CSPAN - Washington Journal 04/23/2025

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April 23, 2025 07:00-10:00 - CSPAN

02:59:50

Washington Journal 04/23/2025

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julie rovner

20:04

pedro echevarria

cspan 42:13

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donald j trump

admin 02:28

justice amy coney barrett

scotus 00:38

justice brett kavanaugh

scotus 01:36

justice elena kagan

scotus 00:56

justice ketanji brown jackson

scotus 01:30

karoline leavitt

admin 01:28

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barbara fisher

00:10

bill clinton

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george h w bush

r 00:02

george w bush

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ingo swann

00:27

justice neil gorsuch

scotus 00:02

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy.
		Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live.
		Then, Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Edward Whalen, discusses the role of the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, as a check on the power of the executive branch.
		And KFF Health News Chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner on the future of the Affordable Care Act and the Supreme Court case that reviewed its provisions on preventive care.
		Washington journal starts now.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is the Washington journal for April 23rd.
		The justices of the Supreme Court considered a case in which parents in a Maryland school district were seeking an opt-out provision from their children being read material from storybooks that feature LGBTQ plus themes and characters.
		Parents seeking that recourse on religious liberty grounds, the school system pushing back, saying an option to accommodate parents could be a logistical challenge, and they believe parents must show that either they or their children are being coerced to change their religious beliefs.
		You'll hear arguments from both sides of the case, but to start the show, do you support or oppose a religious opt-out for LGBTQ books in public schools?
		Here's how you can let us know if you support that opt-out.
		202748-8000 is the number to call.
		If you oppose that opt-out for the reading of these books, 202-748-8001.
		You can also let us know your thoughts on text this morning at 202-748-8003.
		You can post your thoughts on the matter as well on Facebook and on X. Two and a half hours, the justices heard this argument.
		You can still see that argument, by the way, in its entirety if you go to our website, our special page dedicated to Supreme Court matters, in which this case was heard yesterday by the justices of the Supreme Court.
		The Washington Post, reporting on some of the exchanges that took place during that time, saying the lawsuit over story time and books with such titles as Uncle Bobby's Wedding and Love Violet has implications for public schools nationwide.
		It is one of the three major religious right cases on the docket this term for the Supreme Court.
		At issue is whether public schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, illegally burdened the First Amendment rights of parents to freely exercise their religion when children are required to participate in discussions touching on gender and sexuality that conflict with their parents' faith.
		During more than the two and a half hours of argument, the justices made clear that they had studied the storybooks in question.
		Several read aloud from disputed texts, some of which referred to drag queens and same-sex marriage.
		Conservative justice repeatedly pressed Alan Schoenfeld, the lawyer for the school system, on why it could not easily accommodate the rights of religious parents.
		There's more to that story.
		Again, you can see that entire argument concerning this case.
		But when we are asking you this morning, when it comes to this idea of an opt-out for the reading of these books to school-aged children, do you support that idea of an opt-out or do you oppose it?
		If you support it, it's 202-748-8000, the number to call, and 202-748-8001.
		If you oppose it, it was yesterday at the court that during the arguments that Justice Brett Kavanaugh pressed the attorney representing Montgomery County, the school system, the public school system, to explain why they believe that opt-out notices for these types of instruction were not feasible.
		Here's part of that exchange from yesterday.
justice brett kavanaugh ▲ ● ▼		The county had an opt-out, you said.
		Every other school board in the country has opt-outs for all sorts of things.
		The county has opt-outs for all sorts of things.
		The other Maryland counties have opt-outs for all sorts of things.
		And yet, for this one thing, they change in mid-year and say no more opt-outs.
		I'm just not understanding feasibility.
unidentified		So, again, I think what's in the record is that with respect to these books, as they were deployed in the classroom, there was high absenteeism in some schools.
		For example, dozens of students being opted out in, I think Mr. Baxter said the average size of an elementary school in Montgomery County is 700 students.
		So, each grade is 125.
		If you have dozens of students walking out, making arrangements for those students to have adequate space and supervision and alternative instruction, I think is infeasible.
justice brett kavanaugh ▲ ● ▼		They do it for all sorts of other opt-outs.
unidentified		They don't do it for all sorts of other opt-outs.
		There's a limited universe of things that students can opt out from.
		The Family Life and Healthy Sexuality Curriculum stands alone.
		It is mandated by the state.
		It is something where you are able to predict precisely when the curriculum is going to be deployed.
justice brett kavanaugh ▲ ● ▼		There's a four-themary, substantively, to what we have here, and there's an opt-out allowed there.
		I guess I'm not understanding why Montgomery County School Board stands alone.
		I think in the country, you can tell me if there's another school board that's done something like this.
		I don't know the kind of books that are being used and prohibiting opt-outs.
		And I guess I'm just not understanding the whole goal, I think, of some of our religion precedents is to look for the win-win, to look for the situation where you can respect the religious beliefs and accommodate the religious beliefs while the state or city or whatever it may be can pursue its goals.
		And here, they're not asking you to change what's taught in the classroom, they're not asking you to change that at all.
		A lot of the rhetoric suggests that they might have that they were trying to do that, but that's not what they're trying to do.
		They're only seeking to be able to walk out so that they don't have to, the parents don't have their children exposed to these things that are contrary to their own beliefs.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Again, that was part of the arguments that took place at the Supreme Court.
		This idea of a religious opt-out for LGBTQ plus books in public schools and lessons taught from them.
		If you support that idea of an opt-out, 202-748-8000, if you oppose that, 202748-8001, you can text us your thoughts at 202748-8003 and available to you also to post your thoughts.
		You can do that on Facebook and on X. Rebecca in Arkansas, a supporter of this idea of an opt-out.
		Rebecca, good morning.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I support it because I do not think parents should, if they don't want their young children exposed to this, they should have, that's up to them.
		The children, this shouldn't be forced upon young children.
		It's obscene.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		And I think they have every right to not expose their young children to this.
unidentified		It's just not right at all.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Rebecca there in Arkansas giving her thoughts this morning a little bit more about the case, saying the parents in the case that have children in the public schools in Montgomery County, which is the Washington, D.C. suburbs, and one of the most religiously diverse counties in the United States.
		They include Tamara Mahmoud and Enos Barakat Barakot, who are Muslim, Melissa and Chris Persak, who are Roman Catholic, and Svetlana and Jeff Roman, who are Ukrainian Orthodox and Roman Catholics.
		It was in 2022 that the county school board approved books featuring LGBTQ characters for its use in language arts curriculum.
		One book describes the story of a girl attending her uncle's same-sex wedding, for example, while another book, Pride Puppy, tells the story of a puppy that gets lost during a pride parade.
		It was the following year that the board announced it would no longer allow parents to excuse their children from extruding using the LGBTQ-themed storybooks that prompted parents in this case to go to federal court,
		where they argue that the board's refusal to allow them to opt their children out violated their rights under the First Amendment to freely exercise their religion because it stripped them of their ability to instruct their children on issues of gender and sexuality according to their respective faiths and to control how and when their children are exposed to these issues.
		Another viewer on our support line, this is James in Virginia.
		You're next up.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hi, Pedro.
		Good morning.
		I just don't see why this evening conversation.
		You've got 1% of the population that wants their books read in school.
		Why don't we give the same platform to a hate group or terrorist group?
		This doesn't even make sense.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, specifically, what's wrong with the idea of reading these books to children?
unidentified		I mean, I don't understand it.
		I've got a little boy and a little girl in school, a boy and a girl.
		They're not LBGQ.
		They don't need to be taught that or read books about something they don't even understand.
		I mean, you've got to be 21 to buy a pack of cigarettes, but we're going to teach kids in school, middle school, about sexuality.
		That doesn't even make sense.
		I mean, why don't we teach them about hate?
		Why don't we teach them about terrorists?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So hold on, hold on.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		But as far as the opt-out option, then that would be fine to you if they have the ability to be opt-ed out of this kind of instruction.
unidentified		It should not be in our school system at all, Pedro, is what I'm saying.
		So I need to pull my kid out of school because the teacher decides to read a book that 1% of the population believes in.
		Think about that for a second.
		So you're going to pull your kid out of school that you pay taxes on because a teacher decides that she wants to read a book about LBGQ to your kid.
		So you've got the inconvenience.
		Instead of your teacher teaching math, reading and writing, you're going to teach them about sexuality.
		I mean, why are we even having this conversation?
		This is the most ludicrous.
		Why is that even in front of the Supreme Court?
		Where's the common sense to this, Pedro?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, okay, okay.
		Let's go to Timothy and Maryland opposing this idea of an opt-out.
		Timothy, you're next up.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		It's not that I oppose it.
		No one listened to what Kavanaugh said a while ago.
		I don't want my kids and I know about homosexual three or four years old either.
		But the fact that AV as a state in the nation always had the opt-outs, kids who leave the classroom.
		And I don't think nobody should be teaching them books even to know three or four years old because a child don't know better.
		A parent know better.
		But for this to go to the Supreme Court, a parent should just take their kids out of class at that time and not read the book.
		And the school shouldn't be teaching to the kids.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, then you're calling in on our though.
		You oppose the opt-out option.
		Specifically, why is that?
unidentified		I oppose it.
		It's already in effect.
		You can take the kid out of class if you don't want him to read a certain language, certain books.
		It's already in effect.
		This is not a matter of things focused on publicity, some publicity.
		That's how it is.
		Avicenstein Woke thing came out.
		You've been to L mode because you've been in L mode.
		Destiny Sweets already.
		Sesame Suits been around for kids for years.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Tim there in Timothy in Waldorf, Maryland.
		You heard from Brett Kavanaugh.
		It was Justice Elena Kagan.
		She talking to the attorney and asking questions of the attorney that were representing the parents in this case.
		And specifically, the idea of exactly what they think an opt-out notice would be, when it would be required.
		Here's Elena Kagan from the argument yesterday.
justice elena kagan ▲ ● ▼		What I'm hearing you saying is the burden is basically up to the parent to decide this conflicts with my religious beliefs.
		I want an opt-out.
		Is that correct?
unidentified		Yes, and on the Sherbert side, under strict scrutiny, they would have to first show that there is a law that's not neutral or generally applicable, so there's a limit there.
		And on the Yoder side, if this court didn't want to go all the way to address the issues that aren't present in this case, it could rely on the uniquely coercive environment of the schools.
		And now putting those kinds of issues on the certain side.
justice elena kagan ▲ ● ▼		Still, it's like just pretty, I mean, you're, I'm really searching for something, and I can, I know that you realize that, and you're still not giving me anything other than if it's in a school and a sincere religious parent has an objection, that objection is always going to result in an opt-out.
		That's right.
		No matter what the instruction is like, no matter what the materials are, no matter how old the kids are.
unidentified		And that's the rule that schools everywhere in the country are working under right now by their own choice.
		That was Montgomery County's own rule before this lawsuit came in.
		And there were never these kinds of problems until it really introduced a curriculum that was clearly indoctrinating students.
		And things that the principal said was introducing things as fact that aren't.
justice elena kagan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but once we articulate a rule like that, you're going to have a lot of parents, it seems to me.
		I don't think you can say just because it hasn't happened.
		Once we say something like what you are asking us to say, it'll be like, you know, opt-outs for everyone.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Again, that full Supreme Court argument available on our website at cspan.org.
		A previous viewer asked why this was before the Supreme Court in the first place.
		The website SCODIS blog, which covers all things Supreme Court, has this to offer when it comes to that, saying that the lower courts refused to temporarily require the school board to notify the parents when the storybooks would be used and give them a chance to opt their children out of instruction.
		A federal appeals court reasoned that on the quote threadbare, and that's in quote facts before it, the parents had not demonstrated that exposing their children to the storybooks compelled the parents to violate their religion.
		So, to this idea of support or opposing LGBTQ plus books being used in instruction, where do you stand on it if you support that idea of an opt-out for parents on religious or other grounds?
		202748-8000.
		If you oppose it, 202748-8001.
		Some of you posting on Facebook to give your thoughts there saying that this is Sue from Whiting, New Jersey.
		She's actually texting us, saying allowing people to, quote, opt out because of religious beliefs is a slippery slope.
		Parents wanting to opt out of having their children vaccinated due to religious beliefs, for example, could potentially endanger other students.
		However, any material introduced to students should strive to be age-appropriate and endorsed by school boards and made aware to parents.
		Again, texting us as an option too if you want to do that.
		202748-8003.
		Tina's up next.
		She's in Maryland.
		Good morning.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		I support having an opt-out because when I went to school, they had where when you had sex education, your parents had decided I have a transgender in my family.
dennis in kentucky ▲ ● ▼		I have no problem with it, but I don't think I should explain his choices between three and ten because they're too young to understand.
unidentified		They struggle with just understanding being three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten.
		Those are things I don't get them involved in paying my credit cards.
		Those are things I feel should be addressed later in life.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Tina there in Michigan on our support line.
		You've noticed that we've divided the lines of support and opposed for you to give your thoughts this morning.
		Brian in Illinois, also on our support line.
		You're next up.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning, Pedro.
		I watched a good deal of that Q ⁇ A yesterday.
		Thank you for providing that telecast.
		And it seems like the case, and this was my introduction to the case, I plead ignorance, but it seemed that this case is along the lines of religious expression and not just parents' wish for what their kids are exposed to in school.
		And I support the opt-out on both counts because I believe the parents ought to be able to guard their children, even in a school classroom, from stuff that they think is not age appropriate or otherwise inappropriate for their child to experience.
		If they don't have that power over their kids' lives, even in school, then I think we're heading down a bad road.
		And I would never leave parenting duties to any of the teacher my child has had, my grandchild has had, or my great-grandson who's going to be in kindergarten next year.
		And when I think of having to have a conversation with him at his level of maturity or immaturity and his readiness for drag queen story hour or any of these other things that seem outlandish to my view to expose young children to.
		And definitely, it seems in an effort in this case and in case of the things like drag queen story hours, an attempt to indoctrinate kids that aren't yours, that this is perfectly normal when not all of us see it that way.
		And we don't want our kids exposed to it at that age.
		And that sums up my point of view.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Brian, before we let you go, quickly, what did you think about the quality of the arguments both sides brought to the case?
unidentified		I thought the guy that represented the school district was well spoken and his arguments seem to have merit.
		I just think the school district's argument in general is flawed in the way I described.
		It does not take into view the fact that parents should be able, again, in my view, and apparently in the view of the people that brought the suit, that they should have more control than what's being afforded them by this school district over what their kids are exposed to.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Brian there in Illinois.
		Again, he watched the case.
		You can do the same on our website at c-span.org, our app at C-SPANNOW.
		Two and a half hours of argument brought this case, one of three cases that the court will hear when it comes to religious expression and freedoms.
		Lisa in Ohio, opposing this idea of an opt-out.
		Lisa, hi there.
unidentified		Hi.
		So I have kids, and I'm very familiar with Montgomery County.
		It's extremely diverse, not just religiously, but my kids have had many friends with same-sex parents starting in preschool.
		My daughter's best friend through elementary school had same-sex parents.
		My daughter in middle school had a transgender teacher.
		So your kids are exposed to it.
		And it's not fair for the child who is going through that to have to explain it to her peers.
		And that's where the teacher steps in so that all the kids understand and, you know, the child doesn't feel isolated.
		And just, it's not at that age, they, you know, they don't have the tools to explain themselves.
		And so that's where the teacher comes in and supports the child through these books and through, you know, discussing it in an age-appropriate way.
		You can't stop your kids from what's really going on in the world.
		You can't protect them from everything.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What do you think about this idea being this case being brought forth on religious freedoms and aspects of when it comes to the parents?
unidentified		I feel like religious freedoms are forced upon everybody.
		Like we have to, they want us to accept all of their rights and their beliefs, but they don't want to accept anyone else.
		They're inflexible in that part.
		They want us to pray in school and they want us to inflict God in everything.
		And they're against abortion.
		Like even though we may not be religious, they want all of their rules to apply and none of anyone else's to apply.
		So I just think it's unfair.
justice neil gorsuch ▲ ● ▼		I think kids should be exposed to it.
unidentified		I mean, they are exposed to it.
unidentified		You can't protect them.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Lisa there in Columbus, Ohio, giving us her thoughts this morning.
		You can continue on doing the same on the lines.
		The USA Today takes a look at some of the books that were brought up as part of this case.
		You can find this story at their website saying the book Intersection Allies features nine kids from different backgrounds, including Alejandra, who uses a wheelchair while playing basketball, Adelia, who wears a hijab in ballet class, and Kate, who prefers a super cape to, quote, skirts and frills.
		In Uncle Bobby's wedding, Chloe's favorite uncle gets married to another man.
		Quote, I've read so many comments talking about sex being inappropriate in books for kindergartens, author Sarah Brandon said in an interview with PEN America, a writers and free expression group, quote, there's no sex in my book.
		It's a story about a family that ends with everyone dancing at a wedding.
		The story also shows the cover of one of the books in question, Pride Puppy, by Robin Stevenson, Julie McLaughlin, saying that in that alphabet primer, Pride Puppy children chases their dogs to a pride parade.
		Their parents who sued complain the book, quote, invites students barely old enough to tie their own shoes to search for images that include underwear, leather, and lip ring.
		The school says parents are trying to give a salacious bent to objects like a leather jacket.
		But since the lawsuit began, Montgomery County has stopped using Pride Puppy, as well as My Rainbow, a book about a mom who makes a rainbow-colored wig for her transgender daughter.
		That's some of the books in question.
		There's a picture of some of the covers when it comes to the books.
		These are what the books that centered in that case that the Supreme Court heard yesterday.
		This is Jake in Maryland up next.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, I guess I would say that I would oppose this.
		Oppose, sorry, excuse me, I would be for the opting out.
		And I would also say that I would oppose it being totally focused on religious reasons.
		And I would think that the ability for parents to weigh in as it pertains to what is exposed to their children is very important.
		And while I empathize with the last caller that spoke about having folks that are part of the LGBTQ plus community, as I do myself, I would also say that I'm not sure that That's the place of this to be, I guess, enforced and or encouraged in schools.
		And I would also say that what was offered by the Ohio caller earlier was very that I'm directly in support of that as it pertains to the various points that he offered.
		The one part as it pertains to the arguments back and forth, because I've also been listening closely on the way to and from work yesterday and today and just reading about this at night.
		I would just say that part of the argument back about how folks get a chance to weigh in when they're electing their school board officials.
		I'm not sure that that's totally adequate, but I did also hear reference to different recourse they may have if certain books are added to the curriculum that they do not agree with, but I didn't get a chance to really research that yet.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Again, this case centered in Montgomery County, Maryland, not too far from Washington, D.C. Our next call is from Nissa in Greenbelt, Maryland, who opposes an idea of an opt-out.
		Nissa in Greenbelt, hello.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		Excuse me.
		It's Nisa, like Lisa.
		Oh, sorry.
		I just wanted to make two points.
		No, no problem.
		So I'm an educator.
		I'm a parent.
		I am also an attorney and advocate.
		I teach in Prince George's County Public Schools, which is right next to Montgomery County, and we often share policies.
		Let me just make two points, having been down there yesterday.
		The opt-out is a problem.
		The reason why the opt-out is a problem is because this is simply a veiled attempt by people who want to essentially apply private room schools or imply, or I should say, enforce school choice where there's not a school choice option.
		Sonia Sunga Mayor, Justice Sotomayor, made an excellent point yesterday when she said, Well, what if the teacher in the class is a married two same-sex person?
		They would have wedding photos and families.
		That's exposure.
		So, what they were doing was they kept trying to make exposure and indoctrination the same thing.
		I will just say this as a teacher: if parents really think that we have the power to indoctrinate children through curriculum, then we would have the highest test scores on the face of this earth.
		I can repeat, write, and put on a computer instruction for a time.
		And I will still have students, smart students, ask me what did I just say?
		They are not being indoctrinated in any way.
		The second point that I wanted to make was I was slightly disappointed in, let me rephrase my words.
		Yesterday, of course, opposing sides were able to protest.
		And the opt-out opposing the opt-out side, the LGBT plus community, was out there.
		And it was a lovely display of rainbow and color and all those things.
		But that's the problem.
		So many parents think that that's what exposure to same-sex or LGBTQ issues looks like.
		It is not always a drag show.
		And I'm slightly disappointed to see that I didn't really see a strong presence from organizations such as the Human Rights Organization and other pro-LGBT plus communities to dispel misinformation.
		So the party was lovely.
		My students, we went.
		They enjoyed watching both of the protests, but I felt like there should have been a stronger, more forceful, and probably I can't choose the right word, but I would have liked to see another set of representatives from the LGBT plus community.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Nisa, there in Maryland, another Marylander.
		This is Mark in Hampstead on our support line.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		So I agree with the opt-out option.
		I would take it further.
		You know, I would point out that last caller who claimed she was a lawyer.
		You know, it's funny how people who are cultural Marxists love using words like misinformation.
		You know, the thing is, is kind of like another lefty idea of sex education in school, which they started in the late 60s.
		You know, venereal diseases had been going down among young people throughout the 1950s.
		It wasn't until they started doing sex education in school that venereal diseases started back on the rise as soon as they started sex education.
		Now, the last teller also mentioned that teachers are not indoctrinating students.
		Well, let's look at the actual numbers.
		Why is it that almost 40% of teenage girls in middle school and early high school now identify as non-binary?
		When this was not even an issue 10 years ago, it was less than 1%.
		It has increased by 400% in the last few years.
		This is a social contagion.
		And it's part of a concerted effort on the teachers' union and these woke school boards to, you know, you have to ask yourself, and I don't even know why this case would make it to any court.
		What I want to know is why aren't they arresting these teachers?
		Any adult who wants to talk to a child about sex should be suspect.
		Like, why did they want to do this so bad?
		And why did they keep pushing doing these drag shows in school and acting like the exception is the norm?
		You know, you know, the fact is, is there are a couple thousand people who are born with nine fingers every year.
		But when we teach biology, we teach kids that human beings are born with 10 fingers and 10 toes.
		There are exceptions.
		The problem with the left is they always try and make the exception the rule.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		When I was in school, I didn't know if my teacher was married or not.
		I didn't know anything about their personal life.
		They were there to teach, not indoctrinate.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Mark there in Maryland.
		Again, this case stemming from a school system, Montgomery County, Maryland, being heard before the Supreme Court.
		Some of you calling in saying you had a chance to listen and monitor the case from yesterday.
		You can give your thoughts on this idea of an opt-out when it comes to the use of these type of storybooks and instruction.
		202748-8000.
		If you support that idea, if you oppose that idea, 202748-8001.
		Some of you posting on our Facebook page.
		This is Vicki Mayfield saying, why are they pushing these books?
		I think they instead should have a quote opt-in.
		And then Jason Toft, also from Facebook, saying that people that ban or burn books always end up on the wrong side of history, wrong in all capitals, by the way.
		Bo in California on our opposed line.
		You're next up on this idea of an opt-out.
		Bo, good morning.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, Pedro.
		You know, the problem is this opt-out is requiring, and I watched the case too.
		It really focuses on there having to be a religious purpose.
		And I don't think it should be there at all.
		I mean, frankly, whether I'm religious or not, I don't want my kids hearing about this kind of stuff at school.
		It's morally inept and evil to try and push this upon young children.
		And I agree with many of your callers.
		It shouldn't even be a Supreme Court case.
		It should not be in the kids' purview.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're calling on our line for the idea of those who oppose an opt-out option.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Could you elaborate on that?
unidentified		Well, that's my point is we shouldn't even have to opt out.
		And this opt-out is just for religious purposes.
		What if I don't want to go in and say I'm a Christian or Muslim or anything?
		I just don't want my children learning about this kind of stuff at school.
		They shouldn't even be talked about.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Bo there in California giving us his thoughts this morning.
		By the way, if you go to Cato's website, the Cato Institute, they have a map taking a look at some of these ideas of arguments that are taking place across the United States and states dealing with various education issues to show you just the green dots that are represented on this map.
		These are the cases specifically or the instances specifically dealing with the idea of reading material being at the center of concern for parents who are part of that.
		So if you look at that, there are other options too, but just to give you an idea of how widespread across the United States when it comes to reading material alone, this topic, this case specifically dealt with LGBTQ storybooks being used as a part of instruction.
		Again, more there at our website if you want to see the case and hear the arguments on our support line.
		John, John, in Virginia, go ahead.
unidentified		Hi, I'd like to echo the thought that one of your textors put in.
		This should not be an opt-out issue.
		We just had an election, and the majority of the people in this country are not in line with a small percentage that want to force their ideas on the rest of us.
		So if it's a real litmus test, let's do a program and opt in for all of these ideas that are on the fringe.
		And let's see how many people opt their children into this type of learning environment.
		I guarantee you, the lefties and then the people pushing this garbage won't like the idea because it's going to be a small class.
		Have a great day.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
		The New York Times features an op-ed by Megan Stack, an opinion writer, a contributing writer.
		Her home is in Montgomery County, Maryland.
		The title of the op-ed, My School District Could Have Avoided the Supreme Court case, writing about the case that was heard yesterday.
		She says, I can't decide which conceit is more delusional.
		The school district grandstanding about social tolerance while forcing a minority of religious families to engage with books they consider immoral or the religious parents claiming they can't properly rear their children in faith if the kids get exposed to a few picture books.
		Both positions, it seems to me, rest on a cartoonishly inflated sense of schools' influence on children and both seek an ideologically purified classroom.
		We're underestimating the sweep of ideas and information kids absorb simply by existing in our world.
		Most of all, I feel our community's failure to resolve a thoroughly predictable tension with time-tested tools of straight talk, compromise, and extending one another a little grace has made for a demoralizing spectacle.
		And I can't help but notice that our district and its clumsy efforts to force tolerance might have given the Supreme Court an opening to repress LGBTQ-related speech in the nation's schools.
		There's more there by that author.
		And the New York Times is where you can find it.
		Again, there's a picture of some of the books that were in question before the justices of the Supreme Court.
		On our opposed line, this is Elise in Oregon.
unidentified		Hello.
		Good morning, and thank you, C-SPAN, and for taking my call.
		I'm a 70-year-old white female, and I oppose opt-out for religious freedom.
		LGBTQ does not have anything to do with religion.
		And the reason that these programs should be required is too many parents indoctrinate their children at home and they are not exposed to diverse ideas.
		And this is about diversity and inclusion that will hopefully lead to more social equality.
		And I agree that we need to have more inclusion.
		So if some kids don't go to the program and others do, the kids are going to be talking about it in their classes.
		And I think story time is a perfect way to talk about diverse ideas.
		And I wrote a letter about this when I live in Florida, opposing book bans, opposing not teaching kids.
		That's how hatred continues.
		Too many people are siloed in their homes.
		And it's public schools that offer the diversity.
		So thank you.
		And I did watch the whole hearing and I agree that a very small group of right-wing religious believers should not dictate for the rest of the country.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Elisa, if I may ask, several people call again saying they watched the hearing.
		What prompted you to watch the hearing?
		Did you hear about it otherwise?
unidentified		Or what prompted you to watch the whole thing?
		Well, I watch almost all the Supreme Court hearings.
		I write letters.
		I'm an activist.
		And this is so crucial to our young children to learn about different ideas.
		And when our Supreme Court is siding with a small group of parents, I don't think they're being there.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
		Elise in Oregon, thank you again.
		Elise, one of the many people calling this morning saying they watched the whole case.
		I've told you this before.
		I'll tell you this again.
		If you want to go to our website at c-span.org, that's where we keep like an archive of key core cases that the court hears.
		Audio provided to us from the Supreme Court.
		We put the pictures of the various people who are talking.
		That way you get a sense of the dynamics and the back and forth of the questioning that takes place when the court hears these matters.
		This case specifically on our website, too, if you want to catch it there at c-span.org.
		Georgia, this is Will on our support line.
		Hi, Will.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		How you doing, Pedro?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Fine, thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, this is my first time in college, Pedro.
		But what are we talking about here?
		I support parents' right to not have their kids subjected to those type of books.
		But whether they're subjected to it or not, if they're going to be gay, they're going to be gay anyway.
		It was gay people way before those books was written.
		And it's going to be gay people if they slash them off the shelves or whatever they do like they do during the history books.
		It was gay people in Rome.
		I mean, what we need to be talking about is taking history books off the shelves.
		Because if a society don't remember their history, they're bound to repeat it.
		And these things we talk about is mediocre.
		If a parent don't want their kids to read a certain type of book, I mean, I agree with that.
		Totally.
		I agree with that.
		But because they don't read that book when they're five, six, eight, nine, ten, eleven years old, that don't mean they're not going to be gay when they get 20 or 21.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Will they're in Georgia giving us his thoughts?
		Again, this court, this case going through the lower courts before reaching the Supreme Court, when the justices heard it yesterday, one of the exchanges featured Justice Katanji Brown Jackson.
		She questioned whether allowing the opt-outs to go forward would expand the parents' ability to object to other perspectives inside of schools, even that beyond the curriculum.
		Here's some of that exchange from yesterday.
justice ketanji brown jackson ▲ ● ▼		Is your argument actually confined to the content of the school's curriculum?
		I mean, I appreciate that you say we're in the public school, this is a uniquely coercive environment, but what if we have a teacher who is gay and has a photo of a wedding on her desk?
		Is a parent able or could they opt out of having their student be in that classroom?
unidentified		Well, we think no, because the student, you know, the student may have a claim a burden, but on the question of the student doesn't have the right to tell a teacher what to say, the teacher has speech rights.
justice ketanji brown jackson ▲ ● ▼		But I guess I don't understand that given your argument.
		I mean, so, you know, example one: we have a gay teacher in the classroom and they have a wedding photo on their desk, and the children are exposed then to the same kinds of picture that you say is in the book that you don't want children to be exposed to.
		What about the parent, the teacher showing pictures from the wedding, or the teacher goes off to get married and comes back and talks about their spouse?
		Do we have opt-out provisions for children in that situation?
unidentified		Again, we think the same rules would apply.
unidentified		And if you were an assistant, the same rules would apply.
justice ketanji brown jackson ▲ ● ▼		So this is not just about books.
justice ketanji brown jackson ▲ ● ▼		This is about exposure to people of different sexual orientations and the objection, the sincerely held objection, that children shouldn't be exposed to this.
unidentified		Again, our clients are not raising those, and we know that these kinds of objections aren't happening.
unidentified		Here, the board is imposing internation on children.
justice ketanji brown jackson ▲ ● ▼		What if a student group puts up love is love posters around the school featuring same-sex couples or trans youth?
justice ketanji brown jackson ▲ ● ▼		May parents, do parents have to have notice of this and the ability to opt their children out of going into the parts of the school where these posters are?
unidentified		Again, we don't think that any child has the right to dictate what the school does.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That from the Supreme Court yesterday, the topic, this idea of an opt-out for parents to give them the option for their children to avoid being taught lessons and instruction from LGBTQ plus storybooks.
		If you support that idea of an opt-out, 202-748-8000.
		If you oppose it, 202748-8001, the numbers call.
		Lucretia in Coca, Florida, on our support line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		I want to say that I support it for the main reason back in the 60s.
		I only lived six months in Tennessee, and they still had Bible reading in the schools up there when it was not supposed to be.
		And since we were Roman Catholic and the only book we were supposed to use was the Catholic book, my dad did get me out of that part of the class.
		Now, in Florida, teachers don't get that.
		I mean, parents don't get that kind of choice because they took over the whole education in Florida all the way through the universities.
		And they even are putting out Ten Commandments in every friggin' classroom.
		And being Catholic, I'm wondering if they're getting that from the King James book.
		But in Florida, also, they've got it now.
		If you don't have a kid in school, you can't say nothing.
		And I'm made of Floridian from the 50s.
		I went through these schools.
		I've never seen a teacher with a picture on their desk about their family.
		My son went through the schools in the early 2000s.
		Never saw a picture of pictures on the teacher's desks.
		And it's like, it's better to be able to opt out instead of having none of that stuff in there if we have to go that route.
		Personally, I think religion don't belong in school at all because as the people, as the kids have friends, they're going to find out some of them are gay and some of them are different.
		And that's the way life is.
		Life is going to teach them what their parents ain't going to.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Lucretia there in Cocoa, Florida, giving off her thoughts.
		This being reflected in similar by Greg Mosier this morning on Facebook saying we can prepare kids for life or quote opt them out of life.
		Only one approach will prepare them for the world.
		Let's hear from someone on our oppose line.
		This is Maddie in Michigan.
		Hello.
		Maddie in Michigan.
		Hello.
		One more time for Maddie in Michigan.
		Okay.
		Let's hear from Kareem.
		Kareem also on our opposed line.
		Washington, D.C. Hello there.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, Pedro.
		So my issue is where do you draw the line?
		So if we take sexuality out of it and say, hey, a parent can oppose anything that any curriculum that opposes sincere beliefs, it's Women's History Month.
		So if I said, hey, I don't want my kids learning about like successful women because that's against my religious beliefs.
		So I think we need to think about where do we draw the line in censoring like what kids can learn about the world.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Marlene.
		Marlene joins us in Florida on our support line.
		Hi, Marlene.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hello.
		Yes, I support a religious opt-out or any other kind of opt-out for LBGQT books in the classroom because I think it has a lot to do with age appropriateness.
		And we don't object to movies being rated, you know, as to whether they're appropriate for young children or not.
		You know, a good G and the PG and all that.
		And so I don't understand why we're allowing, you know, books to just unit's an appropriate age, you know, to introduce some of these books.
		You know, you don't confuse kids.
		You tell them there's man, there's woman.
		You don't start going into 20 or 30 other combinations like bestiality or whatever.
		You don't do that to young kids.
		You know, you don't confuse them.
		And it's just ridiculous.
		We rate our movies.
		Why don't we rate our books as to age appropriateness too?
		And that's what this basically is.
		I don't know why it's just religious.
		It shouldn't be taught in the school, period.
		You know, school is for math, reading, writing.
		It's not.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let me ask you this because you brought up the age appropriateness.
		What if similar themes are taught on the, say, on the junior high level or the high school level?
		Would you have the same kind of objection or at least the same kind of thought?
unidentified		No, no.
		I said age appropriateness.
		You know, when kids reach a certain age, I don't know, 13, 14, 15, something like that, high school.
		I would say high school.
		You know, then other things can be introduced.
		Although I don't see, you know, it can be introduced, you know, gradually or just not, you know, as a subject, you know, that we have to study every day.
		I mean, it can be, you know, talked about, mentioned, I guess, discussed, but it shouldn't be because it's considered indoctrination and just ridiculous.
		We have age-appropriate movies, but why can't we have age-appropriate books?
		You know, nobody, and right away when it's books, oh, we're banning books.
		Well, why are we saying, oh, we're banning movies because we're, you know, not letting a certain age group watch a certain movie.
		It's just ridiculous.
		It's the same.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		It's the same thing.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Marlene there in Florida giving us her thoughts.
		Several Maryland people, residents of Maryland calling us.
		Again, this case stemming from Montgomery County, Marilyn Miguel in Gambrill's Maryland pose line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Yes.
		Hi.
		How's it going?
		Thanks for having me.
		Yeah, you know, I'm opposed to the whole entire thing.
		I mean, when I called in, I don't know.
		I'm listening to the different callers, but I'm opposed to opting in or out.
		I mean, I pay, you know, for these, for these people to teach my kids, and I don't want them to be indoctrinated.
		I want them to, you know, learn the natural order.
		And the natural order is man and woman.
		And, you know, these books are trying to, like, like the woman said before, they're trying to confuse kids.
		I think that this is a, it's kind of like a ploy.
		They want to destroy our kids' ability to see things through the lens of the natural order.
		And, you know, I'm not a religious person.
		I'm not, you know, I was raised Catholic, but I don't raise my children religiously.
		But I don't want them to be taught things that are going to indoctrinate them.
		I don't want them to learn about the gay agenda.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, let me stop you there only because you called it on the wrong line when it comes to this idea of you support an opt-out or oppose an opt-out.
		So viewers, as you're calling in, make sure you pick the best line that represents you.
		The SCOTUS blog taking a look at this case from yesterday highlights some of the exchanges that were taking place saying Justice Clarence Thomas asked Eric Baxter who argued on behalf of the parents whether the LGBTQ themed storybooks were merely present in the classroom or instead actively used as part of the curriculum.
		Baxter explained that teachers are required to use the books with the school board suggesting that they do so five times before the end of the year.
		The whole point of including the storybooks in the curriculum, he stressed, was that every student would be taught from them.
		Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that the teaching of the content in the storybooks might amount to more than mere exposure, presentation of an idea as facts, such as telling students that, quote, this is the right view of the world, she posited, is different from exposure, such as telling students that, quote, some people think a particular thing.
		We'll hear from Justice Barrett in just a bit.
		And again, you can hear from that whole exchange yesterday at the Supreme Court when you go to our website at c-span.org, a two and a half hour exchange between the justices and the attorneys that represent both the parents and Montgomery County, Maryland.
		Again, also, if you're interested in Supreme Court cases, some of you are, another case to be heard today at 10 o'clock.
		You can follow along on C-SPAN 2 if you're interested in hearing more of the court's arguments.
		This ACE case takes a look in a case challenging whether the Environmental Protection Agency can allow California to set its own greenhouse gas emissions standards for new vehicles.
		That coverage of Diamond Alternative Energy v EPA, 10 o'clock is where you can see it.
		C-SPAN 2, also on C-SPAN now.
		That's our free mobile video app.
		Also online at c-span.org.
		As promised, here's Justice Amy Coney Barrett yesterday from the court case.
justice amy coney barrett ▲ ● ▼		And many of the books, it's not just pictures.
		It's actually the text is, you know, it's talking about there are not just two genders, embracing, you know, non-binary and pronouns, et cetera.
		So that's exposure, though, to those ideas.
		It's not just exposure to the pictures of the two men getting married.
		It's exposure to the ideas.
unidentified		That's correct.
justice amy coney barrett ▲ ● ▼		But to clarify, what are your clients objecting to?
justice amy coney barrett ▲ ● ▼		Are they objecting only to exposure or are they objecting to what they're calling indoctrination?
unidentified		If by exposure you mean having the books read to them, they do object to that.
unidentified		They're not objecting to the books being on the shelf or available in the library without a teacher requiring them to read it or reading it to them.
justice amy coney barrett ▲ ● ▼		So you would not be making the same claim based on your clients' religious beliefs if they were just on the shelves or just in the library.
unidentified		Correct.
justice amy coney barrett ▲ ● ▼		Could another parent bring that claim?
unidentified		I suppose they could, but then you would, I mean, again, we don't see these kinds of claims happening, but they would almost certainly lose because it would, strict scrutiny would easily be satisfied if every student were allowed to say, I want this book or not that book.
unidentified		No student has the right to tell the school which books to choose or what curriculum to teach or what other students will have to learn.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Hubert in Minnesota on our support line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Good morning, America.
		And yeah, aka Brother Samine.
		But yeah, of course, not only do I support opting out, but I like the guy who called in and said that people should have to opt in.
		I think that the overwhelming majority from pieces that I've heard here and there, people are really frustrated with the LGBTQ stuff.
		In fact, I think that may be one of the huge reasons so many people sat out of the elections from the Democrat side of the party.
		The Democrats are not listening to their base and they are not left.
		But if I could, further on this subject, you know, it's interesting that when you go to get a colonoscopy, the first question that they ask you on the intake call is, are you male or female?
		And they specifically ask you, do you, are you male or female?
		And they specifically say, and we're not asking you what your preference is.
		And so, and I understand there may be some scientific situations where people have nine fingers, you know, in some cases.
		But if we are not to lie to a doctor, if we are, then, and I'm sorry, I don't mean to offend them, but it is a lie.
		You are born what you're born, I do believe.
		And if we have to tell, if we're, if a doctor can be expected to know the truth of what you're, then we shouldn't expect anybody else to have to lie.
		Now, I can understand being sensitive to, you know.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, how does that relate specifically?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How does that relate specifically to the use of these storybooks?
unidentified		Well, they're teaching about transgender issues, are they not?
		Or at least with the LGBTQ community, that whole door, that whole can of worms is opened up through these books.
		And even if they are just so far about just, you know, gay marriage or gay relationships or such.
		But, you know, again, transgender is a part of that issue.
		And so, again, if you have to tell a doctor what your original sex is, then you can't, why should you expect anybody else to not, you know, respect?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, gotcha.
		Gotcha.
		Hubert there, John in Pennsylvania on our opposed line.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, how are you today?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, please.
unidentified		I oppose it because I believe in the separation of church and state.
		I believe that the United States Supreme Court has already eroded those rights too much and allowed too much of an incursion of religious beliefs in public schools.
		Religion doesn't belong in the school's period.
		The only time religion belongs in the school is if it's a court non-religion, which is teaching different religions.
		Let's flip the argument.
		If there's supposed to be a separation of church and state, what would the churches think if the public was allowed to put input into what they can teach in their churches?
		The separation of church and state is very important to this nation, and there was a reason that the founding fathers put that into the conversation.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, this deals more with the religious rights of parents and what their children hear under those rights.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Is that a different issue than, say, teaching religion in a school specifically?
unidentified		No, there should be a separation of church and state.
		You know what?
		The argument is, oh, it's parents' rights, but you know what?
		When they try to enforce their rights, what they do is limit everyone else's rights.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		John there in Pennsylvania, calling in on our opposed line.
		This is from Alan up next.
		Alan's in South Carolina, calling in on our support line.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, how are you doing?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Fine, thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah.
		All right.
		Well, I support the opt-out for the LGBTQ.
		Of all that right there, though, I just would always want to be sure if they're teaching them correctly about everything that they have to understand about what lesbian, gay, bisexual was originally supposed to stand for.
		Gay would always sort of mean happy.
		Lesbianism is something that's different when guys are sort of, you know, we have a tendency to want a rough house or something like that, but we've got to make up back friends again.
		And bisexuality is referring to something that's a little bit different than what most people are going to think about being if they're attracted to both sexes.
		And that's just the only, that's the only thing that I have to say about that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, specifically to the opt-out option, why do you support it specifically?
unidentified		Well, I would say that they're actually teaching instead that gay would always mean men-like men, and they're not teaching it that it's about a certain form of speech that they would always take, that then they begin to be some way that's a little bit overjoyed, happy of the situation they're celebrating.
		But when they're going to teach it that way, and they're going to teach that there's a proper way for women to have a sexual relationship or guys to have a different way than was going to have been, that's when it doesn't have like it was supposed to have been arranged for there to be a code for us to understand.
		It's just like we were talking about the Founding Fathers.
		If we have what was going to have been freedom, we don't have anything free unless we're free of, you know, and to actually force someone to.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, got your point, Alan.
		Let's hear from Sherry.
		Sherry in Germantown, Maryland, calling in on our support line.
		Sherry, hello.
unidentified		Hi.
		I agree with the earlier caller that reading this material is not age appropriate.
		And I believe that the confusing, the confusion with the young children come with the subliminal messaging about the relationships that are put forth in these books.
		And I think that it would, it's just too confusing for children at such a young age.
		I think that these books would probably be more appropriate for the middle schoolers and high school children.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So these are storybooks designed for a younger age.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're saying more age-appropriate material, same kind of theme, okay for junior high and above, say.
unidentified		Yes.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		One more call.
		We'll hear from Rose.
		Rose is on our support line.
		Hi, Rose.
		Go ahead.
		You're on.
unidentified		Good morning.
		It's parents, parents, who have ultimate control over what their children learn and when they learn it, not the UN or the World Economic Forum and not Agenda 2030 that pushes LGBQTI and transgenderism.
		They can opt out of any class they don't want taught.
		These are your children, your children.
		They do not belong to the government.
		No teacher should be able to surprise parents with LGBTQTI curriculum.
		All books used for the class should be divulged on a reading list in advance, as they do in college, where you get to decide which classes you are paying for and your children take.
		You are paying for this just as you were with college with your taxes.
		You do have a voice.
		The Supreme Court does not raise your children.
		So their view is moot, M-O-O-T, moot.
		Reclaim your role as parents.
		This ideology comes from the United Nations and the World Economic Forum.
		It is not normal.
		It should not be normalized.
		Advancing the idea that two men or two women can get married is mind control and coercion.
		It's an abomination.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Rose there in Tennessee finishing off this call and many calls later in this course of the hour.
		Thanks for all of you who participated.
		We'll have two guests joining us during the course of the morning to talk about various themes.
		We'll hear first from Ethics and Public Policy Centers Ed Whalen.
		He's a senior fellow with that organization.
		He'll discuss the role of the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, as we've been talking about, as a check on the power of the executive branch.
		Later on in the program, KFF Health News Julie Robner talks about the future of the Affordable Care Act and also a Supreme Court case on its preventative care provisions.
		Those conversations coming up on Washington Journal.
unidentified		Saturday, watch the White House Correspondents Association dinner live on C-SPAN from the Washington Hilton Hotel.
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		c-span democracy unfiltered democracy is always an unfinished creation Democracy is worth dying for.
george h w bush ▲ ● ▼		Democracy belongs to us all.
bill clinton ▲ ● ▼		We are here in the sanctuary of democracy.
george w bush ▲ ● ▼		Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼		American democracy is bigger than any one person.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected.
unidentified		We are still at our core a democracy.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.
unidentified		Washington Journal continues.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Ed Whalen joining us.
		He's with the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
		He serves as a senior fellow, also serves as the chair for constitutional studies at the center.
		Mr. Whalen, welcome back to C-SPAN.
unidentified		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Tell us a little bit about the center, its purpose, and particularly when it comes to judicial matters.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What position does the center hold?
unidentified		Well, the Ethics and Public Policy Center is a think tank that's really dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to issues of public policy.
		We recognize the importance of a sound culture in forming sound politics.
		We were founded in 1976, and I think we've had quite an impressive history since then.
		My own work has been on the courts program since 2004, really trying to promote conservative principles of originalism and judicial restraint.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		To that end, then, what do you think of the role as the courts, the federal courts specifically, when it comes to check on the executive branch?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's the proper role?
unidentified		Well, the Constitution creates a system of separated powers.
		There are lots of contentious issues about just what that means for the courts.
		I think there are proper occasions for the courts to intervene and issue orders and say, here's how we construe the Constitution and the laws, and we order you to abide by that.
		There have been lots of other instances where the courts have, I think, improperly overridden the democratic processes.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		When it comes to the courts generally, how do you think they react when it comes to presidents, policies, laws put in by various presidents, and the courts reacting?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How do you think the courts generally react to what the president puts out there?
unidentified		Well, that's a big question.
		Let's have in mind that there is an appellate process in the court.
		So oftentimes you'll have district court judges on one side or another of the ideological divide who might issue bad rulings.
		One hopes that as it filters up through the appellate system, then to the Supreme Court, those errors get corrected.
		I think by and large, that's happened.
		There have been lots of exceptions, and different presidents would have cause to object to different rulings by the courts over the years.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So that's the lineup.
		Here's the pitch.
		How do you think the courts specifically are reacting to Donald Trump as president when it comes to their judicial rulings?
unidentified		Well, I think in a way it's too early to tell precisely because this appellate process hasn't had a chance to play out.
		The Trump White House is understandably frustrated by all of the preliminary injunctions and temporary restraining orders, so-called TROs, that district courts throughout the country have issued against one after another of the shock and awe flood of initiatives.
		A lot of this was foreseeable, and some of it even seems to have been invited.
		Nonetheless, there is some frustration.
		Many of these rulings have been issued by Judges appointed by Barack Obama or others by Republican appointees, even by appointees of Donald Trump.
		So I think it's hard to paint a big picture.
		I think, again, the White House has a lot of frustration and is complaining about a lot.
		That doesn't mean that all of its complaints are well-warranted.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Such as what?
unidentified		Well, I think there are a lot of complaints that go beyond we disagree with this reasoning, we want to get the appellate courts to overturn it, but instead are calling for judges to be impeached, or you have folks in the White House proclaiming tyranny, just a lot of over-the-top rhetoric that I don't think is actually helpful to their cause in the litigation.
		Maybe they see it as helpful politically.
		But, you know, you would have to look at each case matter by matter to discuss it and to assess it.
		And again, there can be good arguments on both sides of many of these cases.
		But in some ways, it seems as though the Trump administration has been eager to invite these fights and hasn't really taken action to avoid them.
		As an example, we have this prominent case that involves a Salvadoran illegal alien whose surname is Brego Garcia.
		The Trump administration concedes that he was illegally deported.
		It probably could have taken corrective action right away to remedy that.
		It may not have even required that he be brought back to the States.
		But the White House has been, I think, very obstinate, even in the face of orders by the district court, by the Fourth Circuit, by the Supreme Court.
		And I think its obstinacy is viewed by many judges, and it was seen by some Supreme Court justices as bad faith.
		I don't think that's going to help it in this battle or more broadly.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This was broadly, the administration brought that on the use of these wartime powers going back several decades in history.
		What do you think about the use of that power?
		Is it applicable to the Kilmar Abrego case?
unidentified		Well, the Abrego-Garcia case involves, I think, ordinary deportation powers.
		And clearly he's deportable.
		We can get into the details of his case more.
		But what you're asking about with the Alien Enemies Act is a proclamation that Donald Trump issued with respect to Venezuelans, specifically with respect to individuals deemed by the administration to be members of a gang.
		The shorthand is TDA.
		Now, he's used this Alien Enemies Act as the basis for this.
		I think there are lots and lots of questions about whether the proclamation itself is lawful.
		There are some very robust champions of executive power who say this goes way too far.
		So the Supreme Court has already put a stop to the major use of this by saying, look, you need to provide due process to anyone you're deporting this way.
		The person is going to have a right to file a habeas petition and to challenge in that habeas petition the claim that he is a member of this gang.
		And they'll also be able to challenge, as we've seen, the legality of the proclamation altogether.
		So I think it's a very aggressive effort that may well not succeed.
		It only involves a tiny, tiny percentage of the illegal aliens in this country.
		I mean, we're probably talking 0.0001%.
		That doesn't render it insignificant.
		I don't mean to suggest that.
		Obviously, gang members are among the most dangerous illegal aliens in this country, and I'm very supportive of efforts to deport them.
		Let's just make sure we get the right people and do it lawfully.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Ed Whalen joining us for this discussion about judicial branches and the Trump administration, 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats, and 202748-8002 for independents.
		You can text us questions or comments to it, 202748-8003.
		Some of those comments about the use of administration's policy when it comes to deportation came from judges themselves.
		There was some reaction in the papers this morning.
		Here's one saying, quote, this is not a secret court, an inquisition from medieval times.
		This is the United States of America.
		That was U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein at a hearing at New York.
		He goes on to say, you got to tell a person when he's done what he's done.
		What do you think of that reaction and some similar reactions from the judges themselves?
unidentified		Yeah, well, I'm not familiar with that particular case, but judges properly see due process as an important mandate.
		What process is due can vary dramatically in different proceedings.
		I don't think, as a general matter, that illegal aliens are entitled to a heck of a lot.
		If you face a deportation order, you're maybe entitled to contest that you're the person who's named, contest that you're an illegal alien, but that's probably all been established by then.
		There are, in other contexts, other challenges that folks being deported can raise.
		They can say that they're entitled to asylum.
		They can argue as Brego Garcia did that the order of removal should be withheld with respect to a particular country.
		And look, there probably are lots and lots of ways to improve the immigration system and to challenge existing case law that makes things too difficult.
		I wish the focus were on that.
		And I wish we would see, for example, a set of cases, appellate court, Supreme Court from the Justice Department that it's working to get altered so that deportations can be done more efficiently.
		Instead, I think we're seeing a lot of political rhetoric that isn't going to achieve much.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		There was a report issued by the Congressional Research Service about the administration and this term saying that using its methodology, the service identified 17 cases in which federal courts issued nationwide injunctions, that between January 20th of this year and March 27th of this year.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Is that an unusual number or at least an unusual figure to you?
unidentified		Well, it probably is.
		I'm sure it is, in fact.
		But we also have an administration that is boasting about how aggressive it is on all these fronts.
		And it also has skirted the usual processes working through the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel to make sure that its executive orders are actually lawful.
		The term nationwide injunctions is a confusing one.
		I think different people use it in different ways.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What does it mean to you?
unidentified		Well, I think insofar as it's objectionable, what it means is an order that gives relief to non-parties.
		So you have someone comes into a court and says, I'm entitled to relief against the government, and this court says, yes, you are.
		Well, of course, that's going to apply nationwide.
		Of course, it's not going to be the case if you travel from Virginia to California.
		Suddenly you're going to lose your rights there.
		So that meaning of nationwide injunction is not particularly meaningful.
		But if the court says, not only are you entitled to relief, but we're going to strike down this law entirely, bar its application to anyone, or bar the application of this regulation to anyone, that's going beyond the bounds of what an injunction properly ought to do.
		So that's the sense in which I think a nationwide injunction is objectionable.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Before we take calls, you said that the president depends on various avenues within the White House to bring these legal cases.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Who's he listening to most, and is that the right person to listen to in your mind?
unidentified		Well, it seems that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is a very influential voice on this.
		He's a very bright and talented person politically.
		He's not a lawyer.
		It certainly seems that he's micromanaging the Department of Justice in a way that's unprecedented.
		And a lot of his own rhetoric has been wildly inaccurate and I think irresponsible.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Ed Whalen is joining us for this discussion.
		Again, you can call in on the lines if you want to ask him questions.
		We'll start off this morning with Ron.
		Ron is in New Hampshire.
		Line for Democrats on with Ed Whalen.
		Good morning, Ron.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Oh, thank you, and thank your guests very, very much.
		I'm very honored to get to speak to Mr. Whalen this morning.
		And kudos to you guys again.
		Greatest show on TV.
		Your producers, everybody there, awesome.
		Has been for a very long time.
		But yeah, this is just incredible.
		What's the deal with this?
		This gay makeup artist was sent off and they grabbed the lady protester that was going to the university off the streets.
		And these people are citizens.
		If they did something wrong, if they broke the law, wanted by the law, if they're illegal, then they broke the law doing that.
		Then, yeah, pick them up.
		But isn't it like against our against the USAI policies or something?
		We're supposed to take people in that may end up getting killed in other countries, and we're sending them to a prison where we're almost certain that they're going to be tortured and possibly killed in this prison, may never be able to get them back and everything.
		This is just lawlessness.
		This is really just incredible times right now.
		It's like we're living in a mini Russia at this point.
		All right.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Ron there in New Hampshire.
unidentified		Well, I think that Ron is repeating some allegations that are out there that may well be true but haven't been established.
		He also, I think, mistakenly, well, I know he referred to these people as citizens.
		They're not citizens.
		That doesn't mean that they're not entitled to due process, but it's important to establish that we are talking about aliens.
		He referred to a gay makeup artist, as I understand it.
		That's an allegation.
		This involves an individual who was detained and I believe deported under this Alien Enemies Act proclamation and who says that he was never part of this gang.
		Indeed, that he threatened, he fears being persecuted by this gang because of his sexual orientation.
		The second person he refers to, I think, is this lady protester.
		I believe he's referring to a student at, I'm forgetting now, a college in the Boston area who was seized off the streets by ICE agents and I think is now in some sort of facility in Texas or Louisiana.
		She was lawfully in this country, as I understand it.
		She's not a citizen.
		The actions there seem quite extreme.
		It's not clear that she ever did anything more than write an op-ed that people object to, but perhaps there's more to it.
		So, you know, there's a bit of a fog here, and both sides have their allegations and the facts that they assert.
		The value of judicial hearings is that they provide an opportunity to sort through this.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		There's also the case of Magmu Khalil of Columbia University.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What does this illustrate about the Trump administration's use of apprehension, and what are the legal challenges facing the Trump administration?
unidentified		Well, so I believe Khalil is someone else who was studying this country legally, who's been outspoken, I believe, on Palestinian issues, may well have crossed the line in some very ugly rhetoric.
		I can't say I know this case very well.
		But yeah, I believe he's detained.
		And so we see some very aggressive action.
		These small number of cases aren't really doing much, it seems, to achieve the broader purpose of deporting lots and lots of people.
		And they're inviting fights.
		Now, maybe that's what the administration wants.
		I really don't know.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What does it mean for the courts, though, as they determine these kind of things?
unidentified		Well, the courts are going to be assessing has the administration acted lawfully.
		Are these allegations true?
		What degree of deference is owed to the White House in making these determinations?
		A very important question.
		And I think in the immigration context, under lots of these laws, substantial deference is owed to the White House.
		Now, the White House is going to lose, I think, in practice, if not also in law, a lot of this deference if it is seen to be acting in a very wild manner.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Delaware, Alex is next.
		Republican line.
		Hi there.
unidentified		Yeah, how are you doing?
		I just wanted to ask you a question about Obama deported millions.
		And are you trying to tell me that they had millions of cases to deport them people, ED?
		And it just, it's so, it's just not right.
		It's corrupt.
		It's so corrupt.
		This guy, he even says that he should be deported.
		It doesn't make any sense why they're making a big deal out of all this.
		It's really craziness.
		That's all I got to say.
		Well, I'm not quite sure what facts Alex is relying on here, but there's no question that there have been lots of illegal aliens in the past who have voluntarily returned to their countries.
		And you see statistics that show these people being deported.
		These count as deportations.
		You don't need, Alex referred to cases.
		You don't need elaborate trials here.
		So many of these people realize they have nothing to contest.
		So I'm not sure I understand the argument that Donald Trump is unable to achieve things that Barack Obama was able to achieve.
		I see no evidence that courts are standing in the way of the ordinary deportation system that Barack Obama used.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		When it comes to the courts, ultimately, as various cases from the Trump administration filter through the lower courts, what does it mean for the Supreme Court?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And from actions of the court that you've seen to date, what do you get as a sense of the court when it comes to how the administration is using its power?
unidentified		Well, you've been getting a lot of emergency applications to the court.
		So, again, the ordinary appellate process, you'd have a final ruling by the district court.
		You'd have a careful review by the Court of Appeals.
		You'd then have a sorcery petition to the Supreme Court.
		The Supreme Court would decide whether or not to grant it.
		This could go easily over a period of years.
		Things have been happening on an expedited basis, in part, in large part, because district courts have been granting a lot of TROs or preliminary injunctions.
		And so those are, at least in the case of preliminary injunctions, immediately appealable.
		And what the Trump administration has sought is emergency stays of orders against them.
		And these requests have been getting up to the Supreme Court very expedited basis, in a way that invites fast rulings on complicated matters.
		And the margin of error becomes all the higher when the court is asked to act so quickly on facts that aren't very developed.
		So we've seen some rulings by the Supreme Court in favor of the administration, some rulings against, some rulings against that the administration pretends are in its favor.
		It's a mixed bag.
		I don't envy the Supreme Court justices who have this, you know, the flood of applications coming to them now that are not easy to handle.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What did you make of the actions of the Supreme Court that Saturday morning when it comes to deportations, putting a halt on them?
unidentified		Yeah, so you're referring to this extraordinary ruling either very late Friday or maybe at 1 a.m. Saturday morning in a case arising out of Texas in which individuals who feared they were about to be deported to Venezuela via this Alien Enemies Act proclamation that I mentioned sought emergency relief.
		And seven justices granted that very promptly.
		It was extraordinary that it happened so quickly.
		The court acted as it noted without hearing from the government.
		It was a temporary action and it's reconsidering it right now as it's received an opposition from the government as well as a dissent from Justice Alito and Justice Thomas.
		I think it's difficult to see that action as anything other than reflecting a deep, deep distrust of this administration, a sense that it cannot be taken as word when it says it's not going to deport folks.
		And I think that distrust unfortunately has been earned.
		Now, it doesn't mean that that distrust justifies the order.
		I'm explaining it, not taking a position on whether or not it's justified.
		But I think it does show that at least seven justices, including all three of Donald Trump's own appointees to the Supreme Court, seem rather alarmed by the bad faith defiance that they seem to perceive.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		One of the dissents came from Justice Alito.
		He wrote in part saying, in sum, literally in the middle of the night, the court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application with dubious factual support for its order and without providing any explanation for its order.
		I refuse to join the court's order because we had no good reason to think that under the circumstances issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate.
unidentified		A very strong statement by a justice I respect a lot.
unidentified		We'll see how this issue sorts out in the coming days.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to Christian.
		Christian joins us from Ohio, independent line for Ed Whalen.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hi, yes.
barbara fisher ▲ ● ▼		So looking back on history, Bill Clinton deported formally roughly 1 million illegals here with only 12 injunctions.
unidentified		George Bush was 2 million with only 12 injunctions.
		Obama, arguably probably the largest amount, 3.5 million, again, with only 12 injunctions.
		Yet for Donald Trump, in his first term, he deported 1.5 and had 30 court injunctions.
		Now, with only 138,000 roughly being deported, there's already another 30 court injunctions.
		And I just have to ask, because I watched this play out, and I used to be a longtime Democrat.
		And honestly, I voted on both sides of the aisle.
		But the more I watch these things play out on TV, I just have to ask, how much of these court injunctions today are actually authentic and justified versus manufactured outrage because they don't like who's in charge.
		And I mean, I don't remember any of this being on the news 24-7 with news anchors melting down.
		I mean, it's completely unhinged.
		And while, you know, it's just an observation, but I know a lot of people that observe the same thing.
		And I guess, you know, people wonder why we end up back in this situation.
		They've watched the same thing I have.
		And, well, here we are.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		But Kristen there in Ohio.
unidentified		Well, let me just say I'm distrustful of a lot of the numbers we see tossed around as though they're well substantiated.
		Again, a lot of the numbers for, say, Clinton deportations were voluntary returns, and they seem to involve seasonal workers who would come in one season, go back home, come back in the other season.
		So you're talking about a lot of the same people.
		And we talk about numbers of injunctions.
		Again, that doesn't capture the significance of it.
		I'm also skeptical of the number.
		But you also have unprecedented action here.
		I mean, how many of these injunctions involve Donald Trump's Alien Enemies Act proclamation?
		Certainly there are quite a few out there, and there'll be more.
		So I don't think that counting injunctions is a very good way to measure things.
		Granted, it takes a lot more work to come up with a more sophisticated measure.
		And the caller may well be right that there are some courts that are over-eager to block what the administration is doing.
		But if you're talking about ordinary use of deportation powers, I simply don't see why those are unavailable.
		So the very fact that if it is a fact that you had these high numbers of deportations by previous presidents should mean that this president should be able to use those same powers to get those done.
		And I'm not aware of any injunctions that render that impossible.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The Ethic and Public Policy Center is Ed Whalen joining us for this discussion.
		Kathleen in Mississippi, you're up next.
		Democrats line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Good morning.
		I had tried to text in, but I didn't have no data on my phone, so I called.
		This is about the Constitution, our Constitution.
		You should not have A War Act for, like he said, I want to get rid of a United States citizen.
		We have nothing.
		We is a worst state, I think, in Mississippi.
		And they just rolled it over us.
		I mean, it's ludicrous what they're talking about.
		Get rid of the federal government, get rid of education, get rid of everything.
		What's left?
		Nothing.
		It's sad that people want their whole life and don't have nothing to shut for $988 a month.
		I'm not rich.
		My grandchildren, children are not rich.
		We barely survive and they taking everything from us.
		I mean, God forgot the Pope.
		That's all I can say.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Kathleen in Mississippi.
		She brought up the idea of the Constitution.
		Ultimately, these are, to what degree are these constitutional challenges that the administration presents when making these actions and the courts have to interpret.
unidentified		Well, okay, so as your question indicates, there's this stratum of statutory law that involves a whole host of questions.
		And then there's a matter of whether the administration has complied with some basic constitutional obligations such as due process.
		And different cases are going to present different things.
		I heard a lot of static on that call, so I apologize.
		But I certainly heard the caller express understandable frustration with the consequences of illegal immigration.
		And it is often the poorest Americans who suffer most from this in labor competition and other things.
		So I speak as someone who is broadly supportive of President Trump's goals on the immigration front.
		I would just hope that they would be pursued effectively and legally.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The president himself, responding to the various actions, including the Supreme Court on his Truth Social site, he said the courts are intimidated, in part.
		He said the courts are intimidated by the radical left who are playing the ref.
		Great Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito correctly wants to dissolve the pause on deportations.
		He's right on this.
		If we don't get these criminals out of our country, we're not going to have a country any longer.
		We cannot give everyone a trial because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years.
		And he goes on to say we would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of illegals we are sending out of this country.
		There's the rhetoric, but where's the truth?
unidentified		Well, this talk of trials is deeply misleading.
		Again, President Trump is expressing an important sentiment that a lot of us share.
		I don't know that his political rhetoric here is very helpful.
		And we're not talking about trials.
		I mean, if you're an illegal alien, you don't need a trial on anything.
		There's not going to be some jury that tries to decide whether you're an illegal alien.
		These are processes that are handled first and foremost by the executive branch and by the Department of Homeland Security and the immigration authorities within that department.
		So, and again, there may well be obstacles to immigration officials acting as effectively as they ought to.
		We ought to identify those obstacles.
		But have in mind that this Brego Garcia, who's the Salvadoran national who was, as the administration concedes, mistakenly deported to El Salvador, was deemed deportable back in 2019.
		It was a Trump administration back then that did not challenge the order withholding deportation to El Salvador.
		That did not detain him.
		That released him back into the community.
		So a lot of the rhetoric doesn't really match reality.
		The challenge is great, but I'm afraid a lot of the over-the-top political rhetoric misses the real issues.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is from Georgia.
		Roy joins us next.
		Republican line.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
		I keep hearing about the Alien Enemy Act.
		The part of the problem is that Trump is trying to do the right thing, but he doesn't have the tools to do what he wants to do.
		So instead of relying on some old law, he has the Congress, he has the Senate.
		They need to give him the tools he needs to accomplish what he's trying to do.
		I mean, you used the words yourself, unprecedented.
		This is unprecedented.
		20 million people to come over here, many of them criminals.
		So why don't we create the laws that would allow him to do that?
		This president is fighting a deep, deep state that have imported these people here for nefarious reasons.
		He can't do it on his own.
		He's fighting against these people on his own, and the Congress is sitting there on their thumbs doing nothing.
		They need to come forward and help this president out.
		We're talking about laws.
		They make the laws.
		They made the laws.
		Trump to enforce the laws.
		But to get the ACLU and all these other people trying to delay what he's doing so they can earn money, like you said, 200 years, they're doing a payroll trying to defend these criminals, the president need help.
		And the Republican Party is not helping him.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Roy and Georgia there.
unidentified		Well, it's an interesting observation.
		I don't know that the White House has actually proposed any legal reforms for Congress to adopt.
		Of course, Congress doesn't need to wait for the White House to do so.
		But I think the more immediate question is what can the administration do with existing legal authorities.
		And so we have lots of folks pointing out that previous presidents have deported a lot of people.
		So it's not obvious to me why this administration can't do so through the ordinary authorities.
		And, you know, it's picking fights on, you know, that, again, the involve important matters, the deportation of gang members.
		But there's a separate law that already allows deportation of gang members without the ordinary protections.
		But you still have to make sure that you're talking about that these people, you have to make some good effort to make sure that the people you say are gang members really are.
		And that's where things can get difficult.
		But again, I think that, yes, maybe there's room to look at Congress reforming the system.
		You're still going to run into a lot of barriers on due process.
		I think the more immediate approach would be to look at the bad case law out there and get it fixed.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You wrote a recent piece for the free press just to read you the headline.
		support Trump's policy goals, but oppose turning law into politics.
		Can you summarize what you're the idea you're trying to?
unidentified		Sure.
		Basically, I fear that the White House is still in campaign mode, viewing everything through the lens of politics, denying that there is a separate realm of law in which rules and reasoning and principles in the Constitution apply, and instead stigmatizing and demonizing anyone who stands in its way.
		And I think we've seen that that's not going to work in terms of winning good results from the courts.
		So I would hope that we see the Department of Justice acting with more day-to-day autonomy, answering to the White House, of course, but not answering to White House staffers, not having our Attorney General be a nominal Attorney General with a de facto Attorney General in the White House.
		And you have to have, look, we have an incredibly talented Solicitor General, John Sauer.
		He wrote a very good brief in response to this action over the weekend, and we'll see what the court ends up doing.
		There's a previous brief I saw in the Fourth Circuit that bore his name.
		I have to think the first couple paragraphs were somewhere in the White House.
		Just a lot of screeching, inaccurate rhetoric.
		I mean, claims that foreign affairs are an exclusive reserve of the executive branch.
		Not true.
		Other, I think, misrepresentation.
		So the Department of Justice needs to be able to act like lawyers in court to make the best case for the administration.
		If it does that, I think it'll do pretty well in a lot of these cases.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		To what degree do you think the Justice Department and the Attorney General is going to show that independence?
unidentified		That's a big question.
		We haven't seen much of it so far.
		I would think that at some point responsible lawyers in DOJ would say, look, do you want to win these cases?
		It says to the White House, well, stop your tweeting.
		Stop proclaiming tyranny every time you lose a case.
		Stop calling for judges to be impeached.
		Stop misrepresenting the Supreme Court's rulings, claiming that you won a victory when you actually had a loss.
		And let us do our job.
		We'll see if that happens.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Jerry joins us next.
		Jerry is in Virginia.
		Republican line for Ed Whalen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I have a question.
		Who are you?
		Why is no one talking about the lack of processing when those people illegally enter their country?
		The law says someone illegally crosses their border, they shall be detained until they have a hearing.
		But that never did happen under the previous administration.
		They just gave them a prepaid debit card, a cell phone, and flew them anywhere they wanted to go.
		That's when they should have been processed, right?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Jerry in Virginia.
unidentified		Well, one point Jerry makes, I'm seeing a lot, it's as though the judges who are insisting on due process somehow had some role to play when people crossed the board in the first place.
		That, of course, isn't how it works.
		You know, many of these individuals probably were detained, but others, you know, clearly the Biden administration let a lot of people in.
		It acted very irresponsibly on the immigration front.
		And that does present a huge challenge to this administration.
		It's easy to let all these illegal aliens in.
		It's much more difficult to go through the processes of deporting them.
		So, you know, I recognize that's a huge challenge.
		I'm not sure that the suggestion that somehow the courts are at fault for providing due process now when somehow due process wasn't accorded when they came in.
		I'm not even quite sure I understand that concept.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Democrats line from Ohio.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Lamar, hello.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		It's real, I'm having a problem understanding exactly for what reason people describing these immigrants as illegal aliens.
		They are human beings, and you can detect the first sign of disrespect when you have someone on talking about them, speaking as illegal aliens.
		I never heard anyone refer to the immigrants coming into the country back in the early 1900s as illegal aliens.
		They call them illegal immigrants until they were legal.
		But that's the first sign of disrespect.
		These are human beings first.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Lamar there in Ohio.
unidentified		Well, of course they're human beings.
		The term illegal aliens is a long-standing one.
		It's a term that Liberal Justice William Brennan used often in his own opinions.
		I use the term not to convey any disrespect.
		I think I've been clear that I believe these people are entitled to be treated with respect.
		There is a political correctness or wokeness that tries to get us to change our vocabulary.
		I'm not going to acquiesce in that.
		I don't know what undocumented immigrant means or illegal immigrant.
		I'm not sure why he finds that term more acceptable.
		But some people think the alien is somehow suggesting that this person is flying around outer space or is a Martian.
		Well, that's obviously not the root of the term.
		And so I think it's possible and improper to use this term while also recognizing that, yes, of course they're human beings.
		Of course, I believe we have an obligation to treat them with dignity and respect and to make sure that the law is applied properly to them.
		But I'm not going to change my usage in response to the sort of concern that the caller raised.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Another topic altogether, part of the goals of the White House and the Senate would be judicial nominations.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How are they doing on that front?
unidentified		Well, there haven't yet been any judicial nominations, which is a little surprising to me.
		I think judicial nominations are perhaps a lower priority in this administration than they were in Donald Trump's first term, in part because there are far fewer vacancies and there are likely to be far fewer vacancies throughout the four years than there were in the first four.
		That said, I was expecting Donald Trump to beat Joe Biden's mark of making the first nominations, I think, on April 19.
		I think that's what Joe Biden did.
		And that date has passed, and we haven't seen these nominations.
		We'll see.
		You know, I think I'm more interested in seeing whether Donald Trump continues to appoint the sort of, in my view, high-quality nominees that we saw the first time around, or whether the folks who use a lot of rhetoric that's contemptuous of the courts succeed in getting judges who don't seem to believe in the rule of law.
		I think that'd be very problematic.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And on a higher level, I want you to think about what's the possibility of a Supreme Court vacancy in this term.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
unidentified		Well, I have to say that the day after the election, I speculated that I thought a justice would retire this year.
		There's a lot of public pushback, and so I no longer think that.
		I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think that a voluntary vacancy is unlikely this year, and perhaps next year as well.
		It's interesting.
		It could be a big gamble.
		The Republicans now have a 53 to 47 majority in the Senate.
		There seemed to be a pretty good map in the 2026 elections to hold on to that majority, but things are very, very volatile.
		And any justice who wants to be replaced by someone who has a similar judicial philosophy risks making the same mistake that Ruth Bader Ginsburg made, staying on so long and then departing in circumstances where you end up with someone very different from you filling your seat.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Texas, we'll hear from Liz, Republican line.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		I just have a couple of questions.
		I'm very concerned about the judge's injunctions and wondered, do American citizens have the ability to go to these judges and file a class action lawsuit against the prior administration who allowed millions of illegals to come in without any vetting or due process.
		Now we have multiple Americans who have been raped and murdered by the illegals.
		What remedy do American citizens have since apparently the illegal aliens have the ability to enjoin our president from removing them for the American citizens' benefit?
		I find this extremely disturbing.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Liz in Texas.
unidentified		Well, there is no such judicial remedy available to American citizens.
		You can't go in to try to enjoin something that happened four years ago.
		It's a generalized injury, to use legal jargon, so there would not be standing to pursue that.
		The American people had a political remedy and still have one.
		Part of the political remedy was the election of Donald Trump.
		And I think it's way too early to proclaim failure on the immigration front.
		Lots of people are sort of catastrophous.
		Everything is just really, really terrible.
		Look, there are lots of problems.
		I don't mean to minimize those, but let's work through the process as best we can to get good results rather than screaming for impeachments, which, again, isn't going to accomplish anything.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The work of our guests can be found at eppc.org.
		Ed Whalen serves as a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, also the Constitutional Studies Chair.
		Thanks for joining us.
unidentified		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Coming up, we're going to take a look at where the Affordable Care Act stands today.
		And joining us for that discussion, KFF Health News is Julie Robner on the future of the act, as well as a Supreme Court case that looks at its preventative care provisions.
		that coming up on Washington Journal.
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pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		A look at the future of the Affordable Care Act with Julie Robner of KFF Health News.
		She's a chief Washington correspondent.
		Thanks for giving us your time.
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Before we look at the future, let's look at the present.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How have, how, what's the trend as far as those signing up for the Affordable Care Act, and how does this year compare to previous?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Well, during the pandemic, the subsidies were expanded for people to buy private insurance on the marketplaces.
		And we saw really enrollment basically double.
		So we have about 24 million people now with Affordable Care Act coverage.
		That's just the private coverage through the marketplaces.
		We also have about 20 million additional people who joined because of the Medicaid expansion.
		Those are the two biggest pieces of the Affordable Care Act.
		So right now, it's fair to say that enrollment under the law is at its all-time high.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		When you take the subsidies in the question, how long do the subsidies last for?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And are there concerns that the subsidies might go away?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Yes, there are a lot of concerns.
		The subsidies will go away unless Congress renews them.
		They go away at the end of this year, at the end of 2025.
		So Congress has a decision to make whether it wants to continue the subsidies or let them expire.
		But if there's no action, then they go away at the end of this year.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Our guests already mentioned that these enhanced subsidies took place with the onset of the American Rescue Plan.
		More than 2020 enrollment has doubled.
		When it comes to the subsidies, and you said Congress ultimately will decide, I guess I don't know for every member of Congress, but generally, where is Congress on this idea of continuing the subsidies?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's a general thought, you know, when President Trump was re-elected and Republicans took control of Congress, the thought was that the subsidies would go away, that they would need that money to extend their tax cuts.
		And that indeed may still be the case.
		But we're seeing a lot of Republicans, a lot of this expanded coverage, particularly people buying their own coverage, happened in Republican states, particularly in Republican states that didn't expand Medicaid.
		So we've seen huge increases in places like Florida and Texas and Georgia.
		And some of the senators from those states are a little bit having some second thoughts about whether or not they want to, you know, basically raise people's premiums.
		In some cases, premiums could double.
		So there's some back and forth about whether or not they're going to let these subsidies expire.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What degree then do the senators that might want to keep these things in place are talking to the White House about keeping these things in place?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And what's the White House's mind on this?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		You know, I haven't heard what the White House has said about this, because remember, this really is a congressional decision.
		They will automatically expire unless Congress extends them.
		And of course, then the President would have to sign it.
		This is supposed to be part of the one big, beautiful bill that the President keeps saying that he wants that would have the tax cuts and more money for immigration enforcement and more money for energy.
		This is part of this whole reconciliation process that Congress is about to launch into.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Just for a reminder, what does the ACA cover generally?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Well, the ACA is an enormous bill that does a lot of things, but the main part of it is to expand coverage, both by giving people who don't have access to workplace coverage through either through Medicaid or through buying it themselves.
		There are new rules for insurance companies.
		There are a lot of programs that help train future health care workers, health care professionals.
		There's everything from, you know, there was a permanent reauthorization of the Indian Health Service in the Affordable Care Act.
		There was enabling generic biologic drugs for the first time in the Affordable Care Act.
		So it was an enormous law.
		But the main part of it that we think about is this expanded coverage and the rules of the road for what has to be covered.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Specifically, what does the law, what do those who get the ACA, how much does it cover preventative care?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Well, that was one of the big and popular issues in the Affordable Care Act is a requirement that certain types of preventive care be covered with no additional out-of-pocket costs, so no co-pays or deductibles for certain types of preventive care.
		And there are a number of them, but many of them come from something called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which is a quasi-independent agency under the Department of Health and Human Services of experts that basically evaluate preventive services and decide whether or not they're essentially worth the money that they cost.
		So they give them grades and anything that the USPSTF grades A or B is required to be covered with no additional out-of-pocket costs by the Affordable Care Act.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The topic of that preventative care was centerpiece at the Supreme Court this week, a specific case brought against that, looking at that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Can you tell our viewers about that case?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Yes, this case says that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force was not properly established under the Constitution because it's too independent and that they cannot legally, because the members were not appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, they are not allowed to make these types of decisions about what should be covered.
		Interestingly, well, the Biden administration first started defending this case.
		Interestingly, when the Trump administration came in, they continued to defend this case.
		So they were at the Supreme Court saying, no, we think that this task force is fine and okay.
		And by the way, we exercise enough control over their decisions, or at least whether their decisions are finally implemented, that we think everything is A-OK.
		And you don't need to decide that this needs to be completely taken apart and reestablished.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The case, if I understand it correctly, brought by a set of employers out of Texas, those who, I guess, classify themselves as Christian employers.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How does that factor into that?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		They were objecting to one of the USPSTF recommendations for something called PrEP, which is the preventive care for AIDS and HIV.
		And they were saying that requiring them to cover PrEP with no additional out-of-pocket cost, you know, encourages homosexual activity and intravenous drug use.
		That's kind of a stretch of a claim, but that is their claim.
		They also charge that it violated their religious freedom, but that is not a piece of the case that the Supreme Court was looking at.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Was there a sense of how the justices, when they heard the case, how they responded to it?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		There was.
		I mean, there isn't always, and you never know for sure, but certainly some of the conservatives that the plaintiffs would need to rule with them, particularly Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Barrett, seemed kind of dubious about these arguments.
		And most people who watched the arguments, including me, seemed to feel like it was more likely that the court is going to rule for, in this case, the Trump administration, which was previously the Biden administration, which is against the plaintiffs in this case.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And what does that mean then?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Does that mean preventative services go away or to what degree do they go away?
unidentified		Right.
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Well, it would mean that nothing would change.
		If they do what we assume they do, which is say that, no, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is okay as it is, then everything would be okay.
		If they were to rule the other way, it gets complicated because, of course, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force predates the Affordable Care Act.
		They just sort of wrote in the requirements for an existing body of experts that were already making these recommendations.
		So basically, what could go away are all of the recommendations that they've changed since 2010, since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law.
		So a lot of those are sort of changes in things like cancer screenings.
		They've changed ages.
		They've changed populations who would be covered.
		There aren't that many changes.
		It would get very complicated very quickly.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Julie Robner, for this discussion with KFF Health News, if you have questions about the future of the Affordable Care Act, different lines today.
		For those of you who received insurance under the Act 202748-8000, it's 202-748-8001.
		If you have private insurance, if you're not insured, 202-748-8002 and all others, 202748-8003.
		Let's hear from Clyde.
		Clyde is in Oklahoma, a receiver of ACA insurance.
		Clyde, thanks for calling.
		You're first up.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Well, I've been trying to figure out something.
		I mean, it talks about the deadly rune in the Bible.
		Are we running head-on into it?
		It looks like it.
		Thank you very much.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, let's hear from Pat.
		Pat in North Dakota on our line for those who are not insured.
		Pat, hello.
unidentified		Hi.
		I'm calling for my daughter.
		She's a realtor, and they had group insurance through the Realtor Association, and the government took it away from them.
		And now she's stuck with Obamacare.
		And she said it's terrible.
		They give you a list of doctors you can call, and then when you call, half of them say they no longer take Obamacare.
		And then when you go to the doctor, there's a deductible, and she says it's cheaper to pay cash.
		So she gets nothing from Obamacare.
		And I think the government has no business sticking, taking people's group insurance away.
		If you can get a group insurance to sign up for, you should be able to get it.
		That's all I have to say.
		Thanks.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Julie Rovner, a couple of calls there.
		One specifically about her daughter's situation.
		What's the takeaway?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, you know, a lot of people were affected in a lot of different ways.
		It may have just been that the group insurance didn't meet the requirements of the law, or it may have just been that the group decided that the insured didn't want to cover them anymore.
		And, you know, in many cases, there are a lot of plans that don't meet the needs of people, but that's why there's also a lot of choice.
		You know, one of the big complaints, particularly early on, again, was that they had these very narrow networks in some of these plants, and the premiums and the out-of-pocket costs were pretty high.
		One of the things that these additional subsidies did was at least make that cheaper.
		Didn't always make the networks broader, but you can usually find a broader network plan.
		It's always a trade-off in sort of how much you're going to pay versus, and this is true in group insurance too.
		You know, the broader the network, the more you're likely to have to pay for the insurance.
		It's always a trade-off with pretty much all kinds of insurance.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's been the impact of the ACA on health insurance companies overall?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		It's been different.
		I mean, a lot of insurance companies are doing very well.
		A lot of insurance companies are doing very well in the ACA market.
		Some of them came in, maybe bid off more than they could chew, and then left.
		But the market's been relatively stable for the last couple of years.
		And as I said, we've doubled the number of people in these ACA plans.
		And as the costs have gone down, the satisfaction has gone up.
		There are still a number of issues.
		Some the Biden administration was addressing.
		There was sort of an unfortunate incentive for rogue brokers to shift people around between plans, even if they didn't want to change plans because brokers got paid additional money.
		That's something that they were trying to address.
		Now we're seeing the Trump administration cutting back on some of the staff who helps people who run into problems with their ACA plans, which could be another issue.
		So it's not, you know, it isn't perfect.
		Nobody ever suggested it was, but it is, you know, now, excuse me, 15 years sort of into this, it is a relatively stable way that a lot of people get their health insurance.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I suppose that in the lead up to the passage of the ACA, you heard from critics and supporters alike that it would change the way that doctors practice.
		It would change the way that hospitals do their business.
		What's the evidence of that so many years in?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Well, we've seen a lot of other changes in the health care system.
		I mean, one of the things we're seeing a lot of is private equity coming in because we spent so much money on health care, and that's had, I would say, a bigger impact on how the provision of health care has changed than the Affordable Care Act, which remember, yes, yes, it's between the Medicaid expansion and the people on the marketplace coverage, it's 40 million people, but we have, you know, 330 million Americans now, because of the law, most of whom have some kind of health insurance.
		So it's not necessarily from the law that has changed the health care system.
		The health care system has, I mean, the healthcare system has changed and the law along with it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Debbie.
		Debbie has ACA.
		She's in Missouri.
		Hi, Debbie.
		You're on with our guests.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		I just want to say I've had ACA care for a few years now, and it helps me when I go to get my testing done, you know, my cholesterol, colonoscopies, all kinds of stuff.
		I don't find the deductible absorbent.
		And if it wasn't for that, you know, I wouldn't have good care.
		It's not much good for, you know, if you're sick and need to go in for that.
		I mean, all insurance, you have to meet your deductible.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		If I may ask, Debbie, what's your deductible like?
unidentified		I want to say it's a little over 500 bucks.
unidentified		So, I mean, you know, that's completely reasonable.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Debbie there in Missouri giving her thought on the ACA and the deductible.
		Julie Robner, the deductible portion of it is, I guess there's no way to know for sure, but it's 500, the general or people pay more or less.
		How does that work usually?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		No, that's pretty typical.
		And that's pretty typical of employer plans these days, too, is $500 or, you know, even $1,000.
		I mean, there are a lot of ACA plans.
		And again, there's a choice of plans.
		If you want to pay lower premiums, you're going to have higher deductible.
		It's just like car insurance.
		So there are people with multi-thousand dollar deductibles who are basically crossing their fingers and hoping that they don't get sick and need expensive care.
		But as Coller said, and as we were talking about this, preventive care comes without any additional out-of-pocket costs because they want to incentivize people to get preventive care so they don't get sick.
		So they don't need to go into the hospital or have some kind of procedure where they would have to pay their deductible, but also the insurance would have to kick in a lot more money.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mick is in Illinois.
		Mick, receiver of private insurance.
		Hello, Mick.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello.
		I'm a federal retiree, and so I opt to, although I qualify for Medicare, I keep my federal insurance at a cost of about $250 a month, just fearing a Republican administration, what they might do.
		If I don't renew it, I lose it for the rest of my life.
		So that's my plan.
		And also, I would like to say that it's preventive, not preventative.
		It's three syllables.
		So thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Anything from that, Julie Robner?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Nope.
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		But a lot of federal retirees do keep their federal insurance is very good, and many of them do keep it in addition to Medicare.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Michigan, Ron is next receiver of private insurance.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, I got private insurance.
		I don't seem to have any problems with my insurance except the pros gouging from the medical field.
		Seems like they overcharge the insurance companies.
		They probably give them a kickback, too.
		It's like a big scam between the hospitals and the insurance companies and the government and stuff, mostly just the insurance companies and the hospitals.
		And to that guy that was talking about the deadly wound, that's talking about baptism that was changed in 325 AD by the church.
		That was a deadly wound when they changed baptism from Jesus' name to Father Son.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, okay.
		Okay, we got it, Ron.
		To the point of how hospitals practice their care, Julie Robner, what are the discussions going into the ACA is monitoring how much it costs for a hospital to provide services and what could be done about those costs?
		Where are we today on those?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		More recently, there have been efforts, both Republican and Democratic efforts, to increase transparency in pricing, both from the insurance side and from the provider side, from the hospital side.
		They've been met with different levels of success.
		It's still a work in progress.
		But, you know, there's the hope that if people have a better idea of what things actually cost, that they might be able to do better job comparison shopping.
		Perhaps prices could be a little bit better controlled.
		As I say, that is something that the Affordable Care Act kind of sidestepped and that other legislation has addressed since then.
		And we're still working on it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And so, could somebody go to their provider today and say, hey, provide me a list if I'm going to receive these type of services, to what degree can they say, here's the exact cost?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Well, you're supposed to be able to.
		You're supposed to be able to get an estimate from your provider, and you're supposed to be able to get an estimate from your insurer about how much they will pay.
		And sometimes you can, and sometimes you can't.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Jeffrey is in North Carolina.
		Jeffrey, a receiver of private insurance.
		Hi there.
		You're next.
unidentified		Yes.
		Thank you for taking the call.
		Good morning.
		And I just feel that the private sector insurance is just way too much.
		I had tried that, and the copay was just staggering.
		And I had to sign up for the Affordable Care Act for the services that I needed, my back surgery, my knee surgery.
		The copay was staggering.
		The Affordable Care Act put me in a position to be able to have these necessary surges I needed.
		I just feel the government is in such a strong financial position.
		It's confusing that we proclaim a title of the wealthiest and the rich, but you have other nations or countries, and correct me if I'm wrong, that provide that for the citizens in their country.
		Why we don't have something being able to on both sides balance this out?
		This is a concern every day for the average American citizen that need medical care, that cannot walk into a facility to be able to medically get treated because they are definitely feeling the responsibility of a massive debt that they cannot get out of under the provision of what insurance carries that you have or if it's private.
		But I just feel it has to be a better way.
		It should be a better way because I should not have to have shoes off of private insurance and then it was better with affordable care.
		So if it's working, why tear that down?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha, Jeffrey.
		Thank you.
		Julie Robner.
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is a hundred years debate now about how the U.S. should provide health services and health insurance to the population.
		We've never been able to agree on, you know, the Affordable Care Act was a very hard, hard-fought battle over not just the sort of the two years that it took Congress to do it, but the preceding six or seven.
		And, you know, we saw another, we saw fights in the 1940s.
		We saw fights in the 1960s that gave us Medicare and Medicaid.
		We saw fights in the 1970s and the 1980s.
		We're going to continue.
		It's a work in progress.
		Nobody, I think it's fair to say, is very satisfied with the way our health system is working.
		But at least I think the consensus is it's better than it was.
		There's still a lot of work to do.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Julie Robner, we've heard about cuts throughout the federal government.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Could those cuts or proposed cuts affect those who receive insurance under the Affordable Care Act?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Yes, as I said, already the Trump administration has vowed to cut the outreach and to, again, shorten the sign-up period for the Affordable Care Act.
		That was something that the first Trump administration did.
		We're seeing these offices laid off these caseworkers who help people who run into problems with their plans.
		As we know, it's not a completely smooth running system.
		So, and of course, depending on what Congress does, if they cut back on the Medicaid expansion that was in the law, that could affect as many as 20 million people.
		And whether or not they extend these additional subsidies or let them expire, that's another 20 million people.
		So there could be big changes coming.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Robert joins us next.
		Robert is in Ohio, a receiver of ACA insurance.
		Hi, Robert.
unidentified		How are you?
		Thanks for having me on.
		I was, I'm a, I have a Medicaid, Medicare.
		I went through, I have a disability, got into an accident.
		And I, you know, it surprises me when I got this insurance that I could just walk in and get my insurance, you know, get whatever I needed taken care of, whatever ailment, walk out, spend very little on, you know, my prescriptions and the bill and everything.
		And I think with all that we've paid into our system and with having fringe benefits in the past way before my time, the insurance would be a priority because it is known that we're all going to get sick at some point.
		That's a fact.
		Everyone in this country is going to get sick at one point.
		And with all that we've put into it and all the progress that we've made, I would hate to see anything like this go away.
		I think we need more.
		I think we need to go towards more of a even more universal health care because this relieves the stress of a lot of Americans, you know, and that in itself makes life a lot easier.
		And I would like to push to see it go even further and even more affordable.
		That's just me, but I enjoy being taken care of and paying what little bit of taxes I have into it, and I'm okay with it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Robert there in Ohio.
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and I think it's important.
		You know, there are several million, what are called dual eligibles, people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid.
		And they do have virtually all of their needs taken care of because they have low incomes.
		That's what makes them dueligible.
		But that's a fairly small subset of the rest of the population.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Robert in Maryland, a receiver of private insurance.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hey, good morning.
		How are you doing?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I think you go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
		I have insurance through the government.
		And the problem, like other government programs, the insurance industry needs to get a halt of the excessive amount of cost a caller hit on it a few hours back.
		You know, my wife had a back surgery, and we were sent band-aids to cover her incision on her back.
		And the insurance charge, or the doctor charged insurance like $3,000 for Kennedy's band-aids.
		And when it all come down, your insurance negotiations come down us.
		We still had to pay $400 out of pocket for these band-aids that you could get off of eBay for less than $50.
		I don't understand the ballooning of these price.
		Well, I do understand it because it's all corporate greed, but that needs to get a hold of, and insurance would be a lot more affordable in this country.
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there's no doubt that there is vast overcharging.
		There are a lot of people who are in the healthcare industry who are making a lot of money.
		And basically, it's an arms race between insurers and payers and providers.
		And hospitals need to keep their doors open 24-7 and have staff available 24-7.
		Insurers want to pay, don't want to overpay because they want to be able to charge as low premiums as they can.
		So it is just sort of the constant back and forth.
		But there are, as I said, there's a lot of now there's a lot of private equity coming in that wants to basically take as much profit as they can out of what's a very profitable sector.
		So it is a continuing fight.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The private equity aspect, are they buying hospitals wholesale?
		Are they buying practices wholesale?
		Describe the nature of that.
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that is correct.
		I mean, one of the things that we're seeing is that private equity is buying up hospital chains, basically selling out, you know, taking it apart for parts, selling the real estate and having the hospitals then pay rent because they don't own their land anymore.
		And then some of the hospitals have ended up in bankruptcy and ended up closing.
		It's been a real problem, sort of the things that private equity has come in and done to basically make profits for the private equity shareholders.
		It's not a really sort of, it's not the best model for how private equity should work, which is not to say that private equity isn't useful often.
		You know, it comes in and provides capital for things that are absolutely necessary.
		It's just when private equity comes in and takes apart something that's already existent.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How are doctors responding to that trend happening?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Well, doctors' practices are also getting bought up, I mean, by private equity.
		And a lot of them, you know, end up with not exactly what they thought they were going to get, that they're, you know, having to see more patients in less time, you know, not being able to practice the way they would like to.
		So it's been sort of problematic throughout the healthcare sector.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Julie Robner is with KFF Health News joining us for this discussion.
		Our next call is from Ohio.
		This is Tom, Tom, a receiver of ACA insurance.
		Hello, Tom.
unidentified		Hi there.
		Longtime listener, first time caller.
		I have a team.
		Well, my wife and I have a small business.
		We're both 62.
		We have little other options than the ACA at this point.
		Our monthly premium is $1,800 a month.
		We have a health savings account, so $7,000 is our deductible, but after that, we're 100%.
		I wish that the ACA would completely go away and let the marketplace rule with some safety nets for people who have pre-existing conditions and others.
		I think that the ACA provides an avenue for inflated costs by the hospitals of $400 for band-aids or $4,000 for band-aids.
		And also, private equity is a problem.
		It's a problem in every industry.
		And they should need to find a way to why is private equity making so much money now and to put a curb on that.
		But I just wanted to share that, that we do have the ACA.
		We're happy with our insurance, but I think it would be better if the government wasn't involved.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Tom at Ohio.
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Can I make a comment about that?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Please, go ahead.
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Yes, if the government wasn't involved, you probably wouldn't be able to get insurance.
		That was one of the big issues about the ACA is that people who are sort of older and nearing Medicare age continue to be the most expensive, but as expensive as your insurance is, it's being subsidized by younger people.
		That was one of the big arguments at the beginning.
		Most insurance companies simply would not sell to people, or they would sell at even more than you're paying now.
		So, that was one of the populations that was most helped by the ACA: were the people who are sort of over age 55 but under age 65, who basically could not get insurance on the private market prior to the ACA.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Julie Robner, if someone has to go to the dentist or if someone needs eyeglasses, to what degree does the ACA cover that?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Only if you're a kid.
		That's dental coverage is optional.
		Eye coverage is optional.
		Obviously, that varies within Medicaid covers it.
		And in some cases, there are some cases in which things can be covered.
		You can buy insurance that has it, but those were, I think, deemed too expensive to add.
		You know, it's this balance.
		You want to be covered when you absolutely need medical care.
		But we were already hearing people complain about how much their premiums are and how much their deductibles are, and they didn't want to add to that anymore.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Crystal in Pennsylvania is joining us on our line for those who have private insurance.
		Crystal, good morning.
		You're next up with our guests.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I was just speaking about the issue with the doctors not being paid.
		There was a session with Congress where the doctors were complaining about the government paying them with the HMOs.
		So they offered a suggestion that the doctors buy the hospitals and have the coverage, you know, just given to them.
		And then they also wanted to control the medication.
		They wanted to have all of it in their hands so that that way they could then provide the services that they would like to.
		But speaking on that, and then three issues came up while I was on hold: the issue about the private insurance and the ACA and the options that you can have.
		Well, I worked through the pandemic seven days a week, and it was ridiculous.
		I couldn't get sick, and the insurance that my job provided wasn't enough, so I couldn't afford to get Medicaid.
		I made too much money.
		So after the pandemic, then all of the work slowed down.
		A couple of my clients passed away.
		So then I was eligible for affordable care.
		I went through that system.
		Then they send you to a provider.
		I was literally hacked.
		And they tried to take like $700 out of my account when I had signed up for it.
		It was only supposed to be $42.
		My bank called and told me that these things were about to happen and they stopped them.
		But now I don't make at all enough to get Medicaid.
		25 cents blocked me from getting Medicare.
		And when I was sick, I needed to get something from the hospital.
		I mean, I needed to go to the hospital.
		And I'm not eligible to get Medicare anymore.
		So now I have a problem where I sell in my state and I can't even go to the hospital to get coverage.
		So I'm suffering with a lot of different things, but I still have to work.
		Don't have enough money to buy private insurance.
		And the insurance my job provides to us due to the government saying that over, I think, 100 employees, they have to provide some type of insurance.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Crystal, thanks for sharing your story with us.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We'll let our guests take whatever she wants from that.
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not, our system doesn't work very well, and people do fall through the cracks, and it's really unfortunate.
		And sometimes you're eligible for some things, and sometimes you're not, and it does depend on how much you earn, and it's frustrating.
		And, you know, no one has suggested that this is the optimal system, but it is the system that we have.
		It's better for some people, but it's not better for everybody yet.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We heard from various legislators over the years about this idea of Medicare for all.
		Has that idea gone by the wayside?
		Are those still advocating for this idea?
		And what's the likelihood we'll get a discussion on this in the future?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		There are still people who are advocating hard for Medicare for all.
		There's a pretty solid minority, I would say, even possibly a plurality.
		The problem is that would get the government even more involved in health care than it is now.
		And we know that there are a lot of people who would like the government to be less involved in health care than it is now.
		We're at this sort of odd place where the government is well involved in health care, but not enough for some people and too much for others.
		So I suspect this debate is going to continue on for quite a while.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Virgil.
		Virgil is in Virginia.
		Virgil, thanks for calling.
		You are next.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		A lot of good points made out.
		I do have Affordable Care Act.
		It does cover the required yearly checkups, but after that, after paying out of pocket, if something happens, it's financially catastrophic.
		And here's my question.
		I used to be a health care worker until I retired.
		And I'd like to know why federal employees have better insurance than the general public.
		I think that's something that should be allowed to be covered by the entire nation.
		No one group should have a better coverage in health care than any other, especially when that group is representing the majority.
		So I'll leave it with that and have a great day.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Thanks, Caller.
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		I should point out that that federal insurance is not free to the workers.
		They do pay for it.
		It is pretty good, and they do have a lot of choices.
		And that's often, that has long been the trade-off that people go to work.
		It's not just federal government.
		People take government jobs because they generally get a lower salary, but better benefits and more job security.
		That's been the trade-off over the last several generations.
		So it's not unusual that people who work in government jobs have pretty good fringe benefits and usually pretty good retirement, but they do that mostly at a cost of taking less in salary.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Do those who work on Capitol Hill get that same type of insurance or are they required to go under ACA?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		It's complicated.
		It depends exactly who you work for.
		But yes, Congress did subject much of its workforce to the ACA, as well as the members of Congress themselves to the ACA because they didn't want to be subject to that exact argument that, oh, you're giving us this terrible ACA coverage, but you have this gold-plated federal coverage.
		So much of Congress and many congressional staffers did have to give up their federal employee health benefits plans.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Janie is in Arizona, joining us on the phone.
		Not insured for that line.
		Janie in Arizona.
unidentified		Hello.
		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		Yes.
		I would like to ask a couple questions.
		One of them being that as someone who had private insurance initially when Obamacare came into play, my insurance was spectacular.
		I did pay a decent amount for it, but it was in line with the deductibles because my deductible is low.
		Then I got pushed off my plan because Obamacare said, you know, it didn't qualify, even though I thought it was wonderful and had had it for like eight years.
		So I get stuck on Obamacare.
		My deductibles go through the roof.
		My premiums go through the roof.
		And I go to take my kid for like a CT scan.
		They tell me it's $1,000 just to get the CT scan for going towards my deductible.
		I'm like, how can it be this much money?
		When I had my private care, it was like $2.50.
		So I then turn around and I was like, okay, I go to another clinic.
		I say, hey, how much is it if I pay cash?
		I pay cash for the CT scan, $250.
		Literally, no deductible, no nothing, just pay $250.
		I get the CT scan, I'm out the door.
		So clearly this insurance game is ridiculous.
		And I would like to know what you think about the fact that these insurance companies, since Obamacare has come into play, have doubled their profits when, you know, that seems a bit of a scam as well.
		I don't know.
		What are your thoughts?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's Jamie there in Arizona.
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Well, a lot of one of the things I would say is that a lot of the extra profits that insurance companies are making, they're making off of Medicare, not off of the ACA.
		That's another issue, again, with the complication.
		And I will also say that people who lost their private insurance because it didn't comply with the rules of the ACA, in many cases, people said, this was great and I loved it.
		A lot of those people never had to use it.
		They didn't realize what it didn't cover.
		So there were people who had, you know, low premiums and low deductibles because if they had gotten sick, they would have had enormous bills, but they never got sick while they had it.
		So they didn't realize.
		Those were the plans that were canceled under the ACA.
		Were there people who had pretty decent coverage that went away?
		Yes, that was because the insurers decided not to offer it anymore.
		You know, as I said, I'm not an apologist for the state of our health care system.
		It's not great.
		I've been doing this for 40 years.
		You know, we keep having different problems and people keep trying to address them.
		And we're just not there yet because we can't seem to agree on where it is we want to go and how it is we want to get there.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		One more call from Michigan.
		This is Jennifer who receives the insurance under the ACA.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I just wanted to say happy Autism Awareness Month.
		I have a son who has autism and I really think it's critical, especially in my state where we have 80% of our medical coverage coming from the ACA to continue funding the ACA and protecting children who are covered through funding from the ACA.
		My family, myself and my husband are covered under the ACA through the Healthy Michigan plan.
		It doesn't cover certain things, like it's hard to get dental and things like that, but for the most part, pays for medications and things like that.
		And he works full-time.
		And without the medication that he is taking, he wouldn't be able to work.
		And my son is able to go to ABA therapy and get his prescriptions and things that he needs because of his autism because of funding through the ACA.
		So it is important, you know, that all these pre-existing conditions are covered.
		It is important that we look at issues that it has.
		Like these, you know, a lot of people are saying, oh, yeah, we have these issues.
		But for me, that's just making a stronger case that we need to strengthen the ACA, that we need to expand medical coverage under this program because it is really, it does really have some good things that it's doing, but also it does need a lot of work.
		And I do see Medicaid for all as being something that would benefit a lot of people.
		They probably don't even realize it.
		And they think that, you know, the government health care system is a terrible idea because it's not working for them as it is right now.
		But getting rid of it would be so much worse.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Jennifer in Michigan, thanks for the call.
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		I think that kind of sums up the state of the healthcare system pretty well.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		To her point then, let's, for sake of argument, we've gone through the growing pains, so to speak, of ACA.
		What's the future hold considering what we've talked about?
		What are you watching for specifically?
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Well, obviously, you know, this is a pivotal year.
		This is the year when Congress is going to decide: are they going to cut $880 billion out of Medicaid?
		Are they going to cancel basically the expanded federal coverage for these 20 million people who got on Medicaid because of the ACA?
		Are they going to let these additional subsidies expire for people who buy private ACA coverage and potentially, you know, double their premiums and deductibles?
		I mean, I think no matter what, we're going to see some big decisions that are going to be made in the next six or seven months about the future of the ACA.
		Even though technically, you know, Affordable Care Act repeal is not on the table.
		What Congress does and doesn't decide to do in the next six months is going to have a huge impact going forward.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You can see our guest work at kffhealthnews.org.
		Julie Robner with KFF Health News.
		She's their chief Washington correspondent.
		Thanks as always for your time.
julie rovner ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We'll finish the program with Open Forum.
		And if you want to call and participate, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats.
		Independents, 202-748-8002.
		Go ahead and call.
		We'll take those calls when Washington Journal continues.
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pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		If you want to participate in open forum, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats and Independents, 202748-8002.
		You can always text us thoughts at 202-748-8003 and post your thoughts as well on our social media sites, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and also at C-SPANWJ on X.
		It's Punch Bowl News that takes a look at the plan for House Republicans once they get back from their congressional break that was put out this morning saying House Republicans plan to have their reconciliation package on the floor the week of May the 19th.
		Punch Bowl adding, it's not entirely surprising as it's the last week the House is in session before the Memorial Day recess, but it does throw cold water on the idea that the reconciliation bill will be on President Trump's desk before Memorial Day.
		As we reported in Tuesday's edition, that's where the discussion is heading anyway.
		No one believed Memorial Day was a real deadline.
		We'll see if they can get this on the floor by the week of the 19th.
		Also, adding that the working title of the GOP reconciliation package is, quote, Renewing the American Dream Act.
		We'll see if the title, RATA, or something like that, passes muster with Senate parliamentarians, or more importantly, the brander-in-chief, President Donald Trump.
		So that's from Punch Bowl News.
		That's what to expect once Congress comes back into session.
		Again, you can talk about that and other things of political nature on our open forum.
		Don starts us off in California, Republican line.
		Don, go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yeah, I'm sorry I missed your last guest, but I just wanted to point out that we effectively already have Medicare for all.
		I'm a physician in private practice, and every major insurance company bases their physician fee schedules on the Medicare schedule.
		So, in effect, without officially having, without Medicare processing all the claims, we do have Medicare for all.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's been practiced like under the ACA?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How has it changed your practice?
unidentified		I might see more Medicaid patients than I would otherwise.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Vincent, Vincent in Maryland, on our line for independence on this open forum, go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		The ACA is a Democrat, all Democrats, and it's a scheme.
		And it was voted against vehemently, vehemently, but it went through.
		Democrats continue.
		I'm not talking about, I'm talking about political Democrats, continually harm our country every single way they can.
		And C-SPAN is with CNN.
		Your new boss is Sam Feist, and all of you are Democrats.
		Well, that's patently false right there.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You got the boss right.
		It is Sam Feist.
		We're not part of CNN.
		We're our own coverage, but go ahead.
unidentified		You all thought it was.
		Okay, we'll let that go, Pedro.
		Fine.
		Fine.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead and finish your thought.
unidentified		Yeah, all I'm saying is that the Democrats, political, political Democrats, they complain about President Trump and all the rest of them, the whole Republican administration, what they're doing.
		Yet the Democrats who caused the $37 trillion debt and a lot of misery, pain, and harm to people over four years, all they're talking about is getting their party together, not assisting, at least helping the Republicans.
		Isn't that what they're supposed to do?
		Last thing I'm going to get off.
		Republicans and the Democrats, aren't they supposed to join together our founding fathers not to perpetuate their party, but for the good of the people?
		Okay.
		But that's okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Vincent there.
		Let's hear from Tim.
		Tim in Ohio, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		Yeah, my name's Tim.
		Three pet P's I got with today with the way things are worded.
		Here, I keep hearing that rich create jobs.
		That no customers are the job creators.
		Doesn't matter how much money the owner has, if he has a product or what people want, he's going to make money.
		If he has a product to expose that people don't want, he loses money.
		Customers are job creators.
		Your other pet peeve would be pollution.
		You bring a pollution to a political, but a Republican.
		Oh, I don't believe in climate change.
		I don't care if pollution has changed the climate or not.
		Pollution is bad.
		It caused people illness and death.
		It's as simple as that.
		The other way is misusing the word liberal.
		Liberal means open-minded.
		I have no idea what the hell they say.
		Oh, you are anti-liberal.
		What, you're anti-open-minded?
		I wish we get back to the actual meaning of words and use the words for what they mean.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Tim in Ohio, let's hear from Leo in New Hampshire, Independent Line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Good morning.
		I've always realized that the cringe factor in Washington was going to be high, but I never dreamed that the White House correspondents would bring it up a notch or two.
		Free Amber Ruffin.
		I can't believe what they did.
		The woman's accounted person, and I think they pulled the rug out from underneath her because she was controversial.
		Look around you.
		That's all there is in Washington right now is controversy.
		I mean, give me a break, sir.
		Please.
		I love C-SPAN, and some mornings are hard to watch and listen to it, but I do it anyway to just get an idea of what I'm up against out there.
		Thank you very much.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Amber Ruffin was scheduled to appear at the White House Correspondence Dinner.
		That got canceled.
		However, C-SPAN's coverage of the Correspondents Association's dinner will still take place this Saturday.
		Go to our website for more information about our coverage.
		Also, as part of that coverage on Saturday, we'll show you previous White House correspondence dinners from over the years so you can get a sense of the things that have been said and things that have taken place during these events here in Washington, D.C.
		So go to our website for more information on that.
		Republican line, this is from Alabama.
		This is Griffin.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
		I used to be a truck driver, and I actually switched occupations because that sucks so bad.
		And I went back to school to get my education to try to learn a little bit.
		And now I'm struggling to get my student loans.
		I have to go through a whole process now of submitting information that I didn't have to before.
		And now all of a sudden I have to.
		So I'm not really sure what's changing, but I don't know.
		It's not that good.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		If you're still paying student loans, that's what I'm hearing.
unidentified		Yeah, and I have a semester left.
		And, you know, I don't know if I'm going to be able to get my student loans now.
		I'm not sure exactly why, but they're telling me that things are getting rejected and whatnot.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, Griffin, thanks for the call.
		It was yesterday at the White House that the press secretary made this announcement, taking a look at the starting of repayments of student loan.
		That was the first thing out of the gate when it came to the press conference yesterday.
		Here's Caroline Levitt.
karoline leavitt ▲ ● ▼		In other news, the Trump administration has announced we will put an end to Joe Biden's illegal student loan bailout attempts.
		No student loan has been referred to collection since March of 2020.
		That comes to an end.
		On May 5th, the Department of Education will resume involuntary collections for borrowers with defaulted federal student loans.
		The student loan portfolio controlled by the federal government is nearly $1.6 trillion.
		But fewer than four out of 10 borrowers are in repayment.
		This is unsustainable, unfair, and a huge liability for American taxpayers.
		Debt cannot be wiped away.
		It just ends up getting transferred to others.
		So, why should Americans who didn't go to college or went to college and responsibly paid back their loans pay for the student loans of other Americans?
		The Trump administration will never force taxpayers to pay student loan debts that don't belong to them.
		Student loan borrowers need clarity, and we're finally giving it to them.
		Borrowers will now be clearly expected to repay their loans, and those who default on their loan obligations will face involuntary collections.
		The government can and will collect defaulted federal student loan debt by withholding money from borrowers, tax refunds, federal pensions, and even their wages.
		America is $36 trillion in debt.
		We must get our fiscal house in order and restore common sense to our country.
		If you take out a loan, you have to pay it back.
		It's very simple.
		President Trump will not kick the can down the road anymore.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This follow-up story says student loan repayments were paused during President Trump's first term in 2020 as a response to the COVID pandemic when Mr. Trump signed a stimulus package into law.
		Then President Joe Biden continued the pause as part of his campaign promise to relieve student debt, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2023 his plan unconstitutional because it didn't have congressional approval.
		Repayments began on August the 30th of 2023, but the Education Department says only a little more than a third of borrowers is up to date with payments.
		And it noted that nearly 2 million borrowers were unable to submit federal student loan payments through August 2024 because the paperwork wasn't being processed.
		Let's go to Michael, Independent Line in Idaho.
unidentified		Yeah, thank you for taking my call.
		First thing I want to talk about is Social Security.
		There's people out there that, you know, can't, you're wondering how they're going to pay the rent, you know, buy food, medical, you know, medicines and whatnot.
		I was told a story about a retired CPA, and the guy asked him, well, I mean, about you're getting Social Security.
		And he says, oh, yeah, it's just pocket change.
		Well, what?
		If it's pocket change, guess what?
		You don't need it.
		And as far as Medicaid goes, I'm on Medicaid, and there's no way I could possibly afford surgeries and stuff because it seems like every year something else is broken.
		But it's all genetic.
		But, you know, as far as the student loan thing goes, I mean, we've got medical costs, we've got housing, we've got trying to buy cars, whatnot.
		I mean, to me, it should be like if there's interest, well, it's 1%.
		The things we really need, that's, you know, kind of what we need.
		But I do appreciate you taking my call.
		And I think C-SPAN is actually really awesome.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Rich Michael there in Idaho.
		He spoke of cars.
		Speaking of cars, it was Tesla CEO Elon Musk beginning his company's earnings call on Tuesday, saying that his time spent running the president's so-called Department of Government Efficiency will drop significantly starting in May.
		Musk, who watched Tesla's stock tumble by more than 40% this year, said he'll continue to support the president with Doge, quote, to make sure the waste and fraud that we stop does not come roaring back.
		This saying that CNBC reporting that after spending almost $300 million on the 2024 campaign to help the president return to the White House, Mr. Musk created Doge and joined the administration, saying that he'll continue to spend, quote, a day or two per week on government issues, quote, for as long as the president would like me to do so.
		Carolyn, up next.
		Carolyn is from Ohio.
		Democrats line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		I just want to publicly thank, I know it's too late.
		He passed away.
		I always wanted to write him a letter and thank him, but I just want to thank Pope Francis publicly because my husband passed away the day before Easter eight years ago.
		And instead of wanting to be out in public for Easter, I always watched his services and they got me through the eight years.
		And this year was the first year that I publicly went out for Easter.
		And I credit him along with a lot of family love and support and friends and grief counseling.
		But yes, I appreciate Pope Francis and I wish I had taken the time to write him a letter of appreciation for all the services I spent with him and didn't go out for Easter those eight years until this year.
		But I do credit him for getting me through those eight years because I was married to my husband for 33 years and we dated two.
		So we were together 35 years.
		So I appreciate him.
		I feel blessed by him and just something for maybe people to realize that do something now if you need to do something.
		Thank someone, tell them you love them, whatever, because you may lose the opportunity.
		So that's all I have to say.
		Thank you for letting me do that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Carolina in Ohio, thank you for sharing.
		Speaking of the Pope NBC reporting, it was this morning that the first of tens of thousands of mourners to begin filing into St. Peter's to pay their respects to Pope Francis, who will lie in state for three days.
		Earlier today, his coffin's being taken to the church, as you see there.
		Francis NBC reports that reformed his own funeral rite to ensure they reflected his wish to remembered as a simple man.
		So his coffin is not on an elevated platform.
		It's placed facing the pews.
		It was earlier that that procession of patriarchs, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, canons, and other priests chanted the names of the saints in Latin as they carried the late pontiff to St. Peter's Basilica.
		And before the procession set off from the nearby Santa Marta where Francis lived and died, it was Cardinal Kevin Farrell who presided over a ceremony of farewell.
		Again, this is some of the video leading up to the pope's taken to the church.
		Before mourners will come and pay their respects, we'll let you view a few seconds of that as we talk to Richard.
		Richard in Tyler, Texas, Independent Line.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
		Good morning.
		I had the issue about the bailout.
		Now, I might be dumb or something, but didn't we bail out manufacturers to save their jobs and their company's jobs, but they can't do students alone like that?
		That just doesn't make sense.
		And one more thing is that the Social Security, people want to, I want to know, and I have been trying to find out, people die every day.
		Go with the estimate of how many people die per day, per month, per year.
		Like I said, think about this.
		Your parents, like my parents, died before they could even collect their Social Security.
		So I would like to know, or somebody, somebody could tell me or something, where does that money go?
		Who gets that money after your grandparents, anybody that suffered their loss, they paid in their whole life, and then it's just gone.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Richard, there in Tyler, Richard, there in Tyler, Texas.
		This is Simon and Kentucky Democrats line.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning, Dave.
		Good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		Also, I just want to talk about your comment about the student loan repayment program getting back on.
		I am the month.
		I'm also in the same sense of if you do borrow something, you have to pay it back.
		But that doesn't give the right for these loan companies and these banks to charge these absorber interest rates and make it so that way this person is stuck in a wheel, stuck on a hamster wheel, that they just keep making payment after payment of the payment and not going anywhere.
		There has to be some give on that part.
		And second, with Pete headset, if I did what he was doing at my job that I'm working, I probably would be terminated.
		So I don't know why he gets a pass for what we're doing with his issues with SignalChat.
		Thank you and have a wonderful day.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Jonah, who is in California, Independent Line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		How are you guys doing today?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're on.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		I'm calling in today because I am fed up with the fact that we have many, many plates spinning.
		This is the goal of the Trump administration to distract us from what he's really trying to do.
		I'd like the media to help bring up what's actually happening right now and what is the next step for Trump and his administration.
		Because obviously, these are just distractions right now.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What exactly is happening and what exactly is the next step?
unidentified		I don't know what the next step is right now, but I think it's authoritarianism.
unidentified		I really believe that he wants to take over this country and the world because of what he looks like.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Dave.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Dave in San Diego, Independent Line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, good morning.
		Yeah, I agree with Simon on the student loans.
		The predatory lending is horrible for the kids, but yes, they do have to pay it back.
		The other thing I want to talk about real quick is I love C-SPAN.
		You guys are great, the reporting and showing the committee meetings and everything.
		One thing I'm a little, I'm just kind of throwing this out.
		And again, don't take this the wrong way.
		Seeing his C-SPAN is fantastic.
		Just like the Supreme Court, they don't show cameras in there because they want to create a circus.
		I'm wondering now, just because I watch the program and I see the guys and women debating on the floor, and it's turning into a show now.
		Are they all acting?
		And I'm just not sure how to think about that.
		Maybe that's not a good thing that we're creating that.
		Or I don't know if I'm saying it the right way.
		But again, C-SPAN, you guys are great.
		I don't know.
		Maybe here's somebody else's ideas on that too.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Dave, let me ask you this.
		Just, you know, the cameras that broadcast the House and the Senate, they're owned by the House and the Senate.
		We get the privilege of rebroadcasting that.
		I guess you're suggesting that because people can see what's going on, it changes the process of deliberation of what goes on in the House and the Senate.
		I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but is that your thinking?
unidentified		Yes, and thank you for telling me that.
		I didn't understand whose the cameras belong to.
		That's great, and that's what I mean.
		That stimulates great information to be put out there.
		Yeah, but that's what I'm thinking because just like the Supreme Court, you know, they kind of close that off, and it's just a sound thing.
		But I don't know what else to say about that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		No, before you go, let me elaborate a little more just because the House and the Senate cameras that we show when they debate, that's theirs.
		But our cameras also cover hearings that you'll see and special events that you'll see, events at the White House.
		That's our camera work and find people who work on that.
		There's a lot of people, great people behind the scenes that work on that and all the other things that we do.
		So I just wanted to let you know that too.
unidentified		Yeah, absolutely.
		Yeah, the committee meetings are great.
		You know, we get to hear a little bit of what each side is saying and each person is saying.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So I'll finish with this, Dave.
		And I'm not picking on you because cameras in the Supreme Court is something we've always kind of wanted to see.
		I don't know if it will ever happen, but it's something that we are always interested in because I think it also gives a look into what goes on.
		I mean, they get the audio.
		They give us the audio.
		We put pictures on them.
		But we've always been kind of ones to say that video cameras should be part of that process too.
unidentified		Right.
unidentified		And in the hyper-politic world we live in now, I wonder if doing that might kind of turn it into a more of a circus, you know what I'm saying?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I get you.
unidentified		I get you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Dave, thanks for watching.
		Really do appreciate it.
		Really do appreciate it.
		Let's hear from Chris.
		Chris in New Mexico, Democrats line.
		Hello.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		With regard to student loan debt, I might point out that the president filed bankruptcy at least four and perhaps six times, which means that he failed to pay his debts.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So when it comes to student loans, then what would you exactly like to see?
ingo swann ▲ ● ▼		I would like to see a plan like Joe Biden's, which allows borrowers not to pay their debts in light of the fact that we have, in the past, we heavily subsidized higher education to the point where people did not have to borrow money to go to school.
unidentified		And we have ceased funding our colleges and universities to make it much, much more expensive for students.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Chris there in New Mexico giving us his thoughts on student loans.
		Some of you have done the same.
		It was yesterday that comments were made to the state of trade in the United States.
		CNBC reporting it was the Treasury Secretary Scott Besson telling investors in a closed-door meeting yesterday that he expects, quote, there will be de-escalation in President Trump's trade war with China in the very near future, telling a person, according to a person in the room, quote, no one thinks the current status quo is sustainable with tariff rates at their current rates.
		Besson said at a private investor summit in Washington, D.C., that was hosted by J.P. Morgan Casey.
		It was yesterday, Chase, I'm sorry, it was yesterday in the Oval Office with reporters.
		Yesterday, the president was asked about the comments of the Treasury Secretary, asked if he shared those sentiments.
		Here's part of that exchange from yesterday.
unidentified		Mr. President, on China, your press secretary has suggested that some progress is being made.
		Are negotiations actively underway?
		And do you agree with Secretary Besant, who has suggested that the current standoff with China is not sustainable?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		We're doing fine with China.
		We're doing fine with every, I think almost every country.
		Everybody wants to have involvement with the United States.
		As you know, we were losing $5 billion a day during the Biden administration during that last year was a horror show, what they were doing on trade, $5 billion a day.
		And now we have it down to a very low number because we're getting 25% from the automobile industry, from autos.
		We're getting 25% for steel, 25% for aluminum, and we're getting the baseline of 10%.
		And think of it, we're losing almost $2 trillion on trade.
		And those days are gone.
		We're not going to do that again.
		We're not going to let that happen.
		We're being ripped off by almost, I don't say every, but very close to every country, everywhere, everywhere in the world, just being ripped off left and right.
		Yet no leadership, yet people that didn't know what they were doing.
		And we're going to turn the country around.
		You know, we have a very nice phrase, make America great again.
		That's what we're going to do.
		And it's going to start with trade.
		We're doing really well.
		I see the stock market was up nicely, but this is a transition period.
		And it's going to be a little while, but we are doing well with every country.
		Ultimately, we have something they want.
		And you have to view it that way.
		We have something they want, and they want very badly.
		And, you know, it's going to be, they're coming in, they're taking treasure, they're taking jobs when they do that, and they have to pay.
		And they don't have to pay if they come in and create their own jobs.
		You know, if they do their product here, if they build their product or make their product in the United States, we have absolutely no tariffs, and we welcome people.
		But we're taking in a lot of money from tariffs, and our country is getting stronger all the time because the other was not sustainable.
unidentified		Are you going to play hardball with them?
unidentified		Are you going to mention COVID?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		I'm not going to say, no, I'm not going to mention COVID.
		I'm not going to say, oh, I'm going to play hardball with China.
		I'm going to play hardball with you, President Xi.
		No, no.
		We're going to be very nice.
		They're going to be very nice.
		And we'll see what happens.
		But ultimately, they have to make a deal because otherwise they're not going to be able to deal in the United States.
		So we want them involved.
		But they have to, and other countries have to make a deal.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The president in the Oval Office yesterday, you can see more of that on our website and our app.
		When it comes to the events of today, that you can see throughout the day, it's 10 o'clock this morning that you can see on this network the Holocaust remembrance ceremony at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.
		It holds its annual Days of Remembrance Ceremony to honor the victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution.
		More than 30 Holocaust survivors are expected to attend, five of whom will offer their personal reflections.
		That's at 10 o'clock on C-SPAN.
		You can watch on the app C-SPANNOW and online at c-span.org.
		We talked to this earlier about the oral arguments at the Supreme Court.
		They're hearing a case challenging whether the Environmental Protection Agency can allow California to set its own greenhouse gas emission standards for new vehicles.
		If you're interested in that court case, Diamond Alternative Energy VEPA, that's at 10 o'clock too on C-SPAN2, the app and the .org available to you.
		And then it's about 12.30 this afternoon where former House Speaker Paul Ryan will join in a discussion on fiscal policy.
		You'll remember when he was in Congress, he was chair of the House Budget and Waste Means Committees.
		He advocated for reforms at reducing the nation's debt.
		You can hear what he has to say about the state of things now at an event sponsored by Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy 1230 this afternoon.
		Again, on our main channel, C-SPAN, the app and the .org.
		Let's hear from Linda.
		Linda in Indiana on our line for independence.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, thank you for taking my call.
unidentified		I'm calling in regard to something I heard yesterday in the news that Trump was thinking about paying women to have babies to replenish our population.

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