| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Youth Poll's Jordan Schwartz discusses the latest survey about student opinions of politics and the factors that influences political engagement. | |
| And Rachel John Faza, author of the Up and Up Substack newsletter, discusses how Generation Z is engaging in politics and how they are responding to the Trump administration. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| Home insurance prices will spike 8% in 2025, with some states seeing a 27% increase, according to a new study this morning. | ||
| Up on Capitol Hill yesterday, senators heard testimony about insurance in the home market. | ||
| And this morning, we want to hear from all of you what is the cost of homeowners' insurance in your state. | ||
| Here's how we've divided the lines. | ||
| Eastern Central part of the country, dial in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Mountain Pacific, 202-748-8001. | ||
| If you don't want to call, you can text at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Just include your first name, city, and state. | ||
| You can also go to facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and post there or on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Good morning to you all. | ||
| Thanks for watching here this morning on this Friday. | ||
| We want to know from you what it's like to pay for homeowners insurance in your state. | ||
| We shared that headline with you from Fortune magazine that in all states it's expected to rise by 8% and in some states seeing a 27% increase. | ||
| Here is from the Consumer Federation of America, their numbers. | ||
| The national annual average in 2024 for homeowners insurance was 3,300. | ||
| The national average in 2021 was 2,700. | ||
| So you can see the increase there, a 24% hike, more than two times the rate of inflation in the same timeframe. | ||
| Also want to share this with you, the biggest increase in homeowners' insurance rates across states. | ||
| Utah saw a 59% increase, Illinois, 50%, and in Arizona, 48%, Pennsylvania, 44%, and 35% jump in the state of Nebraska. | ||
| As we said, the Senate Banking Committee yesterday held a hearing on Capitol Hill with home insurance policy experts to hear their testimony about what is happening across the country with insurance. | ||
| Here's the top Democrat on the committee, Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, blaming the Trump administration for exasperating the already troubled property insurance industry because of tariffs. | ||
| President Trump is making property insurance crisis worse and driving up costs for families across the country. | ||
| Let's start with his chaotic and damaging tariffs. | ||
| These tariffs will make just about everything needed to rebuild and repair houses more expensive. | ||
| Aluminum, HVAC systems, appliances, gypsum, and on and on. | ||
| The National Association of Home Builders estimates that Trump's tariffs will raise the cost of building a new mid-sized home by $10,900. | ||
| And according to the insurance industry, Trump's tariffs will cost the average homeowner over $100 a year in extra insurance costs. | ||
| A second problem is that President Trump wants to completely eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, as we all know it. | ||
| He's getting a head start by denying disaster aid all over this country, leaving families with little or no federal help following disasters in Arkansas, West Virginia, Washington, and North Carolina. | ||
| Recently, HUD Secretary Turner changed the eligibility requirements for community block development grant disaster relief funds, essentially delaying aid for disaster-stricken communities all across our country. | ||
| Yesterday, Senator Murray and I called on the HUD Inspector General to investigate this. | ||
| Additionally, the administration also recently announced it is ending FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC program. | ||
| This program provides hazard mitigation funding to communities and families across the country to help cover the costs of making their roads and bridges and homes more resilient against natural disasters. | ||
| My state of Massachusetts was relying on $90 million from the BRIC program to make our communities safer. | ||
| If President Trump has his way, more of this assistance will disappear. | ||
| The top Democrat on the banking committee in the Senate yesterday saying that it's the President's actions, potential actions against FEMA and also tariffs that is making the already increasing homeowners' insurance costs potentially go up in this country. | ||
| Let's hear from another senator. | ||
| Here is Tim Scott of South Carolina. | ||
| He's the chair of the banking committee, and he said it's excessive government regulation and a lack of mitigation that's causing these sky-high property insurance premiums. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| Insurance markets must be allowed to function properly. | ||
| They should be based on sound actuarial and underwriting principles, not artificial mandates that distort prices and ultimately hurt consumers. | ||
| Unfortunately, in too many states, government regulations have made it nearly impossible for insurers to price policies based on actual risk. | ||
| In California, for years, insurance regulations prohibited the use of catastrophe models and restricted insurers from including the cost of reinsurance in their rates. | ||
| From 2012 to 2022, for every dollar collected in premiums, some insurers in California spent $1.13 in claims and expenses. | ||
| That's a problem. | ||
| The math just doesn't work. | ||
| That's not sustainable. | ||
| It's no wonder that insurers have chosen to non-renew policies or exit the market in California altogether. | ||
| And this was before, before the California wildfires. | ||
| At the same time, poor land management practices, failure to implement basic mitigation strategies, and misguided environmental policies have made natural disasters even more destructive. | ||
| We must be honest about the multiple factors driving the rise in catastrophic losses, from local mitigation policy failures to market distortions created by counterproductive regulations. | ||
| That's why I've reintroduced the repeatedly flooded Communities Preparations Act along with Senator Schatz. | ||
| This bill encourages local, state, and federal cooperation to establish and implement mitigation strategies and plans. | ||
| Mitigation saves lives. | ||
| It preserves property and ultimately leads to more stable markets and healthier communities. | ||
| Your thoughts, your reaction to what you heard from the top members of the Senate Banking Committee yesterday, they heard testimony on the cost of homeowners insurance in this country. | ||
| And this morning, we want to hear from you. | ||
| What's your experience where you live? | ||
| How much does it cost to insure your home? | ||
| Eastern Central part of the country, dial in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Mountain Pacific, 202-748-8001. | ||
| And just remember, if you don't want to call, you can text at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Include your first name, city, and state, or go to facebook.com/slash C-SPAN. | ||
| And you can also post on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Axios did some reporting on home insurance costs recently, and this is what they found: that steep insurance costs have dragged down our housing market while property taxes threaten to make home ownership unaffordable for many. | ||
| Here's the big picture: a growing share of monthly payments is going toward insurance, and that's not expected to change anytime soon, according to ICE Mortgage Monitor, an industry data provider. | ||
| Nationally, they found insurance made up about 9.7% of the average mortgage payment. | ||
| Zoom in a little bit. | ||
| In South Florida metro area, which includes the Fort Lauderdale, Pampano Beach area, it made up 19%. | ||
| New Orleans had the highest share at nearly 26%. | ||
| Oklahoma City ranked third at almost 19%. | ||
| The analysis looks at single-family homes with mortgages that have taxes and insurance escrowed. | ||
| And by the numbers, the average monthly insurance payment has ballooned from $306 to $519 over the past decade. | ||
| That's in New Orleans. | ||
| The national average jumped from $106 to $191. | ||
| Let's hear from John, who's in Portland, Connecticut. | ||
| John, good morning to you. | ||
| Thanks for calling in, sharing what it's like in Portland, Connecticut to insure your home. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, Greta. | |
| Well, I can say it's gone up since the last major renovation of my house was 2007, and I was paying approximately $1800 to $1,900 a year for my insurance. | ||
| My last payment, which I failed out just a week ago, it's $2,500 in change now. | ||
| And it's just every year it's going up. | ||
| And I listened to the senator that was speaking before, and I don't know how to equate why, but it's due to all the regulations, all this, the fires, the flooding throughout the country. | ||
| So I guess we're, and I pay it well in advance, and I do get a couple hundred dollar discount because I pay it in full. | ||
| So I'm getting a two or three hundred dollar break just because I do that. | ||
| So not everybody can afford that, but I've been, you know, we've been fortunate we can do that every year. | ||
| So it's just tough. | ||
| And we're both on Social Security, so it just makes it tough every year. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So John, do you expect it to go up again? | ||
| Have you called your insurance company? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, yes, I did. | |
| I actually talked to the people that own it. | ||
| We've known, we've been insured by them since for 43 years. | ||
| We've been married 43 years. | ||
| And the rates have gone up, up, up, up. | ||
| And there's no rhyme, no reason she goes. | ||
| Just the way it is. | ||
| And they can't, she can't, her company can't control it. | ||
| It's all the big shots above them to control it. | ||
| So, John, let me share this with you, and then I want to get your reaction. | ||
| This is from Consumer Federation of America, their report recently. | ||
| And these are, they say, the factors driving up premiums. | ||
| Climate change, as you mentioned, this wildfires, flooding, severe weather events are damaging more homes. | ||
| Inflation, rising labor, construction, and building materials costs have made homes more expensive to build and repair. | ||
| And now you add tariffs to that, and potentially the cost of home building goes up and then insurance goes up with it. | ||
| Reinsurance, the reinsurance market is tight, and rates have increased as providers pass the cost on to customers. | ||
| Weak regulatory oversight, state insurance commissioners have given insurers much more leeway in raising premiums. | ||
| So, John, any reaction to some of those factors? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm looking at the screen. | |
| I'm just looking. | ||
| I do believe that some of this climate change is hurting us. | ||
| The reinsurance, I don't know. | ||
| I'm not, you know, I'm a retired aerospace machinist and I don't understand all this insurance stuff. | ||
| I have friends that are in the insurance, but I just wish there was a way that our country could make it more acceptable for all of us, no matter where you stand in employment or your financial ways. | ||
| John, there in Portland, Connecticut, retired. | ||
| He and his wife owned their home for 43 years and have been insured by the same company, and he's seeing his rates go up. | ||
| Helen, Greensboro, North Carolina. | ||
| Helen, what's it like in Greensboro? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's terrible. | |
| The insurance I had last year up until May the 10th was a little over $700. | ||
| Now it went up to $962. | ||
| So, and this company I'm with, this is the last year they're going to be selling homeowners. | ||
| So, I found me another company that's $100 less. | ||
| The raise that they gave us in Social Security this year don't even pay my homeowner's insurance. | ||
| So, we get no compensation to help us seniors to pay the cost of insurance and car insurance. | ||
| It's outrageous in North Carolina. | ||
| So, Helen, what did you make a cut? | ||
| Did you make a cut somewhere else in your life? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, ma'am, I just live on Social Security. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So, what I got in a raise, I've got to, it won't even cover my homeowner's insurance. | ||
| So, everything else I have to pay comes out of what I actually get every month. | ||
| Understood. | ||
| All right, Helen. | ||
| Understood. | ||
| Jim in Inglewood, Ohio. | ||
| Hi, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm in just north of Dayton, Ohio, and the insurance has been going up steadily for the last several years. | ||
| Last year, I actually changed providers from an insurance technique that we've had for years. | ||
| I got a reduced rate, but the homeowner's insurance is one thing. | ||
| The property tax, the property tax. | ||
| Never in my life did I think and I've reached a point I'm blessed. | ||
| I don't owe on my mortgage. | ||
| I own my home, but I make a bigger property tax payment per month by four times than what I paid for an apartment when I first moved out 40-some years ago. | ||
| It's just ridiculous. | ||
| The level of cost for sustaining a home and the nicer the home you have, the more you're penalized. | ||
| So, Jim, let me ask you about home insurance. | ||
| What do you think the factors are in Ohio? | ||
| You know, you're not exposed to the major climate disasters that we normally hear about, the hurricanes and the wildfires, et cetera. | ||
| So, what do you think it is that's driving the cost up? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think that the cost of materials, like everything, has gone through the ceiling over, you know, this isn't something that happened in four months. | |
| This has been going on and it's been steadily climbing. | ||
| The amount of damage that we have suffered from natural disasters has been phenomenal lately. | ||
| So, you just can't hinge this or put this on one situation. | ||
| I appreciate your allowing me to speak. | ||
| Yeah, thanks for calling in, Jim. | ||
| I want to share this headline with all of you from the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Homebuilders are piling on discounts, and home builders, national home builders are offering up discounts on new builds to potential buyers to offset the cost of rising prices of new homes. | ||
| It says in here, D.R. Horton and Lenner, who are two home builders, told investors that their building material providers are holding fire for now, but they expect import levies, tariffs, to push up construction costs later this year. | ||
| Builders think new home prices will rise by anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000 as a result of the trade war. | ||
| So, more expensive it costs, construction costs to build and repair homes means that insurance premiums will go up as well. | ||
| Frank in Silver Creek, Georgia. | ||
| Hi, Frank. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Dylan. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Glad to be on this morning. | ||
| I love your show. | ||
| Yeah, property taxes are, it seems like every time the property taxes go up, my insurance goes up. | ||
| And my insurance has gone up every year. | ||
| And it's, and, and so, my, you know, they have a thing here in Georgia or in some counties where 100% real value, totally subjective. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| 100% real value. | ||
| I mean, I have sheetrock work that needs to be done. | ||
| I have new flooring. | ||
| It needs to be done. | ||
| That is totally subjective. | ||
| And something's got to be done because right now, the legislature in Georgia, they're a bunch of clowns. | ||
| They don't do anything. | ||
| They do everything for income taxes, gas taxes, but the property owning, my taxes are, I own two homes. | ||
| I pay almost $8,000 a year in property taxes. | ||
| So you want your legislator, you want your legislature to lower property taxes. | ||
| You think that's where they could provide some relief to you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that would be good. | |
| They need to do something, and it's school taxes. | ||
| Well, they say it's not property taxes, it's school taxes. | ||
| Well, I'm retired. | ||
| I don't have any children in school, but I don't mind the schools got to be paid for. | ||
| That's no issue. | ||
| But I haven't seen any property relief for property owners in this state in the last 10 years, and I don't get an income tax rebate. | ||
| You know, oh, you didn't pay any taxes, you didn't pay any income taxes. | ||
| Well, Frank, what about I paid $8,000 in property taxes? | ||
| What about, though, the cost of goods, construction goods, raising home insurance costs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's true. | |
| But you get it. | ||
| Yeah, building materials are going up, but it seems like every time my property taxes go up, my insurance goes up. | ||
| And it's not as bad as it is in other places like New Orleans. | ||
| But eventually, 10 years from now, it's going to price people out of the market. | ||
| They're not going to be able to afford a home. | ||
| And all they care about, well, let's see, you qualify low income. | ||
| You're going to get a break. | ||
| But I have a pretty good, I'm fortunate. | ||
| I mean, I can pay it, but I don't think it's right that I have to pay that much money in property taxes. | ||
| All right, Frank, they're tying home insurance rates to property taxes. | ||
| We're asking about your costs for insuring your home across the states, across the United States this morning after the Senate banking hearing committee, excuse me, held a hearing yesterday on Capitol Hill about the rising costs. | ||
| And as we said, according to the Consumer Federation of America, inflation is one of the factors that is driving up home insurance costs. | ||
| From the Washington Post reporting this morning, inflation is widely expected to rise again. | ||
| The Federal Reserve, which is charged with keeping prices in check, had managed to wrestle price growth down to normal levels. | ||
| But now officials are warning that the trade war will probably undo some of that progress and keep officials from lowering interest rates soon. | ||
| At the same time, the Fed is cautioning that it could end up in a bind with the economy slowing too much, but inflation on the rise. | ||
| Normally, slower growth would push the Fed to boost the economy by lowering rates. | ||
| Rising inflation, though, is combated with higher rates. | ||
| That's from the reporting this morning from the Washington Post. | ||
| Let's go back to that hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday. | ||
| Tom Tillis, who's a Republican senator from North Carolina, who was recently hit hard by that hurricane, had this to say about conditions being put on FEMA and the impact of this on home insurance rates. | ||
| I heard y'all, you all talking about mitigation. | ||
| We talked about that for the last 10 years that I've been here and for the eight years that I was in the legislature. | ||
| We always talk about it and just around a storm and then we forget about it and do nothing. | ||
| One of the president was roundly criticized for saying that there should be conditions attached to FEMA aid. | ||
| I disagree incidentally with the president if he meant individual assistance. | ||
| You know, you got to give people food, shelter. | ||
| There can't be conditions for that. | ||
| You move it out the door. | ||
| They shouldn't suffer the consequences of bad policy decisions. | ||
| However, Mr. Gordon made a great point. | ||
| I am perfectly satisfied with the notion of having conditions attached to any resiliency and recovery to states and local jurisdictions that fail to make their communities and their land more resilient and more able to respond. | ||
| So I think that it would be great. | ||
| I've mentioned, I did not know specifically, Mr. Gordon, what you said. | ||
| I think it's perfectly fine to say that we come up with some sort of way to index state and local governments based on the extent to which they've really implemented best practices for forestry management, for tributary clearing within environmental norms, whatever a best practice looks like, depoliticize it. | ||
| And if you're in a jurisdiction that hasn't not only passed the law but implemented the rules, and we're in a world of scarce resources, then the state and local governments that actually are listening and executing and implementing all of these words that we talk about every time a storm comes through, I think they should get first right. | ||
| We're in a world of scarce resources. | ||
| I believe that there should be a point where if a state or local government no longer has demonstrated law, procedures, and money to prepare for resiliency and mitigation, they shouldn't get a dime of federal dollars. | ||
| Give it to the jurisdictions that do. | ||
| Senator Tom Tillis from that hearing yesterday, the Senate Banking Committee, if you want to hear more, you can find it on our website at c-span.org. | ||
| We're asking all of you the cost of home insurance in your state. | ||
| Jerry, in Maine, good morning to you. | ||
| What's it like in Maine on the East Coast? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is rainy, and when our weekends are always rainy, and we get a little thunder in the week, so we're a little bit wet. | |
| But to the point of housing, I think the answer to everything is education. | ||
| We need to educate our kids how to build a wood-frame home. | ||
| We're just too reliant on everyone else. | ||
| And if you get some land, stuff like sawmills, learning how to wire your own home, cutting down regulations. | ||
| I think that's key because I think we've just gone crazy. | ||
| When I watch TV, homes are seven and eight hundred thousand dollars. | ||
| And it's just, I think we're just too spoiled. | ||
| I think we, my grandmother had 12 kids, and my grandfather never had a car. | ||
| And my father, that's how he was raised. | ||
| And we just, we have to go back to the basics and build smaller dwellings so our taxes are less and we have to involve our genius and work together with our families to create places where we can live because the 30-year mortgage is not the answer. | ||
| It just drains you forever and ever. | ||
| So that's my kind of take on the whole big situation. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So, Jerry, what about a 30-year mortgage, though, when interest rates were 3%, 4%, 5%? | ||
| I mean, is that a good investment then? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would like to have us become from birth learn at school how to put a wall together. | |
| I mean, if you're-I understood that point. | ||
| I understood that point. | ||
| Jerry, there in Maine. | ||
| We'll go to some texts here. | ||
| Here's Stephen in Michigan saying, I pay close to $900 a year. | ||
| I made one claim about 10 years ago, and my price of insurance goes up every year. | ||
| Alex in Brooklyn. | ||
| Alex, what does it cost to insure a home in Brooklyn? | ||
|
unidentified
|
A lot. | |
| I mean, I can tell you it's a lot. | ||
| I had some leak on my roof. | ||
| This was a few years ago after a storm. | ||
| And I made the mistake of trying to put a claim in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And after that, they actually wouldn't cover any of the damage. | |
| And then the company that had insured the house basically went under. | ||
| And first, they told me that I needed proof that the roof was fixed in order to just continue the insurance. | ||
| Once I told them that I could fix it myself, I did it. | ||
| And then they said that they needed a contractor to come in and do it. | ||
| And I had to pay thousands of dollars for that. | ||
| Then the insurance company went out of business, and I had to get new insurance. | ||
| And every single company that I talked to said I needed a new roof if my roof was 10 years or older, if you can believe that. | ||
| And luckily, I was able to get through State Farm, but I would have had to pay over $10,000. | ||
| And people are talking about $800,000. | ||
| In New York City, that gets you nothing. | ||
| I mean, you're talking $2 million and above. | ||
| I don't want to discuss the price of my house, but I just find it ironic that you have tillers coming on there saying that states should be disaster ready. | ||
| Well, what about all of Florida? | ||
| That's a Republican state where you have hotels up on the ocean, and climate change is destroying that. | ||
| Huckabee recently was denied aid from FEMA because Trump said that the disasters and the storms that are hitting her state don't, you know, they don't qualify for emergency aid. | ||
| All of this is Republican-made problems. | ||
| And all of you listening to this that are complaining about your insurance going up, well, global warming is real, and storms will get stronger. | ||
| Insurance companies eventually will be able to cover insurance for homes. | ||
| And then what are you going to do? | ||
| The reality is that you have to understand that Drill Baby Drill is not the solution. | ||
| And you have to understand that climate change is caused by human factors. | ||
| So here in New York City, I know that we will get hit with a large storm one day. | ||
| And I am going to try to sell this house before the insurance goes so far up that I just won't even be able to sell this property. | ||
| So then, Alex, what will you do? | ||
| It's cheaper to rent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I mean, I'm just going to move further up north. | |
| I have, I mean, interestingly enough, in my neighborhood, the Hasidic Jews are buying everything up. | ||
| They really don't care about global warming. | ||
| They have a strong community here. | ||
| And I get phone calls from realtors who told me people will pay up to $3.5 million cash for my house. | ||
| I mean, that's how ridiculous the market is here. | ||
| And so eventually, you know, I've talked about this to my brother, and we will get hit with another sandy storm. | ||
| There will be much worse. | ||
| It'll probably cripple the train systems. | ||
| You know, who knows what will happen? | ||
| And I can guarantee you, once that happens, insurance is going to skyrocket, and a lot of people are going to lose their homes. | ||
| And I don't know what the solution is, but I want to sell before that happens. | ||
| But one last thing, everybody, please understand global warming is real. | ||
| And if you're complaining about materials going up and everything going up and your insurance is going up, you thank Republicans for that. | ||
| That is Republicans. | ||
| Alex's opinion there in Brooklyn. | ||
| Here's Tom on Facebook saying my homeowners insurance has gone up every year of the 29 years I've had it with no claims. | ||
| Insurance is a racket. | ||
| Karen in Alabaster, Alabama. | ||
| Karen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hey, good morning, Greta. | ||
| So, yes, our property tax and our homeowners' insurance did go up. | ||
| It's still affordable, but it has gone up. | ||
| But I really want, what I was going to call and say is, I don't know if people know this, and they may, and you may have already said it, but if you're 65 and older, you can reach out to your county commissioner and say, I'm 65, and you can be exempt from paying the property tax. | ||
| So I'm not at that age yet, but when I get there, you can bet I'm going to reach out to them. | ||
| A couple of things I wanted to say also is that the climate change, people keep talking about climate change. | ||
| Climate change is there's nothing we can do on earth to affect climate change. | ||
| The climate changes, and it is what it is. | ||
| If you don't want to pay higher rates on the beach, then don't build a house on the beach. | ||
| And I do agree that maybe we should kind of scale back. | ||
| I mean, my husband and I are talking about retiring in the next few years, and we're talking about what kind of house we want, and he wants the same-size house we have now, but there's only two of us. | ||
| We don't need this big of a house. | ||
| So, I'm all about tiny homes. | ||
| But anyway, I agree with that. | ||
| That, you know, smaller maybe is a little better. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right, Karen in Alabama. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Paul in England. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love that. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I think the small outgoes and smaller conversation is small payments, I reckon. | ||
| Matt in New York. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Matt, go ahead. | |
| Yeah, the topic is insurance. | ||
| America's always been great. | ||
| I don't know why you're having homeowners insurance as a topic. | ||
| You should be having the topic that Trump has ended NPR and PBS. | ||
| Oh, they cut me off. | ||
| No, you're still on, Matt. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| We can talk about that next because we're going to take a break. | ||
| And when we come back, we're going to go to Open Forum for the next half an hour. | ||
| That's any political or public policy issue that's on your mind. | ||
| You can talk to us about that. | ||
| And there are the lines on your screen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll be right back for that conversation. Mike said before, I happened to listen to him. | |
| He was on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
| But I've read about it in the history books. | ||
| I've seen the C-SPAN footage. | ||
| If it's a really good idea, present it in public view on C-SPAN. | ||
| Every single time I tuned in on TikTok or C-SPAN or YouTube or anything, there were tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people watching. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I went home after the speech and I turned on C-SPAN. | |
| I was on C-SPAN just this week. | ||
| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
| They had something $2.50 a gallon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I saw on television a little while ago in between my watching my great friends on C-SPAN. | |
| C-SPAN is televising this right now live. | ||
| So we are not just speaking to Los Angeles. | ||
| We are speaking to the country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Washington Journal continues. | |
| Welcome back to the Washington Journal. | ||
| We're now in open forum. | ||
| Any public policy or political issue that's on your mind, you can share it with us. | ||
| Let's begin with the front page story in the newspapers on many of the newspapers this morning, and that's the headline about Mike Waltz. | ||
| There he is pictured on the front page of the Washington Post, the National Security Advisor ousted. | ||
| Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, will now serve as the National Security Advisor. | ||
| As well, after the announcement was made about Mike Waltz leaving his position, resigning his position as National Security Advisor, the White House a few hours later announcing that he would be nominated to serve as the president's U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. | ||
| Before that announcement was made, though, Jack Reed, who's the Democrat from Rhode Island, serves as the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, came to the floor of the Senate and talked about the removal of Mike Waltz. | ||
| And just hours ago, we learned of press reports that National Security Advisor Mike Waltz will be fired this week because of his own actions around the signal incident. | ||
| If true, I welcome the message of accountability that it sends. | ||
| Mr. Waltz made a significant mistake in adding a reporter to a sensitive signal chat, and his failure of judgment could have had serious national security consequences. | ||
| But I respect that he took responsibility for his mistake and paid the cost, apparently. | ||
| In contrast, Secretary Hedstett has refused to take responsibility for his own misconduct, in which my view was far more egregious than that of Mr. Waltz. | ||
| Indeed, the fallout from this incident has further eroded the already dismal credibility that the Secretary brought to the Pentagon. | ||
| The Secretary's inner circle of hand-picked advisors have nearly all resigned or been fired. | ||
| His chief of staff was dismissed amid allegations of incompetence and unsettling personal behavior. | ||
| Three of his senior policy advisors were fired for allegedly leaking sensitive information, which they all staunchly deny. | ||
| And his top spokesman resigned after losing confidence in the Secretary and writing, and I quote, the building is in disarray under Hegstad's leadership. | ||
| And furthermore, quote, the last month has been a full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon, and it's becoming a real problem for the administration. | ||
| And this was the words of Secretary Hegst's self-selected top spokesperson. | ||
| This chain of events is extraordinary and underscores the concerns I raised at Secretary Hegstett's nomination hearing. | ||
| He does not possess the temperament and management skills needed to lead the Pentagon, and he's proving that over and over. | ||
| Senator Jack Reid, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, with his reaction by the President's decision to have Mike Waltz resign as National Security Advisor and instead have him serve as potentially the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. | ||
| That requires confirmation by the Senate. | ||
| Burgess Everett, who reports for Semaphore, notes this, I believe Marco Rubio is now Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, acting U.S. AID Administrator, and acting archivist. | ||
| Now, the Vice President JD Vance responds to Burgess Everett's post saying, I think he could take on a bit more if only there was a job opening for a devout Catholic. | ||
| We're in open forum this morning. | ||
| We'll get your reaction to that story and others. | ||
| Sticking, though, with Mike Waltz's ouster, as the Wall Street Journal editorial page puts it, they write this, that Laura Loomer, who has shifted from conspiracies about 9-11 to spreading blacklists in the Trump administration, previously helped to oust members of Mr. Waltz's staff with guilt by association tactics. | ||
| She turned, she tarred Alex Wong, Mr. Waltz's deputy and former staffer for Senator Tom Cotton, as connected to the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| Mr. Wong is a noted China hawk, a tough on Beijing veteran of the first Trump term. | ||
| Responding on Thursday to reports that Mr. Wong will follow Mr. Waltz out the door, Ms. Loomer claimed another scalp in a tweet. | ||
| Roberta in Renton, Washington, Independent. | ||
| Roberta, what's on your mind this morning? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just wonder when folks are talking about our undocumented folks that are here in the States, why, you know, they're breaking the law, they're felons. | |
| I just wonder why no one ever mentions the fact that There's a lot of felonies going on in government right now. | ||
| There's a lot of laws being broken, and it's just like dismissed, like, oh, this is government working. | ||
| It makes absolutely no sense to me, and I just find it fascinating that folks who claim to be experts in these fields don't automatically rebut anything that has to do with removing undocumented folks from this country to immediately say, hey, the folks in charge here are also committing felonies. | ||
| And by the way, the person who is running the show is a convicted felon. | ||
| I just don't understand why that argument is never made. | ||
| And I find it a little bit fascinating and maddening at the same time. | ||
| All right, Roberta's thoughts on the president's immigration policies. | ||
| Front page of the Washington Times, Judge Barr's Trump tool to oust gang members. | ||
| The Alien Enemies Act can't be used to detain and deport Venezuelan gang members. | ||
| A federal judge ruled Thursday a significant blow to President Trump's claims of expansive deportation powers. | ||
| The judge, Fernando Rodriguez, said the 1798 law requires a state of war or an invasion or incursion by agents of an enemy nation. | ||
| Front page of the Washington Times. | ||
| Inside of the newspaper, Trump appeals for shutdown of deportation amnesty. | ||
| The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to step in and allow Homeland Security to shut down a Biden-era deportation amnesty that's protecting hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans from deportation, saying lower courts have trampled on President Trump's powers. | ||
| The case is the latest immigration challenge to reach the high court as Mr. Trump seeks backing for his aggressive attempt to rid the country of many of the illegal immigrants who arrived during the Biden years. | ||
| And then below that is another story related to this topic. | ||
| Feds begin filing trespassing charges against immigrants, no exceptions in a restricted military zone. | ||
| The Justice Department is bringing a new tool to the border fight, charging the first set of migrants with entering a restricted military zone in southern New Mexico. | ||
| Ryan Ellison, the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, said Thursday that his office has filed 82 new cases against migrants who crossed illegally into the newly designated national defense area. | ||
| They can face up to a year in prison, which is double the penalty for illegal entry, the usual charge under immigration law known as Title VIII. | ||
| The new charges are being brought under Title 50, which governs defense matters. | ||
| That's the latest on the president's efforts on immigration and deportation. | ||
| Peter in Valley Cottage, New York, a Republican. | ||
| Hi, Peter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Greta. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I haven't called in a while. | ||
| I just want to address your topic of insurance. | ||
| I'm living in my house 40 years now. | ||
| And last, I've never made a claim on my homeowners insurance. | ||
| But I have a policy that includes my home and two cars. | ||
| And last year, my insurance went up $1,000. | ||
| The company that I had went out of business, and I had to renegotiate my policy that I had gotten two months previously, and it went up $1,000. | ||
| So I was paying $4,000. | ||
| And my homeowner's insurance, when I bought the house, my property tax was $2,700 a year, including my school and my property. | ||
| And now I'm paying $12,000. | ||
| So really, basically, most of the cost of insurance that has gone up recently is because of inflation. | ||
| Inflation averaged 5.5% over the last four years. | ||
| And that affected everything. | ||
| As far as tariffs are concerned, yeah, it may affect prices going forward because the tariffs are a recent phenomenon. | ||
| I said, but basically, the cost of everything at the present is for insurance is because of the inflation that we've experienced, which is due to monetary policy by the Fed and federal government spending. | ||
| And also, you know, they're blaming climate change. | ||
| And yes, climate change is a factor. | ||
| It is getting warmer. | ||
| But most of these disasters that we're paying for because everybody, unfortunately, has to pay for it, even if you've never made a claim. | ||
| But they're building homes all over the place in areas where they shouldn't be building or never were building before. | ||
| And what's happening is we have 330 million people now in the country. | ||
| And, you know, they're building houses in areas that are prone to flooding, prone to hurricanes. | ||
| And once there is a disaster, they're allowed to rebuild in the same areas. | ||
| And this just drives up the costs for everybody. | ||
| But basically, what we're experiencing now is due to the inflation that we experienced, the spending over the last four years, five years. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Peter's thoughts there in Valley Cottage, New York. | ||
| He's a Republican. | ||
| Edwin's a Democrat in New Bern, North Carolina. | ||
| Edwin, we're at Open Forum. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I want to address what's going to happen today. | ||
| The jobs report comes out at 8:30. | ||
| Yep. | ||
|
unidentified
|
ADP has already released their figures yesterday. | |
| Only 62,000 jobs were created, 34,000 in the private sector, service sector jobs. | ||
| And the Labor Department showed that 241,000 people filed unemployment insurance. | ||
| We had a negative GDP of 0.3. | ||
| One more quarter, we're going to be in a recession. | ||
| And the problem is, I have with this big, beautiful bill that Trump's going to own. | ||
| And Trump needs to stop saying, Biden this, Biden that. | ||
| He's the president. | ||
| Put on your big boy pants. | ||
| This is how it goes. | ||
| We're going to give defense $1.0 trillion. | ||
| It's a 13% increase. | ||
| Non-defense spending, $163 billion in cuts. | ||
| That's environmental and conservation, science and space, international affairs, transportation, energy, and agriculture, education and job training, economic security and social services, VA Health, justice and general government, and public health and medical research. | ||
| I addressed and want people to contact their congressmen because Congress is supposed to be lining out these items in these appropriations, not Doge. | ||
| Doge has never been sanctioned by Congress, and the president is breaking the Congressional Budget Empowerment Control Act of 1974, which states the president has to inform Congress of any cuts. | ||
| Congress has to make the cuts. | ||
| Congress owns the purse strings, but Trump is not doing that. | ||
| That's why these judges are filing him unconstitutional on all these firings he did for federal employees. | ||
| All right. | ||
| All right, Edwin, and we're going to be talking about regulations coming up here on the Washington Journal and Republicans, the president, and Republicans controlling the House and Senate. | ||
| They say that's the big push for the next 100 days of the president's second term is deregulation. | ||
| So we're going to talk about that coming up. | ||
| Another headline to share with you this morning, this is from the Washington Post. | ||
| The president signed an order yesterday seeking an end to federal funding for public broadcasting. | ||
| That includes NPR and PBS. | ||
| The executive order also instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to halt indirect funding of NPR and PBS through grants to local stations. | ||
| You can talk about that news as well this morning here in Open Forum. | ||
| Raynard in Woodbridge, Virginia, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was just wondering, did C-SPAN have a chance to play Trump's pre-inauguration speech in Washington, D.C. on January 19th? | |
| Specifically, the minute, the 52nd, 30-minute, where he admits that the election was rigged for him to win. | ||
| I was just wondering, because I just haven't seen that played anywhere. | ||
| Well, you can find that on our website, I'm sure. | ||
| If you go to c-span.org and you go into the search engine at the top there on your screen and put in some keywords, you'll be able to find his remarks there. | ||
| Joe, Elizabeth Town Connect, Kentucky, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Glad to be on. | |
| I don't even know where to begin. | ||
| I'm listening to your show this morning, first time caller, and about housing. | ||
| I'm a builder, developer. | ||
| I'm sitting on the job right now. | ||
| 65. | ||
| I've watched the housing market spiral to what it is right now. | ||
| As far as tariffs, I don't see that affecting the housing market. | ||
| I talk with my vendors, suppliers. | ||
| Most of everything that we get is onshore. | ||
| Thank goodness. | ||
| We get a few things from Canada, maybe some cabinets from China, but the majority of things we, I personally, get from onshore in America. | ||
| And it's time for us to tighten our belts and get away from foreign entanglements. | ||
| So, Joe, does that mean you haven't had to raise the cost of what you charge for building a home? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've been raising the cost since I started building back in the 80s. | |
| And that is due to the weakening of the dollar. | ||
| It's the dollar. | ||
| We keep printing money, and our money is not worth anything. | ||
| When you see the stock market go up, guaranteed your prices are going to go up. | ||
| It's inevitable because it's taking more greenbacks to buy things. | ||
| I mean, it's obvious. | ||
| If we don't strengthen our dollar, the prices are going to go up. | ||
| All right. | ||
| John there, a home builder in Kentucky, Republican. | ||
| We're in open forum this morning. | ||
| Any public policy or political issue is on the table. | ||
| Back to deportations, I want to share this headline from NBC here in Washington. | ||
| Virginia Senator Tim Kaine says Democrats will force a vote on a resolution for transparency on these deportations coming from the Trump administration. | ||
| Here's what Senator Kaine had to say yesterday. | ||
| The President of the United States is flouting a 7-2 Supreme Court order and saying he doesn't have the power to retract a mistake that his administration admits he's made and thinks that's the end of the story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're here to say that is not the end of the story. | |
| There is a privileged motion that any senator can file that Senator Van Holland and I, together with Senator Schumer and Senator Padilla, are filing today to force the State Department, the Trump administration, to issue a human rights report about El Salvador. | ||
| This is a little used privileged motion, but it's designed like the other privileges are designed to enable the Article I branch to check executive overreach. | ||
| In this case, President Trump has facilitated the deportation of American residents, many here completely lawfully, to El Salvador without due process. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In some instances, people who are being deported by mistake, as the administration admits. | |
| And the President has even gone beyond this and said that he would like to cut a deal to send U.S. citizens to be in prison in El Salvador. | ||
| So we are filing a resolution today under Section 502BC of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to require the State Department to issue a report on the situation about human rights in El Salvador, particularly the conditions in the prison where Americans are being held, whether El Salvador is taking steps together with the administration to facilitate compliance with the Supreme Court's ruling. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are they interested in following the rule of law or not? | |
| This is a procedure where within 10 calendar days this becomes business of the Senate that we can take up. | ||
| We are guaranteed a vote on it, and we will seek a vote on it at a time that our leader, Senator Schumer, will negotiate with Senator Thune. | ||
| And I want to send a message not only to the administration, if you think you can take steps like this without Congress challenging your executive overreach, you're wrong. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're going to challenge your overreach at every instance when we can. | |
| And I also send a message to the government of El Salvador. | ||
| You might think it's cute right now to grab attention by a bromance with President Trump. | ||
| He's going to be a president for Pocomas, Teresaños Más, Pero Relación Enter de los estados unidos y El Salvador es para siempre. | ||
| And if you think we'll forget you violating the human rights of American citizens, you're wrong. | ||
| We will remember this forever, and there will be significant and challenging downstream consequences for any nation that violates the rights of Americans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The follow-up for this report can include a privileged vote to terminate all security assistance to the nation of El Salvador. | |
| Whether or not that's the will of the body, we'll see what the report has, but we're going to put all of our colleagues on the record. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If Americans are being sent in violation of the rule of law to El Salvador, we should all want to get a human rights report to see whether this nation is following the rule of law or not. | |
| Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, yesterday up on Capitol Hill talking about Democrats' latest efforts to have transparency in President Trump's deportation policies. | ||
| We're an open forum. | ||
| You can talk about that issue or others. | ||
| Carol in Ashton, West Virginia, an independent. | ||
| Let's hear from you, Carol. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Well, I've got a couple issues that, you know, I want to bring as far as the homeowners' insurance, mine has been going up for years. | ||
| It doesn't matter every time, and I'm on Social Security, but every time we get a cost of living raise, the health insurance premium goes up, the homeowner's insurance goes up, also the car insurance goes up. | ||
| And as far as WALS goes, Everybody was, well, you know, let's have accountability. | ||
| Who was held accountable on the last administration for a bunch of debacles? | ||
| Nobody. | ||
| And as far as the Immigration Department goes, if Americans are being deported, yes, they need to be brought back. | ||
| If anybody has already had their day in court and got the papers that says that they need to be deported, they need to go. | ||
| Everybody have a good day. | ||
| All right, Carol James, Newark, New Jersey, Democratic Color. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Darren. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm going to talk some Jesus talk. | |
| I hope you're not mind. | ||
| Now, in the Bible, the book of Acts, chapter 2, it says, and all that believed were together and had all things in common and saw their professions and good, imparted them to all men as any man had need. | ||
| And then it goes on and it says, and the Holy Spirit bless them every day, every day. | ||
| Darling, bless them one. | ||
| We're doing something wrong in this country. | ||
| Now, although it says, book of last name, none of the money should turn less cold. | ||
| All right, James, I'm going to jump in. | ||
| Difficult time understanding you this morning, so apologies. | ||
| Excuse me, inside the Washington Post this morning, two headlines about action in Congress yesterday. | ||
| First, the House votes to block California from banning sales of gas cars by 2035. | ||
| You can see that this action taken by the federal government against a state trying to prohibit them from having stricter regulations on new cars than the federal government. | ||
| And then below that is a headline, the Senate overturning an EPA rule on seven highly toxic air pollutants. | ||
| From the Washington Post this morning, action in Congress on the House and the Senate floor. | ||
| And as you all know, the Republicans have the majority in both chambers. | ||
| Diane in Syracuse, New York, an independent. | ||
| Diane, what's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, good morning. | |
| Well, a little bit of background about myself. | ||
| I was never able to spend any time watching politics or following because of situations in my life. | ||
| I'm not a whiner, so. | ||
| And then when COVID hit, I couldn't work for a great period of time, so I would watch C-SPAN and the other news local because I have never been able to afford nor want to pay for Fox, C-SPAN, NSNBC. | ||
| It's just all local. | ||
| And over the span of time with me watching and making up my own mind without any preconceived notions or following any kind of politics at all, I decided that I was not going to watch any of the local news. | ||
| And that's NBC, CBS, and, you know. | ||
| And so I basically, you know, PBS and BBC, I just found it very offensive. | ||
| And so, and I do not watch their regular programming either because if they put such crass, obnoxious things on their news, I do not want to, and the view is horrendous. | ||
| But anyway, I'm calling to kind of say goodbye to your station. | ||
| because I know you don't have any oversight on what is actually going on and the colors of the call, but I find it very offensive. | ||
| And I also have been cut off and told that my statements were not proper. | ||
| So I wish everybody at your station and Washington Journal and C-SPAN a wonderful, healthy life, but I will not be listening to you because I do not need any more aggravation or back and forth, and I will not watch the House or Senate anymore. | ||
| All right, Diane. | ||
| We are sorry to lose you and hope that you return to C-SPAN to watch our unfiltered, uninterrupted coverage of the federal government. | ||
| You can watch what is being debated and decided here by your Congress, the people that you send here to Washington. | ||
| It's the only place that you'll get the unfiltered, uninterrupted, full event on a network. | ||
| Front page of the New York Times this morning has a story into the missteps that led to that deadly crash here in Washington, D.C. at the Ronald Reagan National Airport. | ||
| The headline is, missteps, equipment problems, and a common but risky practice that led to the fatal crash. | ||
| From their reporting by Kate Kelly and Mark Walker, shortly after the Blackhawk passed over Washington's most famous array of cherry trees, an air traffic controller at nearby Ronald Reagan National Airport alerted the crew to a regional passenger jet in its vicinity. | ||
| The crew acknowledged seeing traffic nearby. | ||
| One of the pilots then asked for permission to employ a practice called visual separation. | ||
| That allows a pilot to take control of navigating around other aircraft rather than relying on the controller for the guidance. | ||
| Visual separation approved, the controller replied. | ||
| The request to fly under those rules is granted routinely in airspace overseen by controllers. | ||
| Most of the time, visual separation is executed without note. | ||
| But when mishandled, it can also create a deadly risk, one that aviation experts have warned about for years. | ||
| Most of these requests for visual separation come from helicopters and not commercial jets. | ||
| If you want to read more, you can find it in the New York Times. | ||
| By the way, the Transportation Secretary for President Trump, Sean Duffy, held a news conference yesterday in Washington on retaining and recruiting air traffic control operators. | ||
| You can find it on our website at c-span.org. | ||
| Kim in Champaign, Illinois, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Hi, Kim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning, Bretta. | |
| Hey, I'm sorry about your last call. | ||
| I really would urge her, please stay engaged. | ||
| I know, you know, listening to the back and forth discussions can be frustrating, but you're right. | ||
| C-SPAN is the only place where we can actually watch our representative in actions and see and observe, you know, how they are supporting or advocating for us. | ||
| So my first point is that, you know, I just want to remind everybody, especially, you know, these callers that are calling in and talking about Home property values and or I'm sorry, property taxes and things like that. | ||
| Let's please remind them that it was in 2017 that the Tax Cuts and Job Act was passed that limited the state and local tax deductions that middle-class homeowners could take. | ||
| They capped it at $10,000. | ||
| That was essentially, you know, and they did that in essence to really just shift so they could give more tax breaks to the well-being billionaires. | ||
| That was truly a transfer of wealth. | ||
| And I've been paying taxes long enough in this country, my husband and I own a home, to where, you know, I can remember like in the 90s and 80s where we were able to deduct interest from our, from, from, from, from credit cards, from home loans, and things like that, to where now they've just whittled away so much from where middle-class people can deduct on their taxes. | ||
| We owe taxes practically, you know, a lot. | ||
| So please, you know, when people, especially when they're debating this budget bill that's coming up and whether to extend these taxes, we should definitely be telling our representatives: no, let's not extend these taxes to where billionaires can deduct more or pay no taxes, and essentially transfer middle-class wealth to billionaires so they can take more tax breaks. | ||
| So let's make sure that we're advocating about that. | ||
| We don't want these tax cuts extended. | ||
| We don't want that for billionaires. | ||
| Secondly, I noticed in my 401k as I'm still recovering from Liberation Day, by the way. | ||
| But what I've noticed when I go through my different investments, I'm more worried that my bonds are losing money. | ||
| That makes me concerned about the future and what America's future is. | ||
| And in terms of other nations funding our debt and things like that in the future. | ||
| So that's what worries me most when I look at when I examine my different investments. | ||
| All right, Kim, I want to jump in because I want to pick up on what you said about the debate over the budget reconciliation bill. | ||
| That is the president's proposal to make permanent his 2017 tax cuts. | ||
| At the same time, Republicans are looking for trillions in spending cuts to programs while increasing funding for border security. | ||
| The president has referred to it as one big beautiful bill. | ||
| The House and the Senate, controlled by Republicans, have to come to an agreement on one bill that both chambers can pass before they can send it to the president for his signature. | ||
| Next week, the House Ways and Means Committee is expected to mark up their portion. | ||
| You can expect that debate around the SALT deduction, as that caller was just talking about, will be part of that debate. | ||
| We're going to take a break when we come back. | ||
| A brand new polling shows young Americans losing faith in government institutions and in leaders of both parties. | ||
| Later on this morning on the Washington Journal, we'll dig into the results with Jordan Schwartz, student chair of the Harvard Youth Poll, and Gen Z political analyst Rachel John Faza. | ||
| But first, Wayne Cruz of the Competitive Enterprise Institute is going to be with us to discuss his organization's annual survey on the cost and scope of federal regulations. | ||
| That conversation coming up next after this break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Looking to contact your members of Congress? | |
| Well, C-SPAN is making it easy for you with our 2025 Congressional Directory. | ||
| Get essential contact information for government officials all in one place. | ||
| This compact, spiral-bound guide contains bio and contact information for every House and Senate member of the 119th Congress. | ||
| Contact information on congressional committees, the President's Cabinet, federal agencies, and state governors. | ||
| The Congressional Directory costs $32.95 plus shipping and handling, and every purchase helps support C-SPAN's non-profit operations. | ||
| Scan the code on the right or go to c-spanshop.org to order your copy today. | ||
| Book TV, all weekend on C-SPAN 2, features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | ||
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| On Saturday, beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern, Book TV is live in Annapolis, Maryland for the 2025 Annapolis Book Festival. | ||
| Join us as we hear from authors on immigration, Gen Z, President Woodrow Wilson, and more. | ||
| And at 7 p.m. Eastern, Independent Institute senior fellow Richard Vetter contends that the U.S. government needs to get out of the higher education business and allow American universities to be guided by the private sector in his book, Let Colleges Fail. | ||
| Then at 8 p.m. Eastern, Fox News host and declared candidate for governor of California, Steve Hilton, shares his book, Califailure, where he argues that California is the worst-run state in America and suggests ways to improve it. | ||
| Then on Sunday at 6:45 p.m. Eastern, Dylan Mulvaney, creator of the Days of Girlhood TikTok series, speaks about her life before and post-transition in her book, Paper Doll. | ||
| At 8 p.m. Eastern, British author and journalist Douglas Murray shares his book on democracies and death cults, where he argues that protecting Israel is fundamental to preserving Western civilization. | ||
| And at 10 p.m. Eastern on Afterwards, journalist David Graham looks at how parts of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 document are being implemented by the Trump administration in his book, The Project. | ||
| He's interviewed by author and George Washington University professor Matthew Dalek. | ||
| Watch Book TV every weekend on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| As Mike said before I happened to listen to him, he was on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
| But I've read about it in the history books. | ||
| I've seen the C-SPAN footage. | ||
| If it's a really good idea, present it in public view on C-SPAN. | ||
| Every single time I tuned in on TikTok or C-SPAN or YouTube or anything, there were tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people watching. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I went home after the speech and I turned on C-SPAN. | |
| I was on C-SPAN just this week. | ||
| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
| They had something $2.50 a gallon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I saw television a little while ago in between my watching my great friends on C-SPAN. | |
| C-SPAN is televising this right now live. | ||
| So we are not just speaking to Los Angeles, we are speaking to the country. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| And we're back with Wayne Cruz. with a Competitive Enterprise Institute Fellow for Regulatory Studies here to talk about the cost and scope of federal regulations. | ||
| Let's begin with that number because the Washington Times did a story about your report. | ||
| Federal Red Inc now costs businesses more than $2.1 trillion per year according to your report. | ||
| When we dig a little bit deeper into that number, the total cost, $2.2 trillion annually, cost to the U.S. households average is $16,000 annually and consumes 16% of income, 21% of household expenses. | ||
| How did you come up with these numbers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Basically, everybody knows, I think, this year that the federal government is set to spend $7 trillion and on that a $2 trillion deficit. | |
| But spending is just one of the ways that the federal government gets, involves itself in the economy. | ||
| The hidden cost of regulation is another one. | ||
| And, you know, regulation of the economy, economics, antitrust, environment, health and safety, and all the paperwork costs that go with that and so forth. | ||
| Years back, the Small Business Administration used to compile studies of the aggregate cost of regulations. | ||
| And back at that time, the costs were approaching a trillion dollars. | ||
| Since then, there's been a lot of regulation. | ||
| Every year, the Office of Management and Budget, it's often late, but every year the Office of Management and Budget compiles a cost-benefit report for regulations. | ||
| It's not all-inclusive. | ||
| It gets at a fraction of them. | ||
| But using various estimates from the federal government, private estimates, the National Association of Manufacturers, for example, has an estimate of the cost of regulation of $3 trillion. | ||
| I use largely government studies that I can find and try to tabulate those in charts. | ||
| And I use a placeholder. | ||
| This year, $2.155 trillion. | ||
| That's equivalent to what the deficit is going to be this year. | ||
| It's roughly equivalent to what individual income taxes are, same number, $2 trillion, four times the amount of federal income tax collections. | ||
| And if you think of corporate profits of around $3.5 trillion, regulations are close to 60% of that. | ||
| So it's a massive part of the economy. | ||
| And we may get frustrated by the debt, which is now approaching $40 trillion. | ||
| We may get frustrated by the government spending. | ||
| But regulation is a huge factor in the economy, especially when you think sometimes government is steering and the market is just rowing in high-tech, in antitrust, in AI. | ||
| Yet we don't measure that. | ||
| You can't look up the cost of regulations the way you can with the debt and the federal spending. | ||
| That's what I'm trying to get at with the 10,000 Commandments Report. | ||
| And I always say I would love for Congress to take on this job and for OMB and the federal government to do these regulatory cost estimates so I can quit writing 10,000 commandments. | ||
| Wayne Cruz is the author of the 10,000 Commandments, an annual snapshot of the federal regulatory state. | ||
| Why do you call it the 10,000 commandments? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I was just talking to a colleague earlier this morning. | |
| It's been 32 years since I started this report. | ||
| We're still trying to get this done. | ||
| And it turns out, actually, in the new reconciliation markup in judiciary, there's a call for an aggregate cost estimate. | ||
| I think that's terrific. | ||
| And I would love to see that survive. | ||
| But when I first put this report together, I was a student at George Mason. | ||
| I came working on the Hill. | ||
| I worked in the Senate, worked at FDA a little bit too. | ||
| But I put together a report because I was interested in this question of federal involvement in the economy. | ||
| I knew what spending was. | ||
| We were looking at cost of legislation and so forth. | ||
| And I put together a report. | ||
| It had a boring title, like Regulatory Trends 1986 to 1992. | ||
| And I thought it's got to have something cute. | ||
| And there was this book about antitrust and how subjectively that law gets applied. | ||
| And it was called 10,000 Commandments about this arbitrariness of how certain regulatory incursions can take place. | ||
| And I thought that would make a terrific title. | ||
| And I did it and it just kind of stuck. | ||
| So when you talk about the cost of these regulations, do you calculate it by looking at what is passed down to the consumer? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a mix because a lot of what when OMB or the agencies assess costs of say an environmental regulation or a labor regulation, they look at compliance costs on business. | |
| You know, energy rules and so forth would be that way. | ||
| But there's also the productivity losses, the potential job impacts. | ||
| And I'll tell you, as an official position, I'm not an economic planner. | ||
| I don't actually think an external observer can calculate the cost of what someone is subjectively experiencing. | ||
| But I do think, since regulations are laws, that Congress, if it isn't requiring that cost estimate for rules, that Congress needs to take accountability for rules. | ||
| So this is really about accountability, too. | ||
| So in when we fight over this, you know, there's, oh, you know, the regulations have benefits. | ||
| Don't worry about the costs and things like that. | ||
| The question should never be, should we do a cost analysis? | ||
| I think the debate has always been, do you do it bottom up and top down? | ||
| I think, okay, yeah, you're both right. | ||
| Let's kind of do both and pull it together. | ||
| The NAM estimate, for example, is regression analysis and then compliance costs that businesses face and so forth. | ||
| I try to use as much of the government figures as I can. | ||
| But also noting that a lot of regulatory costs are completely left out. | ||
| For example, independent agencies, FCC, FTC, left out. | ||
| Financial agencies in particular too, who've been heavily involved in regulation during the Biden administration and switching under Trump. | ||
| But a lot of the regulatory state, you know, big chunks of it weren't getting measured at all. | ||
| And where I can't do that, what I do like to do in 10,000 Commandments and other write-ups is to point out where the gaps are and say that they need filling. | ||
| You said a potential impact on jobs. | ||
| Explain how. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, because with regulations, if there's a lot of red tape, you know, small businesses are less likely to engage. | |
| I mean, there was just a letter from the Chamber of Commerce this week to the administration saying these tariffs are going to crush small business and things of that sort. | ||
| So that's a real issue. | ||
| You know, one of the most important things in a free economy, and that's what we are at CEI, we're happy warriors for free enterprise and we want to see the economy free so that businesses can prosper, jobs can prosper, there's a great deal of prosperity in the economy, the GDP can continue to grow. | ||
| Regulation could be a weight on that. | ||
| Just as we were talking about taxation and spending could be a drag on the economy, so can that hidden tax of regulation. | ||
| So tariffs are a regulation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I see it that way. | |
| Others call it a tax. | ||
| But a broader term is interventions. | ||
| Like for example, since I was stressing over this a little bit because when the CARES Act was enacted, during the COVID crisis, you remember Donald Trump sitting there signing the bill and he looks up at Mitch McConnell and he says, Mitch, I don't know if I can sign this. | ||
| It's got a T on it for trillion. | ||
| I've never signed anything this big. | ||
| Can we do this? | ||
| But the CARES Act, what came after the American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure law, the inflation law, all of these huge, massive pieces of legislation are already hyper-regulatory before the first administrators that I pay attention to in 10,000 Commandments write the first rule. | ||
| So it's intervention in the economy as well. | ||
| There's now this fusion of spending and regulation that in the new edition of 10,000 Commandments and other reports I'm trying to get attention paid to because Congress also bears a lot of the responsibility not just for over-delegating but for enacting laws that are regulatory. | ||
| There are news reports that the next 100 days, the second 100 days of the Trump administration, Republicans and the president, they will be focusing on deregulation. | ||
| What have you heard? | ||
| What do you expect? | ||
| And what do you think should be done? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What I would like to see is at the very least you have to have disclosure. | |
| But I had put together, I called it the hierarchy of deconstruction. | ||
| It was Trump's term that he used, but I had this upside-down funnel that was the Capitol Dome turned upside down. | ||
| So the easy stuff is at the bottom. | ||
| That's what Trump has already stopped that was in the pipeline from Biden. | ||
| The next stuff up are the major rules that they're going after now with so-called resolutions of disapproval in Congress. | ||
| But there are 100 or so rules like that that are vulnerable, but only about four resolutions of disapproval of Biden rules have happened. | ||
| So if they're going to do this in the next 100 days, they'll have to step up the game. | ||
| So there's these major rules, but then also at the top, if it's the case, as I think, that a lot of this legislation is driving the burden of the regulatory state, they'll need to think more about what they're doing in terms of scaling down agencies like the Department of Education or what they do at Energy or what's happening at EPA with Lee Zeldon and things of that sort. | ||
| So big job. | ||
| The Trump administration, it's the 100th day. | ||
| You might remember it bragging about 142 executive orders. | ||
| Of those, there are more than 10. | ||
| I think it was 14 was the number. | ||
| More than 10 deal with regulation. | ||
| You'd be surprised that only five of those invoke Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency. | ||
| I think that's an indicator that it's known that Doge is a temporary project. | ||
| It goes away next year during America 250. | ||
| So there has to be a longer game. | ||
| And that's what you may see in the next 100 days with regulation. | ||
| What do you mean it goes away? | ||
| Because there are articles written today about how the Doge team has done July 2025, as you said, the anniversary, 250th anniversary of the United States. | ||
| So why does it go away and what makes it temporary then? | ||
| Why wouldn't the work continue? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Musk was a temporary employee. | |
| There are appointees in there now. | ||
| It had been the Digital Services Administration. | ||
| What would need to happen for the regulatory reforms to take root and to stick, the Doge effort would need to be put in legislative form. | ||
| And it is the case that there are bills introduced that would take what Doge is doing and aspects of it, like regulatory reviews, sunsetting of regulations, that sort of thing, and make that legislative. | ||
| For a long time at CEI, we've promoted the notion of Congress voting on major rules to approve them, have to get up on its, right now it has to get up on its hind legs and disapprove them. | ||
| What it should do is it would just have to approve major rules and regulations. | ||
| That's part of the discussion going on right now in the budget reconciliation. | ||
| Also, the aggregate cost estimate that I'd mentioned to you, but the notions of sunsetting, there are several versions of that in play now. | ||
| So I think it's very much on people's minds. | ||
| The regulatory burden does matter, but it needs to be all-encompassing. | ||
| We need to cut back on tariffs and antitrust and other kinds of interventions, too. | ||
| All right, more from the 10,000 Commandments report. | ||
| Agencies issued over 3,200 new regulations in 2024, 19 rules for every law enacted by Congress that year, 175. | ||
| If it were a country, U.S. regulation would be the world's eighth largest economy, ranking behind the Russian Federation and ahead of Canada. | ||
| And Trump's total of 2,964 new final regulations in 2019 is the lowest on record. | ||
| We are taking your questions and your comments about federal regulations here this morning. | ||
| Let's hear from Paul, who's in New York, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you doing? | |
| So here's my comments. | ||
| First of all, it sounds like you're only talking about federal regulation. | ||
| There's state and local regulation, which is not insignificant in a city like New York. | ||
| And then secondly, you know, I have this idea, and this came from basically a former presidential candidate, McGovern, who He basically, this is from the 70s, but he basically, you know, he didn't realize how bad regulation was, which he had basically been promoting when he was a politician until he opened a bed and breakfast. | ||
| And then he had to deal with it. | ||
| And then he thought, wow, this is what he apparently said in his book, how bad these regulations are. | ||
| And so what my thought is, is there some way to have politicians potentially experience the onerous nature of complying with many needless regulations. | ||
| So as an example, for instance, if you think about, this is taxes, which is not exactly regulation, but similar. | ||
| If you had, I believe if you had legislators forced to do their own taxes, you know, you put a room aside and you say, you have to do your own taxes, no professionals assisting you. | ||
| You've got a pencil, you get a calculator, do your own taxes. | ||
| My thesis is you would get tax simplification very quickly, right? | ||
| And I think the same thing, seriously, if you're going to say, oh, you know, we've got this rule for you to do compliance for sexual harassment or something, have them do it for their own office. | ||
| Again, nothing wrong against the principles of what they're trying to do, but have them actually experience doing a compliance manual and what have you, as if they had their own employees. | ||
| And I think it might change their perspective. | ||
| Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be any real, there doesn't seem to be any real effort on their part to change it. | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| I don't want to take up too much time. | ||
| All right, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's interesting. | |
| You often hear the case being made for lawmakers to have to live under their own laws. | ||
| And I think a lot of people support that notion. | ||
| I certainly would to the extent you can. | ||
| And you mentioned something about manuals. | ||
| It's the case that a lot of regulations come not from the law, but not even from the rules that get written, the thousands of rules, but all these manuals and descriptives and FAQs that go along. | ||
| It's a tremendous amount of paperwork. | ||
| In fact, I was looking at paperwork too. | ||
| The amount of paperwork in the federal government now consumes the equivalent of like 15,000 human lifetimes a year. | ||
| It's a tremendous amount. | ||
| And you did mention state and local government. | ||
| Completely agree. | ||
| That's one of the major areas where you see tons and tons of regulation. | ||
| Often occupational legislation and regulations and things of that sort. | ||
| So you have to treat it all at once. | ||
| I think that's true. | ||
| I've mentioned the fact that we need to get these regulatory laws under control as well as the regulations generally. | ||
| Same thing true with state and local governments. | ||
| They need to do their job and roll things back too. | ||
| Gary in Connorsville, Indiana, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning, Greta, and morning, Mr. Cruz. | |
| Got a couple questions here. | ||
| Number one, do you teach a class on this stuff? | ||
| If not, you should, because you really know your stuff. | ||
| And number two, you know, you talk about how rules and regulations cost people. | ||
| Well, what about instances where, you know, oversight kicks in and they're like, well, we can just blow that off or whatever. | ||
| And you've got loopholes that people exploit. | ||
| What about all that? | ||
| Yeah, well, I don't teach a class. | ||
| I don't really want to. | ||
| But on loopholes, well, I think what you're really calling for there is a simplification. | ||
| I mean, if you're going to have a certain regulation, if it does make sense to have the rule, it needs to be as simple as possible and it needs to be universally enforced in the right way, if it's the right kind of rule. | ||
| That's what I think the last caller was getting at, too, in terms of politicians being able to implement this stuff, but really dodge the effects of it. | ||
| So we can get better at that. | ||
| But the main thing is, look, when we say regulation is a concern, pay attention, it doesn't mean free marketers don't mean don't regulate. | ||
| The question is how do you best go about doing it? | ||
| And you're talking environmental regulation, health and safety, energy, what should the standards be, all these sorts of things. | ||
| And you're never going to not regulate in a rule of law society. | ||
| It's just that your question is, is it better to do it with regulatory agencies and that kind of political approach? | ||
| Or can we expand the competitive disciplines that really regulate? | ||
| Because the way I like to portray it is any business operating in society has got upstream business suppliers, downstream business customers, consumers, Wall Street, advertisers, the media, all of these forces that are potentially arrayed against it if it misbehaves. | ||
| And I would submit to you that that a lot of times is better regulation, so to speak, than having, you can't just think up a value and name an agency after it and call that regulation. | ||
| You've got to bring into play the strong disciplinary functions of the market, and I think they matter a lot and are neglected too much. | ||
| We're just a few minutes away from the jobs report for the month of April. | ||
| This is from the Hill newspaper. | ||
| Almost half of layoffs this year driven by Doge. | ||
| This is from a new report this posted just yesterday on the Hill newspaper. | ||
| When you see the job numbers this morning, can you dig into them? | ||
| Will you be able to see if it was caused by the layoffs by Doge? | ||
| And how do you look for the impact of tariffs on jobs? | ||
| Because you were talking about that being a regulation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I have a colleague who looks at job numbers and quotes them chapter and verse. | |
| What I'll say, it is likely to be the case that a lot of job reductions could come from rollbacks in the federal government after Doge. | ||
| But I would say that Doge can't just do that independently. | ||
| I know there's a lot of flurry about overstepping bounds and legalities and so forth, but each of the Trump executive orders relating to Doge down at the bottom say to the extent permitted by law. | ||
| And I remember there was a reeling in of Elon Musk by Trump a few weeks back saying, no, the heads of each department and agency are the ones who call the shots with respect to these rollbacks. | ||
| So, and you just saw today now Marco Rubio is wearing four, he's wearing the hat of four different, one department and four other commissions and agencies now. | ||
| So there is rollbacks. | ||
| I don't think people have a problem with the notion that the federal government had gotten too bloated as trying to do too many things. | ||
| The rollbacks are probably legitimate. | ||
| They need to be done in a legal fashion. | ||
| And it probably does affect the job numbers. | ||
| Government jobs affect GDP numbers and so forth like that too. | ||
| So it will. | ||
| We'll update our viewers with those job numbers when we get them here in a couple of minutes from this Hill newspaper and the study that they are citing here from Challenger Gray and Christmas. | ||
| And the report shows that Doge actions led to 283,172 job cuts in the first four months of 2025. | ||
| And Doge downstream impact was cited as the reason for another 6,945 job losses. | ||
| Tony in Spartanburg, South Carolina Independent. | ||
| Hi, Tony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey. | |
| Thank you for getting me on. | ||
| I appreciate your show. | ||
| My question is, does not deregulation, and I am for deregulation, does that not just add to corporate return on investment and then they don't pass it on to the employees and wage increases? | ||
| I mean, isn't it just another form of corporate grade? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I guess you have to split the kinds of deregulation. | |
| And what you're really getting at, I think, is there's this notion in regulation and government intervention called rent-seeking. | ||
| A lot of times companies like regulation if it helps shut out a competitor. | ||
| So part of their effort sometimes is to stifle competition. | ||
| They might not mind if prices go up a little bit or if costs go up a little bit, regulatory costs, if they can shut out a competitor. | ||
| So there is some of that that takes place. | ||
| But I think when we talk deregulation in the way I'm trying to frame it here, I don't mean deregulation benefiting certain companies. | ||
| I'm talking about economic liberalization more broadly and thinking better about how we go about implementing rules in the first place with much more accountability for those rules, much more transparency. | ||
| I'd love to see regulatory report cards. | ||
| I would love it if every year, in the same way you can open the federal budget and look at the federal spending and look at the historical tables going back to the founding era. | ||
| I would love it if you could open up a similar booklet and see the cost of regulations. | ||
| And it would be a tremendous boost to transparency and letting people know what's really going on with the scope of the federal government. | ||
| We'll hear from Michael next, Island Park, New York, Republican. | ||
| Good morning to you, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, my question is: is it possible because of the fact that the amendment for gun regulations is federal, could the federal government provide for a federal gun license and supersede all of the state's gun license, allowing for a federal gun license for the whole country? | |
| I hadn't thought about that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I hadn't thought about that, but often what you'll find in whether it's gun laws or privacy laws or other kind of competition laws is that there will be a call for there to be a federal preemption of what the states do so that we don't have a patchwork of weird or bad or inappropriate regulation. | ||
| Sometimes it can make sense. | ||
| Generally, I like the idea of there being kind of laboratories on the states. | ||
| I'd like to sort of be there to be deregulation down in a safe way. | ||
| And I think that matters a lot. | ||
| But it is the case that in some instances, when you're talking about a fundamental right, that the federal government provision overrides the states. | ||
| I mean, that's certainly the case with constitutional law. | ||
| All right, we have the job numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. | ||
| U.S. payroll growth totals $177,000 in April, topping expectations is what they're reporting. | ||
| And the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.2%. | ||
| Folks were expecting the increase to be around $133,000. | ||
| It's now, it actually grew to $177,000 in the month of April. | ||
| Your initial reaction? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I hope it means that the economy is doing better and doing well, and the Doge subtractions aren't going to eat into that too much. | |
| And why do you say that? | ||
| Explain. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think I would love to think that if a lot of what we hear now is that there's too much uncertainty in the economy. | |
| That's often, that's what we hear. | ||
| And I think that's true. | ||
| I think that's the case with tariffs. | ||
| But if what we hope is true, that we see certainty with regard to tax policy and tax cuts, if it is the case that over the next 100 days, business, the job creators, the small employers are anticipating a less burdensome regulatory state, that could have an effect. | ||
| There's no way to tease that out of the numbers right now, but that certainly could be a factor. | ||
| And I'm sure people will dig into it and determine if that's the case or not. | ||
| But I would say, Trump has this major deregulatory agenda. | ||
| The first time it was one in two out, now it's one in 10 out. | ||
| First time he had regulatory reform officers, now he's got Doge team leads. | ||
| It's everything amped up on steroids. | ||
| I would like to think that those good things dominate, not his, what I call his swamp things, like his Doge dividend paid to the public, his antitrust adventures, these sorts of tariffs and so forth. | ||
| I would like to think that the business community thinks that those deregulatory measures are enough to overwhelm and create new certainty and a healthy environment for business. | ||
| That's what I hope. | ||
| I don't want the swamp things to overwhelm. | ||
| Yeah, CNN, ahead of these job numbers that we just gave you, said it is exactly that according to the people that they spoke to. | ||
| It's uncertainty. | ||
| And they were saying as it stands now and as it likely stood in April, the fuel sources hasn't run dry on our economy. | ||
| And we saw the numbers right there, but it very well could be starting to crack under the pressure. | ||
| Here's a quote. | ||
| The economy appears strong in the data. | ||
| Job growth is continuing. | ||
| The unemployment rate is at a fine level. | ||
| There are no warning signs there. | ||
| But I think what the data doesn't show is that the risks have increased. | ||
| Would you agree with that? | ||
| This is from an economist. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think there are risks, but I want to be positive and hope that tax reform gets wrapped up pretty quickly and we get certainty on that. | |
| And I definitely think that the regulatory enterprise matters because it is, to me, it has significantly grown. | ||
| Last year, just for example, the Federal Register, which is the daily depository of rules and regulations, exceeded 104,000 pages. | ||
| That meant we were on track to have a million pages in the Federal Register every decade. | ||
| So far this year in the Trump administration, there are about 16,000 pages in the register, but 7,000 of those were Biden's before he left office. | ||
| So in a way, regulation is kind of ground to a halt. | ||
| And that could be, I would like to think and hope that that's one of the factors in some of the uptick. | ||
| And let's hope that sustains. | ||
| A little bit more from this reporting in April's, if April's estimate holds true, this was written before we got the job numbers, which is better than expectations. | ||
| They'd mark a significant retreat from March, where preliminary estimates showed a stronger than anticipated net gain of 228,000 jobs. | ||
| The numbers for April is 177,000 net jobs. | ||
| Economists expect that prior 228,000 estimate to be revised down today it was but better than the 133,000 with more complete information. | ||
| So those are the job numbers this morning. | ||
| We're talking about regulation. | ||
| Ronald in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Democratic caller, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I don't know how much knowledge you have on trucking industry, but I was a trucker for several years and trucking regulations are very big. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And I sat and listened. | ||
| We have our little talk, coffee, meetings with truckers, old ones. | ||
| Most every old trucker wants to be an outlaw trucker. | ||
| He don't want regulations. | ||
| He don't want somebody telling him how many hours he can sleep, how many hours he can drive, things like that, or what kind of truck he can drive or pollution. | ||
| And this goes from state to state. | ||
| I think regulations are good, Matt. | ||
| It makes it safer. | ||
| That's the biggest part of that whole thing. | ||
| And we falter on that. | ||
| We still break those regulations. | ||
| How many pounds you can hold? | ||
| Yeah, let's talk about that. | ||
| Regulations are there to make things safer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good question. | |
| I'm coming your way. | ||
| I'm coming down to Myrtle Beach in a week. | ||
| I'm going to bike week down there, as a matter of fact. | ||
| So it's a really interesting question. | ||
| Often you'll hear complaints about the hours of service regulation and their costs. | ||
| So maybe the question isn't that you shouldn't have them. | ||
| Maybe the question is, are they too onerous and should they be reviewed periodically? | ||
| That's really what regulatory reform is all about anyway. | ||
| It's not sweeping everything out. | ||
| It's looking at what makes the most sense. | ||
| And the earlier caller talked about how some regulations can benefit some entities while they hurt others. | ||
| The hours of service regulations may be a part of that. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| But paying attention to how the rules impact and whether they make sense is always something worth reviewing. | ||
| Independent truckers and large truckers probably have different views on it. | ||
| And it's important to keep an eye on and see. | ||
| But you have to have certainty and safety in terms of drivers being alert on the highways and so forth. | ||
| And part of it, too, is a lot of the regulatory policy needs to take into account insurance, insurance and warranties and guarantees and all sorts of private mechanisms that can guarantee safety as well. | ||
| But this hours of service debate has been going on for a long time. | ||
| Christina, Cedar Rapids, Iowa Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I was just, okay, so there's a man that he was talking about the gun laws and stuff, okay, and all these regulations that go on. | ||
| You know, our Saudi fathers, the Declaration of Independence, it's kind of like a grievance list. | ||
| And is there, you know, it tells us that we instituted the government, and just power comes from the consent of the people. | ||
| And, you know, there's a couple of them in there, and it troubles me, like, with the taxes. | ||
| This is a perfect one for imposing taxes without our consent. | ||
| And unalienable rights mean they can't be violated. | ||
| So, like, with the gun something, you know, how could they even touch those kind of things? | ||
| Well, I mean, you're absolutely right. | ||
| I mean, the Bill of Rights spells out what our basic rights are. | ||
| We are here in talking about regulation and government spending. | ||
| We're not talking about fundamental rights, which definitely are inalienable and we can't give those up. | ||
| They can't be taken away. | ||
| What we're dealing with here is just our interactions with other people, what the proper role of government is. | ||
| You know, sometimes I say let the federal government pick a national bird and otherwise kind of back off. | ||
| You know, the federal government has certain roles to play in society on the spending side and on the regulatory side. | ||
| But we, I said, we're happy warriors for free enterprise and economic liberty. | ||
| We want to see government minimized and be as small as it can. | ||
| And so that's, you know, it's a fun debate to have, and that's what the 10,000 Commandments Report is all about. | ||
| Because right now we're not measuring that regulatory side very well, and I want to make sure that we do and that we come up with better ways of disclosure and making sure that if we got rules on the books, they're there for a good reason. | ||
| Joe in Red Bank, New Jersey, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Yeah, I'm calling about the regulation of computers. | ||
| Section 230 of the Communications Act said that gives computer program computer operators independence from lawsuits, lawsuits that are filed because computer operators are harming children with their content. | ||
| Would you be in favor of more regulation of computer services to allow more regulations so that they are not potentially harming children? | ||
| Well, I've got five kids. | ||
| I certainly don't want to see, don't want them harmed, but I do see a big parental role here. | ||
| And Section 230 in the Communications Act is less about protecting big companies, which it does do, but on the other hand, it protects those who post to the Internet, small companies, individuals, from it protects them from being shut down. | ||
| It protects people and enables them to have a voice. | ||
| So Section 230 has been one of the key areas that allowed the Internet to grow like it has. | ||
| If it hadn't happened, we'd have a much less well-disciplined information marketplace like we have. | ||
| It's just enabled an explosion of information and access to goods and services. | ||
| So the internet, keeping it free, I think is important to do rather than to regulate it. | ||
| We'll go to Warren, Michigan. | ||
| Sue is watching there. | ||
| Democratic Color. | ||
| Sue, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hi. | ||
| My thing is this Doge, these people, Elon Musk going through and doing all he can like as far as looking at all the records and everything. | ||
| He's looking at government contracts, people that bid on contracts. | ||
| He has the most contracts out there, government contracts of anyone. | ||
| He's bringing his own people in. | ||
| He wants, I know, I heard that he wants Trump to overturn regulations that he does not want to pay for. | ||
| So what's he going to do? | ||
| Make us pay for it? | ||
| Like as far as the environment goes and like the land we work, the water we drink, the air we breathe. | ||
| What is he going to do with all that? | ||
| He doesn't want to take care of that. | ||
| You are talking about that hurting people like us. | ||
| And we pay for this stuff, you know? | ||
| Like he should never be in those halls of the government looking at all of those contracts. | ||
| I mean, he's looking into anything he can. | ||
| This is crazy. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, one of the big concerns I have actually is the proliferation of contracts throughout the federal government. | ||
| I think in a lot of ways, contracts, especially in the wake of the inflation law, the infrastructure law, we're talking now a federal government that's issuing hundreds of billions of dollars in grants and aid every year, procurement. | ||
| Trump himself, in one of his executive orders, noted that the U.S. is the largest purchaser of goods and services on planet Earth. | ||
| So the government is a very tremendous player in the market in that respect. | ||
| It's a big concern. | ||
| And I do think that having business with conflicts of interest is an important thing to avoid. | ||
| I would hope and anticipate and expect that Musk or any other business leader, because think about it, every administration has business leaders operating within it and working with it. | ||
| But I would hope that there's firewalls there. | ||
| But I agree with you that is a concern. | ||
| But one of the executive orders, I do think it's important, though, that grants and contracts do get the scrubbing that we're talking about here that you raise. | ||
| Whoever does it, whether it's Musk or someone within the agencies or the Government Accountability Office, it's really important to do because we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
| There is one Trump executive order. | ||
| I mentioned there was that handful that invoke Doge. | ||
| And there is one that takes a look at grants and contracts throughout the government for efficiency and making sure that they're in line with the fundamental objectives of the federal government and what's directed by statute, not what's directed by later executive order and things of that sort. | ||
| So it's a really complicated issue. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| I do agree that there's a lot of potential, but not just with Musk, but across the government, for business leaders to get too intertwined with government. | ||
| There's this whole notion of public-private partnerships that's scary to me. | ||
| I worry about that when I see it. | ||
| You might remember when Joe Biden was president when we were talking about launching these AI initiatives, that he had all of the leaders of the tech firms lined up there behind him applauding for this new executive order, which brings up that earlier question we were talking about about rent seeking, about business kind of getting a little too involved. | ||
| Wayne Cruz with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the study is called 10,000 Commandments. | ||
| He's the author. | ||
| It's an annual snapshot of the federal regulatory state, and you can find more if you go to CEI.org. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Cruz. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much. | |
| I appreciate you having me. | ||
| When we come back in a little bit, we're going to look at a brand new poll that shows young Americans losing faith in the government institutions and in leaders in both parties. | ||
| That's in our last hour in about 30 minutes. | ||
| A conversation here. | ||
| We'll dig into the results with Jordan Schwartz, student chair of the Harvard Youth Bowl, and Gen Z political analyst Rachel John Vazi. | ||
| But first, more of your phone calls in open forum. | ||
| Start calling in now. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core, a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
| After a career in investment management and some time as a credit risk specialist at the U.S. Treasury Department, Jill Eicher has written her first book titled Mellon vs. Churchill, the untold story of treasury titans at war. | ||
| It's all about collection of war debts from World War I, which was fought between 1914 and 1918. | ||
| Andrew Mellon, a wealthy industrialist, served as Secretary of the Treasury for Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. | ||
| 11 years total. | ||
| Mellon took on Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill. | ||
| Jill Eicher tells a story that will be new to most readers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Jill Eicher with her book, Mellon vs. Churchill: The Untold Story of Treasury Titans at War. | |
| On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | ||
| BookNotes Plus is available on the C-SPAN Now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| And we are back here this morning in open forum again. | ||
| Any political or public policy issue that's on your mind, we want to hear from you this morning. | ||
| Lines are divided by party. | ||
| There they are on your screen. | ||
| We'll get to calls in just a minute. | ||
| Let's start with the jobs report, though. | ||
| As we said, the April jobs report shows the U.S. labor market remained resilient in wake of Liberation Day tariff announcement. | ||
| That is from Yahoo Finance reporting. | ||
| The U.S. economy added 177,000 non-farm payrolls jobs in April, more than the 138,000 expected by economists. | ||
| And the unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%. | ||
| Average hourly earnings in April rose 0.2% over last month and 3.8% over the prior year. | ||
| Economists had expected wages to rise 0.3% over last month and 3.9% over the prior year. | ||
| So those are the job numbers and you can talk about the economy this morning here in Open Forum and other issues as well. | ||
| Let's go to Kay in Junction City, Kansas, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Kay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I have a question. | ||
| I've been watching C-SPAN for years and they keep saying, but the Constitution. | ||
| Well, evidently I haven't read the Constitution right because it says Congress's job is to protect the United States of America only and to be called back by the president when needed, not to stay up there and have whole cocktail parties month after day after day. | ||
| I have a problem with that. | ||
| And then number two, I have a problem that nobody ever brings up the Bill of Rights. | ||
| My Bill of Rights says that I have the right to pursue my happiness. | ||
| Now, that doesn't mean, and it doesn't say that I have to pay for everybody else's happiness. | ||
| So there should be no social programs in the federal government covering people and the choices that they've made. | ||
| Now, that's my opinion. | ||
| All right, Kay. | ||
| Let me go on to Edward, who's waiting in Jersey City. | ||
| Good morning to you, Edward. | ||
| What's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| So I can't believe Marco Rubio is serving in four different capacities right now, Greta. | ||
| Like, that should not be at all. | ||
| But in New Jersey here on the ground, there were some Department of Justice cuts that have affected us on the ground here. | ||
| Six different municipalities recently was awarded millions of dollars for community violence intervention programming. | ||
| And the president just cut that grant funding $150 million. | ||
| And we are crushed in this state trying to lobby, trying to figure out how we can get the funds, you know, to sustain the work. | ||
| And it's very terrible. | ||
| It's terrible. | ||
| It's just terrible. | ||
| But on another note, as far as like trade and tariffs, if you will, I ran across something online and the ESPN sports reporter Stephen A. Smith was talking with a few personalities and James Carville was included. | ||
| And they mentioned Bill Clinton and the Democrat Party and the trade pact that was made back then where we went into this agreement with China where there was cheap labor. | ||
| And, you know, why back then did we go into this? | ||
| You know, and someone mentioned Nancy Pelosi in the Democrat Party. | ||
| The majority was against it then, but the president and the majority Republican Party passed it. | ||
| So all that happening back then is so consequential now. | ||
| And there's so much more, Greta. | ||
| Like the price of eggs is finally down. | ||
| I was paying almost $10 for a dozen and a half of eggs. | ||
| It's now $4.99. | ||
| You know, I'm still not satisfied. | ||
| Eggs shouldn't be $5, but the price of eggs has dropped finally. | ||
| And I'll stop there. | ||
| All right, Edward, I'll jump in there. | ||
| I want to share an update with all of you. | ||
| This morning, the reporting from Politico on marking up the president's budget reconciliation bill. | ||
| That's his plan to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent and to decrease spending by trillions. | ||
| Political headline is GOP leaders take more time for key mega bill markup after Medicaid snag. | ||
| House GOP leaders are pushing back the Energy and Commerce Committee's mega bill markup another week as Republicans try to resolve lingering issues over spending cuts to Medicaid. | ||
| The panel will now likely hold its markup the week of May 12th, according to four Republicans, and the committee will hold a series of member meetings next Tuesday and Wednesday. | ||
| One of the key issues remaining is how far Republicans go to implement a controversial proposal to cap federal Medicaid payments to states as leaders try to work through various estimates about savings. | ||
| Speaker Mike Johnson, Energy Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie, and other members of the House GOP leadership team ran through Medicaid proposals and other major pieces of the GOP's party line domestic policy package with the president during a White House meeting Thursday. | ||
| The White House also presented Johnson's team a list of items they want in the bill. | ||
| GOP leaders are also pushing back their hopes for holding the Ways and Means Committee's markup of the tax portion of the mega bill. | ||
| We talked about this earlier in open forum. | ||
| Members had hoped to meet next week but are now punting to the following week, their long-standing backup option as negotiations continue on issues under that panel's purview as well. | ||
| You'll recall the Speaker wants this tax reconciliation proposal to the House floor before the Memorial Day weekend recess. | ||
| So that is the goal set by the Speaker. | ||
| They've now delayed markup from in front of two major committees to not next week, but the week after. | ||
| We'll go to Ron in Missouri. | ||
| Good morning to you, Ron, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, how are you doing? | |
| I'm just calling because I was just wondering, like, I have spots in Bitcoin and everything. | ||
| And I'm just like, I can never get inside my cash out because they're telling me that they don't have no email manager. | ||
| And I've been looking forward to try to get inside my cash out. | ||
| All right, Gary, Dayton, Ohio. | ||
| Gary, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| Yeah, I wanted to find out about the Supreme Leader of the Robert F. Kennedy. | ||
| He keeps on wanting to regulate I'm on food stamps or EBT and they want to find out, you know, they want to restrict my ability to buy things on food stamps in them. | ||
| And I was just wondering: do they have the same ability to restrict what they can buy at the White House? | ||
| Because with the tariffs going on, I want Trump to experience what it's like not to be able to buy things like ketchup or Diet Coke. | ||
| All right, Gary. | ||
| Well, the President on Truth Social this morning is saying this: Gasoline just broke $1.98 a gallon, lowest in years, groceries and eggs down, energy down, mortgage rates down, employment strong, and much more good news as billions of dollars pour in from tariffs, just like I said. | ||
| And we're only in a transition stage, just getting started. | ||
| Consumers have been waiting for years to see pricing come down. | ||
| No inflation. | ||
| The Fed should lower its rate. | ||
| Gary, your response to the President. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, but he still doesn't say how he's, you know, he should say, like, how's he benefiting from the tariff thing? | |
| Or is does he have to restrict his, does the White House have to restrict their buying power for what they buy for the White House? | ||
| All right. | ||
| Julie in Charlotte, North Carolina, Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you so much for taking my call. | |
| I'm just very appreciative of any look at waste fraud and abuse by any organization. | ||
| However, I do not understand why Doge is not investigating the $658 billion in forgiven PPP loans. | ||
| Why have those loans not been audited to assure that they met all the federal regulations to have those loans forgiven? | ||
| All right. | ||
| Julie is there with her question out of Charlotte, North Carolina. | ||
| Mary's in Las Vegas, Democratic caller. | ||
| Mary? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think we're being scammed. | |
| I think Doge was put in not to find waste, fraud, and abuse, which they did not find. | ||
| It's already cost more than any savings to have him in there. | ||
| And where's the receipts for all of this stuff? | ||
| I think they're in there to dismantle our government and they're data mining. | ||
| They have all of our private data. | ||
| What do they intend to do? | ||
| Have dossiers on every taxpayer? | ||
| You've got a president in the White House telling us that, you know, we need to cut back on things. | ||
| And there he is selling cards for $5 million to foreign companies where he's pocketing money. | ||
| There's a lot of corruption going on. | ||
| Our national security isn't safe. | ||
| Marco Rubio holding four jobs. | ||
| Give me a break. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Mary's thoughts there. | ||
| And Las Vegas. | ||
| As we told you on Capitol Hill yesterday, the Senate Banking Committee held a hearing about homeowner property insurance and the rising cost of it. | ||
| As we shared with you earlier, a new study found that it's expected to rise 8% across the country in 2025. | ||
| Here is the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Elizabeth Warren, at the hearing yesterday. | ||
| President Trump is making property insurance crisis worse and driving up costs for families across the country. | ||
| Let's start with his chaotic and damaging tariffs. | ||
| These tariffs will make just about everything needed to rebuild and repair houses more expensive. | ||
| Aluminum, HVAC systems, appliances, gypsum, and on and on. | ||
| The National Association of Home Builders estimates that Trump's tariffs will raise the cost of building a new mid-sized home by $10,900. | ||
| And according to the insurance industry, Trump's tariffs will cost the average homeowner over $100 a year in extra insurance costs. | ||
| A second problem is that President Trump wants to completely eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, as we all know it. | ||
| He's getting a head start by denying disaster aid all over this country, leaving families with little or no federal help following disasters in Arkansas, West Virginia, Washington, and North Carolina. | ||
| Recently, HUD Secretary Turner changed the eligibility requirements for community block development grant disaster relief funds, essentially delaying aid for disaster-stricken communities all across our country. | ||
| Yesterday, Senator Murray and I called on the HUD Inspector General to investigate this. | ||
| Additionally, the administration also recently announced it is ending FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC program. | ||
| This program provides hazard mitigation funding to communities and families across the country to help cover the costs of making their roads and bridges and homes more resilient against natural disasters. | ||
| My state of Massachusetts was relying on $90 million from the BRIC program to make our communities safer. | ||
| If President Trump has his way, more of this assistance will disappear. | ||
| You can watch the Senate banking hearing yesterday on homeowners insurance if you go to our website, c-span.org. | ||
| Another news story to share with you this morning here at Open Forum, front page of the Washington Times has this headline. | ||
| Fast fashion bargain bin is drying up in a new era. | ||
| Imports from China are no longer subject to a new rule, excuse me, subject to an old rule. | ||
| As a result, shoppers of fast fashion brands, Sheen and Timu, have seen dramatic price increases and some are at a loss of where to buy affordable new clothes. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal also has this story on its front page this morning. | ||
| Timu and Sheen GERD for new, for end of this tariff loophole that they've had. | ||
| The charge, the change will leave most shipments, including those carried by FedEx and United Parcel Service, subject to the new 145% base tariff on all Chinese products. | ||
| The rule that they've used before was that any packaging of $800 or less was free from any duties charge. | ||
| So that no longer applies to goods coming from China. | ||
| And so Sheen, Timu, other fast fashion that is produced in China, you will see price increases on those items. | ||
| Carl in Rockland, Maine, good morning to your Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Yes, I called in on the Republican line. | ||
| I couldn't get through the Democrat line. | ||
| Yeah, I keep hearing President Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene and them say that prices are way, way down on gasoline. | ||
| So I've kept a record of it. | ||
| When Joe Biden ended his term in office, gasoline in Maine was $2.98 a gallon. | ||
| It's up to $3.15 now, not $1.98 a gallon. | ||
| And when I went grocery shopping yesterday, American cheese in a grocery store, $8 a pound, and cheap bologna is not cheap, $7 a pound for bologna. | ||
| And I've also, I'm a 72-year-old veteran, and between my pension and my Social Security, I live on $15,997 a year. | ||
| All right, Carl, speak into the phone more because now we lost you a little bit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I said, I can't afford living on $16,000 a year to bear tariffs to. | |
| So all I got to say is something's not working here because he keeps saying the prices are going down and gasoline. | ||
| And up here in Maine, we're up to $3.15 a gallon for regular. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So Carl, for folks who are interested in the price of gas across the country, that's something that's tracked by GasBuddy. | ||
| If you go to GasBuddy.com on their page this morning, top 10 gas stations and cheap fuel prices in Washington, D.C., that's where we are. | ||
| And they'll give you the price in the area that you live in based on your locality. | ||
| But you can track it across the country as well if you go to gasbuddy.com and check on what the president had to say. | ||
| Is it at $1.98 in a state? | ||
| Dee Dee in Winder, Georgia, an independent. | ||
| Dee Dee, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Wood, do we need Bill Maher? | ||
| Is that how you pronounce his name? | ||
| And Bob Woodward to investigate all these underground things that are going on. | ||
| The regulations are out of control or unless they're under Trump's control. | ||
| And my question is, how can they justify the regulations that allow these shale corporations to acquire our farmland, and they're funded by China? | ||
| Check it out. | ||
| All right, Dee. | ||
| Terry in Rogers, Minnesota, Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Gretchen. | |
| I think that all the fear that we heard, oh, the stock markets crash, and now what is it up? | ||
| 4,000 points in the last three weeks, up again today. | ||
| China just came out, said they're going to enter into the trade agreements with the U.S. You're looking at gas down, food down. | ||
| I'm telling you, the guy is doing a great job. | ||
| I also would like to say something, Gretchen. | ||
| I don't think it's right that you allowed a guy that just was on that stated he called on the Republican line because he couldn't get through on the Democratic line and just proceeded to let him go. | ||
| I mean, I thought that they just took the calls as they come in. | ||
| I've heard that often from your comment, from your moderators. | ||
| What difference would it make and why would you let the guy go on speaking? | ||
| All right, Terry, Terry in Rogers, Minnesota. | ||
| Terry, talking about this news coming out of China, here's the New York Times. | ||
| China is considering trade talks with the U.S., but it has conditions. | ||
| That's the New York Times headline on that story this morning. | ||
| We can take a look at that as we hear from Jonathan in Grand Prairie, Texas, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Hi, Jonathan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning, Greta, and thank you for taking the call. | |
| You guys do a wonderful job with educating folks that really need educating. | ||
| Mike, just a quick comment. | ||
| You know, I hear people all the time talking about make America great again and safer. | ||
| You've got Pete Hakeseth, who is the Secretary of Defense, the most unqualified individual to ever take that position. | ||
| How can we be more safe with someone that does not have the qualifications? | ||
| If you look at his administration, it's enshrined internally, internal fighting. | ||
| He's firing people left and right, making people scapegoats. | ||
| That man should not be in that position. | ||
| Christy Nong, she's the Homeland Security Secretary, another person that's not qualified. | ||
| And last, I'd like to say, you know, let's not forget that Donald Trump is a convicted felon and incited an insurrection against the capital of the United States of America. | ||
| My wife and I have traveled all over the world. | ||
| We just came back from Australia, New Zealand. | ||
| And I can tell you, the people that we speak to, they think that this country is absolutely crazy. | ||
| We have a gun problem here. | ||
| We have a crime problem here. | ||
| We have a race problem, a sexism problem, a homophobic problem in this country, as well as other things that people are not willing to look at, not to mention the morality. | ||
| I think this country needs to get back to the basics and understand what is right and what is wrong. | ||
| Make your decisions based on that, whether you're Democrat, Republican, or independent. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Greta, thank you for taking my call. | |
| All right, Jonathan in Texas there. | ||
| Another headline to share with you about a new mineral deal between Russia and Ukraine that the White House is proposing. | ||
| The Washington Post editorial board weighs in on it this morning. | ||
| A deal that gives something to both sides for now. | ||
| A new minerals agreement between the United States and Ukraine coming just two months after the Oval Office blow up between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky gives America a stake in Ukraine's sovereignty and independence. | ||
| Under the pact, the two countries would have equal control over a new fund to finance Ukraine's reconstruction. | ||
| The war-torn country would maintain full ownership of its minerals and would not be required to repay past American military support, something the White House had previously demanded. | ||
| The agreement comes only the agreement covers only Ukraine's future mineral wealth, including extractions of rare minerals, oil and gas. | ||
| The U.S. gets rights to those untapped resources, possibly worth trillions of dollars, helping it to offset America's reliance on China for minerals. | ||
| And profits, if realized, would also count as repayment for future U.S. military assistance to Kiev. | ||
| Ukraine did not receive the security guarantees it was seeking, but the new deal makes clear to Russia that the United States is committed to a long-term strategic alignment between Washington and Kiev and a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine. | ||
| That's according to a version of the agreement reviewed by the Washington Post, an agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine. | ||
| I misspoke in the Washington Post this morning. | ||
| Dusty in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Independent. | ||
| Hi, Dusty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
First, I'd like to say that Donald Trump went in and had dozed by all respecting generals, and he put people in their places who are weaker than Donald Trump. | |
| And these people will tell Donald Trump anything. | ||
| Those numbers that you came out with on those jobs, that is nothing but a lie. | ||
| All the people that do it out of work, and the man is talking about the unemployment at 4.2, that's another lie. | ||
| We know Donald Trump is a pathological lie. | ||
| 4K can of one thing, and somebody will tell him it's 10. | ||
| And when he gets on his phone and starts texting, it's 20, he'll put in 25. | ||
| All right, so, Dusty, the numbers coming from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. | ||
| You don't trust those numbers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They are probably connected to Donald. | |
| He's probably. | ||
| I guarantee you, Donald Trump has got control of them people right there. | ||
| And they're lying to him. | ||
| Anybody with common sense knows this unemployment is higher than 4.2. | ||
| That was 4.2 when President Biden was in there. | ||
| I guarantee you it's hitting 6 and 7% right now. | ||
| Dusty there in South Carolina doesn't trust the numbers this morning that we saw from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on jobs. | ||
| 177,000 added and unemployment staying put at 4.2%. | ||
| Steve in Massachusetts, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, how are you today? | |
| I want to talk about tariffs and why other countries have tariffs on us, and no one says that they're bad. | ||
| The other countries don't say they're bad. | ||
| And how, you know, Trump talks about how we've been ripped off for years and years and years by other countries with these tariffs. | ||
| And not one country has retaliated and said, no, we haven't ripped the United States off. | ||
| It's okay that that's gone on, you know? | ||
| And, you know, I really feel that like we turn into tribalism in this country, and there's two tribes. | ||
| You've got the Democratic tribe and the Republican tribe. | ||
| And during the first hundred days, you had the Democrats, they rooted for Canada against the U.S. in hockey in Boston. | ||
| I live in Massachusetts. | ||
| It was full of Americans in that stadium, and they were rooting for Canada because of Donald Trump. | ||
| And they root for Hamas over Israel. | ||
| They want government to stay home and work, rather, private industry. | ||
| They have illegal immigrants over young women and people. | ||
| They have trans men over women. | ||
| And it's just complete tribalism. | ||
| And I wonder how bad it got, like, because you really hadn't mentioned the astronauts coming down and Musk. | ||
| And I wonder how many Democrats actually were rooting for that spaceship to blow up on the way down. | ||
| That's how bad it's gotten, you know? | ||
| And I'm wondering, like, when we're going to start seeing the Chinese flag flown over Democrats' house, and this tribalism has to stop, okay? | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| All right, Steve, Nicole, who's in Nicole in Brandon, Florida, Democratic caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing? | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Let me start off by saying I love your show because it keeps me informed before I go to work. | ||
| So let me tell you an experience I had this morning. | ||
| I got a call from a dear friend that works at Walmart. | ||
| He's been there for about 15 years. | ||
| He told me, Nicole, you better get down here and buy whatever you can because the new tariffs kick in tomorrow. | ||
| He said, for example, the $2 bottle of ketchup goes up to $5. | ||
| It goes up to $4.79. | ||
| So make it make sense to me while this president is indicating that things are going down because they're not. | ||
| They really not. | ||
| They're really not. | ||
| And then let's talk about real estate. | ||
| So a lot of Nicole lost you there. | ||
| We'll go on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, you didn't. | |
| Oh, you're still there. | ||
| Okay, finish your thought, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So let's talk about real estate. | |
| So I heard that there was a bill supposedly passed to get rid of last and first and security and all that stuff. | ||
| But let me tell you something. | ||
| What you need to understand is that America is not making that kind of money. | ||
| So when you go to rent a property now, they want you to make three times the rent. | ||
| Well, America is not paying three times the amount of money. | ||
| So a lot of people are stuck in the situation they're in. | ||
| And then on top of it, now you're telling me that we can't even eat because, like the manager at Walmart says, the new pricing hits tomorrow. | ||
| All right, Nicole, they're in Florida. | ||
| We're going to take a break. | ||
| When we come back, we'll dig into a new Harvard youth poll on what matters most to young Americans and what they're losing faith in. | ||
| We'll discuss with Jordan Schwartz, student chair of the Harvard Youth Poll, and Gen Z political analyst Rachel John Faza. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
As Mike said before, I happened to listen to him. | |
| He was on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
| But I've read about it in the history books. | ||
| I've seen the C-SPAN footage. | ||
| If it's a really good idea, present it in public view on C-SPAN. | ||
| Every single time I tuned in on TikTok or C-SPAN or YouTube or anything, there were tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people watching. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I went home after the speech and I turned on C-SPAN. | |
| I was on C-SPAN just this week. | ||
| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
| They had something $2.50 a gallon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I saw on television a little while ago in between my watching my great friends on C-SPAN. | |
| C-SPAN is televising this right now live. | ||
| So we are not just speaking to Los Angeles, we are speaking to the country. | ||
| Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A, Education Design Lab founder Kathleen Delaski, author of Who Needs College Anymore? | ||
| Questions if the U.S. higher education system, with its skyrocketing costs and declining enrollment, is currently suited to meet the needs of future generations of students. | ||
| The four-year degree college model has been seen for the last hundred years at least as the surefire ticket to better jobs, to the corner office, being a doctor or a lawyer. | ||
| And so that's been the aspiration, particularly in the last 50 years, right, for families for their children to be successful. | ||
| And I think that's beginning to break down to the point where even the haves, if you think about the haves and the have-nots, even the haves are recognizing that the degree, the four-year degree is not necessarily achieving the American dream for them or their children. | ||
| And it's becoming, you know, the affordability issue, it's is has kind of reached a fever pitch. | ||
| And we're kind of looking at how jobs are changing and how quickly skills become obsolete. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Kathleen Delaski with her book, Who Needs College Anymore. | |
| Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on the C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| Get C-SPAN wherever you are with C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app that puts you at the center of democracy, live and on demand. | ||
| Keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the U.S. Congress, White House events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips. | ||
| Catch the latest episodes of Washington Journal. | ||
| Find scheduling information for C-SPAN's TV and radio networks, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. | ||
| The C-SPAN Now app is available at the Apple Store and Google Play. | ||
| Download it for free today. | ||
| C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| And we are back with Jordan Schwartz on your screen. | ||
| He's the student chair of the Harvard Youth Poll here to talk about new numbers that shows young people are losing faith. | ||
| So Jordan Schwartz, what are they losing faith in? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thanks for having me. | |
| So really, it's in a number of different things. | ||
| And the way we look at it, it's truly this holy trinity of disillusionment. | ||
| Because first you have the statistic that tells us four in 10 young Americans, 42%, are truly struggling financially, barely getting by. | ||
| And then you combine that with the fact that only 17% feel deeply connected to a community and only 16% think that the country is headed in the right direction. | ||
| And all of that together really produces this perfect storm where young people don't trust each other, they don't trust the government, and they don't have anyone that they can lean on to try and fix these problems. | ||
| So politically, the results are disastrous, but socially, the results are deeply concerning too. | ||
| And this is definitely not a poll that is particularly optimistic. | ||
| But that being said, I think it's really important that we recognize these facts. | ||
| Is it their financial situation that is driving a lot of this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's hard to say exactly which way it goes, but I definitely think that the financial situation is more on the causal end than the outcome side of things. | |
| Because if young people are feeling like they can't get a job, like they're feeling they can't pay for rent or a house, that leads to a lot of the social issues we're seeing. | ||
| And we've been able to conduct several focus groups and talk to lots of young people around America in more qualitative settings as well. | ||
| And we've heard similar sorts of outcomes where, you know, oh, I can't get food on the table. | ||
| How on earth am I supposed to find a way to hang out with my friends? | ||
| How on earth am I supposed to find a way to be social, to engage like that? | ||
| And the result, I think, is a generation that is really just deeply struggling to make ends meet. | ||
| And as a result, is struggling to enjoy life as well. | ||
| And then what is the long-term impact on them? | ||
| You write, you have in the poll that traditional life goals are shifting. | ||
| What did you find out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so one of our most jarring findings, honestly, is that just 48% of young Americans feel that having kids is someday going to be important to them, which we haven't asked this question in the past, but we have to assume that this is a huge drop from generations past, which is aligned with declining birth rates as well. | |
| But again, it's deeply concerning because only half of the generation seems like they're likely to have kids. | ||
| And we've seen this with a number of other values as well. | ||
| While less severe than the drop in terms of having kids, young people are less likely to report saying that owning a house is important relative to where they used to be. | ||
| And while the vast majority of young people report that financial security is important to them, only 56% actually say that they're confident in achieving that in their lives. | ||
| How did you conduct this poll? | ||
| Who did you talk to? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So we're the Harvard Public Opinion Project. | ||
| We're a student group that runs the Harvard Youth Poll. | ||
| We have for 25 years. | ||
| And what we do is we contract through an organization called Ipsos using technology called the Ipsos Knowledge Panel. | ||
| And without getting into too many of the statistical details, it's an online probability-based panel with a sample size this spring of 2,096 respondents, which gives us a large sample size, ensuring that our data is accurate and truly reflective of our entire generation. | ||
| So how do you look at the numbers? | ||
| When you get these numbers back, how do you look at them and analyze them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so the process sort of goes through two different steps. | |
| The first is we look at what we call the top line data, which is what percentage of the overall 2,096 respondents said a certain thing to a certain question. | ||
| For example, for the question on the importance of having children, what percentage said that it is important to them? | ||
| And that was 48. | ||
| But then we'll go through what we call the crosstabs, which is to say, we'll try and sort it by, you know, young women or young black Americans, or maybe even a more specific group than that. | ||
| Maybe it's young people who voted for Trump who are also in an income category of less than $50,000 a year for their family. | ||
| And so we go through that to really try and see if there are any sort of significant trends out there. | ||
| And by and large, there are, because, as I'm sure everyone here knows, American politics has become so deeply polarized by education and by gender, especially for young Americans in the past few decades and past few years in particular. | ||
| So when we look through that, we can often see that there are huge divides along party lines, along gender lines, and along educational lines for almost all of our questions. | ||
| When you asked those that you polled about Congress and the president, what did you find out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is also an extraordinarily interesting finding because not only is trust low in both Donald Trump as president and both parties in Congress, their approval ratings have some really interesting trends. | |
| Historically speaking, we've asked these questions in 2017 and 2020 as well. | ||
| And both of those times, approval of Donald Trump as president and Republicans in Congress hovered around 30%, exactly where they are today. | ||
| But support for Democrats in Congress has absolutely cratered during that same time. | ||
| Among young Americans, it used to be that nearly half of them, 48%, approved of Democrats' job in Congress. | ||
| However, today that number is down to 23%, even below approval for Republicans in Congress. | ||
| And the vast majority of that drop has come from young Democrats during that time, which I think really speaks to the party's sort of identity crisis, and especially for young Americans, the feeling that the Democratic Party isn't doing enough to help them. | ||
| What did you find on policy, foreign policy, border security, those decisions that were part of, or those policy debates that were part of this last election? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So it's interesting there too, despite young people being pretty sour on congressional Democrats, their policies seem to be more aligned with Democrats than Republicans right now. | ||
| We asked a battery of nine questions on everything from abolishing the Department of Education to scaling back the federal workforce to redeveloping Gaza and everything in between. | ||
| And of course, tariffs. | ||
| And for every single one we asked about, every single policy, there was no more than 35% support among 18 to 29-year-olds. | ||
| The most supported policy was the establishment of a Department of Governmental Efficiency, 35% support. | ||
| The least supported policy was Trump's stated policy of taking over Gaza and redeveloping it as a tourist destination, which polled only at 14% and even had more disapproval from Republicans than approval. | ||
| So by and large, young people are not particularly happy with the policy things we're seeing. | ||
| And we had a similar story for tariffs. | ||
| I think it was about like 18, 19% support. | ||
| And that was before the actual major tariffs came at the beginning of April. | ||
| So when we put all that together, young people really just aren't happy with the state of the world. | ||
| They don't see a great democratic alternative, but they're certainly not pleased with the early days of the Trump administration from a policy perspective either. | ||
| And overall, talk about their trust in government. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This has been a number that has consistently declined for upwards of a decade now. | |
| And right now, only 19% trust the federal government to do the right thing most or all of the time. | ||
| The number was actually slightly lower last spring, but that increases primarily due to a rise among young Republicans who I think are more optimistic following the beginning of the Trump administration. | ||
| But that being said, the fact that it's still under 20% who trust the federal government, our national government, do the right thing the majority of the time, really speaks to how the generation is deeply disillusioned with society around them. | ||
| Jordan Schwartz is the student chair of the Harvard Youth Poll. | ||
| Thank you very much for talking to us this morning and explaining those numbers. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| Always happy to. | ||
| We want to get your thoughts now on young voters and political engagement. | ||
| Start calling in Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| And if you're under 30 this morning, we want to hear from you at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Many in that age group like to text. | ||
| You can do that if you text at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Just include your first name, city, and state. | ||
| Joining us now for this conversation is Rachel John Faza. | ||
| She's the founder and journalist of the Up and Up. | ||
| It's a substack newsletter focusing on Generation Z. Is that right, Jordan Schwartz? | ||
| Why, or excuse me, Rachel John Faza, why did you start this sub stack? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, so I've been writing about and covering youth culture and politics since I was in college myself. | |
| I graduated college in 2020, right at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. | ||
| And I started this newsletter about two and a half years ago because I felt there was a lot to learn about young voters and youth culture and a lot of misconceptions about members of my generation that didn't necessarily hold true when actually talking to young people across the country. | ||
| So the Up and Up is a place to explain the trends and different anecdotes about young people and how they're feeling about culture and politics. | ||
| Overall, then what do you think of this poll that Jordan Schwartz was just talking about from this Harvard youth poll? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So Jordan's interview was great, and I'm a big fan of the Harvard IOP youth poll. | |
| I think that this poll is one in a slate of recent polls and surveys that shows a troubling picture of a generation in crisis. | ||
| And it's not necessarily shocking to see this hard data when I've been having conversations with young people across the country for the past five, but more than that years. | ||
| And there is a lot of anxiety, there is a lot of sadness, there is a lot of fear and frustration. | ||
| But at the same time, I think it's important to note that Gen Z might be on the whole dissatisfied and disillusioned, but they're not disaffected. | ||
| And recent numbers that came out from Circle, which is based out of Tufts, showed that the youth voter turnout rate in 2024 was nearly as high as it was in 2020, which was almost near record highs. | ||
| And so while young people are really frustrated, as Jordan spoke about, they are not necessarily giving up on electoral politics. | ||
| So are they engaged on a day-to-day basis? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would argue, yes. | |
| I mean, this is a generation that has intimately felt one crisis after another affecting their lives. | ||
| If you think about sort of the span of Gen Z, so I'm on the oldest cusp, born in 1997. | ||
| The youngest members of Gen Z are currently around 13 or 12 years old. | ||
| And the events that have taken place during that 15-year span of time are, there's been just so many unprecedented historic events. | ||
| Right, you know, at the start of Gen Z's lifespan was 9-11. | ||
| And then it's just really been one thing after another from there, most recently the COVID-19 pandemic and also just unprecedented political times and history. | ||
| And as a result, I think because we are also the first digital native generation growing up with a phone in our pocket, we've been able to see these events unfolding in real time, not only absorbing them, but having a conversation with our peers about what is going on, whether we agree with it or disagree with it, and also finding ways to engage via social media to create in real life action protests demonstrations. | ||
| And while that has looked different over the various points of time of this generation's coming of age, it's hard to say that this generation is not active, is not engaged when there's just been so much youth-led movement. | ||
| And, you know, I've been talking a lot recently about how I see the generation split in two, where I call it Gen Z 1.0 and Gen Z 2.0. | ||
| And Gen Z 1.0 accounts for anyone who had their adolescent high school experience before the COVID-19 pandemic. | ||
| So I'm in that cohort. | ||
| And Gen Z 2.0 is anyone who graduated high school either during or after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. | ||
| So that includes people who are currently still in high school or younger. | ||
| And these sub-generations look very different and they're taking action and engaging on a daily basis differently. | ||
| Gen Z 1.0 is a little more idealistic and had, when we were in high school and college, more liberal tendencies, whereas we're starting to see Gen Z 2.0 moving further to the right. | ||
| So these subgroups look different, but they are both taking action. | ||
| They're both constantly absorbing news and information online and are engaged, yes. | ||
| So the ages for Gen Z, we're talking age 12 to 27. | ||
| Rachel John Faza, the Gen Z 2.0 moving to the right, what are the driving factors there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| So it's a great question. | ||
| And I think that one of the biggest, well, first of all, just look at the context in which they grew up. | ||
| So they came of age either during or after the COVID-19 pandemic and were really guinea pigs to many of the protocols that were affecting schools during the time that they were in school, whether it was elementary school, middle school, high school, even college. | ||
| And the result of that has been a strong anti-authority posture. | ||
| This is something I've noticed in my conversations with young people across the country. | ||
| And if you think about in the political landscape, which party is talking more anti-authority, authority, sharing more anti-authority viewpoints, the Republican Party and certainly President Donald Trump. | ||
| And so I think that at the same time, these young people, they were missing their biggest moments, whether it was high school graduation or prom or even just a football game, whatever it was, at the same time, missing things just like the ability to flirt, the ability to have recess outside with your classmates if you're in elementary school. | ||
| And if you were frustrated about that, couldn't socialize with your friends and needed someone to blame, who were the ones who were in charge of the COVID policies in most cases, especially as the pandemic lingered on, it became associated with Democrats and liberal elected officials in cities across the country. | ||
| And so I do think that has been a part of this sentiment of frustration and anti-authority posture that has developed. | ||
| But then also recently, there's been some research that has come out. | ||
| I wrote a piece that was in political magazine last week and I spoke with Ali Mortel from Blue Rose Research and she had shared that there is a correlation between content consumed on TikTok and a movement away from Democrats. | ||
| And so TikTok is one of the other things that has bifurcated this generation. | ||
| When I was growing up, there was no TikTok, whereas if you're a member of Gen Z growing up today, TikTok is the platform for any sort of discourse. | ||
| And so I'm not exactly sure why it is that TikTok is perhaps moving young people away from the Democratic Party, but it does seem that the sentiment on TikTok has shifted in that direction. | ||
| And we certainly saw ahead of the 2024 election that President Trump was the first presidential candidate to be on TikTok in that way, thinking of the two major party candidates. | ||
| And his numbers just blew Democrats out of the water, whether it was President Joe Biden or then Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign accounts. | ||
| And there was a lot of pro-Trump sentiment on TikTok as well, which is a place where many young people are getting their news and information. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Rachel John Faza is with us here to talk about Gen Z in this new poll from Harvard. | ||
| David in Cathersburg, Maryland, Independent. | ||
| We'll go to you, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I just wanted to throw in that I'm as a middle-aged person. | ||
| I've got a couple young kids. | ||
| But I'm very heartened by what I'm hearing. | ||
| It's specifically about the rejection of Democrats here because I'm a progressive, but an actual progressive. | ||
| So I'm not a Democrat. | ||
| And I supported Cornell West in this last presidential race. | ||
| And so when I hear that the 20-something percent support for congressional Democrats, I think that's great and appropriate. | ||
| And I'm heartened by it because I'm hoping that there's some actual progressive young people out there who see, for instance, the Democrats' position on Gaza, which is just or toward the poor and oppressed people here in the U.S. | ||
| They are not progressive, but they are kind of pretending to be. | ||
| And this is why I kind of understand if there's any gravitation toward the Republican, even someone who is maybe in their heart a progressive, it's almost better if you can see what someone is and hear kind of truthfully what they're going to do. | ||
| We're going to cut taxes for the rich. | ||
| Okay, well, at least we know what they're going to do. | ||
| Whereas on the Democratic side, we would see a lot of faking as progressive, but the policies end up being almost exactly the same for so long now. | ||
| So I just want to say I'm very heartened by that, actually, because I think this thing about being disillusioned seems like an appropriate response when you have these two parties, but not disengage is what I was hearing. | ||
| And that's lovely to hear. | ||
| All right, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like some downer info, but very heartened. | |
| All right, David. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Rachel John Faza. | ||
|
unidentified
|
David, I think that's a great point. | |
| This is something that in my listening sessions I hear all the time. | ||
| I ask groups of young people, do you identify with one party or the other? | ||
| And a lot of times the answer is no, but it's not necessarily because they don't have strong values. | ||
| Like you mentioned, there's definitely a ton of young progressives who just don't feel connected to the Democratic Party right now. | ||
| They also might not feel connected to the Republican Party. | ||
| I think there are issues that young people care about and prioritize. | ||
| And this is a very issue-driven generation, and yet the party labels are not working for them currently. | ||
| And I did recently a reality check-in with a group of young people and a virtual listening session about perception of both parties. | ||
| And it was interesting to hear similarities in how the young people were describing both the Democratic and Republican Party as sellouts and not standing up for them and their values and sort of performative. | ||
| And I think there's just a lot of overwhelming frustration with these elected officials who either have been in office for so long or just don't feel. | ||
| I also would say, though, it's not necessarily about age. | ||
| It's about policy and personality. | ||
| And so I think there's just a frustration of understanding what the parties are standing for and how that looks for next generation young people who are trying to, A, want elected officials to address the fact that there are problems that they are struggling with right now. | ||
| Look at the numbers that Jordan shared. | ||
| They want politicians to address that head on before offering solutions, but they definitely want to hear some solutions, forward-thinking solutions about where we can go from here. | ||
| And right now, that doesn't seem to be the case. | ||
| We'll go to Fulton, Mississippi, Alan, a Republican. | ||
| Alan. | ||
| Alan, you have to mute your television, please. | ||
| Just listen and talk through your phone. | ||
| All right, we'll move on to Clay in Oklahoma. | ||
| Clay, an independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hey, I completely agree with Rachel. | |
| I think she's got a bead on where a lot of young people are at. | ||
| I know for years I was a registered Democrat, and I'm now I had switched to Republican. | ||
| I consider myself completely independent. | ||
| I don't feel loyal to necessarily a party, but I'm in my 40s, and my young people, my daughters, they're very persuaded by people like Charlie Kirk. | ||
| They see Republicans as having more critical thought and more, I guess, being more open for debate. | ||
| And that has persuaded them in a lot of ways. | ||
| And Clay, before you go, though, what do you mean more open to debate? | ||
| Define that a little more. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the atmosphere on most college campuses, more young people are seeing a narrow-mindedness on, I wouldn't call the liberal, but the leftist side of the political spectrum. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Rachel John Fazo, do you have some thoughts on that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I think it's a really great point. | |
| And you mentioned Charlie Kirk and in this recent reality check-in that I did as well. | ||
| I asked young people who are they going to for news and information? | ||
| Who are the most trusted voices that they appreciate? | ||
| And Charlie Kirk was really at the top of that list. | ||
| I think that when it comes to this point about debate on campus, this is something I hear a lot from young people. | ||
| And especially in that Gen Z 2.0 cohort that I mentioned. | ||
| perhaps because of the political discourse during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, but also coupled with this pervasive cancel culture and political correctness culture that came in large part before and during the pandemic, especially on social media. | ||
| That is something that was really hard for young people growing up with. | ||
| And a lot of the young people I spoke to before and since the election said that it's part of why they moved to the right is because they are just tired of having to quote unquote walk on eggshells with what they say, while Democrats have been perceived as policing a lot of this language and perhaps not necessarily willing to have those debates and conversations. | ||
| I think we're starting to see that change a little bit since the election, but it's definitely something that I've heard, especially from young men. | ||
| And of course, we've seen this gender gap playing out in the election and afterwards as well when it comes to young people and their party affiliation. | ||
| Rachel John Faza, going back to the Harvard youth poll, I wonder if this is related to what you were just talking about. | ||
| Just 9% of young Americans say DEI initiatives have helped them personally, while 11% say they have hurt them. | ||
| So despite this intense national debate is what they write in this poll over diversity, equity, and inclusion, most young people say these initiatives have had little or no impact on their personal lives. | ||
| Yet we're hearing this debate in Washington. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And I think, you know, I certainly have spoken with plenty of young people who appreciate DEI programs and think that this whole conversation has been overblown and politicized and are frustrated by that. | ||
| But at the same time, I think, you know, any young person wants to feel as though they've earned their success themselves. | ||
| And I hear a little bit of frustration with regard to that as well. | ||
| We'll move on to Donald in Michigan, Republican caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I don't know what's the matter either on my phone or there because the voices and stuff completely different on television and on my phone. | |
| So if you don't mind, I'll just give it up for today because it's just a mess. | ||
| Okay, Ralph in Syracuse. | ||
| Good morning to you, Ralph. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Go ahead with your question or comment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, the woman emphasized that the youth were disillusioned by Democrats, Biden and liberals and leftists during the COVID pandemic. | |
| I wanted to understand that more, please. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, I mean, I think we also have to talk about the fact that young people are disillusioned by Republicans too. | ||
| And that has been true for years. | ||
| And it's still, when you look at young voters and how they voted in 2024, they still voted for Kamala Harris in total. | ||
| But there was this massive movement to the right. | ||
| And so a lot of my recent work has been trying to understand why that is. | ||
| And I saw a lot of these conversations playing out before the election when it came to frustration with how the COVID-19 pandemic was handled. | ||
| And of course, President Trump was in office at the start of the pandemic and was responsible for the initial lockdowns. | ||
| I think where some young people's frustration came is as that continued on and lingered, they felt that Democrats were responsible for either keeping schools closed for too long or for mask policies. | ||
| And because of the way that Republicans really leaned into and politicized vaccines and masking and lockdowns, that resonated for, you know, again, I think it came from a place of frustration that young people just wanted to be normal kids. | ||
| And eventually, it seemed like Republicans were the ones who wanted to open things back up again. | ||
| Whether or not, you know, this is this was the right thing to do or scientifically sound, you know, that that isn't necessarily the consideration. | ||
| They are just at the time, young adults who were seeing the way that some of these policies were affecting their lives. | ||
| I wrote in a Washington Post op-ed about a young man in Michigan who told me he found it frustrating that he was allowed to have wrestling matches, but had to wear a mask while doing so. | ||
| And so it was just kind of some of the hypocrisy of some of the policies that young people felt. | ||
| And again, they were really the guinea pigs during this time where, yes, everyone was working from home and there were issues that were affecting adults, but the schools became these hyper-local sort of fertile grounds for all of these policies playing out and for a lot of debate. | ||
| And unfortunately, young people really got tangled in that crossfire. | ||
| And it, I believe, has shifted their political viewpoint. | ||
| Back to the Harvard poll on border security. | ||
| Fewer young Americans now see a crisis at the southern border with the agreement dropping 11 points over the past year. | ||
| This decline spanned across party lines, falling 17 points among Democrats, 13 points among Republicans, and 11 points among Independents. | ||
| Rachel Jonfazo, your thoughts here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So one of the things that I've been most surprised by in my conversations with young people across the country has been support for deportations that I didn't expect. | |
| And again, this is one of those shifts in Gen Z 2.0 and Gen Z 1.0, because I remember when I was in college, there was so much protest around Trump's Muslim ban at the time. | ||
| People were going to airports. | ||
| There were demonstrations and campus quads, and it was very unpopular with young people. | ||
| And again, on the whole, I don't think that these policies are widely popular with young people today when it comes to Trump 2.0 and the current administration. | ||
| But I have seen more support for some of the immigration policies now than I had then. | ||
| And why was that then? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why were they not in support of it in 2017? | |
| Or excuse me, why are they more in support of it? | ||
| What was behind the change? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think there's been a lot of conversation around, certainly, you know, if you look at the Harvard poll too and the number of young people who say they're struggling, more than 40% say they're struggling financially, there's scapegoating that can happen when thinking about who is, you know, when it comes to jobs and ability for a flourishing life. | |
| And I think there's a lot of fear around young people looking towards their future and visions for success and just uncertainty. | ||
| And I think if they are, you know, wanting these jobs to be going to them, they may be against perhaps an immigrant having that job if they were born in the United States. | ||
| But I don't, you know, have a very clear across the board, this generation, one thing I always say is not monolithic. | ||
| And there are varied viewpoints that span the ideological spectrum. | ||
| And again, I don't think this is true of all young people. | ||
| It's certainly not true of all young people. | ||
| And I know plenty who are against these policies, but I do think there is a correlation between the young people who say it's really hard, they find themselves struggling, and they're looking towards the future and they just want certainty that these jobs or their life prospects will be good for them. | ||
| And on those numbers from the Harvard youth poll, more than four in 10 young Americans under 30 are barely getting by financially with women and non-college youth hit the hardest. | ||
| Half of young adults without a college degree report financial hardship compared to 29% of college graduates. | ||
| Only 16% say they're doing well or very well financially. | ||
| We're talking with Rachel John Faza. | ||
| She's the founder and journalist of the Up and Up, a substack newsletter looking at Gen Z. Paul in Boston, Independent, let's hear from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hi. | ||
| My name's Paul. | ||
| I consider myself a moderate independent. | ||
| I was born and raised in Boston and I've leaned left when I got to voting age a lot. | ||
| I'm in a union. | ||
| I've been in a union for 40 years. | ||
| And I've just agree with your speaker. | ||
| I mean, that it just seems, you know, more and more the people that I've worked with, the actual rank and file, that they've been drifting away from the Democrat Party because of lack of action. | ||
| You know, they, you know, they ask for a lot. | ||
| They asked, you know, to stand out and, you know, do standouts and get signatures and what have you. | ||
| You know, the grassroots logistics when it comes to election time. | ||
| But then that's like the last you see of them. | ||
| And, you know, the last few votes, I've leaned towards Republican. | ||
| You know, I still don't call myself a Republican because there's some parts of the Republican Party I don't agree with. | ||
| But I'm not radical left or radical or radical right. | ||
| You know, but I do, I like what she talked about with KikTalk. | ||
| It seems like the younger generation gets a lot of information off of like soundbites on social media. | ||
| And, you know, and through COVID and everything, you know, it sort of separated everybody. | ||
| You know, everything was remote, you know, remote administration, remote. | ||
| You know, there was no hands-on showing up and actually, you know, doing stuff, you know, physical manual labor and stuff. | ||
| And but I'm glad to see that we're coming out of that. | ||
| And I think we're in a transitional period in this country where, you know, Gen Z, hopefully, if they continue to, you know, follow what this woman's talking about, I agree with that and I'm just happy to hear it. | ||
| Rachel John Faza, your thoughts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hi, Paul. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I'm also from Boston. | ||
| So I appreciate you being from there. | ||
| I think that you actually, in the way you're describing your political ideology, sounds a lot like the young people I talk to all the time. | ||
| Again, this is a group that doesn't necessarily associate with either party and wants to find more common ground in the middle. | ||
| And that's something that I think, you know, there's a lot of potential doom and gloom in these statistics and numbers. | ||
| But regardless of how strident someone may be in their views, and young people do have very strong perspectives on that span across the ideological spectrum, there's also a lot of nuance in their beliefs and in their perspectives. | ||
| And I think that oftentimes gets overlooked, especially in this social media environment where the social media algorithms prioritize and promote the most loud, the most vocal perspectives on both sides, and also oftentimes paint issues as very black and white with little room for discussion in between. | ||
| That's something that is frustrating to young people because they recognize that that's not actually how they feel. | ||
| And there is a movement, especially, you know, we had before talking about these, the movement for more debate on college campuses. | ||
| There is a strong desire to be able to have conversations with people who disagree across the spectrum. | ||
| And I think it's incumbent upon all of us who are a bit older to really champion that for young people and allow those forums for discussion to take place. | ||
| And the other thing you talked about is TikTok and the way that young people are consuming their news and media through soundbites. | ||
| And that's totally true. | ||
| And there's been a lot of conversation about the podcast ecosystem and how President Trump really traversed this manosphere of podcasters ahead of the election. | ||
| And that's all true. | ||
| But the reality is that podcasts are just like any other forum for discussion. | ||
| They're being clipped and shared on social media. | ||
| And that is what is going so viral. | ||
| That is where they're getting tons of hits and views. | ||
| And I do think that we are starting to see Democrats lean into the podcast ecosystem a little bit more. | ||
| Last week, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg went on the Flagrant Podcast, which is a widely popular podcast that President Trump went on before the election as well. | ||
| And people have the internet kind of has been exploding and saying that Buddha Judge gave a masterclass in how to do the podcast ecosystem. | ||
| And Andrew Schultz, the host of the podcast, tweeted and posted on X and said, you know, it's almost as if you go on a podcast and you speak and you have good ideas, people will listen and appreciate you. | ||
| And it's true. | ||
| And it's just about getting your message out there, sounding relatable, sharing new ideas while also addressing the reality of the experience that young people are going through today, but doing so in a very pithy, made-for-social approach that will resonate and have reach with young people and where they're consuming their information. | ||
| We'll get on to Miami. | ||
| Pavlina is a Republican. | ||
| Welcome to the conversation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A staunch Republican with common sense. | |
| So I have a question for Rachel: What do the young people think about voter ID? | ||
| And have they ever asked the congresspeople, especially the Democrats, why do they oppose voter ID? | ||
| And they've never laid out an excuse as to why they oppose it. | ||
| Did nobody in the press ask them that question? | ||
| Why, Mr. Jeffries? | ||
| Why, Maxine Waters? | ||
| Why do you oppose having ID to vote? | ||
| What is the hidden agenda behind that? | ||
| So what do the young people think about that? | ||
| And are they opposed to producing ID or citizenship verification? | ||
| Okay, heard your question. | ||
| Heard your question. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I think there's, again, this generation is not monolithic and there's a range of perspectives. | |
| I've spoken with young people who might be more right-leaning, who want more voter ID laws or verification in place. | ||
| But I've also spoken with young people across the political spectrum who think that voter ID can perhaps be hard for young people, depending on what state they're voting in. | ||
| Because if you look at the student population, young people might not have an ID from the state they're currently living in if they are from a different state, but go to school elsewhere, but really should be voting where they go to school because that's where the policies are currently affecting them, at least at the state level. | ||
| And so there's a lot of mixed opinions on this, but I don't think it's as simple as just, you know, there should or there shouldn't be voter ID. | ||
| I think there are certainly people have concerns with election integrity, but at the same time, there are logistical barriers when it comes to making student voting access or youth voting access broader in order to get more young people to vote, which I think is also a question that some have: if who is in favor of getting more young people to vote? | ||
| But there are certain policies that can make it difficult for young people to vote. | ||
| And some of them have to do with that voter ID law. | ||
| Is something I've been writing about for a while, specifically looking at young people who are very transient and maybe moving apartments or houses, especially given that most young people don't own a home, their address is constantly changing. | ||
| And so this can become a little bit challenging and perhaps prohibit the access to the ballot box that young people should have. | ||
| We're talking about young voters and political engagement here. | ||
| Let's listen to President Trump yesterday, last evening. | ||
| He was at the University of Alabama, and here's his advice to the graduating class there. | ||
| I'm going to give it to you, though, just as I say it, and as I've learned it, the hard way and the easy way. | ||
| First, if you're here today and think that you're too young to do something great, let me tell you that you are wrong. | ||
| You're not too young. | ||
| You can have great success at a very young age. | ||
| You're all very young. | ||
| In America, with drive and ambition, young people can do anything. | ||
| I was 28 when I took my first big gamble to develop a hotel in Midtown Manhattan, the Grand Hyatt, and it worked out incredibly well. | ||
| But I was very young at the time. | ||
| I was like a very young person in sort of an old person business. | ||
| Steve Jobs was 21 when he founded Apple. | ||
| Walt Disney was 21 when he founded Disney. | ||
| James Madison, James Monroe, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson. | ||
| They were no older than 25 when they began the journeys that etch their names into the history books for all time. | ||
| So to everyone here today, don't waste your youth. | ||
| Go out and fight right from the beginning, from the day you leave this incredible university. | ||
| Go out and fight, fight tough, fight fair, but go out and fight. | ||
| You're going to be very successful because now is the time to work harder than you have ever worked before. | ||
| Push yourself further than you have ever pushed yourself before. | ||
| Find your limits and then smash through everything. | ||
| Go and smash through. | ||
| You've watched that football team smash through. | ||
| You're going to do the same thing. | ||
| That was President Trump at the University of Alabama yesterday. | ||
| Rachel John Faza has been with us. | ||
| She's the founder and journalist of the Up and Up. | ||
| It's a substack newsletter looking at Gen Z. Rachel John Faza, thank you for the conversation this morning here on the Washington Journal. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much for having me. | |
| We're going to take our viewers now to a discussion happening here in Washington on the U.S.-Japan Alliance. | ||
| The co-president of the Japan Innovation Party and a former Minister of Affairs is part of that conversation. | ||
| Watch the Center for Strategic and International Studies live right here on C-SPAN. |