| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, your calls and comments on the biggest headlines of the day, then Michigan State University law professor Brian Colt discusses President Trump's pardons and the pardoning process. | |
| And later, Career Education Colleges and Universities President and CEO Jason Altmeyer, a former member of Congress, examines the potential redirecting of federal grants from Harvard to trade schools. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| This is Washington Journal for Saturday, June 7th. | ||
| Yesterday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Kilmar Obrego-Garcia, the Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March, has been returned to the U.S. to face federal criminal charges. | ||
| Also this week, President Trump announced a new travel ban restricting the entry of people from a dozen countries into the U.S., citing national security concerns. | ||
| And the Senate continued its work on the massive House-passed budget package known as the One Big Beautiful Bill. | ||
| Those are just a few of the stories C-SPAN has been following. | ||
| And for the first hour of today's program, we're asking you, what's your top news story of the week? | ||
| Here are the lines: Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text your comments to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Be sure to include your name and city. | ||
| You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Good morning, and thank you for being with us today. | ||
| We will get to your calls in just a few moments, but wanted to start with one of the stories just mentioned, and that is the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S. | ||
| This headline is from Politico. | ||
| It says that he is back in the U.S. custody after being illegally deported. | ||
| He will now face criminal charges. | ||
| The article says that the Salvadorian native whose deportation by the Trump administration was declared illegal by the Supreme Court and generated a national fur is back in U.S. custody and will face federal human trafficking charges in Tennessee. | ||
| Abrego Garcia was secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in Nashville last month on two felony charges, transporting undocumented immigrants and conspiring with others to do so. | ||
| The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee when police found Abrego Garcia at the wheel of an SUV carrying nine other men, all of whom were Hispanic and lacked identification, according to the indictment. | ||
| The indictment was unsealed Friday after the Trump administration officials acknowledged Abrego Garcia was in custody of U.S. authorities. | ||
| Pam Bondi made the announcement yesterday after Abrego Garcia's return. | ||
| Here is a clip: Abrego Garcia has landed in the United States to face justice. | ||
| On May 21st, a grand jury in the Middle District of Tennessee returned a sealed indictment charging Abrego Garcia with alien smuggling and conspiracy to commit alien smuggling in violation of Title VIII USC 1324. | ||
| We want to thank President Bukele for agreeing to return Abrego Garcia to the United States. | ||
| Our government presented El Salvador with an arrest warrant and they agreed to return him to our country. | ||
| We're grateful to President Bukele for agreeing to return him to our country to face these very serious charges. | ||
| This is what American justice looks like. | ||
| Upon completion of his sentence, we anticipate he will be returned to his home country of El Salvador. | ||
| The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Obrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring. | ||
| They found this was his full-time job, not a contractor. | ||
| He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. | ||
| He made over 100 trips, the grand jury found, smuggling people throughout our country. | ||
| MS-13 members, violent gang terrorist organization members throughout our country. | ||
| That is one of the top stories that we have been following this week on C-SPAN. | ||
| We are asking you for the first hour, what's your top news story of the week? | ||
| We'll start with Tyrone in New York, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Tyrone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| It's so scary about the Attorney General that works for the president and not the American people. | ||
| Think that these charges that they throwing against Garcia is just smoke and mirrors because they were going to do what they wanted to do with this young man anyway. | ||
| But I really wanted to talk about the attack on the colleges that Donald Trump is unleashing. | ||
| I think that is going to be more detrimental to the Jewish community, mainly because people have a tendency to lash out at the power structure that is smothering them from doing the things that they feel they should be able to do, which is free speech. | ||
| If they want to complain about any group of people within a peaceful manner, it's supposed to be our right to be able to protest. | ||
| And this, what Donald Trump is doing to these institutions is now smothering free speech. | ||
| If people don't agree with what I do or what you do, they should be able to express that nonviolently. | ||
| And this is what he's taking funding away from them and what have you. | ||
| And people forget about these people that was in Charlottesville that was talking about, you know, this Jews would not replace us. | ||
| These people haven't left. | ||
| They're not gone. | ||
| And these attacks on Jewish people is so crazy that people feel defenseless. | ||
| So now you got the president that's coming down on you. | ||
| Now you got, you know, some of the other systems that are being used, mainly if you're using Pam Bondi, Cash Catella, all these other people that have allegiance to the president and not to the American people, we feel defenseless. | ||
| And people get desperate, and desperate people do desperate things. | ||
| That's my concern: if the president continues to smother the American people with the big government, as the Republicans are supposed to be so much against, and use the big government against us as American people, we're going to feel like we don't have no other option but to use, God forbid, violence to get what we want. | ||
| And this is what this is the backlash that I see coming towards Donald Trump and his big government ideology. | ||
| I see this being a serious problem for us. | ||
| I appoint Tyrone as Tyrone in New York. | ||
| Let's hear from Raymond in Windsor, Colorado, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Raymond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, to kind of piggyback off of that, The big government was started in 2020, and the Democrat region shut down the country more than the Republican regions. | |
| And I'm not advocating for either Republican or Democrat at all. | ||
| I too have switched to independent, and we'll be voting third party in these coming future elections. | ||
| But I haven't called into this show in about three, four years, and I do want to go ahead and point out that the reason Trump's poll numbers are collapsing is not because the policies, it's because he was put in for a second term to do a job, and that job was to drain the swamp. | ||
| So we have one side saying that Trump's big policies is going to get the American electorate angry. | ||
| And I'm saying that Trump's policies of not enforcing the rule of law and investigating all these crimes that have been taking place since war speed. | ||
| We can even go back to 2000 with the hanging Chads, is what's got the American electorate more angrier than ever. | ||
| And that's why neither Republican or Democrat will ever win an election again. | ||
| That was Raymond in Colorado. | ||
| Let's hear from Lou in Highland Park, Illinois, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Lou. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My comment is a general statement on this attack on medical benefits and food stamps and all other benefits that help people who have less income. | ||
| Eventually, any money given to a person for medical benefits, whether it's hospitalizations or doctorate bills, that money doesn't stay in the pockets of poor people. | ||
| That money is transferred oftentimes to the middle class, a doctor, a nurse, or a hospital administrator. | ||
| And also, if money is given to people for food stamps, they don't keep that money. | ||
| They spend that money on groceries. | ||
| That goes to employees who work in grocery stores. | ||
| So I think this entire attack on the so-called welfare system of our country is very evil, and it's almost a lie to taxpayers saying that we're going to save you money. | ||
| This money helps America in general. | ||
| That was Lou in Illinois. | ||
| Debbie, Williamsburg, Ohio, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Debbie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I've got a couple concerns that are really on my mind a lot daily, basically, because I watch a lot of the news. | ||
| One thing is I have a fear, and this is kind of crazy, but if they cut all of our Medicare and our Medicaid benefits, and they cut all these people off these programs, and they're not eligible for anything else, are they going, if we have a pandemic, are they going to let us die? | ||
| The people that will be in the nursing homes that don't have it in care anymore, where are they going to put these people? | ||
| The people that are put out on the streets that become homeless because they don't afford their housing taken care of by Medicaid in the programs. | ||
| Are they going to be in tent cities? | ||
| Are we going to end up? | ||
| When I was young, I'm 72, when I was young, we had orphanages and we had poor houses and we had insane asylums. | ||
| And all that's been suspended now. | ||
| And I've got this thing because Trump's doing away with the research for the bird flu. | ||
| And we know eventually that's going to be a pandemic. | ||
| So when we have a pandemic, are all these people going to die? | ||
| That's one of my main concerns. | ||
| Another issue I have is the immigrant that they just brought back from being in prison thoughtfully. | ||
| I'm leery about his protection in our jail systems because it seems like he may be targeted either by people that are racist or even by our own government. | ||
| And those are my two concerns. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Debbie in Ohio. | ||
| We are hearing from you this first hour, your top news story of the week. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If you have one, you can give us a call. | |
| The lines are there on your screen. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| A story that made headlines this week was President Trump announcing a travel ban. | ||
| This is from the Associated Press. | ||
| It says President Donald Trump on Wednesday resurrected a hallmark policy of his first term announcing that citizens of 12 countries would be banned from visiting the United States and those from seven others would face restrictions. | ||
| The ban takes effect Monday at 1201 a.m., a cushion that may avoid the chaos that unfolded at airports nationwide when a similar measure took effect with virtually no notice in 2017. | ||
| Trump, who signaled plans for a new ban upon taking office in January, appeared to be on firmer ground this time after the Supreme Court sided with him. | ||
| It says some, but not all 12 countries also appeared on the list of banned countries in Trump's first term. | ||
| The new ban includes Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. | ||
| There will be heightened restrictions on visitors from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela. | ||
| The announcement came on Wednesday. | ||
| Here is President Trump's announcement that he posted on Truth Social. | ||
| The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas. | ||
| We don't want them. | ||
| In the 21st century, we've seen one terror attack after another carried out by foreign visa overstayers from dangerous places all over the world. | ||
| And thanks to Biden's open door policies, today there are millions and millions of these illegals who should not be in our country. | ||
| In my first term, my powerful travel restrictions were one of our most successful policies, and they were a key part of preventing major foreign terror attacks on American soil. | ||
| We will not let what happened in Europe happen to America. | ||
| That's why on my first day back in office, I directed the Secretary of State to perform a security review of high-risk regions and make recommendations for where restrictions should be imposed. | ||
| Among the national security threats their analysis considered are the large-scale presence of terrorists, failure to cooperate on visa security, inability to verify travelers' identities, inadequate record-keeping of criminal histories, and persistently high rates of illegal visa overstays and other things. | ||
| Very simply, we cannot have open migration from any country where we cannot safely and reliably vet and screen those who seek to enter the United States. | ||
| That is why today I am signing a new executive order placing travel restrictions on countries including Yemen, Somalia, Haiti, Libya, and numerous others. | ||
| The strength of the restrictions we're applying depends on the severity of the threat posed. | ||
| The list is subject to revision based on whether material improvements are made. | ||
| And likewise, new countries can be added as threats emerge around the world. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Let's hear from Jeff in North Carolina, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Jeff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I want these callers that call in this morning, man. | ||
| It just blows my mind. | ||
| I don't know where they get this information. | ||
| I want the American people to never forget these illegal aliens were let in here by an administration that wanted to import voters. | ||
| They can't win an honest election. | ||
| I don't know what left-wing lunatics was running the country when they let all these people in, but never forget they should never be given the right to vote. | ||
| They're giving away your Medicaid, your Medicare. | ||
| Remember, they give them a debit card, paid them. | ||
| How is this not voter fraud? | ||
| Please explain if you have an answer. | ||
| And that was Jeff in North Carolina. | ||
| Christopher in Kennebunk, Maine, at Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Christopher. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'll tell you exactly what unelected voter fraud is. | ||
| It's when you have six unelected black robes who are aiding and abetting a criminal data mining organization in the enterprise of appropriating the private data of 340 million Americans without their approval and certainly not for their benefit. | ||
| These data miners are unqualified and unvetted, and by all accounts, they're addicted to ketamine and marijuana and have no mandated mandate to access our private data, with which they will then be able to steal our identities and blackmail each of us and gain access to our bank accounts. | ||
| These people are not looking for fraud and abuse. | ||
| They're looking to punish people who don't support this totally criminal executive branch, which is in place only by disqualifying tens of millions of Democratic voters in 26 states. | ||
| So I urge Americans, call all of your representatives and all your senators and protest against this so-called Supreme Court, which are all appointed. | ||
| None of them are elected, and they were mostly appointed by unelected presidents like George Bush Jr. and Trump. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That was Christopher in Maine. | ||
| Jennifer, Spring Hill, Florida, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jennifer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Yeah, I'm quite people sound very, very upset. | ||
| And the reason is there's just so much confusion. | ||
| I think your station is probably the only one that gives more direct news. | ||
| We get more propaganda. | ||
| And there's a book out called Propaganda. | ||
| Talked about how we fund a police date in putative state. | ||
| So homeless people are on the streets and then they're put in jail for it. | ||
| I mean, people that have mentally ill, like the one woman brought up, they don't have a place to go to get good therapy. | ||
| So they're on the streets. | ||
| I mean, this is, there's so many things going on right now, but the interesting thing is divorce criminals are the ones that are like Pam Bondi is there trying to indict her. | ||
| You know, they're pardoning the criminals, the people that have been convicted of crimes, they're being pardoned. | ||
| Otherwise, they wouldn't be pardoned. | ||
| So I think it's very important that we get money out of elections because if we had publicly funded elections, a lot of people would be able to get better candidates that aren't paid for by special interest packs or by corporations because that's what we're being run by. | ||
| People are worried about AI, and they should be. | ||
| People are worried about a lot of different things, but we're getting, you know, we're not getting the right information anymore. | ||
| So it's really up. | ||
| I could go on and on. | ||
| Thanks, buddy. | ||
| That was Jennifer in Florida. | ||
| Paul in Nampa, Idaho, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I think that the topic of the week for me would have to definitely be D-Day returned for the 81st time. | ||
| That was a pivotal point in the World War II victory to the Allies. | ||
| And getting all that material over on a thousand chips, I believe, is what I heard. | ||
| It was quite an undertaking. | ||
| The logistics of that must have been absolutely mind-blowing to get all those things over and put it into place. | ||
| Once they did get a foothold, of course, the cost was terrific. | ||
| Many were called, and many, many, many answered the call to duty. | ||
| And they were up against odds that were, it seemed insurmountable, that must have been to them at the time. | ||
| And, you know, I look up to Americans like that and I wonder, where are they now? | ||
| And now they're coming back. | ||
| They're signing up and they want to be a part of this great nation. | ||
| Anybody who doesn't think it's a great nation, there's the door. | ||
| Don't let the good Lord hit you where the good Lord split you. | ||
| That was Paul in Idaho and Paul talking about the 81st anniversary of D-Day, which was yesterday. | ||
| There were a couple of events that C-SPAN aired. | ||
| You can find them on our website. | ||
| One was a Friends of the National World War II Memorial. | ||
| They held a ceremony there, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also spoke at the American Cemetery in Normandy. | ||
| You can find both of those events on our website at c-span.org. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's hear from Ralph in New York, line for Democrats. | |
| Good morning, Ralph. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I'm a UAW worker from upstate New York. | ||
| I'll echo the previous caller: June 6th, 1944, D-Day. | ||
| June 6th, 1963, President Kennedy delivered his civil rights speech on national TV the same night that civil rights leader Meghra Evers was assassinated. | ||
| And June 6, 1968, the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. | ||
| And I thank you for your time. | ||
| That was Ralph in New York. | ||
| Nikki, also in New York, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Nikki. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, good morning. | |
| As a student of history, it seems to me that There are dictators, and my top story of the week is the war on the poor, the war on the elderly, and the war on children, because they don't produce anything for the economy. | ||
| They're a drain on the economy, so we must get rid of them. | ||
| That's the dictator's playbook. | ||
| You take the weakest because I'm not poor, so why should I fight for the poor? | ||
| I'm not elderly. | ||
| Why should I fight for the elderly? | ||
| There's one thing throughout history that you must be aware of. | ||
| No dictator has ever been taken out of power by votes. | ||
| They have always been removed by the people rising up and using violent methods to remove these people. | ||
| That's, you know, that's history. | ||
| That's history. | ||
| So I'll let the American people decide if and when. | ||
| But when things get hard, when things get rough, when your people get thrown out of nursing homes, when your children can't get medical care, I think if you wait for that to occur, I think it'll be maybe too late. | ||
| So you need to rise up now, like you do in Los Angeles, like you do in other cities. | ||
| You need to rise up against this dictator. | ||
| He said he was on the first day, and he is true to his word. | ||
| He is a dictator. | ||
| You know who I'm talking about. | ||
| Thank you very much for listening. | ||
| But America, we came in 250 years ago, Thomas Jefferson told people to take up arms against the king and his, what do they call that? Intolerable acts. | ||
| Thank you very much, and I pray for America every day. | ||
| And I pray that I'm nothing like Donald Trump or his supporters. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Bye-bye. | ||
| That was Nikki in New York. | ||
| Another story we have been following here on C-SPAN for several weeks is efforts to pass President Trump's one big beautiful bill. | ||
| The House has passed that legislation. | ||
| The Senate is now working on it. | ||
| And this is a headline from Politico. | ||
| It says, two House Republicans issue mega bill threats as Senate ponders changes. | ||
| The story says two House Republicans drew firm red lines Friday on changes to the House GOP mega bill, threatening to vote no if the Senate made any changes whatsoever to key provisions. | ||
| Representative Nick Liloida of New York warned GOP senators against lowering the House's $40,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction, while Representative Chip Roy of Texas vowed to oppose any attempt to delay or otherwise water down the phase-out of clean energy tax credits provided in the House passed mega bill. | ||
| From the House floor yesterday, here is Chip Roy talking about that issue. | ||
| And we fought like cats and dogs to get that 60%. | ||
| And everybody in town, the K-Street lobby, are freaking out. | ||
| Oh, no, we're not going to be able to have our subsidies to build more wind farms and solar farms. | ||
| We're not going to have more giveaways because their energy won't compete. | ||
| So that is the one reason I voted for this bill. | ||
| So my message to the Senate, this will get clipped. | ||
| It will get sent to the Senate. | ||
| I'm looking at you, Tom Tillis. | ||
| I'm looking at you over there in the Senate. | ||
| You backslide one inch on those IRIS subsidies, and I'm voting against this bill. | ||
| I want the White House to hear it. | ||
| I want the Senate to hear it because it is the only reason I voted for this bill. | ||
| Because those Godforsaken subsidies are killing our energy, killing our grid, making us weaker, destroying our landscape, undermining our freedom, and I'm not going to have it. | ||
| So you do what you want to do in the Senate. | ||
| House of Lords, have your fun. | ||
| But if you mess up the Inflation Reduction Act, Green News Scam subsidies, I ain't voting for that bill. | ||
| Just a little over 30 minutes left. | ||
| And this first hour of today's Washington Journal, we're asking your top news story of the week. | ||
| Let's hear from Steve, Webster, Massachusetts, lined for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning, Tammy. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I'm in my 70s. | ||
| I watch a lot of news. | ||
| Generally, of course, it's Fox being Republican, but I flipped back a lot to C-SPAN. | ||
| I mean, to LC-SPAN, of course, CNN and MSNBC. | ||
| By far, I thought the biggest story this week was Corinne Jean-Pierre leaving the Democratic Party. | ||
| Now, granted, she has a book out and that's going to improve her sales, but the press secretaries by far seem to be the, or, well, not by far, they seem to be the largest party loyalists that both parties have from, oh, gee, Dana Perino, Jen Saki, Sean Spicer, geez, Ari Schleischer. | ||
| I just found that striking. | ||
| And the fact, well, you know, being a black woman, leaving the party like that. | ||
| Now, granted, she went independent, and independents are, they generally caucus with the Democrats anyhow. | ||
| I just found that a blockbuster. | ||
| Everything else is like, as usual, I mean, you know, Trump not allowing people coming from African nations to the United States. | ||
| He's big on the border. | ||
| That's expected stuff. | ||
| The back and forth on the tax cuts, et cetera. | ||
| But by far, Corinne Jean-Pierre, that just struck me. | ||
| That came totally out of the blue. | ||
| That was Steve in Massachusetts and hear from Dana. | ||
| And I'm sorry, Diana in Livingston, New Jersey, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Diana. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I think what the overlooked story of the week is the corruption surrounding this president, how he has set up crypto to the state. | ||
| Diane, I'm having a hard time hearing you. | ||
| Can you try to adjust your phone, stand closer, maybe? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm talking about the crypto industry and their embrace of just having all the legal regulations removed. | |
| Hidden inside the Senate bill or the House bill was that they can't regulate AI in the state for 10 years. | ||
| Now, why would we do that, right? | ||
| When we saw what happened with the internet with no regulation, they released it with no security. | ||
| It wasn't made, you know, for what we did. | ||
| They released it without security. | ||
| And they're doing the same thing with AI. | ||
| We've gotten a corporate takeover where the tech industry has captured where they want us to subsidize them moving back. | ||
| And then also all the energy that's going to be needed for AI and the Bitcoin is they're making us pay for it through tariffs and through deregulation. | ||
| And then, you know, with the corruption, he removed all the safeguards. | ||
| Why isn't that reported on how he removed the Office of Public Integrity? | ||
| He fired the Spectre General. | ||
| He is trying to remove all the agencies, the heads that protect our consumer rights and workers' rights. | ||
| That is just an overlook. | ||
| He's been given a pass. | ||
| He's being allowed to lie again. | ||
| He appears on TV with the head of state and repeats the lie that he won the election. | ||
| You could see that there's a propaganda that they're trying to rewrite history through what they're doing to the VOJ, right? | ||
| And going after his opponents, capturing our education system, our rebook system, the entertainment industry. | ||
| This is a corporate right takeover, right-wing takeover. | ||
| And you see Donnie Jr. in the Gutter Economic Forum talking about it, how they were censored, they were debanked. | ||
| So they're going to now take over all the different spheres, the mountains of influence, you know, and it's terrible. | ||
| And it's certainly not religious, right? | ||
| What he's doing, taking money from the poor to give to the rich and making us in debt, right? | ||
| So here we are. | ||
| We're going to cut off millions of people from life-saving, like the nursing homes with the Medicaid and people that really need help. | ||
| And we're going to take that away to give the tax rich to the rich and also make us in debt. | ||
| It's like they're, and they do everything to take America's greatness away. | ||
| It's really scary that no one that they're depressed is unable to cover it because of their amount of information that's put out daily. | ||
| And it seems that no one's countering the disinformation this time. | ||
| So I'm really concerned. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Diana in New Jersey. | ||
| David in Swainsboro, Georgia, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| Yes, I'd like to speak to the big, beautiful bill and just how there's things hidden in it that is going to cost us all. | ||
| The Republicans always have been all about states' rights. | ||
| Well, states' rights only replies to them when it's their issue. | ||
| Now, when it comes to the artificial intelligence, that they have taken the states' rights away. | ||
| They have regulated the fact that states cannot defend themselves against AI. | ||
| They cannot do things that will slow down AI. | ||
| They cannot say we don't want that in our state. | ||
| That is just how big a cover-up this big, beautiful bill is. | ||
| And I'd like to point out that this is Gun Safety Awareness Month, and that in the 27 words that are in the Second Amendment, there is not a word about brass ammo. | ||
| Brass ammo was not created until 1843, 50 years after the Bill of Rights was written into law. | ||
| In America, we have let the lobbyists talk us into just killing ourselves with something that doesn't belong and should be regulated. | ||
| And brass ammo is regulated. | ||
| Let's get this real clear, folks. | ||
| Brass ammo is regulated. | ||
| It's just that the little bullets that you see hundreds of little triangles marking at a crime scene, they don't have the pride or prejudice or anything to say. | ||
| That's wrong. | ||
| And they're too scared to do it. | ||
| They're too lazy to do it. | ||
| It's just like they did with the big, beautiful bill where they tell you, oh, we're all about states' rights, and then they want to regulate the states out of it through this big, beautiful bill. | ||
| Thank you so much for allowing me this time today. | ||
| Y'all have a wonderful day. | ||
| That was David in Georgia. | ||
| Let's hear from Rick in Crawfordsville, Indiana, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Rick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| You guys are talking about this IA. | ||
| Oh, well, can I say something? | ||
| Go ahead, Rick. | ||
| You're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, well, I was looking at YouTube about tariff, you know, and Reagan was reading something on there. | |
| I think people ought to get a hold of that on YouTube about Reagan reading the tariff. | ||
| And he's right. | ||
| Millions of people are going to lose their jobs and everything. | ||
| And it just is sad. | ||
| And what Trump's done. | ||
| I'm a Republican. | ||
| Man, I just can't make heads and tails about it. | ||
| Man, I'll tell you what, way the arguments with the Democrats and the Republicans, I think they ought to change that style, get rid of the donkey and get rid of the elephant and call it the Hepfields and Macaulays. | ||
| I think, you know, we'll let them fight over that big old-style pig, you know, whatever. | ||
| That's all I got to say. | ||
| I'll yield back. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Rick in Indiana. | ||
| It was this week we had a couple callers bringing up the One Big Beautiful Bill and provisions. | ||
| This week, this is a headline from Spectrum Local News. | ||
| It says Schumer condemns Trump's big bill for trying to limit judges in enforcing court orders. | ||
| The story says that following multiple reports of House Republicans saying they did not know many of the details in what President Donald Trump calls his One Big Beautiful bill when they voted for it last month, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is honing in on a very specific and contentious provision in the legislation. | ||
| On Thursday, Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the bill's language stripping federal judges of their ability to enforce their own rules is, quote, nasty. | ||
| Here is a clip of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer making those remarks. | ||
| So, we all know that Donald Trump sees himself as a king more than a president. | ||
| Trump is not a king. | ||
| The Republican so-called big beautiful bill will effectively place a crown on Donald Trump's head. | ||
| Buried deep in the Republican bill is a really nasty provision that would strip federal judges of one of their most critical powers, the ability to force their own rulings. | ||
| In other words, Republicans want to codify into law Donald Trump's attacks on our judicial system. | ||
| They want to gut our federal courts until they're utterly powerless. | ||
| They want to buck the Constitution and bulldoze the rule of law. | ||
| This is dangerous. | ||
| It's reckless. | ||
| It's un-American. | ||
| And it isn't just a policy difference. | ||
| This is an assault, an assault on the rule of law, an assault on the independence of the judiciary and on the very checks and balances that have defined this country since its inception. | ||
| So today, I'm announcing that Democrats will fight with every tool we have to stop this provision from becoming law. | ||
| This evil, un-American provision that flies in the total face, in the face of the Constitution completely. | ||
| This provision, as I said, is one of the most direct assaults on the separation of powers in recent memory. | ||
| It essentially hands the government officials, it essentially hands government officials, including Donald Trump, the license to ignore any ruling from a federal judge that they don't like. | ||
| And it strips the courts of any power to hold people accountable if they violate court orders, including the Supreme Court. | ||
| Shame on the House of Representatives putting this in on the Republicans in the House of Representatives. | ||
| Shame. | ||
| This is so bad. | ||
| It's beyond the pale. | ||
| So, as we all know, one of the most essential things that the judiciary has, its ability to enforce its own orders. | ||
| That's the authority we've given the judiciary. | ||
| And this proposal would effectively render judicial rulings meaningless. | ||
| Just words on paper with no power to hold anyone accountable. | ||
| Let's call it for what it is. | ||
| It's the get-out-of-jail free card for Donald Trump. | ||
| This is the get out of jail free card for Donald Trump. | ||
| About 20 minutes left in this first hour of Washington Journal asking your top news story of the week. | ||
| Let's hear from Greg in Harpersville, New York, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Greg. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I just wonder: are we blind, deaf, or dumb? | |
| As an educator or an ex-educator, are we blind to see the corruption that is going on in the White House? | ||
| Are we willing to go and throw people out of nursing homes and go and kick people off of their health care? | ||
| I just don't know. | ||
| Are we deaf to hear the tariffs that are coming and the inflation that will be coming? | ||
| And our representatives don't even care. | ||
| The Republicans want to go and put in the thing about not having the judges' orders enforced. | ||
| This is like turning us to a third-rate country. | ||
| And then are we that dumb to not learn from history? | ||
| I had to take many history courses while in college, and they said history repeats itself. | ||
| I never thought America would repeat itself and not learn from its past. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Greg in New York. | ||
| Maria in Westville, New Jersey, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Maria. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, Tammy. | |
| I hope you can hear me. | ||
| My lead story is in the New York Post today, and it said, assisted suicide likely in New York. | ||
| I'd like to make a couple of points. | ||
| My brother-in-law taught medicine, and he informed me, and it's true, the Hippocratic oath has not been obligatory since the 70s. | ||
| And there are variations of oaths new physicians can take. | ||
| Some of them refer directly to monetary considerations, convenience for people. | ||
| The old Hippocratic oath forbade abortions and assisted suicide. | ||
| And the Catholic Conference is very much against this ruling, of course. | ||
| And I'd like that to be explored. | ||
| And the secondly, the President himself a couple of days ago admitted he didn't know where all the money was going on a lot of these projects. | ||
| And he appoints the Secretary of the Treasury. | ||
| If the President doesn't know where the money is going, who is really directing our affairs, I think it's time, as another gentleman said, go back to the Constitution and the people and find out who is really calling the tune here before it's too late. | ||
| And thank you very much. | ||
| That was Maria in New Jersey. | ||
| Also, this week, it was yesterday that the May unemployment report or the May jobs report came out. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal on their front page this morning, hiring slowed slightly in May. | ||
| The article says that U.S. job growth slowed slightly last month. | ||
| Assign employers remained cautious about hiring amid uncertainty over tariffs and the nation's economic outlook. | ||
| The U.S. added 139,000 jobs in May. | ||
| The Labor Department reported Friday above the gain of 125,000. | ||
| The economists polled by the Wall Street Journal had expected. | ||
| The unemployment rate, which is based on a separate survey from the jobs figures, held steady at 4.2%. | ||
| Revisions showed a jobs market that was much weaker earlier this year than originally thought. | ||
| Employers added a combined 95,000 jobs, fewer jobs in March and April than previously estimated. | ||
| The revised April jobs number was 147,000 down from the 177,000 reported a month ago. | ||
| Let's hear from Pat in Tennessee, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Pat. | ||
| What's your top news story of the week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my top story is: I have been a Republican all my life, but there is no way that the way the Republicans, I am so tired. | |
| All they do is talk about Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Joe Biden, this, Joe Biden, that. | ||
| What are you going to do for us besides try to take away? | ||
| I am 80 years old. | ||
| I've worked since I was 14, never asked the government for a dime. | ||
| And if people honestly believe, like the president said, he's never going to touch Medicaid. | ||
| Well, he is. | ||
| I don't draw Medicaid. | ||
| It won't affect me, but I know people that it will affect. | ||
| Also, if people think that Social Security is not going to be the mess, the next thing he grabs, they're crazy. | ||
| They're not listening. | ||
| They're not paying attention. | ||
| They really are stupid. | ||
| I'm still working. | ||
| I'm 80 years old. | ||
| I scrub toilets five days a week. | ||
| I clean houses just to make enough money to buy my medication. | ||
| I don't know how much longer I can work. | ||
| If they take my Social Security, I'll be pushing a grocery cart down the street. | ||
| I think that's what the Republicans want. | ||
| The old people just to die and get out of their way. | ||
| Well, I got news for you folks. | ||
| If you start messing with the Social Security, you're going to find a whole lot of old people sitting on the lawn of the White House. | ||
| I'm telling you right now. | ||
| That's all I got to say. | ||
| That was Pat in Tennessee. | ||
| Becky in Ohio, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Becky. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I am so disappointed in people. | ||
| If they would listen and pay attention about the Medicaid Medicare, that stuff is not going to be taken. | ||
| It's going to be taken away from the legals that came here to our country that's getting everything free. | ||
| When people like me that raise my grandkids can't even get food stamps because I have a job. | ||
| These illegals get more than what we get. | ||
| And these people got to realize that. | ||
| And then, for what they're saying, the economy and everything is going much better than what they said it was going to. | ||
| There's more jobs opening up. | ||
| I don't understand why people's not seeing for what it is. | ||
| And I was upset, you know, that I'm glad they brought that guy back because he is going to get due process all right. | ||
| He needs to go to prison for what he has done. | ||
| You know, the illegal they brought back yesterday? | ||
| Abrego Garcia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you say anything? | |
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They didn't bring him back for political things. | |
| They brought him back because he's a criminal. | ||
| And they're going to find that out. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| That was Becky in Ohio. | ||
| Let's hear from Juanita, also in Ohio, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Juanita. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| And I hope you can bear with me because our allergies are really bad here in Southern Ohio, Cincinnati. | ||
| I have four things to say. | ||
| The first thing is to Becky. | ||
| Becky, I live in Ohio as you do. | ||
| And I don't know where you get your news from, where you get it from, the toothpury or what. | ||
| But the illegals are not the problem. | ||
| So stop it. | ||
| Secondly, the lady from Tennessee, I agree with her 100%. | ||
| I'm 74. | ||
| I have a very loving family of sisters and brothers who take care of me. | ||
| But everyone doesn't have that. | ||
| And all you NAGA folks who think it's not going to hit you, especially those below the nation's addiction line, who don't have level one trauma centers or have very few when your hospitals start to close, please don't come to Cincinnati as you do. | ||
| Number three, this military parade. | ||
| Now, that's what staff my hackles up. | ||
| My African-American uncles all three fought in World War II. | ||
| In fact, one fought in the unit that freed the last Secretary of State. | ||
| Mr. Trump nor his sons have not picked up a bullet, let alone a gun, in defense of the United States. | ||
| Now, I don't know who this military parade is for, but my one uncle who was in the Black Panthers, the Black Chankers, they came back. | ||
| They didn't need a parade. | ||
| Didn't want one. | ||
| Those were men. | ||
| So for those of you all who want a military parade, stop and think about what our oldest generation gave us. | ||
| They gave us humility. | ||
| And you meet NAGA people, please try to pass that on to your president. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Juanita in Ohio. | ||
| Tom in Boston, Massachusetts, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| All I want to say is that when I listen to everyone advocate, a lot of these liberals advocating for illegal aliens and this Abrego Garcia, worried about his safety in American prisons, I know that they'll never win an election again if this is going to be their mantra as to advocate for illegal aliens. | ||
| And, you know, that's it. | ||
| That's all I want to say. | ||
| That was Tom in Massachusetts. | ||
| Let's hear from Charles in Watertown, New York, line for Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Charles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| We have $37 trillion worth of debt. | ||
| And nobody seems concerned about the debt. | ||
| We hit $50 trillion worth of debt. | ||
| We are. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We have $37 trillion worth of debt. | ||
| And we get to $50 trillion worth of debt. | ||
| Our money is worthless. | ||
| Nobody, I mean Musk, nobody's doubtless. | ||
| I remember that Charles, listen to Mike Wallace 50 years ago, I was 10 years old. | ||
| And he said, Germany, right after the crash in 1929, they had wheelbarrows to buy one Frankfurt. | ||
| Money was worthless. | ||
| Again, the United States gets $50 trillion worth of debt. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| We're done. | ||
| Nobody seems to care about that. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Thank you for that was Charles in New York. | ||
| A caller just a moment ago, Juanita brought up the military parade that will be happening next Saturday. | ||
| It was discussed during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing this week. | ||
| This is a headline from Politico GOP Senators Question Cost of Army parade spectacle. | ||
| It says the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee is expressing skepticism over the Army's plan to hold a multi-million dollar parade in Washington on June 14th, even as service leaders defend it as a vital recruiting tool. | ||
| It says, quote, I would have recommended against the parade, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi said in an interview Thursday, shortly after learning from Army Secretary Dan Driscoll in an Army budget hearing that the event would have an estimated price tag in the range of $25 million to $40 million. | ||
| It was during that hearing the Army Secretary was also questioned by Democrats about the parade. | ||
| Here's a clip from that event. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Secretary Driscoll, you know, diverting a billion dollars away from barracks, like sort of like a $30, $40 million parade. | |
| You're being forced to make 8% cuts for projects, for pet projects that the Secretary and the President want. | ||
| And this is all happening while we're under a CR. | ||
| I'm kind of getting the impression that is the Army just flush with cash and got extra money to spend that it can give away? | ||
| You know, are we giving you too much? | ||
| And, you know, really, how is this? | ||
| I know it's kind of been answered already a little bit, but just to go more into depth, like, you know, our service members, how is this affecting the quality of life of our service members if we're moving this money away from the barracks? | ||
| Congressman, just to go on record, you are not giving us too much money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you're giving it away. | |
| So we are, as stated earlier, dear colleagues, we are incredibly honored, and we take very seriously the duty that we have to the American taxpayer to use those dollars efficiently and effectively for the American soldier for the celebration of our 250th anniversary. | ||
| The planning has been going on for years. | ||
| The Army believes that this will empower an entire new generation of America's youth to catch the spirit to serve their nation, and we are incredibly honored to be able to tell that story. | ||
| General George and I have reflected how lucky we are to be in these roles in this moment in time and to tell the story of an institution that has impacted our country so greatly since its founding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You don't think that money could be better well spent on some type of recruiting campaign that would work over a period of time rather than a one-day event? | |
| That's just going to take place and then it's done. | ||
| This parade, I believe, will be seen by Americans across the country. | ||
| And I very sincerely, and we can look at the recruiting numbers, I would hypothesize, and I will come back and justify whether I was right or wrong, that we will see an incredible filling of our pipeline of young Americans who want to join. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, one thing that I know for sure, right, the thing that does affect recruiting is an investment in actual recruiting. | |
| But I think with these 8% cuts that we're seeing, I'm very sure there's going to be a big, big chunk that's going to come out of recruiting, and that is probably going to hurt numbers over time. | ||
| That was a clip from a House hearing with Army Seckers Harry Dan Driscoll this week. | ||
| He testified before both the House and Senate. | ||
| You can find both hearings on our website, c-span.org. | ||
| Let's talk with Joe in Bedford, Virginia, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Tammy. | |
| I'd just like to say that President Trump, I'm proud to say I voted for him three times. | ||
| He's the hardest working president ever in America's history, and he has the most open administration. | ||
| Every day, either Trump or his administration is explaining things and answering questions like no other administration has ever done. | ||
| And he gets more done in a day than most of the woke tar trout has in four years. | ||
| All the woke care about is America's illegals, America's enemies, and America's criminals. | ||
| And that's why they're going to be as extinct as the dodo bird and the dinosaur. | ||
| You know, it's refreshing to have a president that cares about America's people and America's problems first, because he didn't create all these problems. | ||
| They've been around forever. | ||
| But he's the only president who's had the guts to stand up and do anything about it. | ||
| The rest, all they do is talk, talk, talk while they enrich their family and friends. | ||
| But Trump actually has the backbone to stand up and do the right thing for America's people and America's problems. | ||
| So I say thank God for Trump. | ||
| That was Joe in Virginia and Kerry, our last call for this first hour in Maryland, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Kerry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| How are you today? | ||
| Doing well, Kerry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, great. | |
| I just want to say that this country has really gone backwards. | ||
| Instead of going forward, we are under authoritarian rule. | ||
| It's just legalized. | ||
| You have the Supreme Court, which is supposedly the highest court of the land, which maintains the laws that were put down through the Constitution. | ||
| The people on Capitol Hill, Republicans and Democrats, they run around with the Constitution in the left hand, the Bible in the right hand, and I don't think they know the meaning of either one. | ||
| You have the Speaker of the House who wrote the plans to overturn the election for Joe Biden and Mr. Trump, and I think it is disgusting. | ||
| You have the taxpayers paying at least 50 Secret Servicemen protecting Trump and his entire family, which I thought in red in my education, which I'm 80-plus years old, that the Secret Service is supposed to only protect the president and his immediate family, wife, not the adult children. | ||
| His adult children don't need the taxpayers to pay for their protection because they're supposedly millionaires. | ||
| You have Trump having the taxpayers pay for him to be protected on the golf courses that he supposedly owns. | ||
| I'm just saying, now they're doing the bill to wipe off children, seniors, everything. | ||
| No, all monk Trump people are yelling and screaming. | ||
| Oh, yes, we love him. | ||
| I want to see how much you're going to love him when your Medicaid gets cut off. | ||
| I, for one, I am privileged. | ||
| I'm taken care of in my family. | ||
| But there are a lot of people out here, including yours, who will be suffering. | ||
| We are in an authoritarian country because the businessmen are taking over. | ||
| And I don't believe Trump won the election legally because Mr. Musk said he wouldn't do it without me. | ||
| He's very intelligent, so who knows what plug he didn't pull. | ||
| All I have to say, lastly, for this parade, I think it's ridiculous. | ||
| You're spending money for some one man who has Ausburgers. | ||
| If you know what that is, it's low-scale autism to pacify a man, child. | ||
| This is ridiculous. | ||
| Wake up, America, because your children, your great-grandchildren are going to suffer. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| And only Jesus can help us. | ||
| Have a great day. | ||
| That was Carrie in Maryland, our last caller in this first hour. | ||
| Later this morning on the program, Jason Altmeier, President and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities, discusses the state of career and technical education schools and President Trump's suggestion of redirecting federal grants to Harvard, to trade schools. | ||
| But next, Michigan State University Law Professor Brian Call joins us to discuss presidential pardon power and how they're used. | ||
| And as we had to break, yesterday marked the 81st anniversary of D-Day, the D-Day landings by Americans and Allied troops. | ||
| This is the headline from the Associated Press. | ||
| The article says that veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of those D-Day landings, a pivotal moment of World War II history that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler's regime. | ||
| Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactment. | ||
| Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older, all remembered the thousands who died. | ||
| It was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was there yesterday to deliver remarks. | ||
| Here is a clip from that event. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They prayed, they smoked, they joked, they rode home, they looked at photos. | |
| They knew many of them would not make it out alive. | ||
| And they would have to rely on each other to succeed or to just survive. | ||
| The assault began quietly before dawn on June the 6th with radio silence as paratroopers and gliders landed in the early hours. | ||
| These men flung themselves into the abyss of night, lit only by the fire of German tracers. | ||
| Later that morning, the greatest amphibious assault in the history of mankind began in full force. | ||
| Our men pushed through the waves and flung themselves upon the sand. | ||
| The courage it took to do this is unfathomable. | ||
| The first groups were decimated. | ||
| Thousands of young men lost their lives cut down by the barrage of machine guns and mortars. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But they never let up. | |
| Our warriors never faltered. | ||
| God at their backs. | ||
| As they forced their way inland, the Atlantic Wall began to crumble. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is these men and their bravery whom we are here to celebrate and remember. | |
| A generation of farmhands and city kids, baseball players and shopkeepers, big towns, small towns, rich, poor, who were forged and hardened in the Great Depression. | ||
| Hard men forged for hard times. | ||
| Ordinary men who mustered extraordinary courage. | ||
| While every one of the 9,000 Americans buried here are heroes, three men here also received the Medal of Honor for their actions in the invasion. | ||
| And as Sebastian mentioned, one of those was Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the oldest man to land on D-Day at the age of 56. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He had to submit a written petition to receive permission because he had a heart condition and arthritis. | |
| He had nothing to prove, but he could not stay back while his men met their fate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There were no other generals on the beach that day. | |
| When he landed, far from his objective, he simply said, Men, we'll start the war from right here. | ||
| He organized the troops and made order out of chaos. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A month later, his heart gave out, but he had completed his mission, as did every soul buried under one of those markers. | |
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss presidential pardon powers and how they're used is Brian Calt. | ||
| He is a law professor at Michigan State University. | ||
| Brian, thank you so much for being with us this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| We're focusing on presidential pardons specifically. | ||
| There are others, but why don't we start by having you explain what exactly pardon means when it comes to a presidential pardon, who can receive them, and for what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So a pardon is removing the criminal consequences from someone's actions. | |
| And presidential pardons allow the president of the United States to grant these pardons or some subset of that, like a reduction of a sentence or the remission of a fine or something like that, to people who have committed federal criminal offenses. | ||
| So it doesn't apply to civil liability. | ||
| It doesn't apply to impeachment cases. | ||
| It doesn't apply to state criminal offenses. | ||
| And anyone that the president wants can receive them, but there is no specific timeline on it. | ||
| Someone does not need to have even been convicted or even charged with an offense before the president pardons them. | ||
| It can be at any point in the process. | ||
| We'll get into more of the specifics as the interview goes on, but what exactly does the Constitution say about a president's power to pardon? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the president's pardon power is located in Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution, and it says that the President, quote, shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment. | |
| And what is, explain that impeachment clause. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Constitution in a few different places separates out the impeachment process from the criminal law process. | |
| And this is important because in England, where a lot of our institutions are drawn from, the impeachment process was just a criminal process. | ||
| It was certain offenses, certain people, you would have your trial in Parliament instead of in the regular courts. | ||
| And our Constitution wanted to separate that out. | ||
| So it limited punishments and impeachments and made clear that it didn't apply. | ||
| So double jeopardy doesn't apply. | ||
| You can still be charged criminally if you're impeached and convicted. | ||
| And in this clause, it made clear that because it's separate and because the president can only affect the criminal process with pardons, he can't affect impeachment cases. | ||
| So if someone gets impeached, the president can't preempt that. | ||
| He can't stop that. | ||
| He can't undo that if there's a conviction. | ||
| And we've been hearing a lot about pardons in the past few weeks. | ||
| It's or actually past few months, it's been a popular topic. | ||
| It was announced this week that the Department of Justice is reviewing pardons made by now former President Biden. | ||
| It says this article from the Hill says that it's citing concerns about whether Biden himself was making decisions about clemency power. | ||
| It says an official told the Hill that pardon attorney Ed Martin will lead an independent review to determine if, quote, unelected staffers took advantage of Biden when it came to pardons and commutations. | ||
| If they were to make a, you know, come to a decision that that was the case, can presidential pardons be reversed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The case law is pretty clear that a pardon once issued is final and irrevocable, but it has to be a valid pardon. | |
| So if I pardon someone, that has no effect. | ||
| I guess their argument is that if President Biden didn't actually have anything to do with the decisions, then they weren't valid pardons. | ||
| So they're not really revoking them so much as saying that they were never valid in the first place. | ||
| But they would have to show that, that he wasn't the one making the decision. | ||
| He wasn't the one directing the pardon be issued. | ||
| There's been a lot of talk about the use of an auto pen. | ||
| That's sort of a red herring. | ||
| If the president directs it, the fact that they sign it with an auto pen is neither here nor there. | ||
| But it would be an issue if a president, unbeknownst to him, was having things go out under his name. | ||
| And Brian, for the sake of this conversation and for people who may have been hearing AutoPen in the news, can you explain what that is? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so presidents have to sign a lot of documents. | |
| And so they have these machines, auto pens, where it makes their signature, but it's sort of like a robot pen, or you think of it as a remote control signature. | ||
| But again, as long as it's the president directing that, there's plenty of precedent that says that that's perfectly valid. | ||
| And there's actually no requirement that a pardon be signed. | ||
| It's not like legislation where the Constitution says the president has to sign it. | ||
| Pardons just have to be issued, and they technically don't even need a signature at all if there's some other way to make it official. | ||
| So the use of this autopen is not the issue here. | ||
| Brian Calt, Michigan State University Law Professor, is with us for the next 35 minutes or so for our discussion on presidential pardons and presidential pardon power and how those powers are used. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now the lines: Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| And you can also send us a text at 202-748-8003. | ||
| And Brian, while in office, Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter. | ||
| Bill Clinton pardoned his own brother. | ||
| President Trump pardoned more than two dozen close friends and business associates, including his son-in-law's father during the first term. | ||
| Other than those pardons that make headlines, who typically receives a pardon? | ||
| What's the process? | ||
|
unidentified
|
In recent history, the typical pardon, 90% of the pardons have been just average folks who no one's ever heard of. | |
| They don't really hear about the pardons either. | ||
| They apply not directly to the president, but they go through a process that the president has delegated to the Department of Justice. | ||
| They have the Office of the Pardon Attorney. | ||
| And the Office of the Pardon Attorney handles these applications and then makes recommendations to the President. | ||
| Ultimately, the President decides what to do. | ||
| So he doesn't have to accept the recommendations. | ||
| And people don't need to go through that process. | ||
| They can go right to the president. | ||
| But in recent times, most pardons have gone through and the Office of the Pardon Attorney and that office has certain criteria. | ||
| So they tend to only recommend pardons for people who have already finished serving their sentence, who express remorse for their crimes. | ||
| And most of these people just want to be able to have their civil rights restored, right? | ||
| Serve on a jury, vote if they're in a state where they can't vote, own a gun. | ||
| And that's your typical run-of-the-mill pardon. | ||
| Doesn't make the headlines. | ||
| It's the other 10% that bypass that process that tend to make the headlines. | ||
| We have callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We'll start with John in West Lafayette, Indiana, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Brian, you made the comment earlier that the Constitution permits pardons, including pardons for crimes not committed at the time or not charged at the time that the pardon was granted. | ||
| And I wondered if there's any precedent along those lines that confirms your statement that the Constitution allows a pardon basically for anything that may have happened over a period of time, whether or not charges have been brought at that point in time that the pardon was committed. | ||
| So, anyway, yeah, the leading authority for that, there are a series of cases where the Supreme Court has talked about how broad the pardon power is. | ||
| And there's an 1867 case called Ex Parte Garland arising out of the Civil War pardons. | ||
| And In that case, the Supreme Court very clearly laid out the ability of a president to pardon at any point in the process once the act has been committed. | ||
| So you can't pardon someone for something they haven't done yet, but in ex parte garland, the Supreme Court explained that you can, if you're the president, you can pardon someone before they've been charged, before they've been convicted, during the trial, after they've been convicted, after their sentence is over, any point in the process. | ||
| And we've seen presidents use that power. | ||
| President Trump has used it a fair amount, but so did a lot of his predecessors, most famously when President Ford pardoned President Nixon for anything that he had done or might have done in office, and Nixon hadn't been charged with anything, and yet that pardon went through. | ||
| So that's the leading precedent, but there are plenty of others, and we see prosecutors respect that and drop the case. | ||
| Let's talk with Nelson in Pembroke Pines, Florida, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Nelson. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Mr. Colt, on the same concept, what you're explaining contradicts the very essence of innocence until proven guilty. | ||
| And I find that a little astonishing. | ||
| Shouldn't a person or isn't a person supposed to be found guilty prior to a pardon? | ||
| And how can you be pardoned if you are considered to be innocent until proven guilty? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| This is one of the most common questions I get or a thing that people push back about with the pardon power. | ||
| This idea of preemptive pardons just doesn't sit well with people. | ||
| And you speak to another precedent. | ||
| There's a case called Burdick versus United States from 1915. | ||
| And sometimes people will quote that case as saying that a pardon is a declaration of guilt. | ||
| And if you accept a pardon, that's an admission of guilt. | ||
| And that's not really what Burdick was saying. | ||
| That line is in there, but it's taken out of context. | ||
| So the Burdick case was about whether you have to accept a pardon or not. | ||
| And the court in Burdick said you don't have to accept a pardon if you don't want to, and then it's not going to be valid. | ||
| And there's some back and forth in the case law on that. | ||
| But the point is that they were saying there are some reasons why someone might not want to accept a pardon. | ||
| And one of them is that it makes them look guilty, right? | ||
| That if you pardon someone, you must be pardoning them for something they did wrong. | ||
| And that's true of most pardons. | ||
| But presidents aren't limited to using the pardon power for forgiveness of things that people have done wrong. | ||
| Presidents can also use the pardon power to exonerate someone. | ||
| If that's the message that the president uses accompanying the pardon, then it's not declaring guilt. | ||
| So innocent until proven guilty, if the president thinks that someone is innocent or at least that they don't deserve to be facing any sort of criminal consequences for what they've done, the president can do that. | ||
| And he's not saying they're guilty in those cases. | ||
| He's saying, in fact, that they're innocent or that they should be protected. | ||
| So it's not about, It's not about undoing a declaration of guilt. | ||
| In those cases, it's about that kind of protection. | ||
| And again, if the president phrases the pardon that way, as we've seen not just President Trump do, but plenty of other exonerative pardons, then that's the meaning of that pardon. | ||
| John in Holyoke, Massachusetts, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you. | |
| I want to plug in Grand Theft World. | ||
| Obviously, all the presidents that have ever been president of the United States are either related to the King of England. | ||
| So is this true that also when you win a case against a corporation, you have to sign a paper stating that they didn't do anything wrong? | ||
| Is that the reason why all these presidents that have been president have genocide people in their own country, overthrown leaders and everything so they can get a hold of their land and their resources? | ||
| Isn't this what they're doing in Gaza? | ||
| It's called colonization by the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, and the J.P. Morgans. | ||
| How come they don't get any pardons, but a central bank that funds both sides of the war and tosses their own public into dire straits by economics, right? | ||
| They get to do this, right? | ||
| Pedophiles in Hollywood, right? | ||
| On Epstein's Island, where are all these rich people, right, that are predominantly white? | ||
| I wonder, is that why they're trying to invade Africa for the minerals and everything else? | ||
| John, we'll get a response from Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, sorry, John, but I'm not really sure what that has to do about the pardon power. | |
| But if you have a question about pardons in particular, I'd be happy to address that. | ||
| We'll go on to, let's see, Zach May and Bowie, Bowie, Maryland, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Zach May. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Can you hear me okay? | ||
| Yes, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All righty. | |
| Now, thank you for giving an explanation about pardons. | ||
| I just want to discuss a couple of the pardons that Trump has made. | ||
| He's always complaining about the fentanyl and how it's being brought across the border and backpacks, et cetera. | ||
| However, he gave a pardon to Ross Albright, who operated Silk Road, the dark wet marketplace where illegal drugs were sold. | ||
| So, okay, explain that one. | ||
| And then the next one is where he pardoned, what's the person's name? | ||
| Bear with me one little minute here, okay? | ||
| He pardoned this couple in Miami who were sentenced to 35 years for defrauding Medicare out of $205 billion. | ||
| So you talk about fraud, Medicare. | ||
| Why would he pardon these people? | ||
| So, you know, it's okay, pardons are fine, and I can understand why Biden pardoned his son and some of his family members because he knew those stupid Republicans were going to go after them. | ||
| But anyway, sir, please discuss those two examples of the pardons that Trump has made. | ||
| And I want to thank you for your time. | ||
| America, wake up. | ||
| Take care. | ||
| Those were controversial pardons. | ||
| I think the important thing, I'm not going to get into the specifics of those cases, but I do want to say that the president's pardon power is the most sort of unrestricted power that presidents have. | ||
| Think about all the other things that presidents do. | ||
| A lot of the time they need congressional authorization for things to the extent that they or Senate confirmation of their appointees. | ||
| To the extent that they don't, there's still the possibility of court review and judges can look over what they've done and judge those and maybe overturn it. | ||
| Even the things that don't get reviewed, there's a need to have the federal bureaucracy implement what they do. | ||
| The pardon power is really one of the only powers where none of that applies. | ||
| The president just sort of waves his hand and it happens. | ||
| Congress doesn't weigh in on it. | ||
| It's not reviewable in court and he doesn't really need people to implement it. | ||
| So the bottom line is, and this is getting back to your question, if the president wants to pardon someone, he can pardon them. | ||
| And the only checks on the president's power there are political. | ||
| If people don't like politically what the president is doing, he can pay a price for that. | ||
| And we saw that with Ford's pardon of Nixon. | ||
| It probably cost Ford the election in 1976 because people were very unhappy with him pardoning Nixon. | ||
| That's why the president has the pardon power because the president is supposed to be politically accountable. | ||
| Now, I don't have a crystal ball to tell you what the political reaction to these pardons will be, what the effect at the ballot box will be in the midterm elections or for Republicans the next time around, but that is the mechanism. | ||
| In extreme cases of abuse of the pardon power, Congress can investigate, they can challenge it, and in the most extreme cases, they could conceivably impeach and remove the president. | ||
| What we've seen is that congressional Republicans seem pretty willing to give President Trump the benefit of the doubt on these things. | ||
| So until and unless they pay the price politically, there's really nothing that anyone can do about those pardons. | ||
| But on the flip side of that, if enough people are outraged and take political action about it, then it does have consequences. | ||
| And it's kind of strange. | ||
| Most of our system doesn't work that way, but that is really the only avenue for a check on that presidential power. | ||
| Brian, early in President Trump's current term, he pardoned January 6th defendants, those who were convicted of January 6th crimes. | ||
| And this is from the Washington Post. | ||
| I want to get your, I want you to weigh in on it. | ||
| It says at least 10 defendants accused of other crimes when the FBI came to search their homes after the January 6th, 2021 Capitol riot have invoked the pardon issued by President Donald Trump to claim that his order also clears them of the secondary charges. | ||
| And in most of those federal cases, prosecutors have joined with the defendants. | ||
| But on four recent occasions, recently, federal judges have said no, disagreeing even as the Justice Department argued in favor of broadly applying the president's pardon and strongly worded opinions. | ||
| Federal judges in Washington and Baltimore have refused to grant dismissals describing the government's requests as, quote, unreasonable and acting in bad faith. | ||
| What does the Constitution or what is their precedent for applying a pardon to cases like this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just said that these aren't reviewed in court. | |
| But pardons are reviewable in court if there's a question as to whether it applies to a certain thing or not. | ||
| What's not reviewable is the merits of the pardon. | ||
| You can't say this pardon was inappropriate, it was unjustified. | ||
| But if you say it applies to X, Y, and Z, and someone else says no, it only applies to X and Y, then a court would have to weigh in and say, Has there actually been a pardon here? | ||
| And that is really just a matter of the wording of the pardon. | ||
| If the pardon said that it was covering anything that they did, then it would cover anything that they did. | ||
| If it said it was only covering specific acts, then it would only cover those specific acts, and the court would have to decide: is this within the wording of the pardon? | ||
| Because President Trump also controls the Department of Justice, he's the president, he's the boss, it's not surprising that the prosecutors would take a more aggressive approach. | ||
| But if President Trump really wanted to pardon these people for these other offenses, there's nothing stopping him from issuing another pardon to make that clear and to say, oh, it's not just what happened on January 6th, that's all of the associated things that happened with it. | ||
| As far as precedent for pardons like the January 6th pardon, there's really unprecedented in a lot of ways. | ||
| There have been cases where presidents have pardoned a big group of people who are charged with some sort of disloyalty to the country, but it hasn't really ever been in that context of these were people sort of acting on the president's behalf when they did it. | ||
| You know, it's more like after the Civil War, forgiving the Confederates so we could put the country back together. | ||
| Or during the Whiskey Rebellion, the very first pardons that any president issued, President Washington said, hey, we have this rebellion here. | ||
| If I pardon these people, they'll lay down their arms. | ||
| So let's make a deal here. | ||
| Those are the sort of precedents we had before the January 6th pardons. | ||
| Not anything like what President Trump did. | ||
| Ricardo in Laredo, Texas, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Ricardo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Tammy. | |
| Hope you're doing okay. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Thank you for taking the call. | ||
| My point is for you to give the people a correct interpretation based on some of the parameters that I would like you to consider. | ||
| For example, in the Constitution, that is true that anybody can do anything because God made it so. | ||
| Like we could decide to think whatever we want, we could do whatever we want. | ||
| He's the ultimate judge, right? | ||
| The wording is important because words create or if put up to a review based on the words, that action could be or not and not be correct. | ||
| But I say righteous, that's a difference than legal, because legality has to do with nothing that's righteous or unrighteous. | ||
| It could be perfectly legal and perfectly unrighteous and evil, the act. | ||
| But going back to the Constitution and the cornerstone or the essence of the Constitution is what constitutes creation or a system has to be based on something that's a repeatable event, that scientific approval, which is like for all men are created equal and all endowed with their creator with certain rights. | ||
| And the president has rights, but so are the people, and it has to do with, like you say, with wording. | ||
| So we accept the titles of curse titles of consumer of patient or the soldier only. | ||
| They define only the, they're not a title, they're not a man. | ||
| There are a parameter that describes their ability to act within a certain god in the government, you know, like for example, federal law, isn't it even worse than treason? | ||
| The worst thing is that the institution that you created to make sure that there was equality amongst men has now kept the blessings that man was supposed to inherit. | ||
| Like it's not a democracy, it's supposed to be a republic. | ||
| I remember taking the Pledge of Allegiance and remembering these things. | ||
| And the fact that that institution is now supposedly the, for example, now with all the cases that the Supreme Court is arguing is going, as long as we have the preemptive, in other words, that we were the creator of all the creatures because they named them in some kind of a legalistic system has become the, they say, we could give fund your school, but nothing you say could be considered as truth. | ||
| We're living in a fantasy world and all these things is like a curating thing. | ||
| But if we go back to the Constitution and we uphold the essence of it, that then not only we wouldn't be discussing these things of he could pardon, but then can he do executive orders and take away all our freedoms and liberties? | ||
| You see, that's something that he shouldn't be able to do or promote because whatever we promote for somebody else will eventually be ours, like these restrictions. | ||
| It's a word implies a ligature that it takes to rub something off, like a bond between people and eventually take away, it also implies confinement or jailing. | ||
| So the presence and travel get a response from Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think you're pointing to sort of an eternal question in constitutional law. | |
| Sometimes we focus entirely on the letter of the Constitution and sometimes the spirit. | ||
| And so far I've been talking about the letter of the law and talking about how powerful the president's pardon power is. | ||
| But there are these other dynamics in the Constitution and it sets up a structure. | ||
| It sets up a certain kind of system. | ||
| Not everyone agrees exactly on what the spirit of the Constitution is or what it requires. | ||
| But in the case of the pardon power, it fits within that structure. | ||
| So there are a lot of things in the Constitution where it doesn't give us standards, it just gives us decision makers. | ||
| So it doesn't say who's supposed to get pardons. | ||
| It just says who gets to make that choice. | ||
| And elsewhere in the Constitution, it sets up a structure for holding that person accountable. | ||
| So pardons, you know, the spirit of them is supposed to be that the criminal justice system is not really one size fits all. | ||
| And sometimes people get more consequences than they deserve. | ||
| And we need to have a safety valve. | ||
| And the president can provide that. | ||
| But as soon as you say that, people are going to disagree about who deserves a pardon and who doesn't. | ||
| And so again, it just reduces down to the president's decision. | ||
| And the president is supposed to be accountable. | ||
| I will say, you know, President Trump has made a lot of controversial pardons, a lot of pardons that I personally don't agree with, not that that matters, but he has done them in the middle of his term. | ||
| And what we've seen more recently is presidents leaving their controversial pardons until they're on their way out of office when they're not accountable anymore. | ||
| And that's a problem. | ||
| That's sort of a defect in the system that presidents, when they're not accountable, can do that. | ||
| So whatever else you can say about President Trump's pardons, at least he's doing it at a time when the voters can still weigh in on it and it can still affect his ability to get his agenda through or the midterm elections. | ||
| Let's talk with Tyrone in Columbus, Ohio, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Tyrone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Mr. Tyrone, I just wanted to ask your guests here. | ||
| The pardon powers is a big power. | ||
| It's amazing power. | ||
| But one thing I want to ask, can he power somebody from not the United States, like from somewhere else? | ||
| Can he pardon them? | ||
| And another thing, can he just pardon the whole United States? | ||
| If he's getting a power like that, can he just pardon everybody here and everybody just be free? | ||
| I don't, that's what I'm trying to figure out what's going on. | ||
| That's all I need for him to answer. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| I really appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| The pardon power applies to offenses against the United States, not by any particular person. | ||
| So to the extent that someone from somewhere else is potentially going to be charged with a crime, that they could or has been charged with the crime or convicted of a crime, the president can pardon them. | ||
| As far as the breadth of the pardon power, I suppose theoretically a president could pardon everyone for everything and say everything from before today, there's no more punishments, no more crimes. | ||
| I can't imagine a president doing that, but we have seen very broad amnesties, part of the pardon power, that have applied to millions of people. | ||
| Probably the most notable example was after the Vietnam War. | ||
| Presidents Ford and Carter used the pardon power to forgive people who had evaded the draft. | ||
| And that was a huge number of people. | ||
| Not the whole country, but just all sorts of people. | ||
| Didn't name them individually, just said it applies broadly to anyone who meets these conditions and criteria. | ||
| Randy in Kentucky, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Randy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| You seem to be pretty biased on one-sided examples there. | ||
| So let's go right back to the previous President Biden, who all the pardons that were supposed to be done by, or said to be done by Autopin, where his authority was usurped. | ||
| Is it legal for the president not to give his authority, but someone else uses it without his knowledge? | ||
| And are all those people that he or the Autopen pardoned, is it actually illegal? | ||
| And then number two, why didn't Biden just pardon all of the illegals when he left president, all those 20 million he brought in? | ||
| So I'm sorry you think I'm biased. | ||
| We did talk about that Autopen issue before, and I can just explain it again. | ||
| The use of the Auto Pen isn't the issue. | ||
| The issue is something else you said, which is whether or not he was actually the one making those decisions, whether he was approving them or not. | ||
| And I don't know if he did. | ||
| I mean, Ed Martin is going to investigate this as we heard. | ||
| President Biden has said that he did. | ||
| President Trump has said that he didn't. | ||
| If he didn't, if the president wasn't actually the one issuing these pardons, not that he had someone help him fill out the paperwork, but that he didn't actually know about or make the decision, then those aren't valid. | ||
| But that's the question. | ||
| Did he know or not? | ||
| And that's unknown at this point. | ||
| Brian, I want to ask you about a book that you wrote back in 2012, Constitutional Cliffhangers, a legal guide for presidents and their enemies. | ||
| The description is the United States Constitution. | ||
| Constitution's provisions for selecting, replacing, and punishing presidents contain serious weaknesses that could lead to constitutional controversies. | ||
| You look at six such controversies, such as the criminal prosecution of a sitting president, a two-term president's attempt to stay in power, the Ousteen of an alleged disabled president. | ||
| That was, again, a book you wrote in 2012. | ||
| You also taught a seminar class on it. | ||
| If you were to write this book today, what would you include in it or what would you change from your previous version, if anything? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So when I wrote that book, my biggest task was convincing anyone that any of these were things worth thinking about. | |
| And I've had that issue for decades. | ||
| The very first legal writing that I did was while I was a law student was in the 1990s about whether the president has the power to pardon himself. | ||
| And it seemed fanciful to a lot of people, but my point was that it was important to write about these things before they come up, trying to anticipate what are the weaknesses in the Constitution where we could have a problem, and then figure out what the best answer is without regard to whether I like this particular president or I don't like this particular president, because it's the same answer. | ||
| The Constitution applies the same whether you like the president or not. | ||
| The provisions are the same. | ||
| So I wrote about all of those things in 2012. | ||
| And in the ensuing 13 years, pretty much every one of those issues has not happened, but sort of been suggested. | ||
| So prosecuting a sitting president has been an issue. | ||
| President Trump has said that he does have the power to pardon himself. | ||
| Others disagree. | ||
| We've talked about the term limits. | ||
| Honestly, if I was rewriting it now, other than saying, see, see, I told you we need to think about these things before. | ||
| I also wrote about whether you could, in that book, whether you could impeach someone after they've left office. | ||
| That happened. | ||
| I think I would probably just add a chapter about how it is that these things actually came up and what happens when people, one of the problems with constitutional law is when these issues come up, people tend to choose a side rather than figure out what they think the Constitution actually means. | ||
| There are so many constitutional law arguments on any issue. | ||
| Just take your pick. | ||
| So people just tend to latch on to whatever legal argument happens to give the result that they like personally. | ||
| And that's reality, especially when constitutional law intersects with politics. | ||
| But that's not the best way to think about these things. | ||
| We have to think in the abstract. | ||
| So I would have some stuff in there about trying to work through that political bias that infects people's thinking about legal issues. | ||
| And just one simple thing that people can do. | ||
| When you're thinking about a presidential power or a check on the president, ask yourself, do I think that this is the right answer? | ||
| And then ask yourself the same question with the opposite president. | ||
| If you think that Trump can do this, then you must be okay with Biden doing it. | ||
| If you're okay with Biden doing it, then you must be okay with Trump doing it. | ||
| You can't have it both ways. | ||
| Now, policy matters, that's a different thing. | ||
| But if a president has the power to do something, every president has the power to do that thing. | ||
| And people don't like that, but it's true, and it would help if we could reinforce that sentiment. | ||
| We have one last call for you. | ||
| It's Ava in Columbia, Mississippi, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Ava. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| I want to ask one question, and it's nonpartisan. | ||
| I just simply want to understand this in the very simplest of terms. | ||
| You referred back to Ford Party Nixon. | ||
| In other words, a pardon, and I guess this applies to everyone, covers crimes committed up to the date of the pardon that may not yet be discovered but may be discovered in the future. | ||
| It's not a freelance thing to go out and commit crimes beyond the date of the pardon, but only crimes that may not yet be discovered, that have already been committed when the pardon is written. | ||
| It does not give somebody the right to go out and commit all kinds of crimes and not be covered. | ||
| And that's usually not completely explained, but am I correct? | ||
| You are absolutely correct. | ||
| The pardon power is only retrospective. | ||
| And this is not stated in the Constitution. | ||
| It's just part of the inherent definition of what a pardon is. | ||
| If you're doing it prospectively, then that's not a pardon. | ||
| You could call it a pardon, but it's not a pardon. | ||
| It's just suspending the law. | ||
| And I would say, though, as a caveat, presidents can pardon people only for things they've already done, but by doing that, they might be signaling to certain people that if they go ahead and do something in the future, that the president will pardon them for that too. | ||
| But he would have to do that. | ||
| He wouldn't be able to rely on the previous action. | ||
| He would have to issue a new pardon after these people have done whatever they've done. | ||
| So you're absolutely right. | ||
| Pardons are only for things people have already done. | ||
| Brian Colt is a law professor at Michigan State University. | ||
| You can find out more about his work and that law school at law.msu.edu. | ||
| Brian, thank you so much for your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks again for having me. | |
| Next on Washington Journal, Jason Altmeyer, president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities, joins us to discuss the state of career and technical education schools and President Trump's suggestion of redirecting federal grants to Harvard to trade schools. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A. | |
| Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the pro-peace feminist grassroots organization Code Pink, talks about her life as an activist and the nonviolent disruptive actions taken by Code Pink at congressional hearings and elsewhere to bring attention to their causes. | ||
| We don't disrupt every hearing. | ||
| The majority of hearings we go to, we don't disrupt. | ||
| We sit through to learn. | ||
| We use the opportunity to talk to the members of Congress when they're on their way in and when they're on their way out. | ||
| So, you know, when you're there every day, you have developed a relationship not only with some of the members of Congress, but with the officers. | ||
| And some of them are quite nice to us. | ||
| They recognize that we are nonviolent people, that we are passionate about these issues, and that this is part of what a vibrant civil society should look like. | ||
| Some of them don't like us very much and are meaner to us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We try to report them when they abuse our rights because, again, we go on this principle: it is the people's house. | |
| They are no better than us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They are public servants and they should be listening to what we, the public, want to say. | |
| Medea Benjamin, 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 our free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Next week on the C-SPAN Networks, the House and Senate are in session. | ||
| The House will consider legislation to cancel $9.4 billion in pre-approved government funding requested by the White House. | ||
| The Senate will continue voting on President Trump's executive nominations. | ||
| Several cabinet secretaries and department officials will be on Capitol Hill next week discussing their budgets. | ||
| C-SPAN's live coverage includes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General John Kaine testifying before two committee hearings about their department's fiscal year 2026 budget, first on Tuesday before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, then on Thursday before the House Armed Services Committee. | ||
| On Wednesday, it's the Congressional Baseball Game between the Democrats and Republicans at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. Also on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson testifies before the House Ways and Means Committee about the Treasury Department's priorities. | ||
| And on Thursday, Democratic Governors J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Kathy Hochle of New York, and Tim Walz of Minnesota testify before the House Oversight Committee on their sanctuary state policies. | ||
| Watch live next week on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app. | ||
| Also, head over to C-SPAN.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss the state of career technical schools and President Trump's suggestion of redirecting federal grants to Harvard to trade schools is Jason Altmeyer. | ||
| He is the president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities. | ||
| Jason, thank you so much for being with us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| Why don't you start by telling us about your organization, your mission, and who you work with and represent? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Career Education Colleges and Universities is the national association that represents private post-secondary career schools. | |
| So when you think about career schools, think about the skilled trades, the health care programs, the service industry, the beauty and wellness programs, for example, culinary, truck driving, welding, HVAC, aviation technicians, people in the healthcare programs such as dental assisting, medical assisting, dental hygienists, nursing, so all across the spectrum. | ||
| And we're here today to talk about, in part, funding. | ||
| According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, CTE programs, as they're known, received more than $1.4 billion in federal funding in 2024. | ||
| It was last week that President Trump put this out on Truth Social saying, I'm considering taking $3 billion of grant money away from a very anti-Semitic Harvard and giving it to trade schools all across our land. | ||
| What a great investment that would be for the U.S. and so badly needed. | ||
| $1.4 billion to all of the programs that you just described compared to $3 billion for just one school. | ||
| Your reaction to President Trump's statement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there's different types of institutions related to career education. | |
| So we represent the private post-secondary institutions. | ||
| So the majority of our members are for-profit institutions. | ||
| We have 800 campuses that we represent across the country. | ||
| We do have a significant number of nonprofit members as well. | ||
| And then there are the public institutions, generally speaking, the community colleges in those types of programs. | ||
| So the President doesn't get into how he would direct that funding, what types of programs he would support. | ||
| We certainly are not asking for the money from Harvard. | ||
| It doesn't have to come from Harvard, but we think it's a good investment to invest in career education because we've moved on from this debate about whether or not the four-year path is the most appropriate path for every student. | ||
| And thankfully now we have a recognition in society that we need those professions that I talked about. | ||
| We need welders and truck drivers and nurses and cosmetologists and culinary experts. | ||
| And these are people that you see every day. | ||
| There's huge demand. | ||
| There's vacancies of 80,000 truck drivers, a similar number of nurses. | ||
| The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that HVAC technicians have a 43,000 vacancy every year. | ||
| So we need these jobs and it provides opportunity for students, often non-traditional students. | ||
| So I think the president is looking at the right thing to direct more money to things that are going to help people and help society. | ||
| It doesn't have to come from Harvard. | ||
| You just mentioned it, but there is a need for these programs as well as there's been a shift in perception for what they can contribute. | ||
| How would you define the current state of career and technical education? | ||
| Where are the gaps in terms of enrollment and what are some of the challenges? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there are political challenges because when you look at private post-secondary institutions, in particular for-profit institutions, often they are part of a political game of ping-pong from one administration to the next. | |
| And we can talk about that. | ||
| But what you hear from employers all around the country is there is an enormous skills gap for these professions. | ||
| These are jobs that are needed. | ||
| These are vacancies that are there today. | ||
| And employers are having a very difficult time finding qualified workers to do those jobs. | ||
| And that's what our skills do. | ||
| Our schools do. | ||
| You know a little bit about political ping pong. | ||
| You are a former member of Congress. | ||
| Remind us when you served and your district. | ||
| I served from Western Pennsylvania from 2007 to 2013. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I served as a Democrat. | |
| And let's talk about some of those roles. | ||
| You listed quite a few that people may not have been aware fall under the umbrella. | ||
| When it comes to Outlook or most in-demand roles, where is the growth? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the growth in demand is in the construction industries, in the skilled trades. | |
| If you want to rebuild America, you're going to need truck drivers. | ||
| You're going to need welders. | ||
| We have two schools, one in Seattle, one in Houston, that do underwater construction, underwater welding, very specific, highly technical skill. | ||
| Everyone flies on airplanes. | ||
| If you're sitting on the airplane and looking at those men and women working on the plane outside, those technicians, you want two things. | ||
| You want them to be really good at what they do, and you want there to be a lot of them. | ||
| And that's what our schools do. | ||
| Auto technicians, there's an outdated view that these are people working under the car with wrenches and screwdrivers and the grease is dripping down. | ||
| That's not what they do now. | ||
| These are highly technical computer IT-oriented jobs and you have to be highly skilled to have that. | ||
| And there's a huge demand for those type of jobs right now in the country. | ||
| Jason Altmeyer, president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities, is our guest for the next 35 minutes or so. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now. | ||
| The lines for this segment are broken down regionally. | ||
| If you are in the Eastern or Central time zone, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Mountain or Pacific is 202-748-8001. | ||
| And if you have experience with career and technical education, there is a line for you. | ||
| That is 202-748-8002. | ||
| And a reminder, you can also be sending us a text message at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Jason, you talked a little bit about the shift in perception. | ||
| I want to get your reaction to an opinion piece that was in The Hill. | ||
| It says that skepticism about the value of a college degree is growing, even though the earnings advantage associated with the college degree remains strong. | ||
| Calls to offer more young people career and technical education are multiplying. | ||
| Even though such training does not offer many of the benefits of a college education, education plays a crucial, often transformative role in developing human potential. | ||
| College cultivates critical thinking skills, aesthetic appreciation, scientific literacy, and intellectual curiosity. | ||
| It teaches students how to conduct research, evaluate evidence, construct and critique an argument, work with others, appreciate the different perspectives, communicate effectively, and engage in their communities. | ||
| It goes on to say that college graduates pay more in taxes and make, quote, better decisions about health, marriage, and parenting. | ||
| It also goes on to say that they acknowledge the limits of the college for all approach that has been pushed for decades, but they're saying that it remains the gold standard for most as opposed to an alternative program. | ||
| What is your reaction? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I wouldn't say it's the gold standard. | |
| It sounds like that op-ed is discussing the four-year path and perhaps graduate work beyond. | ||
| And there's absolutely a role for that. | ||
| Of course, I went to college. | ||
| I have graduate degrees. | ||
| I understand the argument that's being made there, but it's not one or the other. | ||
| It's what is the best fit for the student. | ||
| And what's most important to remember about career education is these are often non-traditional students. | ||
| These are people in many cases who have tried something else and it just hasn't worked out, have had things happen in their life that are leading them in a different direction. | ||
| For example, single moms, veterans returning from the workforce, people who've been downsized, maybe going through a divorce, whatever it might be, tried a different educational setting, ventures didn't work out. | ||
| So we are looking at students that this might be not only their second chance, but maybe their last chance at higher education, at making a better life for themselves, of having a family sustaining wage. | ||
| So I don't think it's an apples to apples comparison to look at what you could have gone to a four-year school. | ||
| Maybe that wasn't an available option for you. | ||
| Maybe it's not the best for your life circumstances. | ||
| And the opportunity that we provide is for students from that non-traditional setting. | ||
| We have callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We'll start with Jane in Augusta, Maine. | ||
| And she is on the line for experience with career and technical education. | ||
| Good morning, Jane. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Jason. | |
| This is Jane. | ||
| And I am familiar with career education. | ||
| I worked as a registered licensed dietician, and I've worked among many practice areas in a college, technical, school, training certified food managers. | ||
| And today is World Food Day from the World Health Organization. | ||
| And we need to celebrate more what food service workers do, all people, food servers, food managers, the training that's involved in that. | ||
| And I'd just like you to speak about that and how it relates to all areas of training for food service workers, because a lot of times it involves the food safety code, if you're in a nursing home, Medicare guidelines, and those sort of things. | ||
| Because food safety is very important. | ||
| It's the responsibility of all people. | ||
| Thank you very much for your time. | ||
| Well, Jane, there's a few things that you mentioned there. | ||
| We do support the culinary arts programs. | ||
| There are several excellent schools across the country. | ||
| There are members. | ||
| And when you think about the culinary arts, it does encompass some of what you were talking about. | ||
| You also talked about, for example, nursing homes and maybe health care settings and having folks that are highly skilled and well-trained in helping patients in unique settings. | ||
| So I would agree. | ||
| I mean, these are exactly the type of jobs that are needed in society. | ||
| Often, unfortunately, they are undervalued, but they are of great importance. | ||
| And people who have an aptitude and an interest in those type of professions are very important to society. | ||
| This question is coming in from Tex from Jesse in Tucson, Arizona. | ||
| Asks, can foreign students attend private trade schools on F1 student visas? | ||
| Does the guest have any opinion about that considering the current political climate? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The issue of foreign students is not as big an issue for us. | |
| When you think of the higher education debates that President Trump is having and the Department of Education is having, things like transgender athletes, campus protests, foreign students and visas. | ||
| We do have schools that have foreign students. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There have been some issues related to what the president has done and the access for students being able to continue. | |
| But for the most part, the larger issues that you're hearing debated politically in higher education generally don't apply to our types of schools. | ||
| Let's talk with Christopher in Long Island, New York, on the line for experience with. | ||
| Good morning, Christopher. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hi, Christopher. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| My question is, as a general manager in a family-owned plumbing business on the North Shore of Long Island, we've reached out several times in the tens to if not hundreds of times to our local vocational extension board, offering to either help them with getting instructors or in placement of students that they've graduated. | ||
| We get an interest from the person doing the intake on a call, but we never get a call back. | ||
| How do we motivate Nassau County VEEB? to respond back to us because we would be willing to hire these people once they presented us the two certificates. | ||
| The local workforce boards are very important in this process because they do work with employers. | ||
| It sounds like you're not having the best experience, but they do work with the local employers. | ||
| And ideally, the employers, the workforce boards, and the institutions of higher education would work together to identify the jobs that are needed in that area and to help make sure that the curriculum that's provided, especially in career schools, meets the skills that are necessary for employers. | ||
| You talked about plumbing. | ||
| That is a huge issue. | ||
| Electricians, construction, home building, things like that in relation to major commercial projects. | ||
| I mentioned welding and HVAC and all the rest. | ||
| So it is critically important that there's a positive relationship between the local workforce boards and the employers. | ||
| I'm sorry to hear that this particular employer doesn't have a good relationship. | ||
| It sounds like, but it is really important that schools, employers, and the workforce boards work together. | ||
| This is another text coming in from Greg, Cleveland, Ohio. | ||
| Notes that he's a teacher. | ||
| It says, this is also divisive to divide four-year colleges and trade schools. | ||
| You can throw all the money you want at trade schools. | ||
| The problem is not the funding, it's the recruitment of students. | ||
| Young people do not want, do not want to go to trade schools, period. | ||
| What role do schools and programs like yours have in recruiting and making people aware that this is a viable alternative? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there's two things. | |
| One is the idea of pitting different schools against each other. | ||
| That is certainly not what we're doing. | ||
| We recognize that there is an appropriate four-year path for many students. | ||
| What we're doing is giving an opportunity, as we talked about, for students that want to take a different path. | ||
| I would certainly disagree with the question about the students not wanting to go down that path. | ||
| I have visited over 100 of these career schools around the country. | ||
| I've seen and spoken to those students. | ||
| I've attended graduation ceremonies. | ||
| And these are often first-generation students, people who are the first in their family to seek higher education. | ||
| They're happy with what they're doing. | ||
| They feel a great sense of achievement. | ||
| So from that perspective, I would differ with the question. | ||
| But when you think about the type of career schools and the options that students have, that's definitely something that is not competitive with the four-year path. | ||
| Let's hear from Carla in New York City, line for experience with. | ||
| Good morning, Carla. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, hi. | |
| I just wanted to make a comment. | ||
| You kind of grouped nursing in with technical careers like HVACs and plumbers. | ||
| I'm a registered nurse, and I actually have a master's degree. | ||
| Nurses who practice nursing in America most have to have a bachelor's degree, so they have to go to college for four years. | ||
| If you want to go into any type of administration in a hospital and a nursing home, you have to have a master's degree. | ||
| Nurses also teach at the doctorate levels in universities because who's going to teach the nurses? | ||
| It has to be somebody with an advanced degree. | ||
| So I think for you to group nurses in with electricians and plumbers is really very misleading. | ||
| I think what you're talking about maybe is nurses' aides, patient care assistants, people like that, who don't need any college degree. | ||
| I think maybe they just kind of go to school for like maybe a year or something where they take courses and they can do that. | ||
| But that is very misleading. | ||
| And I'm actually very offended because during COVID, it was really the nursing profession who held the country together and did really a lot. | ||
| So I think for you to just make that statement is really wrong. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Goodbye. | ||
| Yes, certainly not trying to offend anybody, but it is a fact that 20% of the registered nurses in this country got their training at a for-profit school. | ||
| Many of our members are nursing schools. | ||
| About, again, one in five nurses in the country come from the career path that I'm discussing. | ||
| So I'm not comparing the skill set or the importance of the jobs related to different professions that people can take. | ||
| But it is a fact that about one-fifth of the nurses in this country come from career schools. | ||
| Some elevate, including our members, to the doctorate level, to the baccalaureate, to the master's, and even to the doctorate level. | ||
| So we have schools among our membership that have that entire career path, but there's different levels of nursing. | ||
| Clearly, if you are a nursing instructor or you have a doctorate in nursing, you have a different career trajectory and different scope of responsibilities than someone who has a certificate or even associates in nursing. | ||
| But it would be incorrect to say that the for-profit sector or the private post-secondary sector doesn't play a role in nursing because they do produce 20% of the nurses in the country. | ||
| When it comes to access, enrollment, and visibility, I want to share part of an op-ed that was in the New York Times. | ||
| It was written by Randy Weingarten, who is the president of the American Federation of Teachers. | ||
| The headline is stop trying to make everyone go to college. | ||
| During the, in her writing, she talks about the increase in states that are going to voucher programs, and this is where the opinion picks up. | ||
| She says, I propose a different strategy aligning high school to both college prep and in-demand vocational career pathways. | ||
| Just as students who plan to go to college can get a head start through advanced placement programs, high schools, colleges, and employers should work together to provide the relevant coursework to engage students in promising career opportunities. | ||
| More than 90% of students who concentrate in career and technical education graduate from high school and about three-quarters of them continue their education after high school. | ||
| Research shows that career and technical education has positive effects on students' academic achievement, high school completion, and college readiness. | ||
| What she's proposing there is being involved earlier on what is the original purpose of vocational was to prepare college while they were students while they were in school so they weren't doing more work after. | ||
| People may remember you mentioned earlier mechanics and you may have had AutoShop and they've gone into it. | ||
| What is your reaction or your thoughts on integrating better earlier on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm so happy that Randy Weingarten is taking the lead on this. | |
| I've heard her speak about it. | ||
| We've appeared on shows together having this discussion and it's such a valuable discussion to have because people of my generation at Yo Your Reference, you remember you had shop class. | ||
| You had the opportunity to take some of your curriculum at the high school level and learn about the hands-on work. | ||
| And you don't see that quite as much anymore. | ||
| And that at the time, unfortunately, was viewed as sort of the lesser path, you know, where students go that aren't going to go to the four-year school. | ||
| But now it's the path that is of interest to the students. | ||
| It's where their skill set is, it's where their interest and their aptitude is. | ||
| And Randy is exactly right. | ||
| We need that to be at not just the post-secondary level, but at the K-12 level of identifying opportunities for students who have an aptitude and an interest in using their hands, of doing skilled trades, giving them an opportunity to learn what that's all about. | ||
| And if they want to continue at the post-secondary level, they can do it. | ||
| Let's hear from Cindy in Lake Elsinore, California. | ||
| Good morning, Cindy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I will second the vote of the person in charge of the teachers' unions and stuff. | ||
| That there was a shift of what was taught in the schools. | ||
| It shifted to IT, computers, all that stuff. | ||
| When the kids had the option of taking courses, two courses, and it shifted. | ||
| And now it's a melding of both the IT because it's more technical, you're right, but they don't offer wood shop, they don't offer construction, they don't offer automotive repair and stuff like that from middle school through high school to where those students can learn that, | ||
| hey, I might not be good at certain things in the way that teachers teach, but if it's a hands-on application to these younger kids, they know they can say, I like this, and continue on. | ||
| And public education is paid for through taxes. | ||
| And if they decide that they want to go to a college or a technical vocational school and continue on and pay, you know, for that education, they've got that earlier and they know. | ||
| They can get it in their head. | ||
| You know, they're kind of experimenting at middle school and high school as far as the things they like to try. | ||
| But the shift in more academic college prep, I think, discourages people. | ||
| And I've talked to many hands-on plumbers, air conditioner people, automotive people. | ||
| It's hard work, you get dirty, but it's technical now, too. | ||
| And I have a brother that was in that career and stuff and watched him over the length of his career. | ||
| And he's probably retired now, too. | ||
| But he had to learn the diagnostics and the computer training to upgrade his skills. | ||
| But if you start younger, it's better than just somebody knowing that they're better hands-on than they are, I don't want to say, it's the intelligence and the way that they learn. | ||
| The hands-on works a lot better for a lot of kids. | ||
| And if they know that prior to getting out of high school, it's a leg up. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| And the caller mentions computer programs, information technology, cyber security. | ||
| These are very high growth professions as well in addition to the skilled trades, get your hands dirty type jobs that she was talking about. | ||
| But having the student the opportunity, giving the student the opportunity to identify where their skill set is and what is of interest to them at the high school level is critically important to allowing them to get into the right career path. | ||
| As I mentioned, many of our students are non-traditional students. | ||
| They have tried other things. | ||
| They're looking at a change in career. | ||
| So it's all types throughout your life. | ||
| But the key to all of it is having the opportunity of being able to identify the school that is of interest to you, the program that suits your needs, and looking at your life circumstances. | ||
| A lot of our programs offer flexibility, evening classes, working students who maybe are holding down a job, raising their families. | ||
| They want to go on weekends. | ||
| So the flexibility is very important too. | ||
| We started our discussion talking about President Trump's suggestion of shifting funding. | ||
| This is something that the Trump administration, before that, has made a priority, even in his first term, is something that he wants to focus on. | ||
| Talk about the impact of his legislative actions and also recent federal or federal legislation on these programs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
President Trump has done a lot, both in his speaking and his ideas, but also through his executive orders related to career education. | |
| He's talked about revising the accreditation system throughout the country to identify some of these issues that we've talked about and allow students a greater opportunity and have accountability at schools. | ||
| He's talked about apprenticeships, which are a critical component to job training, working with employers, giving students that hands-on experience that we're talking about, and putting the funding behind it to back it up, something that he has talked about. | ||
| So when you look at the Department of Education, we're expecting that as they get into the negotiated rulemaking session, they're going to be looking at a lot of these issues that have come up politically in the past. | ||
| And the Congress currently, with the reconciliation bill, the one big beautiful bill that you hear about, there's a lot of higher education provisions in there. | ||
| So we're very excited about the fact that career education is part of the discussion. | ||
| Hopefully we're getting the politics of focusing on one type of institution over another politically and looking at all schools and holding all schools accountable so that all students can benefit from that accountability. | ||
| I think that's where we're going. | ||
| You also mentioned a program that is out in Seattle, one of two that you have out there. | ||
| A headline from Cascade PBS is why Washington Students Are Choosing Career and Technical Education Programs. | ||
| And it talks about the role that state legislatures are playing as well. | ||
| Tell us about that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This school that you're talking about, one is in Houston, the other one is in Seattle. | |
| It's called the Divers Institute. | ||
| It's in Seattle, and they teach them underwater construction, so underwater welding. | ||
| And there is a role, of course, every state is different, but there is a role for state funding as well as federal funding. | ||
| And one of the issues that we talk about politically is our schools, of course, don't get taxpayer subsidies in the same way that community colleges do. | ||
| So the taxpayer is paying for that student's education one way or the other. | ||
| They're either paying through the subsidies at the state level or they're paying through the Title IV Pell Grant and student loan programs. | ||
| But those programs, especially the one you're talking about in Seattle, I mean, it costs a lot to put on that program, to train those students, to take them out and do what they do under the water and give them the training in the curriculum before then. | ||
| So working with all levels, both state funding and federal funding, and making sure that that student, that their education is available to them, is really important. | ||
| Let's talk with Jeff in Somerville, Massachusetts, line with experience. | ||
| Good morning, Jeff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think there's a couple of things I want to touch on. | |
| And one is the disparity in the value of labor. | ||
| You know, take teachers and nurses, for example. | ||
| And in my opinion, objectively, they're pretty overworked. | ||
| I know nurses and teachers, and I've heard stories. | ||
| And even if I didn't, I think it's pretty clear that the level of work they do is really intense, especially nurses. | ||
| And, you know, you look over in the tech industry, and it's a totally different world where, you know, people are hanging around having conversations. | ||
| They're getting their corporate lunches. | ||
| They're doing their four to six hour days. | ||
| You know, I know of people who get their bathroom time monitored, and they're grown adults, and they only get 15 minutes of bathroom time a day. | ||
| And I think there's an inherent flaw that we have going on here that just totally disrupts, you know, everything. | ||
| And when I tell these tech people that anyone can do what they do, it's not that special. | ||
| They get all offended because they think they're special and they think they're worth their six-figure salary when in reality there's so many people that work harder for them. | ||
| But I also don't want to get too disillusioned here with the massive call to human labor. | ||
| It's as if the country is trying to gather up its labor slaves so we can throw them in their construction jobs and watch them hobble around from all their bodily injuries that they accumulate on their low pay. | ||
| So there's something bigger at play here. | ||
| And it's not just filling the gap or the need for our human bodies to benefit our wealthy overlords who are siphoning from us. | ||
| And I've watched this for my whole life. | ||
| Everything's going downhill. | ||
| Jeff, we'll get a response from Brian. | ||
| Or from Jason. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the caller is underestimating the work that's done in the IT sector. | |
| But leaving that aside, I do think the caller made a good point about societal value with related to certain professions because there are very important professions. | ||
| Caller mentions teaching as one. | ||
| I would put certainly medical assisting, dental assisting, cosmetology, you know, that is a field of passion for somebody who has a passion and a skill for that. | ||
| And those are all areas that you need a certificate to enter the workforce. | ||
| You have to have training. | ||
| You have to go through the higher education system. | ||
| So there is a cost associated with that, as I talked about. | ||
| If you're a Pell Grant student, you're coming from a very low socioeconomic background. | ||
| You're going to need the help. | ||
| If you're going to attend a community college, the taxpayers are going to fund that through the state level. | ||
| But many of these professions, the student who is entering into it needs the taxpayers' help one way or the other to fund that. | ||
| So policymakers look at what is the postgraduate success of that student. | ||
| What are they earning? | ||
| Are they earning enough to pay back the loans? | ||
| Are they earning enough to pay back the value that the taxpayer has put into that student's education? | ||
| But there's also the value to the job that that student is doing. | ||
| And when you look at those professions that I just mentioned, many of them are jobs that don't pay as much as other opportunities, but they're jobs that are important to society. | ||
| They're jobs that the student wants to do. | ||
| And they're jobs that you need a credential to enter into the workforce. | ||
| So I think when you look at creating public policy, those are all things you need to consider when looking at the accountability of the schools in putting forward these students. | ||
| Something the caller mentioned and you did too just now is the earnings for people who go through CTE programs. | ||
| How do those typically compare to somebody who doesn't go beyond high school and those who do graduate from a traditional four-year college? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It depends. | |
| You could become a flight attendant with only a high school diploma. | ||
| You could become a union tradesperson potentially without going through a higher education and you can do well for yourself. | ||
| It's just, you know, your career path and what your family circumstances are. | ||
| If you are a nurse, we had a call by the nurse, you are going to accumulate over time and do very well for yourself as you gain experience. | ||
| If you're a tradesman or woman in welding and in the construction trades, you have the potential to do very well. | ||
| Truck driving, a huge need in this country, and the employers are clamoring for new drivers who are skilled and able to do those jobs. | ||
| Information technology, cybersecurity, the two fastest growing jobs in the entire country are both related to clean energy today. | ||
| It's offshore wind turbines and solar panels. | ||
| So being able to train the workforce for that growing job need is important too. | ||
| And with all of these, the demand sets what that employee is going to be able to make in the job market. | ||
| If there's a high school student watching or somebody else who is listening to this and thinks that this is a path that they want to go down, where do they start? | ||
| Where can they go? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you would look in your local region. | |
| First of all, I would assume they would want to probably stay close to home. | ||
| We have information on our website about scholarships that are available for students who want to pursue the skilled trade. | ||
| So our website is career.org. | ||
| So students who want to learn more about each of these trades and the financial, you know, the outcome that's possible, but also the scholarships that might be available you can find through our website. | ||
| But a search of your local community, looking at our schools, looking at community colleges, maybe talking to employers, depending on where they are in the educational process. | ||
| Do your research and make sure you pick the school that's right for you. | ||
| Let's talk with Harold in West Palm Beach, Florida. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Harold. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Wonderful topic this morning as a passionate educator as I am and I'm enjoying Ms. Altmar and his wealth of knowledge and experience in this critical topic this morning. | ||
| I have a very unusual background how it came to where I am. | ||
| I'm not going to take too much time, but I started in high school in the industrial art class that I had in seventh period and it was very end that I got interested in welding. | ||
| I did not know anything about welding. | ||
| The sparks really got my interest. | ||
| And unfortunately, after I got my diploma in high school, I got into trouble. | ||
| I went into a youthful offender program for about nine months, came out of there on probation. | ||
| And what did I do? | ||
| I enrolled into Apex Technical School for six months to learn welding and blueprint fabrication. | ||
| I did that for 10, 11 years. | ||
| I worked with an aviation company overhauling combustion chambers as a welder. | ||
| We had to be certified twice a year to maintain that position. | ||
| And that catapulted me there on to get my bachelor's, my master in educational leadership, and wrap up my PhD. | ||
| I'm currently an adjunct professor and I'm a school district employee, and I encourage all our secondary students to not only look at the path of four-year schooling, however, look at also the possibility of going to a trade school, which you at the end may find your passion to go into higher education. | ||
| So I'm a proponent for both. | ||
| It shouldn't be one pitch against the other. | ||
| We have to do a better job, I would say, in literally marketing and having schools bring in for simplies trade schools. | ||
| We don't have that anymore. | ||
| So I think that with that, we can really move our education system forward. | ||
| And we really have to really get our job core back on track. | ||
| I'm not going to get into politics of that, but I have a family member that went to Job Corps and established Swum Job Corps, hospitality certification, and have a thriving coffee business at this point. | ||
| So I listened to your comments. | ||
| What's interesting, talking about having a business at this point, is many of our schools do train in entrepreneurship and customer service and giving the students some background in the potential of opening up their own business. | ||
| If you look at cosmetology, for example, that's certainly something that students aspire to do. | ||
| So making sure that they are exposed to the business aspect of what that might look like. | ||
| And is that really something that you want to do? | ||
| And many of them have been very successful. | ||
| And I would agree on welding. | ||
| Welding is a great career. | ||
| It's one of these jobs where there's enormous demand, both men and women. | ||
| There's great growth in women going into welding in the skilled trades. | ||
| So I would agree with the caller that these are schools that are providing opportunity, and it doesn't have to be for people to go down the four-year path, but to do what they like to do and something that's a benefit to society and that fills the skills gap that employers are talking about. | ||
| We have one last call for you. | ||
| It is Bob in Margaretville, New York. | ||
| Good morning, Bob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'd like to take, so far, I'm 100% with you. | ||
| I had a successful son went through the BOCES program down on Long Island. | ||
| He's currently doing very well. | ||
| They got a business running, successful business running in South Carolina. | ||
| My question to you is with my other child, my daughter, who also went to a BOCES program. | ||
| They're big in the Northeast. | ||
| I don't know what you reference them around the rest of the country. | ||
| But it's the school districts, centralized location, plumbing, electrician, culinary, anything that you can imagine. | ||
| So my daughter takes a DNA course, works over on the island for Mount Sinai affiliate, moves to Virginia. | ||
| They did not recognize any of her certificates. | ||
| Moved down there during the, prior to the pandemic, there was a great need for these people. | ||
| She had to go to college for two years to get recertified as a CNA after working eight years. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| There's where I got a problem. | ||
| If you're certified in one state to carry over, I think a quick check of recertification into the state that you're moving to, and they look at your credentials, I think that should be sufficient. | ||
| Should the state want to add a little bit here and there for their medical requirements, that's great also. | ||
| I'm 70. | ||
| I watched BOCES. | ||
| I did the welding like that last gentleman. | ||
| Okay, all the shots. | ||
| I happened to work for a school district and they changed it to technology. | ||
| All of that kind of went out the window. | ||
| You learned on a computer and then you applied it. | ||
| You weren't making projects, foundry, welding, any of that. | ||
| The BOCES programs and to the feller in Nashville County, get in touch with your BOSES. | ||
| That's how my son found his job. | ||
| They posted those jobs and he went out, boom. | ||
| So I'd like maybe to address that if we could. | ||
| The certifications. | ||
| You did it for the nurses during the pandemic, but you got to recognize. | ||
| And the last thing I'll tell you is New York State with their Class 1 drivers. | ||
| If you had that, you could go to any state. | ||
| That has since gone over the last 50, 60 years. | ||
| Everybody wants to get in on the money end of it. | ||
| So that's my comment, and I'd appreciate your thoughts on that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| This is a big issue. | ||
| One of the things that we also do at our association is we manage state associations. | ||
| We have 17 states that are under the umbrella of state associations that we manage. | ||
| And the ability of a student to be educated and get certified in one state, nursing is one example. | ||
| It does apply to other jobs as well. | ||
| To be certified in one state and then take those credentials and your experience to another state, it's not automatic that you're going to be certified in the other state. | ||
| So there are compacts that are established through nursing and these other jobs where a state would agree to accept the credentials from other states, even though they might not align perfectly with what the credentials would be if that student had gained their education in that state. | ||
| So it is an important issue. | ||
| It's something that I think we're making progress on around the country. | ||
| And it's helpful in a society that's somewhat transient to be able to go into a different state, carry out your same occupation, and not have to take on additional educational requirements. | ||
| Jason Altmeyer is president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities. | ||
| You can find out more about the organization online at career.org. | ||
| Jason, thank you so much for being with us this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| We are wrapping up today's Washington Journal with more of your calls during open form. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| The lines there on your screen, Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | |
| This weekend, Diane Kiesel, a retired New York Supreme Court judge and author of the book When Charlie Met Joan, talks about legendary actor Charlie Chaplin's legal trials and the implications for American law, celebrity culture, and Cold War politics. | ||
| On the presidency, Jared Cohen, with his book Life After Power, addresses the question, how does the former head of the free world spend his retirement? | ||
| He looks at seven presidents, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush for the answers. | ||
| A look back at the Allied invasion of Normandy 81 years later with a U.S. Army Air Forces film detailing the planning and after-battle summaries of the airborne invasion on D-Day. | ||
| Then author Garrett Graff on his oral history of the invasion. | ||
| And U.S. Army Film details the logistics of treating wounded soldiers in the field and English hospitals during the invasion. | ||
| Exploring the American story. | ||
| Watch American History TV every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history. | ||
| Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | ||
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| At 2.30 p.m. Eastern, Book TV presents coverage of this year's Gaithersburg Book Festival in Maryland. | ||
| Authors will discuss wrongful conviction, AI and art, the American Revolution, and more. | ||
| Then, at 8 p.m. Eastern, Pennsylvania Republican Senator Dave McCormick and his wife Dina share their book, Who Believed in You, which talks about the importance of mentors and shares stories of successful politicians and business leaders who have had their lives changed by them. | ||
| And at 10 p.m. Eastern on Afterwards, Stephanie Land discusses her path from working as a maid to earning a journalism degree and later writing about the working poor in her book Maid. | ||
| She's interviewed by Rachel Schneider, co-author of The Financial Diaries. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We are in open form up until 10 a.m. | ||
| If there's a public policy issue you'd like to discuss, you can go ahead and give us a call. | ||
| We will start with Diane in Burberton, Ohio, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Diane. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| I mean, I did it again, Tammy. | ||
| Anyway, I apologize. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Earlier, a woman called in from Ohio stating that migrants were receiving care, you know, like welfare. | |
| And I know for a fact, especially in the state of Ohio, they do not receive anything unless you're a United States citizen in some form or another. | ||
| Because my sister retired from the jobs in family services, so that idea is out. | ||
| Another thing that I was going to say is this idea of trickle-down economy is false, especially since years ago I was an investigative for Workers' Comp. | ||
| Those employers would do anything not to allow those injuries to be paid for. | ||
| They don't care. | ||
| Most employers don't give a diagonal. | ||
| That's why once that law that allowed for NAFTA to go through, they got the heck out of town as quick as they could because they knew that they would be become rich. | ||
| Another thing I wanted to say is I watch this show very much. | ||
| And the Cato Institute, who they especially do nothing but get data, stated several times 90 to 95 percent of the fentanyl coming into the United States is brought by Americans. | ||
| And I also know that only 1%, according to their statistics, of migrants are doing anything illegally. | ||
| So how is Trump getting all these people coming in and taking them out of the country if only 1% are doing something illegal? | ||
| I think he is the one that's doing something illegal. | ||
| Another thing is there are a movie out called Straw, and it shows a woman who had two jobs. | ||
| Yes, it's a movie, but this is like real life, where she went and worked hard to provide for herself and her child. | ||
| And if she would have taken off work in order to be recertified every year for Medicaid, if Medicaid was entitled to her, she would have lost time for money. | ||
| Diana, I got to move on, but appreciate you calling in. | ||
| We'll go to Jeff in Tampa, Florida, Lion for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jeff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| How are you doing? | ||
| Doing well, Jeff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sounds great. | |
| I actually had three items here, and there are more questions than solutions, but I'm going to offer some. | ||
| In terms of Medicaid, I guess Mike Johnson talked a little bit about 1.4 million illegal immigrants are on the Medicaid system. | ||
| And I'm just wondering, I've done some research on this. | ||
| About 10 million illegal immigrants or whatever you want, undocumented workers, are actually in the workforce paying state, federal, and FICA taxes, and they're not getting anything in return. | ||
| So my question is, I'm wondering where those tax revenues are going, because maybe what we could do is take those tax revenues, move them into Medicaid, take care of those, especially those 1.4 million that have families and children, and then go ahead and change the law if we want to change the law. | ||
| But it might be a solution. | ||
| And again, my question is, where are those tax revenues going right now? | ||
| The second thing is they had a career education person on, and I couldn't get through. | ||
| But in terms of career and technical funding, I was in that role for many years, and we were always kind of looked at through the colleges and universities like as the red-headed stepchild. | ||
| Those departments would get large budgets, but those budgets would never really, there was never enough funding allocated down to those career, technical, and departments that were actually providing those non-degree type programs. | ||
| So, I think that's one of the areas that a lot of these universities and colleges should be looking at. | ||
| And finally, on the opportunity curve, it seems like training follows products that are already in the maturity phase in the United States, and there's not enough innovative training that's being done to look at the future. | ||
| What kind of training that's needed maybe four or five years down the road. | ||
| And I was wondering why we're not emphasizing that. | ||
| I mean, we do a private training course for nurses in natural biologics, which we fill almost every time we run the course. | ||
| And they use that for clinical applications, but they're not trained in it. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| Those are my three questions. | ||
| That was Jeff in Florida. | ||
| Let's go to Kay and McIntosh, New Mexico, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Kay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Lovely to be on C-SPAN. | ||
| I've been listening for years. | ||
| My high school graduation was more than six decades ago. | ||
| I was in a family that had been college educated. | ||
| I was an only child. | ||
| There was enough money to pay for college. | ||
| My parents had met at college, and the natural idea was: well, of course, you'll go to college. | ||
| So in high school, we had the college prep career requiring so much English history, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| They did have, they didn't call it shop hearts, I can't remember. | ||
| This was strictly gender-specific divide. | ||
| The ladies had household arts for cooking and sewing, and the fellows had whatever they did of, you know, they got to work with saws and tools and so forth. | ||
| My point is, when I got to the point of graduation and I had been accepted at college, I went and had a job that was trivial, and we knew it was trivial. | ||
| But the scholarships these days that are associated with lotteries seem to have a requirement that you go straight from high school into college. | ||
| I think if you can take a year or so off, and people deride McDonald's as, well, if you can't do college, you go to McDonald's. | ||
| They have their own pathway. | ||
| That's not bad. | ||
| But if those lottery scholarships can be available for those people who just want to take a year out, they're tired of studying for tests and they want to get a little more, get their feet wet, they can go work somewhere as a learner, as a helper. | ||
| Even as all they're doing is greeting customers coming in, they start hearing the lingo that goes with the career path. | ||
| That was Kay in New Mexico. | ||
| Ted in Warrington, Oregon, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Ted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Anyway, I wish I would have been on with your previous guest. | ||
| I am a journeyman plumber. | ||
| I've been retired for 10 years. | ||
| I walked out when I was 56. | ||
| I went to a five-year school. | ||
| I had been a plumber in the Air Force, active duty, just to get into this whole country club. | ||
| We have a school that when I went through it, they had an enrollment of about 25 students every year, maybe every other year. | ||
| And now, in local 290 in Portland, they've got 700 apprentices in school. | ||
| And I just want to say that it's probably the best thing I've ever seen. | ||
| The new generation is the future. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That was Ted in Oregon. | ||
| Rip in Fredericksburg, Virginia, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Rip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| I am conscious of everybody riding in the road and texting. | ||
| My son, Hunter Garner, was run off the road by his best friend and killed at June 10, 2007. | ||
| And he was 16. | ||
| And we, to this day, are still a little bit in shock over that. | ||
| But my wife started Project Yellow Light with the Martin Agency and the Ad Council, NITS and Noise, AT ⁇ T, Mazda, U-Haul, Elephant Insurance. | ||
| And my point in telling you all this is that, you know, our youth is our future, and our youth is acting so irresponsibly on the road. | ||
| And I hope that everybody can find some way to just pull off the road and instead of texting while you're driving, just pull off the road. | ||
| It takes two seconds. | ||
| I mean, you'll enjoy it, actually. | ||
| And anyway, there it is. | ||
| Don't want to hold you up, but Project Yellow Light. | ||
| Yeah, we're sorry to hear about your loss. | ||
| It sounds like you're coming up on the anniversary of the loss of your son. | ||
| What are you going to do to honor him on that day? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Every year, a billboard company and the largest billboard company in the world gives us $3.5 million worth of billboard. | |
| And so Clear Channel gives, we take iHeartRadio Jingle and Why You Don't Text and Drive, Project Yellow Light Video, $8,000 Scholarship, Why You Don't Text and Drive. | ||
| And Billboard Artwork, Why You Don't Text and Drive, $2,000. | ||
| They give us three billboards in Times Square, and we take up those families. | ||
| And they get to show what they have created on those billboards. | ||
| Clear Channel is a fabulous billboard company that really lends us great credibility and helps us along with the ad councils incredible. | ||
| So that's what we're doing, Julie. | ||
| We have a new Labrador Retriever, Otis B. Redding, the Martin Agency named him. | ||
| I didn't want that name. | ||
| But anyway, Julie's going up, I think, the 27th to New York. | ||
| I can't go this year. | ||
| And that'll be what that is. | ||
| But everybody, you know, cry for Hunter. | ||
| He was such an incredible guy. | ||
| Rip, give us your website one more time for people who are interested. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Project Yellow Light. | |
| God bless you, dear. | ||
| Good day. | ||
| And that was Rip in Virginia. | ||
| Michael, also in Virginia, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just have a general opinion about why the American people, especially the Republicans, made a decision to elect Donald Trump versus anybody else, even during the primary. | ||
| It seems like they wanted to suspend any kind of due process, democratic process, liberty, or anything, any type of law that would be normal, that we were used to, just because they feel like the Congress is not doing what they're supposed to do. | ||
| The immigration problem is out of control. | ||
| So therefore, it's just sort of like let's do make a deal with the devil. | ||
| It's elect Donald Trump, who himself is a convicted criminal. | ||
| Let him do whatever you want. | ||
| Let us entrust our freedom, independence, and all the values that we have as a free nation to a billionaire, another billionaire of Elon Musk, rather than to selecting someone who is duly qualified and someone who has a better moral compass than Donald Trump and Elon Musk. | ||
| So right now, I think the American people, especially the Republicans, have to wake up and understand that those are not something that we can trade. | ||
| Those values have to be primary. | ||
| Those are the ones that we have to believe in, and they have to be the reason why we elect a president or any official for that matter, a congressman, a senator, or a governor. | ||
| Not because there is something that we really don't agree with, whether it's a social issue or an immigration issue. | ||
| It's just that, you know, I feel like the American people decided to make a deal with the devil. | ||
| And we are now seeing what happens when we elect someone who has very little moral competence. | ||
| That was Michael in Virginia. | ||
| And Michael mentioning Elon Musk during his comments. | ||
| This is a headline in The Hill. | ||
| It says Musk floats, quote, the American party after Trump Tiff. | ||
| The article says that Elon Musk floated a new political party on Friday after falling out with President Trump over the big, beautiful bill. | ||
| He launched a Thursday poll on the social platform X, which he owns, asking about whether or not the country needed a new faction for political nominees. | ||
| He said that the people have spoken. | ||
| A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% of the middle. | ||
| He says, and exactly 80% of people agree. | ||
| This is fate. | ||
| Musk wrote citing numbers from his survey. | ||
| He followed up with a potential name for the group, the American Party. | ||
| He says in recent days, Musk has railed against Trump for suggesting the United States increase its national debt by $4 trillion as proposed in the bill. | ||
| It was that argument between President Trump and Elon Musk playing out this week. | ||
| President Trump was asked about it yesterday aboard Air Force One. | ||
| Here are his remarks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Elon Musk left the White House, to the administration at large. | |
| I think that's what. | ||
| What about the Tesla? | ||
| I gave him a key. | ||
| I tried very hard, and that's why I haven't done it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's your point about when it's work, then, as of this point, for the political administration? | |
| How do you think his doge did at the end of the savings? | ||
| Oh, I think it helped us a lot. | ||
| I think it helped our thinking. | ||
| And it's not finished at all. | ||
| We are basically taking it over. | ||
| We're doing a job. | ||
| Many of those people remain with us, and they're going to remain with us at Raymond. | ||
| It's terrific. | ||
| We saved hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
| It's terrific. | ||
| And it's going further. | ||
| I mean, I'd give you the answer actually at the end of two years because a lot of it is out into the future. | ||
| But it was a big saving. | ||
| We had a good mindset. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And what do you know about the Tesla? | |
| Are you going to keep it or are you going to... | ||
| I haven't thought about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you have any plans to cause? | |
| I mean, I hope he does well with Tesla. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you have any plans to speak with Mr. Musk? | |
| This was one of your closest advisors. | ||
| No, I don't have any plans. | ||
| Somebody made a mistake. | ||
| A lot of reporters have been calling me. | ||
| I didn't call any reporter. | ||
| A lot of reporters, they asked me to say it. | ||
| No, I'm not even thinking about that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There apparently were these efforts, and this is what I read, to bring you guys you and Elon back together. | |
| So those efforts are, where are they? | ||
| No, no, there are efforts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've been asked about it, but I'm not really interested in that. | |
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Let's hear from Jerry in Tarhill, North Carolina, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Jerry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Well, I would just like to say good morning. | ||
| We are being divided. | ||
| The world being divided. | ||
| Not just America. | ||
| And it seems like we're going through a process where the news media is making a lot of things pass, and we did not let us know what's going on. | ||
| You're like, Trump wanting to have a 21-year-old in one of his cabinets. | ||
| And the news media is like Germany. | ||
| They're thousands of people. | ||
| Now, I get one of them. | ||
| I'm a 72-year-old victim, and I see you. | ||
| I hope the world see you. | ||
| They will let me speak. | ||
| That was Jerry in North Carolina. | ||
| Richard in Chicago, Illinois, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Richard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the House of Representatives voted to appropriate $1,000 savings account for every newborn child in the United States. | |
| What the Senate ought to do is add a free complimentary DNA ancestry test to every newborn in the United States with the results of the ancestry test stamped onto the birth certificate. | ||
| Every youngster growing up in America, I don't know what his ancestry is. | ||
| And that's my comment for this morning. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Richard in Illinois. | ||
| Kim in Ohio, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Kim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm a transgender American, and I'm very concerned about what Mr. Trump is doing, especially dismissing a colonel in the Space Force just for being transgender. | ||
| And I've received a lot of prejudice and discrimination myself. | ||
| So it's so unfair to be treated this way just because you're different. | ||
| That was Kim in Ohio. | ||
| Jerry in Crane, Texas, line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, Jerry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| How's it going today? | ||
| Doing well, Jerry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have a question for the people who run Washington Journal, a show I've been watching almost daily for 10 years. | |
| I check in almost every day. | ||
| And I've been checking in lately in particular because I'm waiting to hear something about the book by Jake Tapper, CNN, Alex Thompson Axios. | ||
| I'm sure you're aware. | ||
| They just wrote a book called Original Sin. | ||
| There have been other books come out as well. | ||
| And I know you guys like to have authors on, but you haven't had this author on, these authors on. | ||
| Jerry, we are going to have Jake Tapper on our program not this coming week, but the week after. | ||
| So stay tuned. | ||
| Stay tuned. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're busy. | ||
| They have work to do and they're making their rounds. | ||
| But we have them. | ||
| They're on our radar. | ||
| And I believe it's on the 17th, but don't quote me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We've been on about every show except yours, and I really appreciate you guys finally coming around to it. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| No problem, Jerry. | ||
| Rita in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Rita. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I just want to say, I think that it's really disgusting that Donald Trump wants to have a military parade that just happens to be on his birthday. | ||
| I mean, he's always crying to blues about wanting to smash money that's being spent. | ||
| But yet he's mostly smashing programs for affecting the veterans, the children, and senior citizens. | ||
| But yet he says that the millions spent on this parade is nothing but peanuts. | ||
| The only reason why he wants to have a parade is because Putin had a parade. | ||
| And you know the old expression goes: monkey see, monkey do. | ||
| And as far as the cost, as he, you know, for this parade and everything, as far as he's concerned about being peanuts, he's the biggest nut of all. | ||
| And I think that all the Republicans in the Congress and the Senate that are too cowardly to stand up to Trump when he's doing things that they know is terribly wrong, but yet they won't say anything about it. | ||
| They better hope that when midterms go around, that they still have a job. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Rita. | ||
| This is a headline on CNBC right now. | ||
| Trump announces U.S. trade talks in London next week. | ||
| It says that Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and two other Trump administration officials will meet their Chinese counterparts in London on Monday for new trade talks. | ||
| President Donald Trump said, Besant, who has been leading the administration's efforts to craft a deal with Beijing, will be joined by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamison Greer. | ||
| Trump said, Trump writing on social media, the meeting should go very well. | ||
| Thank you for your attention to this matter. | ||
| It says that CNBC has contacted the Chinese Embassy in Washington for more information on Trump's announcement. | ||
| The spokesperson for the embassy did not immediately reply to a request for comment. | ||
| It says that Trump had first revealed that further trade talks were planned after he held a lengthy phone call with President Xi Jinping on Thursday. | ||
| We have one last call for today. | ||
| It's David and Chadbourne, North Carolina, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, I was just wanting to call in this transgender issue that I see that's just heating up. | ||
| It seems as though that the transgender boys are wanting to play on the girls' team. | ||
| Why don't they just simply play on the boys' team? | ||
| And that way, everything as far as the physical, the physicality of these people are equal. | ||
| It's more equal and totally unfair for the girls when you have a male playing on another team against you. | ||
| I thought that would be something that's something that somebody needs to look at. | ||
| Let's bring up. | ||
| Put them on the board's team. | ||
| Let them play on the boys' team. | ||
| You have a good day. | ||
| That was David in North Carolina. | ||
| Our last call for today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Thank you for being with us. | ||
| We'll be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern and 4 a.m. Pacific with another edition. | ||
| Until then, enjoy your Saturday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government politics and public policy from Washington to across the country. | |
| Coming up Sunday morning, Hudson Institute Defense Strategy Senior Fellow Aaron McClain on the recent Ukrainian drone strike on Russia's Air Force and lessons for U.S. readiness. | ||
| Then Sophia Tripoli, Health Policy Senior Director at Families USA, discusses the impact of the GOP budget bill on Medicaid and healthcare programs. | ||
| Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Sunday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | ||
| This weekend, Diane Kiesel, a retired New York Supreme Court judge and author of the book When Charlie Met Joan, talks about legendary actor Charlie Chaplin's legal trials and the implications for American law, celebrity culture, and Cold War politics. | ||
| On the presidency, Jared Cohen, with his book Life After Power, addresses the question, how does the former head of the free world spend his retirement? | ||
| He looks at seven presidents, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush for the answers. | ||
| A look back at the Allied invasion of Normandy 81 years later, with a U.S. Army Air Forces film detailing the planning and after-battle summaries of the airborne invasion on D-Day. | ||
| Then author Garrett Graff on his oral history of the invasion. | ||
| And U.S. Army film details the logistics of treating wounded soldiers in the field and English hospitals during the invasion. | ||
| Exploring the American story. | ||
| Watch American History TV every weekend. | ||
| And find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history. | ||
| A count of two balls and one strike. | ||
| And a swing of a base hit landfill. | ||
| Tune in Wednesday to C-SPAN's live coverage of the Congressional Baseball Game coming to you from Nationals Park. | ||
| Since 1909, this tradition has united Democrats and Republicans on the field for a spirited evening of camaraderie and competition. | ||
| And this is Drilled into Center Field of Base Hit. | ||
| Two runs are going to score. | ||
| Don't miss the historic matchup. | ||
| Live coverage starts Wednesday at 7 p.m. Eastern on the C-SPAN Networks. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
| Oh, you think this is just a community censor? | ||
| No, it's way more than that. | ||
| Comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to create Wi-Fi-enabled lifts so students from low-income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. |