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Washington Journal. | |
| We'll take your calls and comments live. | ||
| And then Faith and Freedom Coalition Chair Ralph Reed talks about this year's Road to Majority Conference and his view of President Trump's legislative agenda. | ||
| Also, Roots Action co-founder and policy director Jeff Cohen discusses his organization and efforts to shape what the Democratic Party should stand for. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Saturday, June 28th, 2025. | ||
| The Supreme Court closed out its session yesterday with several major rulings, with the conservative supermajority delivering several key decisions supporting President Trump's agenda. | ||
| One major victory for the White House, the court's decision to limit the power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions, a tool many lower courts have used to block the implementation of dozens of President Trump's executive orders. | ||
| This morning, we want to hear your thoughts on the court's key decisions this session. | ||
| Our phone lines, for Republicans, 202-748-8001, for Democrats, 202-748-8000, and for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you'd like to text us, that number is 202-748-8003. | ||
| Please be sure to include your name and where you're writing in from. | ||
| We're also on social media at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Now, that key decision related to nationwide injunctions was tied to a case on birthright citizenship. | ||
| Here's a story about it on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Justices Curb Power of the Courts. | ||
| The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday limited the authority of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions, a decision that handed President Trump a victory in his battles with the judiciary, but left uncertain the fate of his push to curtail birthright citizenship. | ||
| The 6-3 decision, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, faulted lower courts for granting universal injunctions that blocked President Trump's policy across the U.S. | ||
| The court said that because such orders go beyond providing relief to the plaintiffs, they likely exceed the authority Congress gave to district judges. | ||
| Barrett, however, left open the possibility that Trump's birthright policy could be blocked nationwide under lawsuits brought by New Jersey and other Democratic-led states, in contrast to companion cases filed by pregnant women concerned about their future children's status. | ||
| Now, for an overview of some of the decisions that came of the decisions that came down yesterday in particular, let's look at a graphic here, the one that I just mentioned, limiting the power of federal judges to grant nationwide injunctions. | ||
| That was that birthright citizenship case. | ||
| There was also a ruling that Maryland school policy barring opt-outs for LGBTQ books violates religious rights. | ||
| Another ruling upheld Texas's age verification law for porn sites, and another preserved Affordable Care Act coverage of preventative health care. | ||
| And another upheld the phone and internet subsidy program for underserved areas. | ||
| And finally, a ruling that sided with a death row prisoner seeking DNA testing. | ||
| Now then, related to that birthright citizenship case again, yesterday, President Trump was joined in the White House briefing room by Attorney General Pam Bondi as well as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to deliver remarks celebrating the Supreme Court's ruling on federal judges' injunctions and birthright citizenship. | ||
| Here is a portion. | ||
| This morning the Supreme Court has delivered a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law. | ||
| In striking down the excessive use of nationwide injunctions to interfere with the normal functioning of the executive branch, the Supreme Court has stopped the presidency itself. | ||
| That's what they've done. | ||
| And really, it's been an amazing period of time, this last hour. | ||
| There are people elated all over the country. | ||
| I've seen such happiness and spirit. | ||
| Sometimes you don't see that, but this case is very important. | ||
| I was elected on a historic mandate, but in recent months we've seen a handful of radical left judges effectively try to overrule the rightful powers of the president to stop the American people from getting the policies that they voted for in record numbers. | ||
| It was a grave threat to democracy, frankly, and instead of merely ruling on the immediate cases before them, these judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation. | ||
| In practice, this meant that if any one of the nearly 700 federal judges disagreed with the policy of a duly elected president of the United States, he or she could block that policy from going into effect or at least delay it for many years, tie it up in the court system. | ||
| This was a colossal abuse of power which never occurred in American history prior to recent decades, and we've been hit with more nationwide injunctions than were issued in the entire 20th century together. | ||
| Think of it, more than the entire 20th century, me. | ||
| I'm grateful to the Supreme Court for stepping in and solving this very, very big and complex problem, and they've made it very simple. | ||
| I want to thank Justice Barrett, who wrote the opinion brilliantly, as well as Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Thomas. | ||
| Great people. | ||
| Thanks for this decision and thanks to this decision. | ||
| We can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis. | ||
| And some of the cases we're talking about would be ending birthright citizenship, which now comes to the fore. | ||
| That was meant for the babies of slaves. | ||
| It wasn't meant for people trying to scam the system and come into the country on a vacation. | ||
| Now some response from the Democratic side. | ||
| Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, said on X, the Supreme Court's decision to limit the courts of their long-held authority to block illegal executive actions is an unprecedented and terrifying step toward authoritarianism, a grave danger to our democracy, and a predictable move from this extremist MAGA court. | ||
| By weakening the power of district courts to check the presidency, the court is not defending the Constitution, it's defacing it. | ||
| This ruling hands Donald Trump yet another green light in his crusade to Unravel the foundations of American democracy. | ||
| Now, let's go to your calls with your thoughts on the Supreme Court's decisions this session. | ||
| But before that, I want to go over a couple of other decisions, not from yesterday, but from earlier in the session. | ||
| There have been several key rulings from the Supreme Court this term, including rules against Planned Parenthood's Medicaid funding, upholding regulations of ghost guns to make them more traceable, upholding the state ban on transgender minors using puberty blockers and hormone therapy, siding with a straight woman in a reverse discrimination case, as well as siding against a disabled firefighter suing for health benefits discrimination. | ||
| The source of this list from USA Today. | ||
| Now then, let's hear from Anna in South Windsor, Connecticut on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Anna. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| And happy both to everyone. | ||
| I think the Supreme Court we have to trust them. | ||
| We have to put our trust in them that they would do the right thing for all the people. | ||
| And speaking of all the people, Chairman Powell, Chairman Powell, you are for all the people. | ||
| We love you. | ||
| We respect you. | ||
| You are real. | ||
| You are a real. | ||
| So, Anna, you're talking about the Federal Reserve Chairman, but I wonder which of the Supreme Court rulings this term you think are most significant. | ||
|
unidentified
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Correct, Jimmy, there in helping me. | |
| Which one? | ||
| Yes, were there particular rulings from the Supreme Court or decisions this term that you think are particularly important? | ||
|
unidentified
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You're taking up my time. | |
| But I heard the Supreme Court, I think they did well or whatever they tried to do. | ||
| I don't know enough about those to question them. | ||
| But I think Chairman Powell will make a great president. | ||
| And he's for all the people. | ||
| I trust him. | ||
| Next, we'll hear from Junietta in Northeast Maryland on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Junieta. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| And what are your thoughts on the Supreme Court's decisions this term? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think it's about time. | |
| I think that they let the lower courts embarrass America as a country. | ||
| And they should have stepped in before, but I'm very grateful for their choices. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And now we'll hear from Walter in Washington, D.C. on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Walter. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning, Miss Adams. | |
| How are you? | ||
| I'm fine, thank you. | ||
| How are you? | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm doing great, ma'am. | |
| Doing great. | ||
| The Supreme Court did an excellent job with the ruin, especially regarding birthright citizenship, because there's a lot of confusion with that. | ||
| I'll be as quick as possible with this. | ||
| But the foundation of the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship clause is from the Civil Rights Act of 1866. | ||
| Republican Senator Lyman Trumbull is the author of that clause. | ||
| It was written to give the children of the formerly enslaved black population citizenship because the entire Democratic Party of the day refused to recognize our ancestors as citizens. | ||
| Walter, can I pause you for just a moment? | ||
| I just want to read the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for our audience, and then I'll get right back to you. | ||
| The 14th Amendment specifically says, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. | ||
| Walter, please continue. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| And with that, the Birthright Citizenship Clause made it clear from the Civil Rights Act of 1866 that it is not for ambassadors, diplomats, Native Americans, or anyone under a foreign power. | ||
| That is, foreign nationals. | ||
| All four of these groups, their allegiance is to their nations, not to the jurisdiction of the United States. | ||
| And being that Native Americans lived in Maryland and Virginia, and they couldn't get birthright citizenship and they were in the states because they were to their tribal nations, then Congress, who wrote our immigration laws saying you can't come in illegal. | ||
| And also, black scholar Dr. Claude Anderson, said that black folk are the only non-immigrant groups where they had the right and ratify three constitutional amendments to give us citizenships, but it was not written for. | ||
| Oh hello, you're still going Walter, you're fine. | ||
| Oh, I'm sorry. | ||
| What is being done here is the 14th Amendment. | ||
| They were being used for everybody. | ||
| That was not the original purpose of that. | ||
| It was only for black people because we were the only group that were denied citizenship. | ||
| And it's not seems like you support the Supreme Court's decision in this case on nationwide injunctions. | ||
| Let's hear from Ken in West Sacramento California, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning Ken. | ||
|
unidentified
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hello I can't believe you're actually listening to me in Washington DC are you there yes we're here what are your thoughts on the Supreme Court's term on what decision we're talking about whichever one you like | |
| I believe that birthright citizenship should only be legal for those of the people who are only born here illegally. | ||
| I mean really, I mean I'm I'm, I'm totally a stupid human being. | ||
| I don't have any you know saying in what, but people come here illegally and want to have a baby and claim that they're illegal. | ||
| That is, that's far from the truth. | ||
| Anyway, I'll let you go. | ||
| I don't want to keep you bye-bye, okay? | ||
| The Washington POST has a story for what the Supreme Court's decision actually means for birthright citizenship, as the court declined to specifically address that issue that executive order in this case. | ||
| So here's the story. | ||
| Legal experts said the next 30 days will be critical in determining whether President Donald Trump's ban on birthright citizenship is allowed to take effect in states not covered by an injunction. | ||
| The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump victory on Friday in a ruling that narrowed the authority of federal judges and sparked a legal scramble for groups trying to stop his birthright citizenship ban from taking effect. | ||
| The justices limited the ability of lower court judges to issue nationwide injunctions, including those that had halted his ban on birthright citizenship, while litigation is pending on the policy at issue. | ||
| At the same time, the court court left open a path for challengers to continue to try to block the ban and paused Trump's executive Order ending birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants and foreign visitors for at least 30 Days. | ||
| The ruling could have vast implications for both Trump's ability to move forward with some of his administration's key proposals and for immigrant families living in states that are not protected by an injunction. | ||
| Much will depend on how the next month unfolds. | ||
| Now, to Christian in Phoenix, Arizona, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Christian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you so much for taking my call. | ||
| I just want to congratulate the president again for getting this favorable ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court. | ||
| Of course, many people forget his first term, all of the federal district and circuit appeals judges that were making very erroneous rulings, especially out of the Knife Circuit, especially out of the D.C. Circuit. | ||
| And so much of his actions, executive actions, executive orders, proclamations were being slowed down, especially on immigration, especially on the border in that first term. | ||
| And now here we are in his second term. | ||
| And once again, you have the same exact activity going on. | ||
| And finally, the U.S. Supreme Court said enough is enough. | ||
| And I would encourage all these lawyers and attorneys that are out there for the left, for the Democrats, for the rhinos, for the anti-Trump movement, keep following these lawsuits because you know what? | ||
| The more you do this, the more you reveal about what is really going on in our country and to this birthright citizenship issue. | ||
| I really wish the U.S. Supreme Court would have issued a ruling on this. | ||
| I would even foresee the left and the rhinos and all the anti-Trump people, they're probably going to end up filing another lawsuit to try to stop the birthright citizenship again because the U.S. Supreme Court did not make a ruling on those merits because birthright citizenship should have never been given to people who were not here legally. | ||
| And if you read Trump's executive order, which the media will not do, if anyone noticed at home, every time they talk about this birthright citizenship case, they don't read Trump's executive order. | ||
| All Trump did was cite the INA, the Immigration Nationality Act. | ||
| And under the INA, United States Congress gives specificity on who is eligible to be a U.S. citizen. | ||
| That is federal immigration law. | ||
| They're not talking about, he's not talking about the 14th Amendment. | ||
| He's simply talking about the INA, which actually lays out that criteria. | ||
| That is not talked about in the media on anytime this subject comes up. | ||
| Nobody talks about it because they know that what Trump did was 100% legal. | ||
| So now going forward, every single election, every four, and really, you could apply this to even United States Congress, U.S. House, U.S. Senate, every two, four, and six years. | ||
| We will be voting on whether you want open borders, birthright citizenship, and virtually unlimited entry into the United States for all who are not U.S. citizens. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So before we get back to your calls on the Supreme Court's current finishing up its term this session, I do want to point out that today we're going to have a special rare time that the Senate will be in session this Saturday. | ||
| I'm going to read a story here from thehill.com. | ||
| GOP leaders set Saturday vote on Trump's big beautiful bill. | ||
| Despite Republican pushback, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Senate Republicans to expect to see the legislative text of the budget reconciliation package on Friday evening and then to vote at noon on Saturday to begin debate on President Trump's tax and spending bill. | ||
| I will note that last night we did get that full text of the legislation from the House, from the Senate Republicans. | ||
| And here is another Hill story on that: that the Senate GOP unveils text and changes for the massive Trump bill. | ||
| They unveiled most of the legislative text for their mammoth tax and spending package as the GOP pushes to pass it in the coming days and have it on President Trump's desk before July 4th. | ||
| The bill, which checked in at 940 pages, was released shortly before the stroke of midnight and included a number of key changes in order to win the okay from both a set of key holdouts and the Senate parliamentarian, who forced the GOP to scrap a number of provisions they had hoped to use as key savings for the package. | ||
| Now, back to your thoughts on the Supreme Court's term finishing up and some of the major cases that we saw. | ||
| Let's hear from John in Syracuse, New York on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| I do not support birthright citizenship. | ||
| Don't support it at all. | ||
| Obviously, anyone that comes in illegally, that's clear-cut. | ||
| They don't deserve to be in here. | ||
| They have no birthright citizenship. | ||
| But learning from C-SPAN, from watching C-SPAN, I didn't realize that there's, I don't know if they're cartels or whatever, fly pregnant women into this country legally, then they have their kid here. | ||
| Now we're stuck with them. | ||
| Well, what's that all about? | ||
| That's cheating. | ||
| So it's not just illegals that come here. | ||
| People come here legally, have their kids here. | ||
| Now we're stuck with them. | ||
| I don't support that at all. | ||
| So, you know, Democrats, you better clean up your act or you're going to continue to lose elections. | ||
| I'm a Democrat. | ||
| I don't support anything illegal, and I don't support these people coming in legally that are pregnant and have their kid here. | ||
| Now we're stuck with them. | ||
| No way do I support this. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Amy, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion on that case, limiting nationwide injunctions, and that was tied to that birthright citizenship case. | ||
| She said in that majority opinion, some say that the universal injunction gives the judiciary a powerful tool to check the executive branch. | ||
| But federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the executive branch. | ||
| They resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them. | ||
| When a court concludes that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power to. | ||
| Now, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent in this case, saying, no right is safe in the new legal regime the court creates. | ||
| Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. | ||
| Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. | ||
| The court's decision is nothing less than an open invitation for the government to bypass the Constitution. | ||
| The executive branch can now enforce policies that flout settled law and violate countless individuals' constitutional rights, and the federal courts will be hamstrung to stop its actions fully. | ||
| Until the day that every affected person manages to become party to a lawsuit and secures for himself injunctive relief, the government may act lawlessly indefinitely. | ||
| That was again Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent. | ||
| Now then, let's hear from Jose in New York, New York, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jose. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| I think the Supreme Court is out of control. | ||
| And I think the decisions are based upon the party instead of really interpreting the law. | ||
| They settle judges as well. | ||
| You know, so I don't know how they come to determine that no lower federal court can have a case before them and can't make a decision. | ||
| They should be able to make a decision just like the Supreme Court is making a decision. | ||
| This same Supreme Court is creating laws, which they don't even create law. | ||
| They're supposed to interpret law. | ||
| But they created laws that got Trump to be president in the first place by giving him immunity that he didn't even have. | ||
| He's still a citizen of this country. | ||
| And if you want to talk about citizenship, it's how you categorize words. | ||
| They say illegals, illegals. | ||
| It's illegal to do what? | ||
| To cross the border coming to the country is not committed a crime. | ||
| They don't call that a crime. | ||
| And that's what people have to understand. | ||
| Now, if you want to talk about birthright, the letter is clear. | ||
| It's not something that's complicated. | ||
| I don't know what American people are doing. | ||
| They're so short-sighted and they saw in their feelings about certain people. | ||
| But yet, these people bring in so much money and they do the cheapest labor that anyone else is doing, but they want to climb and complain because they hear the same old, same old saying over and over. | ||
| And it's a projection from the Republican Party that people just bought into and they assume and they don't really look at what's really going on. | ||
| But if you want to talk about birthright, let's talk about birthright. | ||
| Then anyone has to trace their ancestors back and they're like, you don't even belong in this country because you're not a natural-born citizen because your ancestors came over here and took land. | ||
| They didn't earn land or was born in this land. | ||
| This call is crazy. | ||
| The country is crazy. | ||
| The Congress takes forever to do something. | ||
| I think we've got your idea, Jose. | ||
| Let's hear from Melissa in Cleveland, Tennessee on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Melissa. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I don't think anybody really realizes this, but this ruling does swing both ways, guys. | ||
| I mean, if a politician is going to say that certain groups of people don't deserve constitutional rights because they're the wrong race, the wrong religion, wrong income, wrong age, et cetera, then, you know, those groups could easily say that if the Supreme Law of the United States, which is the Constitution, doesn't apply to me, the laws of the United States don't apply to me either. | ||
| I can pick and choose which laws I follow. | ||
| If I want to go rob a bank, even though it's against the law in this country, guess what? | ||
| If I'm one of those groups, that law doesn't apply to me anymore. | ||
| I'm no longer a citizen, therefore I don't have to obey the law. | ||
| It's a perfect defense in court. | ||
| You know, so they're going to do, you know, they're going to have a law of unintended consequences here. | ||
| And I hope that the state attorneys general understand that before their legislators move to start banning certain groups of people from having constitutional rights. | ||
| Now, as to birthright citizenship, you know, my ancestors have been here since 1787. | ||
| I don't think the oath of citizenship was required until 1800 or something like that. | ||
| That means I have no proof that my family ever took the oath of citizenship. | ||
| If there is no such thing as birthright citizenship, I'm an illegal alien. | ||
| If ICE wants to come find me and deport me back to Ireland where my ancestors came from, I'll be happy to wear a sweater. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| John is in Granada Hills, California on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, hello, and good morning, America. | |
| The decision by the conservatives on the court was absolutely horrific. | ||
| They have now further given the president of the executive more power, more power, decreasing the original fathers of the Constitution who wanted to have co-equal branches of government. | ||
| The dissenters viewed the ruling as a significant blow to individuals' rights. | ||
| Just because a president makes a presidential decree in executive action does not make it law. | ||
| To make it law, it has to be codified via Congress. | ||
| So now federal judges were able to think to themselves, and they're smart, brilliant people, well, this doesn't sound like it's constitutional. | ||
| So I'm going to say no. | ||
| And it should have remained that it is a national thing that affects all 50 states because then it's appealed and then it's decided whether it's constitutional or not. | ||
| And then it might be codified by Congress or it might not. | ||
| Now the conservatives on Supreme Court have screwed that all up so that now when the president makes a presidential decree and Trump has made, what, I don't know, well over 100 of them, that it's going to almost become law because it will be acted upon for maybe years until people get, you know, now they're talking about class action lawsuits. | ||
| So this Supreme Court has screwed up again big time, just like they did with the immunity thing. | ||
| They just took it out of thin air. | ||
| So it's obviously a lot of people. | ||
| You're talking about the decision at the end of the last term to grant immunity for presidential actions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pardon me? | |
| Well, I was just recapping that you were referencing the Supreme Court's decision at the end of the last term to grant immunity for presidential actions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, and that was a horrific decision, too, because there's nothing, not a word in the Constitution linking president with the word immunity. | |
| So they just dreamed up that stuff, just like they reversed the precedent for Roe v. Wade. | ||
| That was constitutionally, I think, completely improper because it was precedent. | ||
| It was precedent. | ||
| So the conservatives on this court, now it's up to the Dems to change it. | ||
| It's going to be the Democrats, as always, that are for the people, you know, that want to help people, not just hurt people. | ||
| John, I want to read a little bit more reaction to that decision related to universal injunctions and birthright citizenship. | ||
| This is coming from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and posted on X. | ||
| The Supreme Court's decision to limit nationwide injunctions is a dangerous step backwards. | ||
| It weakens the court's ability to protect our communities and directly attacks birthright citizenship. | ||
| The CHC will fight this with everything we've got. | ||
| Betty is in Blacksburg, South Carolina on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Betty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd like the Supreme Court. | |
| Can you turn down the volume on your TV, and then please continue with your comment? | ||
| All right, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think what the Supreme Court does is some of them, I don't mean no Democrat, but some of them are like Jackson, because that's who Biden put in there. | |
| But anyhow, what Trump's doing and all these people, it's all about Trunk. | ||
| I mean, people got sick of that. | ||
| I've heard people say that. | ||
| I saw you here. | ||
| They don't tell nothing about nothing. | ||
| The man doing a good job. | ||
| No matter what nobody says, he did a good job when he came in the first time. | ||
| And I believe he should have come in 2020. | ||
| And anyhow, he's done a good job. | ||
| There wasn't no war. | ||
| If somebody tell me what Biden has done for the American people, please put it on C-SPAN. | ||
| Let me hear it. | ||
| Because I didn't hear one thing he done. | ||
| He done a bad job. | ||
| He done everything he could. | ||
| So Trump would have to do all this that he's trying to straighten out before he left there. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| We are going to actually finish up our segment on the Supreme Court and its decisions, but you're welcome to carry on your comments related to these court cases and other topics because we're going to shift now into open forum. | ||
| But before we do that, I want to point out a couple of events coming up later on today. | ||
| This morning, the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference is going to convene in Charlotte, North Carolina to consider administrative and policy issues that are affecting the federal court system. | ||
| That conference will kick off with a discussion on how current events in the national news may influence law practice as well as developments in federal funding, issues regarding the separation of powers and freedom of the press. | ||
| That's going to be live at 10.15 a.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Then at 11.15 a.m. Eastern, there's going to be a conversation between Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Fourth Circuit Chief Judge Albert Diaz. | ||
| You can also watch our live coverage on the C-SPAN Now app or online at c-span.org. | ||
| We're going to shift now to open forum. | ||
| Just a reminder, our phone lines for Republicans, 202-748-8001, Democrats, 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Let's go to Tom in St. Augustine, Florida on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Well, thank you for C-SPAN, big fan. | ||
| Could you please play the segment of the arguments in the Supreme Court about nationwide injunction, where I believe it was Justice Jackson will use the example of a president through executive order being able to send the military out and confiscate your guns. | ||
| And then you would have to sue to have your Second Amendment because you believe your Second Amendment rights were violated. | ||
| I'm a scared gun owner, and it appears that they gave him the right to do that. | ||
| So could you please ask anybody calling in on any line, I'm a Democrat gun owner, if they're a gun owner and that scares them that any president now has that right, please play that segment for everybody. | ||
| I'm sure you have it. | ||
| It was the Supreme Court argument concerning that issue. | ||
| Again, I appreciate C-SPAN. | ||
| Everybody have a great day. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So, Tom, I don't have that clip ready to play right now, but I'll remind folks that you'll be able to watch or listen to all of the oral arguments from this session on our website, c-span.org. | ||
| Next up is Anita in Ypsilanti, Michigan on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Anita. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have a couple of questions or comments. | ||
| My first question is: well, first off, thank you, Christy Span. | ||
| But also, I wanted to know what was the ruling on gerrymandering in Louisiana. | ||
| Number two, it seems that if you have this idea that the court is limiting the lower courts, then what happens with, say, for example, you get a Democrat in office? | ||
| Will the people who are Republicans be upset? | ||
| Let's say, for example, and also what happens when you have someone who happens to be a Republican who's considered to be an anchor baby. | ||
| Are they going to go after them? | ||
| I'm sure there are some Republicans who feel that among the extreme Republicans who feel that some of their Republican heroes, I think one of Ms. Kash Patel has been, I mean, if you listen to Republican circles or read their websites or forums, they like them, don't like them because he's considered to be an anchor baby. | ||
| Although at least he was born in Africa. | ||
| So, Anita, if I can pause you for a moment, and I want to let you finish your point, but you asked about what happened with the gerrymandering case, and I was able to find an article on NPR with the headline, the Supreme Court postpones Louisiana redistricting case to next term. | ||
| The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday said it would re-argue Louisiana's congressional redistricting plan in its next term after this summer. | ||
| At issue is the Louisiana legislature's creation of a black majority congressional district. | ||
| A group of voters sued, arguing that the state legislature had unconstitutionally relied on race in drawing new congressional district lines. | ||
| So it looks like that case was postponed, Anita. | ||
| Please continue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that brings me to my other point about districts. | |
| There is, I guess, an article about there's more people entering, getting older in our population. | ||
| I guess there's 12 million people. | ||
| I guess numbers wrong. | ||
| They're young, and we're not having babies. | ||
| So I don't think it's, and the question is, I wish someone would talk about that and not just talk about the cost of living, but talk about infant mortality, talk about abortion, talk about homicide, especially in the black community. | ||
| I think for some reason, sometimes black people think it's an other issue, but black people don't really understand how, I guess, ideas of having black districts, if we don't have children, the question is why don't we have children? | ||
| If we don't do that, there's going to be a problem where we don't get representation. | ||
| But thank you so much. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you, Anita. | ||
| Let's hear from Eric in New Brunswick, New Jersey on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Eric. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, ma'am. | |
| Thank you, C-SPAN, for taking my call this morning in open forum. | ||
| I'd like to just celebrate the fact that we have as our HHS secretary, Bobby F. Kennedy Jr. | ||
| He's going to point out something as simple as the fact that if you're smoking a Newport cigarette as your morning cigarette this morning, you do not believe Black Lives Matter because you're not smoking an American spirit, which is tobacco and water only. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| The dark green American spirits are meant. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Our previous caller before Eric was referencing some new data that came out related to the ages of people in the United States. | ||
| Here's a story about that in Housing Wire. | ||
| Older adults outnumber children in 11 states as the population ages. | ||
| Older age brackets are growing rapidly as the birth rate falls. | ||
| Young Americans are deciding to have fewer children than previous generations or none at all, and that's causing the overall population to age. | ||
| New population estimates published this week by the U.S. Census Bureau put the trend in blunt terms as the number of people in older age brackets are increasing rapidly while younger age brackets aren't growing at all or are even shrinking. | ||
| Consider the numbers. | ||
| Between 2020 and 2024, the population of people in their 30s rose by 4.5% and people in their 40s grew by 4.1%. | ||
| That's higher than the population of the nation as a whole, which went up 2.6%. | ||
| But the older age brackets increased dramatically. | ||
| People in their 60s increased by 4.5% between 2020 and 2024. | ||
| People in their 70s rose by a whopping 15.3%. | ||
| And people in their 80s and older grew by 12.4%. | ||
| All right, back to your calls in Open Forum. | ||
| David is in Baltimore, Maryland on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, C-SMAN. | |
| Thanks for everything we do. | ||
| I'm actually, I live in Idaho, but I'm here helping my mom, so I'm involved in the men. | ||
| I'd like to make a comment on the birthright citizenship, and hopefully it's more than just opinion. | ||
| But in the amendment, it says, born in the United States and under the jurisdiction thereof. | ||
| And in my mind, that means if I can deport you, you are ultimately under the jurisdiction of some other state, and therefore not my problem. | ||
| And you shouldn't have legal status if I choose to revoke any legal status from you. | ||
| You're ultimately not under my jurisdiction. | ||
| As it applies to U.S. citizens, I cannot deport you. | ||
| As it applied to enslaved people, it would have been prohibitively expensive and ridiculous to even try. | ||
| So they were ultimately the enslaved people under the jurisdiction of the United States. | ||
| And I would just ask your viewers to ponder that and have a great day. | ||
| Cheers. | ||
| Mike is in Illinois on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| What are your thoughts in Open Forum? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just thought that Sodom Irrit's dissent the other day. | |
| I thought that was kind of disgusting. | ||
| And I think that Amy Colmy Barrett, I think that she's kind of like creating an interpersonal divide between the court systems. | ||
| I can see that the Democratic side and the Republican side is getting more divided than ever. | ||
| And I think that Amy Coleman Barrett is one of the only people on that court that truly takes a legalistic view on all these policies. | ||
| And I think that Donald Trump is doing a really good job. | ||
| And I just wish them the best of luck. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Next up is Jim in Parsons, West Virginia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just wanted to voice my opinion, listen to other people speak there. | |
| I think I saw the call earlier. | ||
| He kind of summed it up, nailed it pretty closely. | ||
| It feels to me like Republicans seem to promote, they speak of Democrats as being utopianistic and idealistic and delusional, you know. | ||
| But in fact, I think it's Republicans are much more delusional and idealistic, posturing a fantasy that everyone in America is going to be wealthy and we can all afford health care, which we can't, which is why they created the ACA, Obamacare. | ||
| Things have become way too expensive in America. | ||
| That's why Medicaid is expensive. | ||
| Meanwhile, for the last 50 years, we've kept lowering the tax rates for the very wealthy, lowering the tax rates for the very wealthy, lowering the tax rates. | ||
| We're not bringing enough revenue to keep up with how expensive life in America is. | ||
| And the other delusion I think that Republicans seem to posture and peddle is this idea about people coming here with dark skin, that they're not, these people are coming here to work. | ||
| You know, Pam Bondi said the other day that we've arrested 2,700 different, well, Trump was telling people at his rallies for years that there's 10 million, then 11 million, then 12 million, a million every different rally you go to, a million more. | ||
| And they've got 2,700 that have committed crimes or whatever. | ||
| Well, that's good. | ||
| But meanwhile, I mean, like they say over 75% of these people that ICE is picking up have no criminal record whatsoever. | ||
| It's like, what are you people doing? | ||
| 40% of the labor in America's food and agriculture production and construction are these folks who are coming here to work. | ||
| I don't see any like that. | ||
| A woman said, what did Joe Biden do? | ||
| Joe Biden did a lot of things, and he was human about it. | ||
| You need to give people a path to citizenship, and Republicans won't even offer a path to citizenship. | ||
| They want to peddle this illusion. | ||
| Well, I say, how many of you Republicans have your son and daughter lined up to go work in all these different fields for relatively low pay? | ||
| None of them do. | ||
| They imagine these things will get done. | ||
| It's just—and it's sad to see what the Supreme Court is doing. | ||
| They seem to have appointed themselves as a right-wing arbiter of— So, Jim, if I can interrupt you for just a moment, and then I'll let you finish your point. | ||
| You mentioned data showing that ICE was picking up people who did not have criminal records. | ||
| Much of that data has come from the Cato Institute, and here's a story about that when they released this data on June 20th. | ||
| 65% of people taken by ICE had no convictions. | ||
| 93% had no violent convictions. | ||
| New non-public data from immigrations and customs enforcement indicate that the government is primarily detaining individuals with no criminal convictions of any kind. | ||
| Also, among those with criminal convictions, they are overwhelmingly not the violent offenses that ICE continuously uses to justify its deportation agenda. | ||
| ICE has shared this data with people outside the agency who shared the numbers with the Cato Institute. | ||
| And there's more numbers there that most of the Bookans are primarily non-criminals and other violent offenders, including just low percentages here. | ||
| So 65% had no convictions. | ||
| And then of those that did, it was things like property crime, 3.7%, 7% violent crime, 4.5% non-violent vice, and then other charges, as you can look there. | ||
| Jim, did you have a final point to raise? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's exactly, precisely the point. | |
| Trump stands up there and makes speeches. | ||
| Pam Bondi, all of his agency heads line up behind him and make these speeches and tell people things that aren't true and get people whipped up in their minds of, well, chain migration and birthright. | ||
| For gosh sake, it's like dogs in a hay manger. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You can move on to Bill in Memphis, Tennessee on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm sort of conservative. | |
| I guess I'm sort of a conservative. | ||
| But here in Memphis, Tennessee, and Nashville, and all these counties in Tennessee, the white minorities in the line. | ||
| And I know here in Memphis, they're doing a really good job. | ||
| They have white people in politics here, but the coloreds and the Mexicans, a majority. | ||
| And my grandchildren go to school with the coloreds and the Mexicans, and they're much different than some of us older folks. | ||
| They got colored friends, and some of them are marrying within each other. | ||
| So the civil rights bill, I'm not against the colors. | ||
| I didn't got used to the colored people in the majority here in Lempis and Nashville and about four or five counties here in this state. | ||
| They control it, doing a good job. | ||
| And I'm not as, quote, prejudiced as I used to be because I've gotten used to that. | ||
| And there's some white organizations said they're going to try to cut the civil rights bill out. | ||
| Well, the young white kids are not going to go along with that because they have colored friends. | ||
| And y'all need to think about that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's hear from Chuck in Calumet City, Illinois on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Chuck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, good morning, Kimberly. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Fine, thank you. | ||
| How are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm outstanding. | |
| Thanks for asking. | ||
| I think with regards to the birthright citizenship, we're overworking this thing because it's quite simple to me. | ||
| If one, which is a human being supposedly, if you have a, you look above your waist, you've got a nail, you're a human being, you were born. | ||
| Now, let's reverse this thing. | ||
| If the human being, such as it is, would perish in some country, some country, you perish, you die, then you're going to have a certificate of death placed upon you, wherever that country, wherever you perish in that country. | ||
| So you died in that country. | ||
| That's not changed. | ||
| That won't change. | ||
| Now, let's reverse that with regards to birthright citizenship. | ||
| That means that if you were born in some country, then you're born and your certificate of live birth is going to indicate that country that you were born in. | ||
| It has nothing to do with whom it is that brought you to that country. | ||
| That baby has nothing to do with that. | ||
| But just as if you died in some country, you're going to get a death certificate for that country. | ||
| If you were born in some country, you're going to get a certificate of live birth for that country, not because you were brought in there by some cartel. | ||
| So that doesn't make any sense. | ||
| So we are oversimplifying this thing. | ||
| It's quite easy to reconcile that. | ||
| You're born, you're born, you die. | ||
| The country you died in, that's what's going to say on your death certificate. | ||
| The country you were born in, that's what it's going to say on your certificate of live birth. | ||
| Hence, that's quite simple. | ||
| Thank you so much, Kimberly. | ||
| In other news that we are following, the Senate voted last night to block a war powers resolution in a near-party line vote. | ||
| This is part of the continuing fallout of the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. | ||
| In this story from Roll Call, Fetterman, a hawkish supporter of Israel, was the lone Democrat to side with the GOP. | ||
| The Senate Friday evening narrowly rejected along mostly party lines an effort by Democrats to force a floor vote on a measure to restrict President Donald Trump from launching future attacks on Iran without congressional approval. | ||
| Opponents defeated 4753, a motion to discharge from the Foreign Relations Committee, a war powers joint resolution by Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, that would prohibit any offensive U.S. military attacks against Iran if Congress has not issued a declaration of war or a new authorization for use of military force. | ||
| Now, Virginia Senator, Democratic Senator Tim Kaine was speaking on the Senate floor on Friday about why he believes his War Powers Act legislation was needed. | ||
| Let's play that clip. | ||
| War is too big to leave the decision to send our sons and daughters and risk their lives on the say-so of one person. | ||
| We had some turmoil this week in the Senate. | ||
| We were going to have a briefing on Tuesday that they had to, from the national security officials of the administration, they had to postpone it till Thursday because they were fighting with themselves and they were fighting with reporters about intelligence that had come out that the president wasn't happy about. | ||
| In the immediate aftermath of the attack, he said that the Iranian nuclear program had been completely obliterated. | ||
| All sources, Iranian sources, Israeli sources, the IAEA, the United States have said severe damage, but because the president sort of went overboard with the Hiroshima Nagasaki claims and completely obliterated, reporters started to dig into it. | ||
| And then the President got mad, and then the Secretary of Defense started to name call reporters who were asking basic questions. | ||
| War is too big an issue to leave to the moods and the whims and the daily vibes of any one person. | ||
| And that's why the founder said, unless it's an imminent defense, and in this case it wasn't, the Israeli foreign minister had said before the U.S. attack that their attacks had already set the Iranian program back at least two or three years. | ||
| That's a direct quote from the Israelis who follow this very closely. | ||
| If the program had been set back at least two or three years, what was the urgency that suggested we needed to take this action without a debate in Congress? | ||
| And Madam President, it was not only done without congressional authorization, it was also done without congressional consultation, and it was done without congressional notification of Democratic leaders. | ||
| Also speaking in the Senate, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham explained his opposition to Senator Kaine's proposal. | ||
| It says in the Constitution the President shall be commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States and of the militias of the several states when called into actual service in the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, left out the Air Force because back then we didn't have one. | |
| Since the founding of this country, it's been understood that the Commander-in-Chief can act as the Commander-in-Chief to protect our nation from threats, that he is in charge of the military. | ||
| He sits atop of the, he's the civilian in charge of the military, and it's his decision to use military force. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's Congress's decision to declare war. | |
| How many times do you think, Mr. President, we've declared war since the founding of our nation? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll give you the answer. | |
| Five. | ||
| Just think about all the military conflicts that have existed in the history of our country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we've only declared war five times. | |
| The War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, Spanish-American War against Spain, World War I, and World War II. | ||
| So do my colleagues. | ||
| If Congress has only declared war five times, does that mean all of these other military operations are illegal? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| Because we have the power to declare war and us, the Congress only, doesn't mean the Commander-in-Chief can't be the Commander-in-Chief. | ||
| This country cannot be put in a legal state of war unless the Congress decides to do that. | ||
| But to suggest that means the Commander-in-Chief can't do anything without our approval makes all of us Commander-in-Chiefs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you think they had that in mind? | |
| Do you think they really meant for the Congress to be the Commander-in-Chief, not the Commander-in-Chief? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The logic of this is as follows. | |
| Because we have the ability to declare war, therefore the President can't act unless we agree. | ||
| You've taken his power to be commander-in-chief away. | ||
| Now, back to your calls in open forum. | ||
| John is in New Orleans, Louisiana on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| One thing about that, Cato, the 65% people taken, it is from the physical year, and that's October 1st till whatever, June 15th or something. | ||
| Four of those months were under Biden, four and a half were under Trump. | ||
| They don't even, you know, break that down. | ||
| It's a pretty sloppy piece. | ||
| And so so, convictions. | ||
| I'm sorry, there's a lot of people who commit crimes that don't get convicted. | ||
| And in the present, you know, attitude with things, you're much less likely to bring a case forward in a sanctuary city. | ||
| So, John, if I can pause you for just a moment, you're correct that this is looking at convictions and not necessarily charges, which also doesn't capture anybody who has committed a crime. | ||
| But I did want to correct you that it looks like this data from Cato starts October 1st, 2024, which was the start of fiscal year 2025. | ||
| So that would be about one month before President Trump. | ||
| Oh, I see. | ||
| I see what you mean. | ||
| You're saying it started in October. | ||
| And so, since President Trump took office in January, that is why it's covering data from back then. | ||
| I see what you mean. | ||
| So, this is the Cato Institute. | ||
| Numbers say that as of June 14th, ICE had booked into detention 204,297 individuals since October 24th, 2024, which was the start of the fiscal year. | ||
| So, you're correct in saying that that does predate the Trump administration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And also, the Constitution does not say any place where the president is really subject to the judiciary other than the fact that Congress decides whether or not he should be removed or punished. | |
| The judiciary is really subject to the president. | ||
| He has the power to pardon people. | ||
| I mean, a judge can say, you are guilty. | ||
| And Trump can say, no, he's not. | ||
| Biden can say, no, he's not. | ||
| So, I mean, it kind of puts the president above the judiciary. | ||
| The president also chooses federal judges. | ||
| So I don't know why everyone thinks that the judiciary is, I mean, this emperor that everyone must listen to. | ||
| Let's hear from Ruth in Akron, Iowa, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Ruth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I don't know if I am able to speak about a problem I have with Medicaid. | |
| It's open forum. | ||
| You can discuss it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm 87 years old, and I lost a bunch of teeth, all my teeth, and I can't get a dentist anywhere that will help me. | |
| Nobody will take Medicaid to give me my dentures. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Next up is Michael in Stanford, Connecticut on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| How are you guys doing? | ||
| Hey, so this birthright citizenship, just another thing Trump wants to take away. | ||
| He's taking all these things he's done, he's taken rights away from people. | ||
| Can somebody tell me one thing he's done for people besides taking it away? | ||
| So getting back to his birthright, so a baby is born. | ||
| They're in the delivery room. | ||
| It's born right there. | ||
| Here's your birth certificate. | ||
| There are two people. | ||
| They were born here. | ||
| They're Americans. | ||
| Prove it. | ||
| How are you going to prove it? | ||
| What do you got to do at that point to prove that this kid is actually American? | ||
| If they're Spanish, what do you got to do to prove it? | ||
| What's going to happen with that? | ||
| How do you prove they're actually American citizens? | ||
| There's going to be American people that, oh, I don't know. | ||
| Maybe he's not an American. | ||
| What? | ||
| I mean, Trump, I don't know what he's doing and who and what he's doing it for. | ||
| And I said this before, the Trump derangement syndrome, that's the people who back Trump. | ||
| Because you have to be deranged to follow a deranged person. | ||
| All right, have a good day and hopefully none of this bill pass. | ||
| Okay, thanks. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| Janice is in San Diego, California on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Janice. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have several things I'd like to say. | ||
| I'm so I guess I'll go before. | ||
| If I was an illegal immigrant, I would be absolutely appalled and insulted at the Democrats' thoughts on what illegal immigrants come here for. | ||
| They're all fruit pickers. | ||
| No, they're not. | ||
| I let this idea go over 50 years of my life. | ||
| And early in the day, when I was in junior high school, 90% of them were fruit pickers. | ||
| They're not fruit pickers anymore. | ||
| They work in construction. | ||
| They work in the cell phone company, technology. | ||
| They go to college. | ||
| I would be absolutely disgusted, and I am, when I give Democrats' thoughts process on what illegal immigrants come to the United States for. | ||
| Now, I also, with the birthright thing, my sister was born in Pinsbury, England, when my father was in the military. | ||
| She was an automatic citizen of England. | ||
| We were not. | ||
| And my father did not get the quote seal on her birth certificate before we left. | ||
| And they actually threatened to have her deported back to England because she was a citizen. | ||
| The rest of us were never included. | ||
| My sister is a dual citizen of England and the United States. | ||
| We are not. | ||
| Why should there be anything different with Latinos, Chinese, or anybody else who squats in America and has a baby? | ||
| And then they think that the whole family should be welcomed in the United States. | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| As far as Trump's performance as the president, I give him 1,000%. | ||
| I think he is doing an absolutely fabulous, fantastic, awesome job. | ||
| And for all these people, Democrats, of course, that call in with all of their criticisms and negativity, it does not matter what that man does. | ||
| They will never give him any props for anything because the hate is strong and it's blinding. | ||
| And at the end of the day, Trump is for all Americans. | ||
| He didn't say Republicans first. | ||
| He said all Americans. | ||
| Thanks so much for everyone who called in in open forum. | ||
| That's all the time we have for this segment today. | ||
| Later on on this morning's Washington Journal, Jeff Cohen, co-founder of the progressive group Roots Action, will join us to discuss his group's priority for the second Trump administration, as well as the debate over the future of the Democratic Party. | ||
| But after the break, Faith and Freedom Coalition Chair Ralph Reed will join us to discuss the top issue of this year's Road to Majority Conference going on here in Washington this week. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This morning, the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference convenes in Charlotte, North Carolina, to consider administrative and policy issues affecting the federal court system. | |
| The conference kicks off with a discussion on how current events in the national news may influence law practice, as well as developments in federal funding, issues regarding the separation of powers, and freedom of the press. | ||
| That's live at 10.15 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| And then at 11.15 a.m. Eastern, a conversation between Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Fourth Circuit Chief Judge Albert Diaz. | ||
| You can also watch our live coverage on the C-SPAN Now app or online at c-span.org. | ||
| American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | ||
| This weekend, Daniel Stone, author of American Poison, A Deadly Invention, and the Woman Who Battled for Environmental Justice, chronicles Harvard professor Alice Hamilton's attempts to expose the dangers of leaded gasoline in the early 20th century. | ||
| Then, historian and Vietnam War veteran Mark Leapson on his book, The Unlikely War Hero on the Life of Navy Seaman Doug Hegdal and his experience as a prisoner of war inside the notorious Hanoi Hilton Prison in North Vietnam in the late 1960s. | ||
| On The Presidency, filmmaker and screenwriter Rod Lurie on how the American president is depicted on film and TV and how it affects our understanding of the office. | ||
| Exploring the American story, watch American History TV every weekend and find a full schedule in 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 5 p.m. Eastern, author Martin Reeves, with his book, Like, The Button That Changed the World, he explores the origins of the like button and how the thumbs-up symbol changed the internet. | ||
| At 7.15 at a book event in Washington, D.C., Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski talks about her book, Far From Home, her Alaska Roots, Election History, and her more than two decades in the Senate. | ||
| Then at 8.30 p.m. Eastern, retired United States Army General Stanley McChrystal discusses his book On Character, Choices That Define a Life. | ||
| He talks about personal qualities and the hallmarks of American citizenship. | ||
| And at 9.30 p.m. Eastern, authors Jacqueline Schneider and Julia McDonald share their book, The Hand Behind Unmanned, discussing America's automated arsenal, including torpedoes, drones, and other remotely controlled technologies. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN2 and find a schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're joined now by Ralph Reed, who is the founder and chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. | ||
| Welcome to Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much, Kimberly. | |
| Good to be with you. | ||
| Well, thank you for joining us. | ||
| And you're in the Washington, D.C. area this week for your coalition's annual Road to Majority Conference. | ||
| Can you talk a little bit about your group, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, as well as your Road to Majority Conference? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I founded Faith and Freedom in 2009 in the aftermath of the first Obama campaign when the center-right got so badly out-hustled on the ground by the Obama and liberal forces. | |
| They did a much better job of identifying their vote, mobilizing it, and turning it out. | ||
| I had been involved in the Bush campaigns in 200 and 2004. | ||
| I had headed the Christian Coalition in the 90s. | ||
| So I had some familiarity and background in voter registration, mobilization, and turnout. | ||
| And I felt it was really important that the faith community was engaged, that Christians had a voice in their government. | ||
| And since that founding, Faith and Freedom Coalition has now grown to over 3 million members and supporters and activists in all 50 states. | ||
| We have full-time lobbyists in probably 16 state capitals. | ||
| We have a fully staffed legislative and policy office in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And in 2024, we knocked on 9,734,949 doors in the battleground states. | ||
| And according to exit polls as well as Pew Research data, we saw the largest turnout of conservative, evangelical, and other conservative Christians in the modern political era. | ||
| They voted about 82 to 83 percent for Donald Trump, and they provided between 45 and 48 percent, depending upon how you count it, of his entire vote. | ||
| So it's a really big deal. | ||
| And this weekend is our annual policy conference. | ||
| We're at the Washington Hilton, and this thing has been packed out for two days with an unbelievable lineup of speakers. | ||
| Who are some of your speakers, and will the President be joining you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the President has been here nine times before, and he is always welcome here. | |
| He hasn't arrived yet, but with Donald Trump, you never know. | ||
| We've been in touch with the White House, and again, he's always welcome, and we'd love to have him. | ||
| But honestly, the most important thing, and the reason why we did what we did in 2024, was so he could be sitting behind the resolute desk making the decisions he's making. | ||
| We've also had Speaker Mike Johnson, who keynoted our gale last night, Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Yakil Leiter, which we thought was very timely given the situation in the Middle East and the recent military strikes against Iran's nuclear sites. | ||
| We've had everybody from Senator Lindsey Graham, Rick Scott. | ||
| We've had members of the cabinet, including EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Besant yesterday morning, Scott Turner, Secretary of HUD. | ||
| I don't want to leave anybody out, but about half the cabinet and many senators, governors, congressmen, Governor Glenn Young of Virginia yesterday, Winsom Sears, by the way, the gubernatorial nominee in Virginia, will be here this morning. | ||
| And in addition to that, for those of your viewers who are people of faith, a lot of faith leaders and religious leaders who are here. | ||
| Paula White, who heads the faith office of the White House, Eric Metaxas, best-selling author, and Robert Jeffers, who is the pastor of First Baptist in Dallas. | ||
| So it's an interesting mix of faith and policy. | ||
| Quite the lineup. | ||
| Broadening out a little bit beyond the conference, what are some of the key important political themes motivating political social conservatives this cycle? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think that at the moment we're really focused not exclusively but primarily on two things. | |
| Number one, the conservative priorities, not just for the faith community, but for the center-right generally, that are in the Trump tax cut bill, the so-called Big Beautiful bill. | ||
| And for us, excuse me, those boil down to three or four big things. | ||
| One is expansion of the child tax credit. | ||
| We think the child tax credit is sound fiscal and tax policy, but it's also social policy. | ||
| It's allowing families with children to keep more of what they earn because we believe the most successful Department of Health, Education, and Welfare ever conceived is not in a government building in Washington, D.C. | ||
| It's families and homes and marriages and children. | ||
| That's the first schoolhouse. | ||
| It's the first workplace. | ||
| It's where children are nurtured and socialized. | ||
| So we want to strengthen that family unit. | ||
| The bill, the Big Beautiful bill, expands the child tax credit from the current $2,000 to $2,500. | ||
| The Senate bill indexes it for inflation. | ||
| Secondly, is the ending of forced taxpayer funding of abortion, including subsidies, taxpayer subsidies, to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the Western world that performs about 400,000 abortions a year. | ||
| And I know this is a controversial issue, and I know not everybody agrees. | ||
| But whether you're pro-life or you're pro-choice, there is a consensus in our country, and polling shows it, somewhere between 60 to 80 percent, depending upon the poll, who do not believe that taxpayers should be forced to pay for what many believe is the taking of an innocent human life in its mother's womb. | ||
| And then the third priority in the bill is the school choice provisions. | ||
| There's a provision that allocates about $5 billion for tax credits for contributions by taxpayers to elementary and secondary education scholarships so that children who are trapped in schools where they can't learn or they're not safe can attend a school of their parents' choice. | ||
| So there are some big things in this bill that we want. | ||
| I just want to pause you briefly on the school choice effort. | ||
| I'm seeing a story here in the AP just from yesterday afternoon that a Republican plan to expand private school vouchers nationwide was dealt a major setback Friday when the Senate parliamentarian said the proposal would run afoul of procedural rules. | ||
| The years in the making plan would have created a federal tax credit supporting scholarships to help families send their children to private schools or other options beyond their local public schools. | ||
| But in an overnight announcement, the Senate parliamentarian advised against including the proposal in President Donald Trump's tax cut and spending bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your thoughts on that well obviously the Senate parliamentarian has sadly dealt a number of blows to provisions in this bill and this is just one of them. | |
| But this is not the end of the line. | ||
| There's a process in the Senate where you can appeal to the chair. | ||
| We're going to urge that that be done. | ||
| And no matter what happens in the Senate, you have to remember there's going to be two versions of this bill, one House, one Senate. | ||
| They're going to have to go to a conference committee after the Senate acts. | ||
| They're going to have to meld those two bills into one final product, and then we're going to get to another bite of the apple. | ||
| And I'm not an expert on Senate parliamentary procedure, but also this is not my first rodeo. | ||
| I've been doing this for decades, and we've been dealt these kinds of blows before. | ||
| There's often a way for a workaround. | ||
| There's a way to reformulate or rewrite the legislative language. | ||
| But I can tell you this: whether it is in this bill or in a subsequent bill, we're going to keep fighting for the rights of every child in every school in America, whether they're black, brown, yellow, or white, whether they're rich or poor, to be able to attend a school where they can learn and where they're safe and where they can be future successful workers, business owners, and citizens. | ||
| Right now, we have a two-tier educational system, and the well-to-do and the wealthy get to go to the good schools, and the poorer children and the minority children are trapped in schools where they don't know how to read, they don't know how to write at grade level, and it's abysmal. | ||
| And this is not just an educational issue. | ||
| This is a moral issue, and it is an issue of right and wrong. | ||
| And frankly, it is the civil rights issue of our time. | ||
| And if you look at the history of our country, the segregationists used to stand in the schoolhouse door and tell minority school children they couldn't get in. | ||
| Now you have today's liberal leaders and the teachers' unions and the Democrats standing in the schoolhouse door and telling those minority children they can't leave. | ||
| It's wrong, it's immoral, and we are not going to rest until this is resolved and fixed, and every child can go to a quality school. | ||
| We're going to be taking your calls for Ralph Reed from the Faith and Freedom Coalition and our phone lines one more time. | ||
| For Republicans, 2027-8001, for Democrats, 202-748-8000, and for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Mr. Reid, you mentioned Planned Parenthood earlier, and I want to get your thoughts on the Supreme Court 63 ruling against Planned Parenthood, saying that medical patients do not have the right to sue to obtain non-abortion health care from the organization's medical providers. | ||
| Obviously, using federal funds for abortions is already banned. | ||
| The decision allows South Carolina to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. | ||
| What are your thoughts on that decision and what happens moving forward? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, obviously, we have supported defunding not just Planned Parenthood but other abortion providers under Medicaid programs. | |
| And frankly, this has been a long-standing bipartisan consensus in our country that goes all the way back to the Carter administration and the passage of the Hyde Amendment, which was sponsored by the late Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois. | ||
| And it said that taxpayers would not be forced to pay for abortion under the Medicaid program for elective abortions. | ||
| And that has been the policy throughout the history almost since Roe v. Way. | ||
| So this is an issue that is a little different. | ||
| The challenge is that if Planned Parenthood is receiving taxpayer funds for other services, they have ways of cross-subsidizing. | ||
| And a lot of times those funds, if they're not entirely fungible, they're certainly partially fungible. | ||
| And I think it's also, frankly, an issue of just sound public policy and sound Medicaid policy. | ||
| If what you're trying to do is to provide people with prenatal care and other essential services, you don't really want to be funneling funds into an organization whose primary purpose is to take the life of an innocent child in its mother's womb. | ||
| And so that's the reason for the policy. | ||
| There were in the Bush administration, I mean Bush 43, George W. Bush, there were community health centers that were set up to provide a full spectrum of health care services to Medicaid recipients and others of a lower socioeconomic status who needed access to quality health care, so that there were those health care clinics. | ||
| And I think it's something that the states have a right to do. | ||
| I applaud the Supreme Court decision. | ||
| And as I said, you know, we're going to fight to make sure that this happens at the federal level, which means it will apply to all 50 states. | ||
| I want to read you the portion of the dissent that Justice Katanji Brown Jackson wrote in this case on that Planned Parenthood ruling. | ||
| She said, today's decision is likely to result in tangible harm to real people. | ||
| At a minimum, it will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them. | ||
| And more concretely, it will strip those South Carolinians and countless other Medicaid recipients around the country of a deeply personal freedom, the ability to decide who treats us at our most vulnerable. | ||
| The court today disregards Congress's express desire to prevent that very outcome. | ||
| Your response, Mr. Reid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, obviously, I disagree with the dissent, and I very strongly agree with the majority opinion because I think that taxpayers have rights too, and you're trying to balance those two rights. | |
| So we believe people have a right to quality health care. | ||
| It's a matter of prudential judgment as to whether or not that's provided by charities, whether it's provided by faith organizations such as the tradition of faith-based hospitals like Catholic hospitals and Methodist and Baptist hospitals, or whether it's provided by the government. | ||
| You know, this idea that the choice of first resort to care for the poor and the marginalized is always the government is just not true. | ||
| But once you're involving taxpayer funds, I believe taxpayers have a right to make prudential judgments about how those funds are best used in deploying them for purposes of caring for those who need help. | ||
| And I think, again, as I said, it has been a bipartisan consensus under every president since 1978 that we do not use taxpayer funds under the Medicaid program to pay for elective abortions. | ||
| That was the policy under Clinton, under Obama, and even though Biden opposed it, every Democratic candidate for president, by the way, supported that until Hillary Clinton in 2016. | ||
| So it's only been very recently that the Democrats have advocated for Medicaid paying for abortion. | ||
| And there's one simple reason why. | ||
| It's because they're pro-abortion. | ||
| They want more abortions. | ||
| And the way to do that is to have the taxpayers subsidize it. | ||
| In fact, the Alan Gutmacher Institute, which is a research arm of Planned Parenthood, has estimated that if there was taxpayer-funded abortion the way the Democrats and the Senate want, the way Kamala Harris and Joe Biden advocated in the last presidential election, it would lead to 200 to 300,000 additional abortions every year in America. | ||
| And wherever you stand on this issue, and again, I know it's a divisive issue, it's a highly emotional issue. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| But wherever you stand on this issue, and I'm strongly pro-life, you should be trying to have policies that will lead to fewer abortions, not more abortions. | ||
| That's not sound policy. | ||
| Let's go to some questions from our callers. | ||
| Kristen is in Warren, Ohio, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Kristen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I would kind of like to go back to what he was saying about the voucher system and how it's the majority reason for doing so is to help all the low-income kids. | ||
| I'm kind of a little miffed about how much we keep touting that when the reality is in Ohio, only 10% of the kids who are receiving vouchers are literally from that sector of low-income and wanting to have a better leg up of getting into an environment that is not what a lot of it happens in public schools. | ||
| 10%. | ||
| The rest of the people who are receiving those vouchers are people who have had children never once step into a public setting. | ||
| They've already been paying that. | ||
| They can afford it. | ||
| And what happens one of two ways? | ||
| That 10% of low-income that comes in there, they come in and do manage to get in a better environment. | ||
| And that's, of course, why their parents sent them there. | ||
| They're not dealing with all the fights and the riffraff and the things that happen sometimes in public schools because public schools don't have the luxury of kicking out kids when they do things that break the rules. | ||
| And I can tell you, I sent my kids to both. | ||
| So, Kristen, I want to give our guest a chance to respond to some of the points that you've raised. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'd have to look at that Ohio program, but I can tell you that, so I can't respond to that directly other than to take the point. | |
| I can't dispute it, but I can tell you that in the most long-standing, well-developed and robust educational choice programs, such as in the state of Florida, which began under then Governor Jeb Bush and then was subsequently expanded by every subsequent governor. | ||
| It's been a very long process. | ||
| You know, Rick Scott and then later Ron DeSantis, it's been under Governor Ron DeSantis that it's become universal school choice. | ||
| And yes, in many of these states, everybody is allowed to take advantage of that scholarship program, not just the lower-income individuals. | ||
| That's a matter left up to those individual states. | ||
| But in case I didn't make it clear, I believe this is the right of every parent and every child, regardless of income, regardless of ethnic background, regardless of socioeconomic background, regardless of where they are geographically, whether they're in a rural area, suburban, or urban. | ||
| We believe this is the right of a parent. | ||
| And again, you know, this is a policy dispute. | ||
| The Democrats and the left and the teachers' unions believe that the only option that should be subsidized by public funds and should be encouraged by public funds is a public school. | ||
| Now, look, just to be clear, I am a product of public schools. | ||
| I attended public schools my entire life until I went to graduate school. | ||
| So, from first grade all the way through my college degree. | ||
| So, I believe in public education, but I also believe that the best way to have quality public education is to have competition and, more importantly, to give families, parents, and children the right to attend the school of their choice. | ||
| And I think, you know, when you're talking about a 21st century system, and I'm familiar in a broad way about the history of public education in the country, I believe in it. | ||
| I think we need to have a strong public education system. | ||
| I've had family members who are teachers, and I want to applaud all the public school teachers that are out there on the front lines every day. | ||
| But we're not in the early 19th century. | ||
| This is not the era of Horace Mann. | ||
| The problem we confront as a society in the age of the internet and artificial intelligence and technology and the 21st century is not the ability of taking people who are illiterate and providing them with a basic subsistence education so they can read and write. | ||
| We have to prepare these people to be the workers, the entrepreneurs, and the citizens of the 21st century. | ||
| And the way to do that is to have a free market system where there's competition, where there's innovation, where there's multiple choices, where consumers and parents and children get to decide, not bureaucrats. | ||
| And that's the best system by far. | ||
| And the irony of this, Kimberly. | ||
| Ralph, I do want to get to a few more callers, but go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, sure. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's hear from John in South Dakota on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, and thank you for allowing me, Paul. | |
| The biggest problem that we have, and the reason this bill is very bad, is because, well, you have nitrous oxide, which is 315 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2 is. | ||
| And it's exponentially releasing from the polar regions now as the ice melts. | ||
| And then you also have methane. | ||
| John, what's your question specifically for Mr. Reed? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because of the warming planet and all the information that this bill is getting rid of information from NOAA, from NASA. | |
| It's going after any renewable energy that wants to get us off fossil fuels. | ||
| And the fossil fuel industry uses men like this to convince religious people who are good people. | ||
| It convinces them that this man is going to try to save their children when in fact he's going to murder them by making this planet uninhabitable. | ||
| So please, everybody. | ||
| I just want to make sure that we're clear on your point. | ||
| You're arguing that the phase-out of the clean energy tax credits in the Big Beautiful Bill Act is something that's particularly damaging. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, actually, you know, manslaughter is when you accidentally kill children and stuff. | |
| But this man is doing it on intentionally. | ||
| Is not killing anyone, but let's hear from Ralph Reed maybe on your position on how this bill treats clean energy tax credits as well as maybe climate change more broadly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, we know this is a big debate that's underway in the Senate right now. | |
| The House has largely eliminated those Green New Deal provisions that were previously passed under some of Joe Biden's spending blowouts, of which he had three different bills. | ||
| He had an infrastructure bill, he had the American Renewal Act that created these massive subsidies for alternative energy, whether it's wind or solar or whatever it was. | ||
| And here's the basic problem. | ||
| There's two issues. | ||
| The first is that even if you buy in to the argument of the climate change lobby, the policies that they advocated, the subsidies for clean energy, that alternative energy, and the things that they tried to do to discourage the use of fossil fuel, | ||
| they wouldn't have changed the global climate by even a half a degree Celsius over the next 50 years. | ||
| So even if you believe all of their apocalyptic warnings about the warming of the client, their own policies and their own projections were that it wasn't going to make a significant difference. | ||
| Even if you take something like their subsidies for electric vehicles, how do you think we power electricity? | ||
| The electricity grid is largely natural gas, oil, coal. | ||
| A very small percentage of it is alternative energy. | ||
| So you would think, oh, we're all going to drive electric vehicles. | ||
| And by the way, I'm not hostile to electric vehicles. | ||
| I own one. | ||
| But I'm not under any delusion that by powering my car through the electric grid, rather than putting gasoline in it, that I'm somehow or another saving the planet. | ||
| Most of the electricity is generated by fossil fuel because solar only works when the sun's out, wind only works when the wind is blowing, and that's not all the time. | ||
| You need a reliable electricity grid. | ||
| So no matter what our policy is, the bulk of the electricity grid is going to be powered by fossil fuel because it's more reliable. | ||
| Last point. | ||
| If you try to do these things through government bureaucracy and through command and control out of Washington, D.C., rather than allow the marketplace to make these choices, you're going to have a disaster on your hands. | ||
| And I don't have handy this morning the actual totals of the amounts for these individual programs, but I can tell you this: billions, billions were in the Biden spending blowouts for setting up these car chargers, these EV chargers, electric vehicle chargers all over the country. | ||
| We spent billions of dollars. | ||
| And by the end of the Biden administration, I think we had less than 20 chargers that had actually been deployed. | ||
| And what we've got to understand is that the marketplace and the private sector know how to meet these needs. | ||
| And if you try to do it through government command and control, where you've got some politician or a bureaucrat in Washington deciding, oh, we need this many chargers or this many gas pumps, that's not how you grow an economy. | ||
| Okay, let's hear from Martin in Long Island, New York on a line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Martin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN and Mr. Reed. | |
| I have a question. | ||
| I'm 79 years old, and my parents always taught me it's so easy to criticize someone or something without having a solution. | ||
| And I watch the Democratic Party always criticizing the Republicans, and they're always criticizing our president with no solutions. | ||
| My question to you, Mr. Reed, where is our nationalism in this country? | ||
| Why can't we work together so when our foreign governors see what's going on, how we're fighting in America, they take advantage of us? | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Reed. | ||
| Well, thanks for the question, and congratulations on reaching the age of 79. | ||
| And I would just say I'm as an American historian, which is what I was ironically enough trained to do. | ||
| I didn't end up doing it, but I got a doctorate in history, and I spent a lot of time thinking about our country, about its history, about its DNA, and about what makes America special. | ||
| Some would say exceptional. | ||
| I would certainly agree with that. | ||
| What makes America great, to borrow a phrase? | ||
| And I would say one of the things is that, yes, we fight, and we fight in a very robust and energetic way. | ||
| I think our enemies and adversaries mistake that and misapprehend that for disunity. | ||
| It is not. | ||
| It is us as Americans exercising our precious First Amendment rights of free speech, of freedom of association, and in some cases, freedom of religion. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And that creates this sturm and drag and this constant sort of dichotomy in our country. | ||
| But no one should mistake that for the fact that we are, as a nation, are not the United States of America. | ||
| If you hit this country, if you harm even a hair on the head of a single American, either our service personnel or a citizen, this country will come together. | ||
| And, you know, as Winston Churchill said, America is a slumbering giant, but once awakened, it is a roaring lion. | ||
| And yet we have our fights and we have our disagreements. | ||
| And I would say this about President Trump's policies. | ||
| You talked about all the criticism. | ||
| We got a report this week that real wages for hourly workers in the United States have gone up 2% in real terms. | ||
| That means after inflation, just in the first five months of the Trump administration, that is the largest such increase ever recorded in that short a period of time in a presidential administration in recorded economic history. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| We got an inflation report this week. | ||
| And in spite of all of the warnings, you know, and all the doomsday predictions that tariffs were going to increase inflation, inflation is falling and is either at or near the Fed's 2% target, and that's just in the first five months. | ||
| So I do want to get to a couple of years ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yesterday, the SNP hit an all-time high. | |
| So these policies are already working. | ||
| And once we pass the Trump tax cuts, which we're going to do, and we make them permanent between the tariff and trade policies, the deregulation, the tax cuts, and then once the Fed belatedly finally gets the signal that inflation is under control, real wages are rising, they'll cut interest rates, and this economy is going to explode. | ||
| So Rashad is in Sacramento, California on our line for independence. | ||
| Go ahead, Rashad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm not familiar with your guest and his organization, but I do applaud what he's doing as far as the school voucher choice. | ||
| I'm a parent and educator, and I definitely see a lot of what's happening with regard to the systemic problems that go on in a lot of the public schools. | ||
| And there needs to be more advocacy for school choice because my children, when they were coming up, I got involved with the schools to try to look at why are they struggling so much. | ||
| And the reason why I got into education was a result of that. | ||
| My daughter, my oldest daughter, just graduated from the University of California this spring. | ||
| And she was first in public school, I mean, private school, then we put her in a public school, which she didn't like. | ||
| But I wanted her to have that experience because, like your guests, I came through the public school education from all the way up to college and everything too. | ||
| Mr. Rashad, we only have a few minutes left in this segment. | ||
| Can you ask your question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, sure. | |
| So what is this organization doing to advocate for more parents, particularly in urban areas, regarding school choice? | ||
| What are they doing to get to work? | ||
| Because it's a very important thing. | ||
| Okay, let's go ahead and answer that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, great question. | |
| And it is a top legislative and policy objective and priority for our organization. | ||
| And I mentioned earlier we have full-time lobbyists already in about 16 state capitals and state legislatures. | ||
| We're on our way to expanding that into 20 to 25 states and ultimately 30 plus states over the next several years. | ||
| And those advocates in those capitals, and more importantly, the churches and the citizens that they're representing and advocating on behalf of are working at the state level to expand these school choice programs. | ||
| And this is going to be just like what unfolded in Florida, what has unfolded in Texas and other states that have moved ahead on school choice. | ||
| It's going to be gradual. | ||
| You know, you're not going to go from no school choice to universal school choice in one legislative session. | ||
| So it's going to happen incrementally. | ||
| We believe that we will ultimately achieve the objective of having tax credits for contributions to those programs at the federal level. | ||
| And we're not going to rest on this. | ||
| Matt is in St. Louis, Missouri on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Matt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you. | |
| I want to show that the pro-life side is hypocritical. | ||
| I do that by pointing out that what they want is to use the government to create laws to force women to sacrifice their bodies for someone else. | ||
| And no one wants their body sacrificed for someone else. | ||
| This gentleman on the TV screen would never want the government to force him to sacrifice a kidney for someone else. | ||
| And pregnancy is hard on a woman's body. | ||
| It's irreversible. | ||
| And so the argument I often hear is they didn't want to be pregnant. | ||
| They shouldn't have had sex. | ||
| As if consent for sex is consent for pregnancy. | ||
| It is not. | ||
| Consent for sex is just that, nothing more. | ||
| If the rule is consent for sex, the act, means consent for pregnancy, the risk, then consent for leaving your door unlocked is consent for home invasion. | ||
| Since it's clearly a problem. | ||
| What issue are you asking Ralph Reed to respond to? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want him to recognize that he's being a hypocrite when he says he is pro-life because he would never sacrifice his kidney for someone who needs it today, right now. | |
| Okay, let's let Mr. Reed respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, as I said earlier, you know, we understand that when it comes to the issue of protecting life, that you're balancing two competing rights. | |
| One is the right of the woman to make her own choices. | ||
| The other is the right of the unborn child to have a right to life. | ||
| And if you want to live in a society where life is devalued, where life is not protected, and you think you can only have that policy with regard to unborn children and think it isn't going to affect the elderly, it isn't going to affect the infirm, that it isn't going to lead to a devaluing of all life, I think we're kidding ourselves. | ||
| So we believe that the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence guarantees every one of our citizens a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. | ||
| We believe the 14th Amendment's equal protection law provision or clause says that no person, no person doesn't say whether they're born or unborn, shall be denied a right to life without due process of law. | ||
| And we believe the unborn child is a person. | ||
| They have brain waves at roughly 30 days. | ||
| They have a heartbeat within five to six weeks. | ||
| They are alive and they feel pain at a certain point. | ||
| So we, you know, again, this is a matter of prudential judgment. | ||
| It's primarily proceeding at the state level. | ||
| But we certainly don't believe at the national level that a child that can feel pain, that a child that can survive outside the womb, and we would argue a child that has a heartbeat and is clearly alive should be denied that right to life. | ||
| And by the way, half of those unborn children are women. | ||
| So we're standing up for the right of these women. | ||
| They just happen to be in the womb, and they have a right to life too, so that they get to pursue their choices after they're born. | ||
| David is in Los Angeles, California on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you? | |
| I just wanted to comment on the gentleman's statement about renewable energy. | ||
| I heard his ridiculous talking points. | ||
| Renewable energy is reshaping the world in a profound and necessary way. | ||
| Harnessing these sources like solar, wind, hydrogen. | ||
| David, I want you to finish your point, but which point that Ralph Reed made did you think was ridiculous? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, specifically, he talked about charging stations and mentioned the infrastructure bill. | |
| But he failed to mention things like it was complemented by the Inflation Reduction Act. | ||
| There was a 30% tax credit. | ||
| And we have charging stations all over the place, particularly here in Los Angeles. | ||
| There are charging stations everywhere you go out. | ||
| The parking lot is charging stations. | ||
| Now everybody's utilizing these EV chargers, and they've grown significantly, and it has made a major impact on the renewable energy. | ||
| And then he said something ridiculous about how global warming is only going to change, as if we shouldn't try to make a difference. | ||
| And global warming's impact on the environment is significant and it's going to be catastrophic if we don't continue to pursue renewable energy in an aggressive way. | ||
| And, you know, he just made it seem like it's a trivial attempt. | ||
| You know, just because something's difficult doesn't mean we shouldn't attempt to try to achieve it. | ||
| That's the point I was trying to make. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Mr. Reed, we'll let you respond before we wrap up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, again, I don't think he really disagreed with anything that I said. | |
| I didn't say that there shouldn't be EV chargers. | ||
| I said the opposite. | ||
| I drive an electric vehicle. | ||
| I use electric chargers. | ||
| And trust me, if I go outside of suburban Atlanta where I live, you know, Atlanta proper, it's very hard to find a charging station. | ||
| So I'm all for more chargers. | ||
| What I'm not for is some government boondoggle where we create some bureaucratic program. | ||
| People apply for government contracts. | ||
| It takes years and years to decide who's going to get the money. | ||
| Then it takes them even more years to decide who's going to build the chargers and where they're going to put them. | ||
| So by the end of the Biden administration, they made all these great promises. | ||
| My point was not that we shouldn't have alternative sources of energy. | ||
| My point was the marketplace and not government command and control should decide that. | ||
| So that's why I'm in favor of treating all of these forms of energy equally. | ||
| You know, let them all be treated the same under government policy, and let's have an all-of-the-above strategy. | ||
| I'm not opposed to solar or wind. | ||
| I'm not opposed to electric vehicles. | ||
| I just don't believe the government should pick winners and losers because it doesn't work and because most of the time none of this stuff ends up being deployed. | ||
| And you remember the Solyndra debacle under the Obama administration where they gave government loans and tax credits in the billions to startup companies that were supposed to provide all these solar energy and they went under and the taxpayers lost. | ||
| So that was my only point, not that we shouldn't have it, but that the government shouldn't be trying to dictate it. | ||
| The government did not dictate the rise of the fossil fuel industry. | ||
| That happened in the marketplace. | ||
| The gas stations that you see when you fuel your car, those are not government gas stations. | ||
| That was the private sector. | ||
| That works, that meets the needs of consumers. | ||
| The other usually leads to failure and to a massive loss of taxpayer funds. | ||
| Well, thank you very much for your time. | ||
| Ralph Reed is the founder and co-chair of the Faith and Freedom Coalition in town for this year's Road to Majority Conference. | ||
| Thank you very much for your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Kimberly. | |
| Great to be with you. | ||
| Now, after the break, we're going to have a conversation with Jeff Cohen, who is the co-founder of the progressive group Roots Action, and we're going to talk about his group's priorities in the second Trump administration, as well as the debate over the future of the Democratic Party. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A, George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley, author of The Indispensable Right, discusses the history of free speech in America and the people who advanced it. | |
| He argues that the First Amendment right is a basic human right that protects all the others and shares his concerns about current attempts by government, universities, and the private sector to limit free speech in the United States. | ||
| I have a colleague who has called for amending the First Amendment and says that it's aggressively individualistic. | ||
| There are other law professors who are saying we should trash the Constitution. | ||
| There are books out that say that free speech of the First Amendment, according to one Michigan law professor, is the Achilles heel of the United States. | ||
| So there is this still ongoing debate over what is so revolutionary about that language. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the book tries to answer why. | |
| Jonathan Turley, with his book, The Indispensable Right, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | ||
| You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| One October morning in 2018, journalist William Giroux says he was returning some books to his local Virginia Beast library when he noticed a new state historical marker planted in the ground near the front entrance. | ||
| It said the library was built on the site of a World War II prisoner war camp. | ||
| In Mr. Giroux's author's note in his latest book called The 15, he writes, quote, I was surprised and a little embarrassed, unquote, not to know that the U.S. had 700 POW camps spread throughout the United States in 46 different states, housing 371,683 German soldiers and 49,784 Italians. | ||
| That's during World War II. | ||
| His book is subtitled Murder, Retribution, and the Forgotten Story of Nazi POWs in America. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author William Giroux with his book, The 15, on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| The U.S. Senate is meeting for a rare Saturday session to work on the Republican tax and spending cuts bill. | ||
| President Trump has insisted that Congress deliver the package to him by July 4th. | ||
| Due to Gabble back into session at 2 p.m. Eastern, no votes are currently scheduled. | ||
| Watch live coverage of the Senate on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| Get C-SPAN wherever you are with C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app that puts you at the center of democracy, live and on demand. | ||
| Keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the U.S. Congress, White House events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips. | ||
| Catch the latest episodes of Washington Journal. | ||
| Find scheduling information for C-SPAN's TV and radio networks, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. | ||
| The C-SPAN Now app is available at the Apple Store and Google Play. | ||
| Download it for free today. | ||
| c-span democracy unfiltered get c-span wherever you are with c-span now our free mobile video app that puts you at the center of democracy live and on demand Keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the U.S. Congress, White House events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips. | ||
| Catch the latest episodes of Washington Journal. | ||
| Find scheduling information for C-SPAN's TV and radio networks, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. | ||
| The C-SPAN Now app is available at the Apple Store and Google Play. | ||
| Download it for free today. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| Joining me now on set is Jeff Cohen, who is the co-founder and policy director at Roots Action. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thanks to be nice to be with you. | |
| Thank you very much for joining us this morning. | ||
| Can you tell us a bit about Roots Action, which you co-founded in 2011, your mission, the types of policies you advocate for, and how you're funded. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Roots Action is a C4 organization funded primarily by the members and the people that are on our email list. | ||
| Our email list is over a million people. | ||
| We advocate for peace, economic justice, environmentalism. | ||
| We also have a C3 that gets some foundation donations. | ||
| That's called the Roots Action Education Fund. | ||
| Why were we set up? | ||
| I guess there were some online groups. | ||
| Move On might have been one of them. | ||
| And they were very active during the invasion of Iraq. | ||
| And they led the opposition to that invasion when most of the Democratic senators supported the Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq. | ||
| Senators Clinton, Senators Biden, Senator Edwards, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader. | ||
| So it was the goal. | ||
| And we noticed that when the Democrats took the Congress, when Pelosi became the Speaker and then Obama became the president, a lot of the liberal online groups quit talking about peace or cutting the military budget because the Democrats were in power. | ||
| So the best way to explain Roots Action is we fight for peace and economic justice no matter which party is in control of the White House or the Capitol. | ||
| So we're an independent progressive group fighting for a pro-working class agenda. | ||
| You all recently made an endorsement in the New York Democratic mayoral primary, which at the time that you made your endorsement was pretty unusual for Zorhan Mamdani. | ||
| And I wonder what your take is of that election, its outcome, and what that means in terms of Democratic strategies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We supported, we came out and announced our support of Zorhan Mamdani. | |
| We knew him as a state legislator. | ||
| We did it on day one when he announced his mayoral run. | ||
| He had fought for affordable housing from Albany. | ||
| He had instituted in New York City while he was a state legislator a pilot program for a free bus line and it got people out of their cars and it really helped working class people in New York. | ||
| So when he announced he was running for mayor of New York City we were the first national group to support him and I've got to say as all the headlines are saying it's a seismic shift. | ||
| The Democratic Party establishment, the corporate establishment, the Democratic leaders that are indebted to corporate donors and wealthy donors, they're appalled. | ||
| Many of them have not even expressed support for the guy who overwhelmingly won the Democratic primary. | ||
| 430,000 votes in the first round. | ||
| You know, they have ranked choice voting in New York. | ||
| So 430,000 people ranked him number one. | ||
| They'll do more calculation next week where they eliminate. | ||
| There were 11 candidates. | ||
| And as they start eliminating candidates, they take, who was your second choice? | ||
| Zoran, he's going to go well over half a million votes. | ||
| It was a remarkable grassroots campaign. | ||
| 40,000 volunteers knocking on more than 1 million doors with an agenda of affordable housing, bringing down the price of groceries in New York City. | ||
| And it really caught on. | ||
| It was in many ways a multi-ethnic, multi-generational movement, but it was powered by young activists, the kind of activists that aren't usually turned on by Democratic Party candidates, but they were in New York City. | ||
| You mentioned this a bit, but I want to point to an article in The Hill highlighting that Schumer and Jeffries, the top Democratic leaders in Congress, congratulated Momdani on the NYC upset, but stopped short of endorsing him. | ||
| Many Democrats are kind of holding back support for him despite his unexpected win. | ||
| What do you think is behind that and how applicable is the way he won to other Democrats across the country? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good question. | |
| We did not expect the Democratic Party establishment to rally around Zorhan Mamdani. | ||
| In many ways, what he did was a refutation of the lousy leadership of the Democratic Party. | ||
| The way corporate leaders like Hakeem Jeffries in the House, Schumer in the Senate, how beholden they are to corporate donors. | ||
| Zorin ran a completely grassroots campaign in New York City. | ||
| He didn't have corporate donors. | ||
| He wouldn't take corporate money. | ||
| And he showed, in answer to your second question, he showed the way for future Democrats. | ||
| The grassroots is hungry for a candidate that will stand up for affordable housing, bringing down the costs of groceries, no-cost child care. | ||
| The masses of people, the broad electorate, including not just Democrats but independents, they want to hear a pro-working class politics. | ||
| So I think he showed the way. | ||
| He raised so much money from small donors so fast, and New York City's got a matching program for municipal candidates that he started sending out emails, I don't need your money anymore, I just need you to volunteer. | ||
| And he got it. | ||
| The problem with the Democratic Party leadership, Schumer, Jeffries, Pelosi in the past, is they're reliant on corporate donors. | ||
| Those donors don't want a reform agenda that might inspire voters. | ||
| Zorin Momdani showed that if you have a pro-working class agenda, when affordability is such a huge issue, not just in New York City, but across the country, you can win. | ||
| And you don't need to rely on corporate donors because if you do, the corporate donors tell you what you, you know, they limit what you can say and what you can't say. | ||
| And that's the beauty. | ||
| Bernie Sanders, one of the biggest fundraisers in history, and it's all small dollars. | ||
| For a while, his donations were averaging $27. | ||
| AOC runs with a pro-working class agenda, elected to Congress, and she's a huge fundraiser. | ||
| So you don't need, I think what Zorin, AOC, and Bernie have shown, you don't need wealthy interest, the 1%, the corporate elite, to fund your candidacy. | ||
| If you have an agenda that inspires people, you'll get a lot of small donations. | ||
| Republican House Member Alise Tafanik said on X, New York elected Democrats are in absolute free fall. | ||
| Republicans will run and Republicans will win New York. | ||
| There's an argument being made, mostly by Republicans, but some Democrats as well, that Mr. Momdani is too progressive and too far to the left and that that will actually be more helpful to Republicans than to Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, it's like me listening to the Hillary Clinton people saying we want Trump to be the nominee in 2016 because he can't win. | |
| Democrats who have a progressive pro-working class agenda can win. | ||
| The Zoran Mandani amazing grassroots campaign has proven that point. | ||
| And I think it scares the heck out of Republicans. | ||
| Now then, I also want to talk about something you've raised already, which is sort of the divides within the Democratic Party, generational divides in terms of the progressive versus more centrist. | ||
| Where do you think these main divides are in the party and what's to be done about them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the majority of Democrats want the progressive agenda. | |
| Indeed, when you look at, say, the Bernie Sanders AOC agenda of Medicare for all, free or cheap public college education, you see that's so popular, not just with Democrats, but with the broad public. | ||
| So the divide is that the corporate establishment of the Democratic Party basically they can't inspire voters, so they have to rely on the corporate donors. | ||
| And I think there's a different way that's been shown how you can get elected, and that's the way that AOC has shown. | ||
| A number of representatives in Congress have shown. | ||
| They don't take corporate money. | ||
| They have a pro-working class agenda. | ||
| And I've got to say, the reason why the progressive wing of the party has to become the dominant wing is because you cannot defeat the phony populism of a Donald Trump, who claims to be for the working class, as he's telling people who to hate. | ||
| You've got to hate minorities. | ||
| You've got to hate DEI. | ||
| It's the gays. | ||
| It's the trans people. | ||
| It's the immigrants. | ||
| That kind of phony populism that divides people is something that cannot be defeated by go-slow, yes-no status quo corporate Democrats. | ||
| They lost in 2016 with Hillary, a winnable election. | ||
| They just lost again in 2024. | ||
| The way to defeat Trump and the phony populism is with a genuine progressive, populist, pro-working class agenda. | ||
| And that's why there's always been this fight within the Democratic Party. | ||
| Those who aren't very popular with the voters, but they have a lot of corporate donors, that's the establishment of the party. | ||
| This new crop of Democrats that's very popular with the base and could get all of these volunteers and all of these small dollar donations, that's the way to the future. | ||
| The New York City election result, and we're going to see the final result this coming week when they tabulate all the ranked choice voting, it's really inspired progressives that we're on the right track. | ||
| We can win where corporate Democrats cannot win. | ||
| We'll be taking your calls for our guest. | ||
| Our lines again for Republicans, 202748, 8001. | ||
| For Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| I want to circle back to something you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation about how so many Democratic groups have moved away from the topic of peace and that you remain focused on that. | ||
| I want to point out that on Roots Action's website, you have a petition related to no more war with Iran because your organization has been very critical of these U.S. strikes against Iran. | ||
| What's been your reaction to how these events have unfolded? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're appalled that you can just keep bombing countries and not go to Congress. | |
| The Constitution is clear that only Congress has the power to declare war. | ||
| And again, because we're an independent group, we'll criticize Obama when he was bombing countries without going to Congress. | ||
| So, yes, I'm glad you brought that up because militarism, ending militarism, is a big part of the Roots Action agenda. | ||
| I encourage people to go to rootsaction.org. | ||
| We need to cut the military budget. | ||
| It grew under Biden year after year after year, and now President Trump is going to even balloon the military budget. | ||
| There's a reason other advanced industrial countries all have universal health care. | ||
| We don't. | ||
| There's a reason other advanced democratic countries have free or almost very inexpensive higher education. | ||
| We don't. | ||
| It's because more than half of the discretionary spending in our federal budget goes to war or war preparation. | ||
| It's the military budget. | ||
| So it's a defining issue for rootsaction.org. | ||
| The peace movement is growing and we're a part of it. | ||
| I want to play a portion of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this week defending the administration's assessment that the U.S. strikes had a devastating effect on Iran's nuclear facilities while accusing the media of inaccurate reporting about it. | ||
| So here's the exchange along with the reporter who asked him how the administration arrived at the conclusion that the attacks were so devastating. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean what changed in the past three days and make you so you know sir, I think I mean I think I explained what changed. | |
| There was a great deal of irresponsible reporting based on leaks, preliminary information in low confidence. | ||
| Again, when someone leaks something, they do it with an agenda. | ||
| And when you leak a portion of an intelligence assessment, but just a little portion, just the little portion that makes it seem like maybe the strike wasn't effective, then you start a news cycle, whether it's the Washington Post or Fox News or CNN or MSNBC, you start a news cycle that starts to call into question the efficacy. | ||
| That's why. | ||
| So you bring the chairman here who's not involved in politics. | ||
| He doesn't do politics. | ||
| That's my lane to understand and translate and talk about those types of things. | ||
| So I can use the word obliterated. | ||
| He could use defeat, destroy it, assess, all of those things. | ||
| But ultimately, we're here to clarify what these weapons are capable of, which anyone with two eyes, some ears and a brain can recognize that kind of firepower with that specificity at that location and others is going to have a devastating effect. | ||
| So we all recognize there will be days and weeks ahead. | ||
| That's why yesterday I said, if you want to know what's going on at Ford, you better go there and get a big shovel because no one's under there right now. | ||
| No one's under there able to assess and everyone's using reflections of what they see. | ||
| And that's why the Israelis, the Iranians, the IAEA, the UN to a man and to a woman who recognize the capability of this weapon system are acknowledging how destructive it's been. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that's what's changed. | |
| So you are also a media critic and founder of the national media watch group FAIR. | ||
| What is your assessment of not only what Secretary Hegseth said, but also how the media has been covering the story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we've documented at fair.org that peace voices, critics of U.S. foreign policy, are basically excluded not just from Fox News, but from CNN, MSNBC as well. | |
| So the coverage in the mainstream media has been so narrow. | ||
| Was it an effective strike or not? | ||
| I'd like to hear a debate, did we violate international law again? | ||
| We did. | ||
| And it's just funny to hear the dishonesty that comes out of the Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth in this particular instance because he's blaming it on a leak of an intelligence report. | ||
| It wasn't the leak. | ||
| Donald Trump, without knowing what the heck had happened, announced within a few minutes that they had totally obliterated the nuclear program. | ||
| So we're getting used to just so much dishonesty from the Trump White House that here he is trying to shift attention to a leak of an intelligence report when it was the President of the United States without any evidence whatsoever that made this obviously wrong declaration within a few minutes of the bombing. | ||
| So, but yeah, the media coverage of war is perhaps the worst issue in mainstream media. | ||
| You have debates about was it effective or was it not effective? | ||
| You don't have debates about why don't we cut the military budget and start providing free public education, higher education. | ||
| Why don't we provide universal health care? | ||
| Why don't we take some of the money that's going to the Pentagon and redirect it to housing, health care, the environment, education that's overwhelmingly popular. | ||
| When I say the progressive agenda, I'm not talking about that it's popular with most Democrats. | ||
| It's popular with most Americans. | ||
| Most Americans want the Pentagon budget cut, and they want these other things lifted up. | ||
| Most Americans want taxes increased on the wealthy 1%, the richest 1%. | ||
| Instead, we have a situation today, you know, where a billionaire pays a lower tax rate than the billionaire secretary. | ||
| And poll after poll shows that the public is with the progressive agenda, but they just don't hear it enunciated in a media that goes from the corporate centrist of CNN to the right-wingers of Fox News or the corporate centrist at the New York Times and the right-wingers at the New York Post. | ||
| There's a whole popular agenda out there that doesn't get play in most of the corporate-owned mainstream media. | ||
| In many cases, the billionaire-owned mainstream media. | ||
| All right, we're going to turn to your questions for Jeff Cohen, who is the co-founder of Roots Action. | ||
| We'll start with a question we received via text from Jimbo in Bakersfield, California, who's an independent voter, and asks, does Mr. Cohen recognize that the Democratic Party has a serious branding problem with independent voters? | ||
| Wouldn't now be the perfect time for the Democratic Party to disband and allow a new, more moderate political party to form as an alternative to MAGA? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The problem with the Democratic Party is that it's too corporate. | |
| It's too yes, no, go-slow, status quo, corporate. | ||
| What we need is a party that is very different than Trump, that fights Trump's phony populism where he appeals to workers while he's giving all these tax breaks to the rich. | ||
| So I believe the way you defeat MAGA is not with a go-slow, moderate Democratic Party. | ||
| It's with a Democratic Party that stands for something and stands for the working class and the struggling middle class. | ||
| Kamala Harris didn't lose because she was seen as too radical. | ||
| She lost because people suspected she's talking out of both sides of her mouth. | ||
| She's flip-flopping too much. | ||
| They didn't know what she stood for. | ||
| She didn't tell a strong story. | ||
| We need candidates, Democratic, progressive candidates, where everyone knows where they stand. | ||
| The beauty of a Bernie Sanders, one of the most popular politicians in our country, everyone knows where he stands. | ||
| And he gets people to vote for him. | ||
| I'm not sure I agree with you on everything, but I know you're blunt and you're telling the truth, and that's why I support you. | ||
| And Bernie won a lot of swing voters. | ||
| All right, let's hear from Skip in Ontonagon, Michigan, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Skip, I may have mispronounced the name of your town. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's okay. | |
| Most people do, but thank you, C-Span. | ||
| Mr. Cohen, I was a former Democrat for 40 years, and all I ever heard about in the past eight years is anti-Trump. | ||
| You know, just blast Trump now, Kaye. | ||
| Call him a liar, and don't say a word about anybody else. | ||
| We bring up Bernie Sanders. | ||
| He has won. | ||
| How did he do? | ||
| How did he do progress his head? | ||
| My question is, when, when will you stop with the TDF blaming Trump for everything? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is that ever going to happen? | |
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| I love your question, and I actually agree with it. | ||
| You may be surprised that the Democratic Party from Hillary in 2016 to all the years since, if we just talk about Trump and all his lies and all his abuse of disenfranchised groups, we're going to win. | ||
| No. | ||
| What you need is an actual positive agenda. | ||
| And that's what the Democrats haven't put forward lately. | ||
| We need a positive agenda that addresses the needs of the working class and the struggling middle class in terms of affordable housing, health care, on and on and on. | ||
| That positive agenda would win elections. | ||
| I agree with you 100%. | ||
| And you may be surprised, sir. | ||
| It's too much Trump, Trump, Trump, instead of putting forward a positive agenda. | ||
| Next up is Lance in Fort Laudedero, Florida on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Lance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| Good morning, Mr. Cohen. | ||
| I was born and raised in New York City and seen it go through a lot of changes. | ||
| And the idea that you're going to support Mr. Mondani, whose basic appeal to the populace is that he will give you free things. | ||
| The idea of grocery stores run by the city. | ||
| I've been to the DMB. | ||
| Have you been to the DMB in New York? | ||
| How long it takes to get anything done? | ||
| This would be a nightmare. | ||
| What you're going to do with Mr. Mamdani and his progressive, whoopee kind of ideas is that you're going to chase the rich away. | ||
| The rich stay in New York because they love New York, because it's the center of the world. | ||
| I still love New York. | ||
| But you can't afford to get rid of your tax base. | ||
| And what he is going to do by hitting them with more taxes is that they will finally say, enough. | ||
| I'm going to Florida. | ||
| I'm going to Texas. | ||
| I'm going to somewhere where people appreciate the amount of money and business I provide and not trying to skin me alive. | ||
| I don't know how you can present this as a winnable election. | ||
| Watch. | ||
| Watch what happens in November when he wins big, even though the billionaires are going to be spending millions of dollars to smear him, as they did during the primary, but it did not work. | ||
| So in terms of the billionaires fleeing because they're taxes, they didn't flee when Bill de Blasio was the mayor. | ||
| There's always this threat that they're going to flee. | ||
| And for me, a lot of them, I would say, good riddance. | ||
| You're not doing anything for New York City. | ||
| What we need is a New York City that's affordable. | ||
| That's why Zorhan Mamdani is popular. | ||
| Putting one nonprofit government subsidized grocery store in each of the five boroughs so it can compete with the private grocery stores is a very moderate idea. | ||
| What's interesting when I hear about Momdani's left-wing extreme agenda, the kinds of things he's proposing are mainstream ideas throughout Northern Europe where they don't have poverty, where working people have more power, where the billionaires don't control the political system. | ||
| So I just disagree with you. | ||
| My daughters both live in New York City. | ||
| I lived in New York City. | ||
| I'm looking forward to a New York City that improves and that caters to the majority, the masses of people, rather than the Bloombergs and the billionaires that were funding Cuomo, a discredited former governor who had to resign in disgrace. | ||
| That's where the billionaires were putting their money. | ||
| And it's just, it's uplifting to activists, whether they're environmental activists, labor activists, peace activists, that Momdani has won such a resounding victory. | ||
| And whether you are looking forward to it or not, I hope if you and I met in a year or two, we'd be able to agree, wow, he got through a few of these reforms and it's made New York City better. | ||
| In terms of how well his success and the way that he achieved it applies throughout the rest of the country, a centrist Democratic group, Third Way's Matt Bennett, made this statement. | ||
| He said, it's dangerous to believe an NYC Democratic primary offers a roadmap for winning in purple-red places. | ||
| Democrats should follow the likes of Spamberger and Slotkin, not the siren call of DSA, Democratic Socialists of America, socialism. | ||
| Momdani diagnosed the right problem, the affordability crisis facing the working class, but he has the wrong solutions. | ||
| His ideas can't work and would make matters worse. | ||
| Dems should, of course, recruit and promote young charismatic, optimistic, and brilliant communicators, but we need them to run as mainstream Democrats like Bill Clinton, who became governor at 32 with those qualities. | ||
| See also Obama, Galeo, Slotkin, Torres, etc. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bill Clinton endorsed Cuomo in the mayor's race. | |
| Bill Clinton has been totally rejected by today's Democratic Party. | ||
| Third Way is always called a centrist think tank. | ||
| It should be called a corporate or corporatist think tank. | ||
| They are well funded by corporations, and they want the big corporations and the billionaires to run not only the Republican Party, but also the Democratic Party. | ||
| What the base of the Democratic Party is saying is we're tired of yes, no, go slow, status quo, corporatism, a real agenda. | ||
| And our first Republican caller was right. | ||
| If all you say is Trump bad, Trump bad, Trump's a liar, that doesn't win you elections. | ||
| Zorin has shown how to win elections. | ||
| You have to have a positive, progressive agenda that working people understand you're on their side. | ||
| You're not on the side of big business and the 1%. | ||
| Frank is in Weber County, Utah, and our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Frank. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I would like to refer back to 2016. | ||
| Both parties had an excellent candidate in the primaries. | ||
| On the Republican side, they had John Casey, excellent candidate. | ||
| He's the last man standing that Trump defeated to win the primary. | ||
| On the left, you had Martin O'Malley, governor of one of these coast states, I believe. | ||
| Excellent candidate. | ||
| I would have to flip a coin during that election if those two would have been the candidates, because they were both excellent. | ||
| And I think either one of them could have won. | ||
| But the Republicans went with Trump all out. | ||
| That's when Venn Mag was created. | ||
| Now they're stuck in place. | ||
| We can't prime out of there with a crowbar. | ||
| And the Democrats, they just sit there and let Bernie and Hillary fight it out and wouldn't even give Martin O'Malley any airtime at all. | ||
| And he was eliminated and eventually Hillary won. | ||
| So Frank, you've raised several points. | ||
| I want to give our guest a chance to respond. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I really appreciate the question. | |
| In 2016, and I've crunched the numbers, Bernie Sanders and the DNC, the Democratic National Committee, they're supposed to be neutral, but they obviously had their finger on the scale or their whole hand on the scale on behalf of Hillary. | ||
| Crunch the numbers in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, where Bernie was so popular. | ||
| Bernie beat Hillary in Michigan in a huge upset. | ||
| Bernie would have defeated Trump. | ||
| We could have gotten rid of Trump. | ||
| Trump would have never become an elected official if the DNC had not rigged things and Bernie was the candidate. | ||
| Why is Bernie so popular? | ||
| Because he's got a strong, very articulate agenda and working people feel he's on their side. | ||
| You know, fair.org, the media watch group that I founded back in 1986, they were showing during the whole Bernie upsurge of 2015-2016, one of the older senators, and his movement was also largely a youth movement. | ||
| FAIR showed the bias in both the right-wing media against Bernie and the corporate centrist media, the Washington Post, now owned by Jeff Bezos, who's partying in Venice, Italy today. | ||
| But the FAIR showed in an article, and Bernie used to wave it on his stump speeches, Washington Post 16 negative articles about Bernie Sanders in 16 hours. | ||
| You know, before the internet, a corporate centrist newspaper like the Washington Post could only attack a progressive like Bernie Sanders once a day or twice a day. | ||
| After the internet, they could do it hour after hour, and it was during the time that Bernie Sanders won the Michigan primary. | ||
| You look at some of those headlines, you can find it on FAIR.org. | ||
| Just Google 16 negative stories about Bernie in 16 hours in the Washington Post, and you'll find it. | ||
| Let's hear from Dennis in New York on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Dennis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Can y'all hear me? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All righty. | |
| The Democratic Party used to be the party for the working class. | ||
| I was once a Democrat. | ||
| I worked in the UAW and the other workers union. | ||
| What happened with the globalization and its open borders and our foreign policies and our high inflation? | ||
| The American people do not want the Democrats. | ||
| You're domestic terrorists. | ||
| You're destroying America. | ||
| We don't want globalization or socialism. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Please respond if you could. | ||
| Yes, I love the question. | ||
| Progressives are against the corporate globalization that's hurt so many U.S. workers. | ||
| One of the leaders of the fight against NAFTA was Bernie Sanders and other progressives, Sherrod Brown from Ohio. | ||
| So I agree with you. | ||
| And as far as the United Autoworkers, I grew up in Detroit. | ||
| I'm a proud supporter of America's unions. | ||
| And the United Auto Workers, with their great leader, the President Sean Fane, they were campaigning for Zorhan Mamdani. | ||
| So I would encourage you get back to your working class roots, your union roots, and understand that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is not for corporate globalization. | ||
| And they are the party, that is the wing of our electorate that supports unions so strongly. | ||
| I want to say one thing, Kimberly, that might explain what I'm standing for, because it's never said on mainstream TV. | ||
| We're told by the media that there's the right-wing Republican Party and the left-wing Democratic Party. | ||
| It's a binary. | ||
| We're told there's a right-wing New York Post and a left-wing New York Times. | ||
| The reality is that in the mainstream or right-wing Fox News and a left-wing CNN, CNN is not left-wing. | ||
| The New York Times, which was just editorializing against Zora and Mamdani, and their editorial looks almost stupid today after the vote was cast. | ||
| The debate within the mainstream media is very narrow. | ||
| It's a corporate debate between what we say, GE and GM, General Electric and General Motors. | ||
| But a lot of the public, including this last Republican caller, is outside of that spectrum, is very critical of corporate globalization. | ||
| But the voices, you know, so it's not a binary, it's the Republican Party, the corporate-funded Democratic leadership, and then much of the Democratic Party, and especially the base, that's progressive. | ||
| I think this last caller made such a good point, and the main foes of corporate globalization were the progressives, but they don't get into the mainstream media. | ||
| They're sort of marginalized because it's usually a corporate center versus corporate right debate within mainstream media. | ||
| Sharon is in Bemidji, Minnesota on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Sharon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| Thanks for the conversation. | ||
| I'm going to push back just a little bit here. | ||
| I think that until, and I'm a Democrat, until Trump becomes the president for all, before he, until he can stop lying. | ||
| Sharon, your line is really breaking up. | ||
| We can't hear you at all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sorry. | |
| Is this better? | ||
| Yes, that's better. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I'm sorry. | |
| I was going to say, until Trump becomes the president for all, he stops lying and he belongs. | ||
| It should be. | ||
| Sharon, I think we can't hear you, but what we heard of what you said was until Trump becomes the president for all, I'm guessing the end of that argument was that we're not going to have a solution. | ||
| But it's a little harder. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, from the beginning of that question, I think it's a very good start to the question. | |
| Yeah, he's not a president for all. | ||
| He's a divide and conquer guy. | ||
| He claims to be for the working class. | ||
| But what he's doing is he's attacking every group in society that's sort of marginal. | ||
| He blames everything on immigrants. | ||
| And he says he's deporting only the worst of the worst. | ||
| Well, they're deporting a lot of the best of the best immigrants. | ||
| He scapegoats trans people, gay people, minorities, DEI. | ||
| Remember the accident in Washington, D.C., where the plane crashed, runs into a helicopter, and Trump immediately blames diversity programs. | ||
| It had nothing to do with the crash. | ||
| So we've got a guy who scapegoats. | ||
| He blames everyone for the plight of working people. | ||
| And working people of all colors have really been struggling through 45 years of neoliberal economics. | ||
| But he never blames the people that are actually in charge. | ||
| And those are the billionaires that fund him, the billionaires that populate Trump's administration. | ||
| And so that's why we say you can't oppose Trump's phony populism, because he's always talking about working class people and how the system is rigged. | ||
| It is rigged. | ||
| It is rigged against working class people. | ||
| But he blames all the wrong groups, and he's making the rich richer. | ||
| And this big, beautiful bill will make wealthy people even richer with their tax giveaways. | ||
| It will cut food assistance. | ||
| It will cut Medicaid. | ||
| And we will see even more rural hospitals closed down because of Trump and the Republicans. | ||
| All right, let's hear from Hunter in Bedminster, New Jersey, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Hunter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning and thank you for the program. | |
| I'd like to get to your guest's opinion. | ||
| From my perspective, I really think it's more about candidate, the candidate quality and charisma. | ||
| You know, Cuomo was so flawed, and he really doesn't have much personality beyond sort of like a Trump bully. | ||
| And the other candidates in the race, whether it was like Adams, you know, Adrian Adams, right, or Lander, they had much better policy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They knew and know the city. | |
| They know the spend. | ||
| You know, as an example, you know, Bomdani's policy about, you know, freezing rents for a couple of years. | ||
| There's so many studies that show that that makes things worse. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So again, I would love your opinion on it's really about the candidate quality beyond maybe the corporate backing, right? | |
| So I'd love to hear what you have to say about that. | ||
| Yeah, it's a good question. | ||
| Candidate quality is crucial. | ||
| I mean, Zoran Momdani is one of the most talented politicians I've seen, and we recognized that when he was a state legislator, that's why RootsAction, rootsaction.org, was the first national group to come out and support him. | ||
| We did that on day one, October 23, the day that Zorin Mandani announced. | ||
| But Brad Lander was a great candidate. | ||
| He had a strong program. | ||
| He's very articulate. | ||
| As you say, Cuomo was totally flawed. | ||
| He left the state government in disgrace. | ||
| Brad Lander, I hope, you know, it's going to be part of the Momdani mayoral administration. | ||
| And Brad Lander, they cross-endors. | ||
| But yes, candidate quality is really important. | ||
| And there's something else I'll say. | ||
| Zorin is young. | ||
| He understands social media. | ||
| His videos were incredible. | ||
| He made a video right after Trump won the election in 2024. | ||
| And he went to talk to working class people throughout New York City of every color, every ethnic group. | ||
| And he found these people that sort of sheepishly had voted for Trump. | ||
| And, well, I wanted to change things up. | ||
| I didn't trust Harris. | ||
| And it's the ability of these young candidates, AOC is another, using social media. | ||
| They know how to reach young people. | ||
| That gets you around the corporate-centered corporate right mainstream media debate because progressives rarely appear as pundits. | ||
| I know that. | ||
| I wrote a book about it called Cable News Confidential. | ||
| But yeah, if you can use social media and you can get 40,000 volunteers in New York City knocking on more than a million doors to talk to voters, listen to voters. | ||
| And in terms of Zorin Mandani's, as you say, strong candidate, charismatic candidate. | ||
| Brad Lander was also. | ||
| Adrian Adams was a good candidate. | ||
| But Zorin excels in listening. | ||
| You can see from these videos, I encourage people that are confused or don't live anywhere near New York City. | ||
| They don't know what all the excitement and hoopla is about. | ||
| Go online, go on YouTube and watch this guy's videos. | ||
| And you'll see someone who's a natural, he loves New York City. | ||
| He loves the people in New York City, even if they disagree with him. | ||
| And he listens to people in New York City, even if they disagree with him. | ||
| And by the way, freezing rent in the rent-stabilized departments will work, but he's also about building more affordable housing. | ||
| You have to do both. | ||
| Well, thank you very much. | ||
| Jeff Cohen, who is the co-founder of Roots Action. | ||
| I really appreciate your joining us on Washington Journal this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Kimberly. | |
| I've been a big fan of C-SPAN since the very beginning when Brian Lamb, the founder, would be in your chair. | ||
| C-SPAN does a great service. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, thank you to all of our callers who joined us for this segment. | ||
| Coming up on Washington Journal, we're going to take more of your calls in open forum. | ||
| As a reminder, our phone lines for Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| For Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're in open forum ready to take your calls. | ||
| But before we get to them, I want to remind everyone that the Senate is actually in session today. | ||
| It's pretty rare for them to be in on a Saturday, but as is reported here in theHill.com, Republicans race toward crucial vote on Trump's mega bill despite uncertainties. | ||
| Senate Republicans are racing into a crucial weekend in their effort to pass President Trump's mammoth tax and spending bill, despite not knowing whether they'll have the votes to advance it or what some aspects of the final package will look like. | ||
| GOP leaders are eyeing an initial procedural vote Saturday afternoon to kick off floor consideration of Trump's big beautiful bill. | ||
| If it clears a simple majority threshold, the chamber would debate the bill before moving to a votarama during which unlimited amendments can be brought to the floor before the final vote. | ||
| Now, yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Schumer held a press conference on his opposition to the Republican tax and spending bill before the Senate begins that debate. | ||
| Here's a portion of those comments. | ||
| Everyone knows this Republican bill is a big mess. | ||
| But now we're hearing chatter they might try to rush it to the floor as soon as tomorrow. | ||
| So let's be absolutely clear. | ||
| This bill is deeply flawed. | ||
| It's devastating for American families. | ||
| It rips health care from 16 million people. | ||
| It has the biggest cuts to food funding ever, losing over 2 million jobs, and that might go up because we hear they may change the make worse the clean energy provisions even worse. | ||
| Biggest cuts to food funding ever. | ||
| And instead of fixing the egregious provisions of the bill, they're trying to jam it through. | ||
| They don't want the American people to find out what's in it. | ||
| The more and more that Americans look at the bill, the less they like it, the more they despise it. | ||
| Quinnipiac said, here are the polling data. | ||
| Quinnipiac, 53% against, only 27% support. | ||
| Fox News, 59 against, 38% support. | ||
| Kaiser Family Foundation, 64% against, only 35% support. | ||
| And you'll notice in these numbers, the American people are learning more and more about this bill, I think in good part because of the action that Senate Dems have taken. | ||
| We have been relentless in letting people know how bad it is. | ||
| And now they know, of course, Americans hate this bill. | ||
| It steals their Medicaid. | ||
| It jacks up their premiums. | ||
| It takes away their jobs and gives trillions away to billionaires and special interests. | ||
| Now, Senate Majority Leader Thune was on the Senate floor yesterday saying it's time to act on the Big Beautiful bills and touting the bill's tax provisions in particular. | ||
| Here's a portion of those comments. | ||
| Mr. President, last November, the American people elected President Trump and a Republican Congress with a clear mandate. | ||
| And since taking control in Washington this year, we've been working to deliver on our promise of a safer, stronger, and more prosperous America. | ||
| Now we have the opportunity to pass a bill that advances all of these priorities and sets our country up for better days ahead. | ||
| We've worked hard on this, and now it's time to deliver. | ||
| Ms. President, the centerpiece of our bill is permanent tax relief for the American people. | ||
| The 2017 Republican-led tax cuts lowered rates for every income bracket. | ||
| We doubled the child tax credit and nearly doubled the standard deduction. | ||
| But those policies will expire at the end of the year without action from Congress, which means a typical family would be hit with a $1,700 tax hike next year. | ||
| In my state of South Dakota, South Dakotans would see their taxes go up on average $2,500. | ||
| We're determined not to let that happen. | ||
| Not next year, not ever. | ||
| And now we're in open forum, ready for your calls. | ||
| Debbie is in Columbia, Missouri, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Debbie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The Democrats are the authoritarians who think they can rule with their 700 imperial federal judges from the lower courts acting as little emperors to dictate what our duly elected president can and cannot do as he does the will of the people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trump was Democratically elected. | |
| The Supreme Court is correct. | ||
| Minors should not have access to pornography. | ||
| There should be no obscene materials presented in schools. | ||
| Immigrants and non-citizens cannot come here and have babies and expect them to be citizens. | ||
| Non-citizens need to, they're under the jurisdiction of their home state, their home country, with regard to birthright. | ||
| And Do-Ran Mamdani is a full-blown communist. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Next up is Dave in Chicago, Illinois on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I wanted to talk about the reconciliation bill that is pending in the Senate today. | ||
| If the Senate majority wanted to extend the president's tax cuts and invest in border security and national defense, they could do all of those things without defunding our nation's health care system. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They could do all the other things that the president and leader Thun talk about without removing funding for hospitals, doctors, ambulances, specialty care, and people with disabilities all across the country. | |
| It's shocking to me that this network and others talk about the populist movement within the Republican Party when this bill of defunding health care is one of the most anti-populist items ever. | ||
| It's not being driven by voters. | ||
| This is not something that people want. | ||
| People don't say, let's make health care harder to access. | ||
| Let's defund hospitals and nurses and doctors and ambulances. | ||
| It's not what people have asked for. | ||
| This is being driven by a small number of people in the administration who view it as an opportunity to get government funding out of the health care system, which is just, it's absolutely punitive and it's going to be devastating and people are going to die. | ||
| And I think the Senate should reject this bill that's pending before them today. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| David is in Brooklyn, New York on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| That's a lot of rhetoric. | ||
| I think that if we can get illegals off the health care and get people that are able to work, that's a good thing for the country. | ||
| I was calling in about the New York City mayor race. | ||
| We saw this very similar when George Santos was kicked out of the Congress, and they put up two candidates. | ||
| One was a veteran, an Israeli Ethiopian Jew. | ||
| One was a milquetoast white man. | ||
| One was Democrat. | ||
| One was Republican. | ||
| The Republican was the Israeli. | ||
| And in the area, people did not cross boundary lines. | ||
| They would not vote for a Republican, even though she was everything that they would hold their daughters out to be. | ||
| So I think it's time for people to really stop looking at party, looking at candidates, and let's end the anti-Semitism. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next up is Karen in Alabaster, Alabama, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Karen. | ||
| Yep. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| So, yeah, I was trying to call in with your previous guest, but it's funny how they come on here, and they just kind of give you a general overview of what their candidate stands for. | ||
| I was looking at his, listening to what he was saying and looking at his website. | ||
| To me, it sounds like he agrees a lot with Trump. | ||
| I mean, he wants to stop endless wars. | ||
| That's what Trump's doing. | ||
| Lower grocery pricing and stop the corporate globalization. | ||
| Bring on everything back here. | ||
| Trump's doing all of that. | ||
| But to give you some more details on what this candidate, man, Danny, wants to do, he wants, and he did talk just a little bit. | ||
| He talked about rent control, which he does want to do that. | ||
| But what he didn't say was he wanted to open government-owned supermarkets. | ||
| He just said lower grocery prices. | ||
| He wants to have the city take him over. | ||
| They want to provide free child care. | ||
| He said that. | ||
| He also wants to empty the jail sales, eliminate police overtime, and cut back police patrols in minority neighborhoods and repeal all criminal misdemeanors. | ||
| That's kind of what they've done right now. | ||
| They just haven't gone to that extreme. | ||
| Crime's going to go up in New York. | ||
| And it's going to cost about $10 billion a year, what he wants to do. | ||
| And he wants to increase corporate taxes, which he talked about that, and the city tax at a tax of 1%. | ||
| They're already paying the highest combined state and city income taxes in the nation. | ||
| So what do you think is going to happen? | ||
| Those people are going to leave. | ||
| And so, you know, you have a lot of people on the right saying, well, we need to get the Republican candidate out of there. | ||
| We need to get Cornwall out of there and back Adams. | ||
| But I say no, let the guy win. | ||
| And let's everybody watch New York City and the nation will all watch and say, when these candidates come out, these Democrat candidates come out and say they're going to do all these things. | ||
| We can see how it doesn't work. | ||
| You know, there's going to be breadlines. | ||
| And so I'll just grab my popcorn and sit back and watch them fail. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
| Sylvia is in Etland, Virginia, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Sylvia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I agree with the prior caller. | |
| Men Danny can't do half of what he says he's going to do. | ||
| Anyways, even if he got the mayor, there's people that will, I mean, mayors can't just do anything they want, just like President Trump can't do everything he wants. | ||
| So I just pray that New York City gets saved from his rhetoric. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Annie in Georgia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Annie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know why Como lost, but it wasn't a fight about his record because we have a president that has done way worse than Cuomo. | |
| And Donald Trump talked about the Mexicans like crazy, but they wrapped around the buildings and voted for him. | ||
| So don't tell him he was about his record. | ||
| It was just the people. | ||
| It's just the people. | ||
| I don't care what nobody does. | ||
| Nobody cares anymore. | ||
| It's a shame. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Anthony is in Norfolk, Virginia on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Anthony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| We're in open forum. | ||
| Please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| In 2019, I stood in a federal courtroom in Norfolk, Virginia, in front of Judge Raymond Jackson with District Attorney Billy Jackson. | ||
| Both of them appointed by Democrats. | ||
| Ma'am, Billy Jackson stood in that. | ||
| I was there because I threatened to punch somebody in the jaw. | ||
| I've never been in trouble before in my life. | ||
| There's a lot more to that. | ||
| But I stood in a federal courtroom and had my First Amendment right violated like what our founders thought to not happen. | ||
| The district attorney told the judge that I was a Trump supporter, believed in MAGA, America First, and was a danger to the public. | ||
| They put me in prison for four years because of that. | ||
| I did my time. | ||
| I'm home since I've been home. | ||
| They did nothing but mess with me. | ||
| They violated. | ||
| I got a violation, put me back in prison. | ||
| I got back out again. | ||
| I got rid of the public defenders, and I appealed it myself. | ||
| My violation, ma'am. | ||
| I won. | ||
| I won an appeal me personally myself, and I'm not a lawyer. | ||
| And now I do have an attorney. | ||
| But the Democrats are out of control. | ||
| These district judges are putting people in prison for just believing in America first, man. | ||
| I'm living proof of it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Next up is Nicholas in Bloomingdale, Georgia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Nicholas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just really wanted to call in. | ||
| I actually just recently moved from New York. | ||
| We left because of how expensive everything is and how ridiculous the prices are getting. | ||
| But I am supportive of Mondani and Mamdani and everyone complaining about the grocery stores run by the city. | ||
| I understand what the problem is if one grocery store in every five bows is there to make sure that there is more competition so that they can't rise up the prices. | ||
| I just wanted to call in and make that point. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Bob is in Arlington, Texas on our line for independence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Bob. | |
| Yes, I'm calling to remind everybody of a patriot's birthday yesterday. | ||
| Ross Perot was 95 years old, and he deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom. | ||
| You know, the Medal of Freedom was given to Brian Lamb by George Bush. | ||
| Bill Clinton refused to give the Medal of Freedom to Brian Lamb. | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
| In fact, Bush, I think Bush's wife is the one who prompted that because it was a special ceremony. | ||
| Brian brought his new bride in, and he was the only one in the ceremony. | ||
| But it would be something that really Ferreau's record should deserve a Medal of Freedom. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Robert is in Mason, Arizona on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thank you. | |
| I have three quick points. | ||
| Number one is, according to protocol, a flag should be displayed outside a building on the right side as you exit the building. | ||
| Trump has two flags on the left. | ||
| Even my Kmart, or not my Kmart, my Walmart has the flagpole on the correct side exiting Walmart store. | ||
| So apparently, Trump couldn't even run a site of a Walmart. | ||
| My second point is: Israel has socialized free Medicare or medicine for its citizens with free abortion on demand. | ||
| You don't have to have any kind of situation to have that abortion. | ||
| And I never hear conservatives say anything about socialized medicine in Israel and the abortion that's available to all their citizens. | ||
| And the third thing is, in a topic, pregnancy is when an embryo is growing outside a woman's womb, usually in a fallopian tube, and it isn't viable. | ||
| And in some states, they're required to take that embryo to term, and it can result in a death. | ||
| My only hope is, if it happens, and I hope it doesn't, that it happens to a Republican who vote a son or daughter or wife of one of these representatives who takes away abortion for no good reason. | ||
| So those are my three points. | ||
| I'll let it stand at that. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| It's hot here. | ||
| Boy, oh, boy. | ||
| James is in Ada, Oklahoma on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi there, James. | ||
| Can you turn down your TV and then go ahead with your point? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my point is: why are they messing with Social Security? | |
| I worked all my life to have that, and now they're trying to change it all up and everything. | ||
| And back in the Obama president, he took out $85 million or $85 billion, and he never did pay that back. | ||
| So, why are they messing with our Social Security? | ||
| And the illegals, they get that money, and they ain't even been here to get that money to pay for that. | ||
| So, you know, that's all I got coming in for my money, and I can't work anymore because I've got no way to go to work. | ||
| I can't work because I'm sick and high blood pressure and a whole bunch of other stuff. | ||
| But I just don't understand why they want to jack with something that we put our money into. | ||
| I know they do put money with it, but still, yet, why are they messing with our Social Security? | ||
| So, what in particular do you mean? | ||
| I don't think there's anything in the reconciliation package related to Social Security. | ||
| What concerns do you have specifically, James? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I keep hearing they're going to cut this and they're going to cut that, you know, and everything else, and Medicare is going to go up and everything else. | |
| It's just, you know, I don't know why they want to mess with the Social Security. | ||
| You know, we put that money in there, they didn't. | ||
| I know they're putting money with it, but still, yeah, that's our money. | ||
| So, why do they want to use our money for other things? | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, let's hear from Brian now in Cambridge, Ohio, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| How are you doing today? | ||
| Good, thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I decided to call and uh, because I've been listening to this on TV, been coming on. | |
| You know, Trump's doing good. | ||
| You know, he ain't doing bad. | ||
| He's doing how he's doing what he got to do. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| People understand that. | ||
| You know, he's going through a rough life. | ||
| I mean, he'll come in and take care of all the mess up. | ||
| They screwed up that and all that good stuff. | ||
| I mean, he ain't by president. | ||
| I don't think so, because he's doing pretty good. | ||
| I done bought over 25 flags from him. | ||
| His flag is governor. | ||
| He's a good president. | ||
| I need breeds. | ||
| Everybody just leave him alone. | ||
| Let him do what he got to do. | ||
| He keep the mouth shut and listen. | ||
| They understand what's going on. | ||
| And I like him. | ||
| I mean, I ain't getting. | ||
| I mean, he's a rough, tough man. | ||
| He's a good president. | ||
| I do breed, sir, in my life. | ||
| You know, Biden had it. | ||
| He done screwed everything all up on us. | ||
| Then you have to come back in and stating it all up because Biden didn't care about nobody. | ||
| He would by himself. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Anthony is in New York on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Anthony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a Democrat, and my question is: why is Trump trying to put it? | |
| Trying to hassle everybody. | ||
| I understand about the border. | ||
| I really like him about the border. | ||
| But now, with this bill, this bill is going to hurt a lot of states. | ||
| And I don't think he should, they Republicans should push this bill. | ||
| I think they need to go back to the drawing board and try again because it's going to affect a lot of Medicare. | ||
| It's going to affect a lot of disability people. | ||
| It's going to hurt a lot of Republican states, not Democrat states, but Republican states. | ||
| And with the mayor in New York who's running for mayor, Madani, I don't know if he can, yes, I don't know if he can push all that he says he wants to because Kathy, the government, the governor, is probably not going to allow it. | ||
| Also, she has too many people backing her. | ||
| So New York is going to feel it. | ||
| And also, one more thing before I go. | ||
| I feel the immigrants is taking too much from this city, from the country. | ||
| We need to tighten our borders much better, and Trump needs to do a little more better than just bum rushing ice in people's houses and places where they work. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Beth is in Las Lunas, New Mexico, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Beth. | ||
| Hi, thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I just wanted to comment on the bill before Congress. | ||
| Even in Trump's first tax bill, they treat income differently depending on whether you earn it or whether you own a business. | ||
| If you own a business, you get to take 20% off the top and your standard deduction. | ||
| That is not fair. | ||
| Secondly, the estate tax. | ||
| It's already almost $14 million is exempt. | ||
| Now they want to go to $15 million, and that's just for single-fowlers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
For couples, it's double. | |
| Why should we exempt all that money? | ||
| Thirdly, the national debt. | ||
| If we go bankrupt, most of the creditors that lend money to the U.S. are U.S. citizens and businesses. | ||
| Look up what happened in Greece when they went bankrupt. | ||
| You want 90% of your retirement savings to disappear. | ||
| This is common for Trump. | ||
| He uses bankruptcy in his businesses. | ||
| It's only good for Putin, not our country. | ||
| And this bill raises the national debt by $5 trillion. | ||
| So we can either cut programs like the Defense Department or actual waste and fraud and prosecute people, or we can raise taxes by getting rid of that pass-through income deduction and the exemption for $14 million. | ||
| I just like people to vote for what your interest is. | ||
| If you're a wage earner or a retiree, you need to consider those facts and just read the bill. | ||
| All right, let's move on to Joan in Phoenix, Arizona on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Joan. | ||
| Yes, hello. | ||
| I would like to make a comment about the fact that I don't even know why I vote for either party, first of all, because they always talk about housing for the middle class, low-income housing for the middle class, but neither party talks about housing for the low-income workers and retired people. | ||
| I know I don't qualify for the affordable housing. | ||
| They request three times the amount of rent to even apply before you even get a break on it. | ||
| So that's one thing I'm very discouraged about either party because you never hear anybody talk about the low-income workers and the low-income workers, retired people. | ||
| And that's a lot of the population that only make a dollar or two above minimum wage in whatever state they work in, if they're lucky. | ||
| So that's it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| David is in Texas on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Hope everybody's having as good a day as I am. | ||
| I'm just wondering, the Democrats really do not have a platform with the exception to bad mouth everything our president does. | ||
| The Republicans have all had their spines removed to make it easier for them to bend over and kiss the president's feet. | ||
| Sorry about that. | ||
| Let's go to James in Alexandria, Virginia on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, America. | |
| I just want you to focus your attention to Venice, Italy. | ||
| Now, Jeff Bezos is having a wedding that costs over $60 million, and he's getting a tax cut. | ||
| And while we sit around here and struggle, do not even have medical care that take care of us, and they're just potting away with the money that poor Americans are making. | ||
| Now, let's add to that that this guy, or this felon that's in this over office, increased the debt by $8.1 trillion, and he's asking for the same again. | ||
| And on top of that, people have forgotten that 1.4 million people died when this guy had control of the virus in his last term, administration. | ||
| So we need to look at this real clearly and stop giving these rich people a tax cut. | ||
| Thank you, America. | ||
| Well, thank you to everyone who called in for Open Forum and all of our other segments of the show. | ||
| Just a reminder, the Senate is in session today working on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and we'll have coverage of that Senate session on our website, c-span.org, as well as on some of our channels. | ||
| And also, this morning, the Fourth Circuit Judicial Court, the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference will convene in Charlotte, North Carolina to consider administrative and policy issues that are affecting the federal court system. | ||
| That conference kicks off with a discussion on how current events in the national news may influence law practice as well as developments in federal funding, issues regarding the separation of powers, and freedom of the press. | ||
| That's live starting in just about 15 minutes at 10.15 a.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Then at 11.15 a.m. Eastern, we'll have a conversation between Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Fourth Circuit Chief Judge Albert Diaz. | ||
| You can also watch our live coverage on our C-SPAN Now app or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Thanks again to everyone who tuned in this morning. | ||
| We are going to be back with another edition of Washington Journal tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern. |