CSPAN - Washington Journal 07/15/2025

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July 15, 2025 06:59-10:00 - CSPAN

03:00:57

Washington Journal 07/15/2025

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Main

mimi geerges

cspan 36:03

tom fitton

17:19

Appearances

chuck schumer

sen/d 03:58

dick durbin

sen/d 01:50

donald j trump

admin 02:53

hakeem jeffries

rep/d 01:58

margaret brennan

cbs 00:54

mark rutte

00:48

pam bondi

admin 01:34

rand paul

sen/r 01:28

robert f kennedy-jr

admin 01:28

tammy bruce

00:58

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adam goodman

r 00:04

barack obama

d 00:02

bill clinton

d 00:02

george h w bush

r 00:02

george w bush

r 00:04

jimmy carter

d 00:03

john roberts

fox 00:06

patty murray

sen/d 00:04

rachel maddow

msnow 00:07

ricky ross

00:11

ronald reagan

r 00:01

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bob in new york

callers 00:21

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Speaker	Time	Text
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mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
		It's Tuesday, July 15th.
		Yesterday, President Trump announced billions of dollars worth of military equipment for Ukraine and severe tariffs on Russia if there was no peace deal in the next 50 days.
		During an Oval Office meeting with the NATO Secretary General, the president said that NATO countries would acquire U.S.-made weapons, including Patriot Air Defense Missile Systems, and that those countries would provide them to Ukraine.
		We're getting your reaction to that this first half hour of the program.
		Here's how to reach us: Democrats, 202748-8000.
		Republicans, 202748, 8001.
		And Independents, 202748-8002.
		You can also send a text.
		That number is 202-748-8003.
		Include your first name in your city-state.
		And you can post your comments on social media.
		Facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ.
		Welcome to today's Washington Journal.
		Let's take a look at what President Trump said yesterday in the Oval Office regarding providing that military equipment to Ukraine.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		And we make the best equipment, the best missiles, the best of everything.
		The European nations know that.
		And we've made a deal today, and I'm going to have Mark speak about it, but we've made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons and they're going to be paying for them.
		The United States will not be having any payment made.
		We're not buying it, but we will manufacture it and they're going to be paying for it.
		Our last meeting of a month ago was very successful in that they agreed to 5%, which is more than a trillion dollars a year, so they have a lot of money.
		And these are wealthy nations.
		They have a lot of money and they want to do it.
		They feel very strongly about it.
		And we feel strongly about it too.
		But we're in for a lot of money and we just don't want to do it anymore.
		And we can't.
		But we make the best and we're going to be sending the best to NATO and in some cases to maybe at Mark's suggestion if we go to Germany where they're going to send early on missiles and they'll be replaced and NATO is going to take care of it.
		It's going to be coordinated by NATO, and they're going to work very much with Matt Whitaker, who's right here.
		He's a great ambassador, and Matt's going to be coordinating.
		You better do a good job, Matt.
unidentified		I will.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		But Matt's going to coordinate.
		He's a very talented guy.
		He's going to coordinate everything.
		So, in a nutshell, we're going to make top-of-the-line weapons, and they'll be sent to NATO.
		NATO may choose to have certain of them sent to other countries where we can get a little additional speed, where the country will release something and it'll be mostly in the form of a replacement.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And here is the headline in CNBC: Trump threatens 100% tariffs on Russian export buyers unless Ukraine peace deal is reached by September.
		We're getting your thoughts on that and the announcement yesterday by President Trump in the Oval Office.
		Here is Tom, a Democrat in Maryland.
		Good morning, Tom.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'm kind of a 78-year-old news nerd.
		And if I remember correctly, a couple months ago, there was a deal between Ukraine and the United States to turn over half of their rare earth minerals to the United States.
		And in return, they'd get aid from the United States military aid.
		Now, that seems to have all disappeared because the deal yesterday has nothing to do with rare earth or the Ukraine who's already going to be paying for everything.
		It seems that NATO is now going to get the weapons, and they're going to give them to Ukraine, and then they're going to pay the United States back.
		What happened to the deal before they were going to get Ukraine's rare earth minerals?
		Thank you.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		It's a good question, Tom, and I don't see anything reported about that.
		But if I do see something or if we're able to find something, we'll definitely share that with you.
		This is Politico announcing that Congress is ready to move on Russia sanctions.
		According to Johnson and Thun, it says backing from both top GOP leaders come after President Donald Trump expressed frustration with the ongoing war in Ukraine.
		Here's how the article starts.
		Both top Republican congressional leaders said Wednesday they are prepared to move forward with new sanctions targeting Russia this month after President Donald Trump signaled he is willing to pressure Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.
		That's in Politico.
		And this is CNN talking about the Patriot missiles.
		These are the defensive missile defense from CNN.
		It says, what are Patriot missiles and why does Ukraine need them so badly?
		So here's some information about that.
		It says that the Patriots are the U.S. Army's key missile defense system.
		They most recently proved their last worth when they helped shoot down 13 out of 14 incoming Iranian missiles that were launched at the U.S. Air Force's El Udaid Air Force Base, Air Base in Qatar.
		The latest versions of Patriot interceptors are capable of engaging incoming short-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones at altitudes up to 15 kilometers and distances up to 35 kilometers.
		So that analysts say that that gives one single Patriot battery the ability to cover 100 to 200 square kilometers of area, depending on how many launchers are in the battery.
		So that's some information about the Patriots from CNN.
		And Horace, Philadelphia, Line for Democrats.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, my dear.
		I don't believe that Donald Trump is doing this thing from his heart.
		Everything has a dollar value to this man because at one time he couldn't stand Ukraine's President Brzensky.
		Now all of a sudden he wants to send weapons over to him and a barpee-turf.
		It's insane.
		He has no idea of what he's doing.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So Horace, he says the reason is because he's become frustrated with Putin.
		What do you think of that?
		Horace, maybe he's gone.
		Well, here is a more from President Trump in the Oval Office yesterday talking about the deadline that he set for Russia.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		And one of the reasons that you're here today is to hear that we are very unhappy, I am, with Russia.
		But we'll discuss that maybe a different day.
		But we're very, very unhappy with them, and we're going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days.
		Tariffs at about 100%.
		You'd call them secondary tariffs.
		You know what that means.
		But today we're going to talk about something else.
		And as you know, we've spent $350 billion approximately on this war with Russia and Ukraine.
		And we'd like to see it end.
		It wasn't my war.
		It was Biden's war.
		It's not my war.
		I'm trying to get you out of it.
		And we want to see it end.
		And I'm disappointed in President Putin because I thought we would have had a deal two months ago, but it doesn't seem to get there.
		So based on that, we're going to be doing secondary tariffs.
		If we don't have a deal in 50 days, it's very simple.
		And they'll be at 100%.
		And that's the way it is.
		That can be more simple.
		It's just the way it is.
unidentified		I hope we don't have to do it.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And here is a text from Don in Floyd, Virginia, an independent, who says, seems like he's doing everything possible to not do anything to Russia.
		I believe they control him by blackmail.
		And this is Dan on Facebook.
		I think it's a roost to buy time for Russia and preempt Congress from passing S-1241, a bipartisan sanctions bill, with enough support to beat his veto pen.
		And Anthony on X says this asinine and disastrous war was provoked by American officials like Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Chris Murphy, and Victoria Newland.
		The right thing to do would be to disarm Ukraine and to defund and exit NATO altogether.
		Wonder what you think.
		Let's talk to Iris, who's in South Lyon, Michigan, independent line.
unidentified		Well, hi there.
unidentified		How you doing today?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good.
unidentified		I just have something good.
		I just have something to say about weapons.
		They destroy the earth.
		It kills more of the earth than it does of people.
		And we can't replace the earth.
		So I don't know what this whole deal is about.
		What are we at war with?
		It seems like we're all going nuts.
		So no.
		Mind your own business and take care of our country.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So Iris, what do you want to do?
		I was going to say, what do you think of defensive weapons for Ukraine so that they can defend themselves against Russia?
		What are your thoughts on that?
unidentified		I say we got plenty of problems here.
		Take care of America.
		That's what they're hired for.
		We can't oversee the entire planet.
		They're not our problems.
		I think they're doing this to bring us into things to destroy America.
		You need land to live on.
		We destroy land.
		Don't you get it, folks?
		Land.
		We need land.
		We can't live on the air.
		We don't float.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, get that, Irons.
		John in Maryland, line for Democrats.
		Good morning.
		John, are you there in Maryland?
unidentified		Oh, yes.
unidentified		How are you this morning?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Go right ahead.
unidentified		I just have one statement.
		Donald Trump doesn't know what he's doing.
		He's an idiot.
		And that's all I've got to say about this.
		His policies are totally antithetical to anything that is worthwhile.
		That's it.
		Thank you very much.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And Josephine in Livingston, New Jersey, Independent Line.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Sadly, we're going to wait another 50 days before you're going to put a tariff.
		Yet our closest ally, Canada, you slap the tariff up in two seconds.
		Another tariff on Mexico, two seconds.
		Really?
		To me, he looks like he's an ally of Putin.
		I'll give you 50 more days.
		Do what you can up to the Ukraine.
		He's a disgrace.
		He's a disgrace to this country.
		He's screwing NATO.
		He's screwing everybody.
		And all for the mighty dollar.
		Thank you.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And we are taking your calls for the next 20 minutes on this topic.
		We'll go to open forum afterwards.
		And these are the numbers.
		Democrats are on 202748-8000.
		Republicans 202748-8001.
		And Independents 202748-8002.
		And here is Mark Ruta.
		He's the NATO Secretary General.
		And he was in the Oval Office yesterday.
		And this is him reacting to the President's announcement.
unidentified		And this is building on the tremendous success of the NATO summit.
mark rutte ▲ ● ▼		The 5%, but also the decision to keep Ukraine strong and the decision to increase our defense industrial production.
unidentified		So based on that, that was Europe stepping up.
mark rutte ▲ ● ▼		This is again Europeans stepping up.
unidentified		So I've been in contact with many countries.
		I can tell you that at this moment, Germany, massively, but also Finland and Denmark and Sweden and Norway, we have the Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada.
		They all want to be part of this.
		And this is only the first wave.
		There will be more.
		So what we will do is work through the NATO systems to make sure that we know what Ukrainians need so that we can make packages.
mark rutte ▲ ● ▼		Of course, in a way, we discussed it this morning, as Pete Hack said, at the Pentagon, in a way that, of course, the U.S. will put on its stockpiles necessary to defend this country.
unidentified		That's absolutely clear.
mark rutte ▲ ● ▼		But it will mean that Ukraine can get its hands on really massive numbers of military equipment, both for air defense, but also missiles, ammunition, etc., etc.
mark rutte ▲ ● ▼		So if I was Vladimir Putin today and you're you speaking about what you were planning to do in 50 days at this announcement, I would reconsider whether I should not take negotiations about Ukraine more seriously than I was doing in the morning, if I was Vladimir Putin.
unidentified		But when I'm Ukraine, I think this is really great news for them.
unidentified		That's right.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And we have that full White House Oval Office meeting on our website at C-SPAN.org.
		If you'd like to see the full meeting there between those two leaders, this is on X from the House Armed Services Committee, the GOP House Armed Services Committee, and they said this on X. Today's decision to send additional weapons to Ukraine financed by our NATO allies is a major turning point.
		It puts real pressure on Putin to come to the table and demonstrates the strength of the NATO alliance.
		It's also a direct result of President Trump's leadership.
		He has made NATO stronger by demanding that all our allies step up, and now they are.
		President Trump has made clear he is determined to end the bloodshed in Ukraine and secure a strong and lasting peace.
		But Putin has lied, delayed, and negotiated in bad faith at every turn.
		Putin has been given every opportunity to choose peace.
		But instead, the Russian dictator continues bombing innocent civilians.
		Thanks to the stronger NATO that President Trump has helped build and today's decision, we're in a better position to bring this war to an end and deter future Russian aggression.
		That's from the House Armed Services Committee Chairman.
		And here is Kay, East Lansing, Michigan, Democrat.
		Good morning, Kay.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'm calling because I believe this is just another attempt by Trump to avoid any confrontation with Putin.
		He's actually, I believe Trump would like the peace prize, the Nobel Peace Prize.
		But doesn't NATO defensive organization, and I don't really understand the role that they would play except as middlemen.
		So my opinion is it's just an effort by Trump to gain, well, not any enmity with Putin, but certainly to stay on talking terms with him.
		Thank you.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk to Jeff, Heightsville, Maryland, Independent Lie.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Jeff.
unidentified		Good morning.
		This is real fascinating.
		I'm fascinated by the fact that the American people, or I'm going to say a portion of the American people, is fascinated by Trump's ability to stand before a crowd and just tell one lie after the other.
		And they sit there and clap and take notes and ask questions.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So what in this case, in this announcement, what are you referring to as a lie?
unidentified		The numbers he put out, and if we're being honest, if we can be honest, you know that 99% of what he says is not true.
		And let's just talk about this thing with Ukraine.
		He literally disrespected Zelensky, the president of Ukraine.
		He would never have done that to Putin.
		And only when it seems like it's going in his favor is when he appears to be supporting you.
		Like he said, this would never happen to me.
		You know, it's easy to talk tough when the responsibility is not on your plate.
		But see, all the news media knows this, but because they don't want to lose their licenses, they're scared Trump's going to threaten them.
		So they acquiesce.
		And the American people are left with this.
		And our kids are left with this.
		He's cutting federal workers.
		He's doing things that are truly.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		We will talk about we will talk about federal workers later in the program, Jeff.
		This is thehill.com.
		Voters say Trump hasn't been tough enough on Putin.
		This is a poll by Harvard Harris poll.
		It was released yesterday.
		And it said 60% of those surveyed, of surveyed voters, say they do not believe President Trump has been tough enough on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
		And here it is by party.
		So it is 58% of Independents, 73% Democrats, and 48% Republicans say that President Trump has not been tough enough on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
		Wonder what you think about that.
		If you were answering that poll, here is Kenneth in Stella, North Carolina, Republican.
unidentified		Hello.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Kenneth.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		You're on the air.
unidentified		Hi.
		I just want to state that President Trump is the best president, the smartest president we ever had.
		He does not lie.
		He tells the truth.
		He just and God saved him for us.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And Kenneth, do you believe regarding this topic, do you believe, do you support the president's actions on sending more military equipment to Ukraine to possibly sanction or tariff Russia?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		What are you thinking on that?
unidentified		He's in a sticky situation, and he's going to do the best he can.
		But I want to state one thing to the whole United States.
		When the people for Biden, for three or four years, got up there and said that the border is secure, and then you could see the people following across the border.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So, Kenneth, we can talk about that certainly during open forum.
		Here is Hakeem Jeffries.
		He's the House Minority Leader reacting to the President's announcement yesterday.
		Take a look.
hakeem jeffries ▲ ● ▼		Vladimir Putin has spent the entire year punking Donald Trump and the Trump administration.
		Donald Trump promised many things to the American people and continues to betray the American people and break promise after promise after promise in a whole lot of areas, including Donald Trump's promise that there would be peace in Ukraine on day one of his presidency.
		How is that working out?
		Donald Trump has spent the first six months of his presidency playing footsee with Vladimir Putin.
		And the response from Vladimir Putin, a sworn enemy of the United States of America, has been to unleash terror on Ukrainian children, communities, and civilians.
		Donald Trump has zero credibility in this area.
		Is he just now figuring out that Ukraine is a friend to the United States of America and Russia is an enemy?
		Is he just now figuring out that the United States should always stand on the side of democracy, freedom, and truth, which is standing with Ukraine as opposed to standing on the side of authoritarianism, tyranny, and propaganda, which is what he's been doing by standing with Russia and Vladimir Putin?
		Is he just now figuring this out?
		Congress has to act independently in this area, and we should sanction Russia and continue to keep the pressure on Vladimir Putin and Russia, a sworn enemy of this country, until the Ukrainian people are able to achieve victory for themselves, our NATO allies in Europe, and the free world.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Henry in Michigan, Line for Democrats.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		There is an article in the Atlantic that you need to bring up this morning for the people to see.
		The United States government is about to incinerate tons of food from USAID that was supposed to go out to starving children.
		The Atlantic.
		Look that up.
		Donald Trump is a Russian asset.
		Donald Trump is stalling for Putin.
		You notice how he cleverly weaves in this was Biden's war.
		I'm just trying to end it for you.
		Trump is a liar.
		Trump is a Russian agent.
		He has been doing Vladimir Putin's bidding since he got into office.
		He knows what he's doing.
		He and Vladimir have been having conversations.
		But look up that food aid.
		They are about to incinerate food instead of sending it to starving children.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Got it, Henry.
		And this is Representative Joe Wilson, a Republican on X, who says, Grateful that President Trump will send weapons to Ukraine.
		This is a wise and great decision from a wise and great president.
		Ukraine wants peace, but Russia wants forever war.
		I told you Trump would fix it.
		And Barb in Longrove, Illinois says the selling of U.S. weapons to NATO for supply to Ukraine is a good idea at this time.
		The threatened stronger tariffs against Russia should be imposed sooner, however, since strong attacks on Ukraine are happening on a daily basis.
		Angie is a Republican in Sterling, Virginia.
		Hi, Angie.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Morning.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Go right ahead, Angie.
unidentified		Oh, okay.
		What I haven't heard regarding the Ukraine and Russia, Russia's northern ports are frozen in winter.
		He needs Crimea.
		People look at a map.
		Crimea has access to the Med and other parts of the world where his ships can moor in the winter months.
		Also, Syria has a $10 billion oil pipeline running north through the Ukraine called use Burisma as its name, but it covers all of Europe.
		All those European countries depend on that oil, as does Russia and China.
		This is money to Putin.
		And they talk about everything else, democracy, blah, blah, blah.
		We want to take it over.
		But they never say why.
		Putin is not going to give up unless he gets those southern ports and access to that oil, what makes him wealthy.
		Thank you.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Crystal, Democrat, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
unidentified		Yes, good morning to everybody.
		But I just want to say that Putin is putting his middle finger up to Trump, and the world is laughing because you're talking about putting terrorists on Russia.
		What does Russia give to us?
		The tariffs are only going to hurt Americans.
		What is Trump talking about?
		I believe everything that most people have said this morning, Trump is a fool.
		The world is laughing at us.
		Trump is not doing anything to Russia.
		Terror has only hurt Americans.
		Russia is laughing at Trump, and the world is also laughing at Trump.
		Trump is a fool.
		That's just how I see this clown.
		Have a good day.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Joe in Carrollton, Kentucky, Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		This is Joe Gilbert.
		I just want to, my opinion is: I believe that the president has been made a fool by Putin and wait 50 days for doing tariffs against the other means for their economic engine to keep this war going is put the tariffs on today.
		I do believe that the Senate and the House do have a bill to start this and get this bill going because Putin will not stop until his objectives are done.
		He doesn't care about Putin.
		Putin does not care about Trump.
		Period.
		Thank you.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Sid in Upper Marlborough, Maryland, Independent Line.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		My name is Sid.
		To deal with Putin, you have to use diplomacy, and that's exactly what President Trump is doing.
		He's waiting 50 days on tariffs, and I do not support putting tariffs on India and China who's buying oil from Russia, because that is just going to collapse the trade deal with China and India.
		India has not even signed the trade deal yet.
		So, with Russia, you have to think about there's other factors involved.
		You just can't go ahead and do this and do that and mess the whole situation up, which is already messed up.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Hold on, but Sid, the secondary tariffs means that President Trump would tariff countries that do business with Russia that buy Russian oil or Russian energy.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So, are you saying you're against that?
unidentified		Yes, I'm against that.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Why?
unidentified		It's got nothing because that's only going to hurt us.
		You think India and China is going to sign a trade deal with us or support that if you're going ahead, if you're going to go and hurt them too?
		I don't think so.
		I don't think so.
		We are not in a position to dictate terms to other countries anymore.
		That's only going to hurt us.
		That is my point of view.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		And this is from Forbes.
		This is contributor Natasha Lindstedt, who says about the topic.
		She says, While not a game changer in the war in Ukraine, the delivery of Patriot surface-to-air missile systems is by far the most powerful tool Ukraine has to protect its skies from Russian aerial attacks.
		Without Patriot missile defense systems, Russia can continue its devastating aerial bombardments, not only on major Ukrainian cities, but on vital infrastructure, including weapons factories and power plants.
		That's in Forbes.
		Bob, North Carolina, Democrat, good morning, Bob.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I have to say one thing, too, because I'm just as old as a Trump.
		And this is the East Coast.
		For the people that don't know the East Coast and Northeast Coast, that live out west and down south and all that, they don't know what he's doing.
		But Trump is not the president.
		It is Steve Miller that's making it all that.
		Trump can come out and say some queer things, talking about it's a beautiful beer, it's this, this, and that.
		He's not saying, and he's talking loud and not saying anything at all.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So, Bob, related to the announcement about weapons to Ukraine, it should have.
unidentified		Trump is not giving weapons to Ukraine like he's supposed to.
		If anybody looks go back to 2015 and that pageant they had over there, what Trump did to that 15-year-old girl and all that, that is what Trump is holding.
		Putin is holding over Trump.
		That's why Trump is treasonous.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		And this is what Senator Chris Kuhn says on X. I'm heartened that Trump is realizing that Putin is the only obstacle to peace in Ukraine.
		Today's announcement should help ensure that Ukrainians fighting for freedom have the weapons they need to defend themselves so they can be better positioned to secure a lasting peace.
		And this is Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat.
		It's way past time we stop writing blank checks for endless wars to appease warmongers.
		I introduced five amendments to bring us in line with a more just defense budget, one that centers the needs of the American people and addresses past harms.
		And Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Democrat, this is the right call.
		Ukraine deserves our absolute support in their fight for democracy and against tyranny.
		Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan.
		Our struggles are the same, only the names are different.
		And we will take a very quick break and come back to Open Forum.
		So if there's other things you'd like to talk about, you can feel free to share those with us.
		The lines are Democrats 202-748-8000, Republicans 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002.
		We'll be right back.
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		Washington Journal continues.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back.
		We are in open forum until 8 o'clock Eastern Time.
		So whatever you'd like to talk about related to politics or public policy, you can feel free to do that on our lines by party.
		And a caller brought up an article from the Atlantic about USAID, so I'll just share that with you.
		It says the Trump administration is about to incinerate 500 tons of emergency food.
		Federal workers warned for months that the high-energy biscuits would go to waste.
		It says that five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it.
		Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food, enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week, are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations.
		Within weeks, two of those sources told me the food meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be ash.
		Sometime near the end of the Biden administration, USAID spent about $800,000 on high-energy biscuits.
		One current and former employee at the agency told me the biscuits, which cram in the nutritional needs for a child under five, are a stopgap measure, often used in scenarios where people have lost their homes in a natural disaster or fled war faster than aid groups could set up a kitchen to receive them.
		And take a look at this is this week's Senate Republicans hope to pass a rescissions bill that would cut, make cuts in foreign aid and funding to foreign to public broadcasting.
		Here is the view of that bill from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		Our Republican senators, most of them, know this is wrong, but they're so afraid of Donald Trump.
		Yesterday, he threatened any of them who voted against the full rescissions package that we have before us would face his wrath.
		What is going on here?
		Does anyone stand up to these horrible, horrible cuts that hurt the American people?
		Republicans in real time are cutting health care.
		They're cutting education.
		They're cutting aid for our veterans.
		Veterans are not getting, they ask them, the veterans know they're not getting the health care they used to.
		And making things even worse, Donald Trump's tariffs are coming in at the worst possible time.
		And in a few short months, they're going to raise the cost of groceries.
		They're going to hurt small businesses and do untold damage to our economy.
		And now this package suffocates public broadcast.
		Well, did they even know when they said they wanted to cut it?
		You know, Donald Trump doesn't seem to like it.
		How much it helps our rural communities?
		It's the only place they can rely on for local news, for weather reports.
		That farmers across rural America depend on public broadcast to get weather reports because there's no other way.
		Did they know that it guts international aid that ensures America's national security?
		Did they even think of the consequences?
		Just because Donald Trump says he wants it cut, and everyone knows he doesn't know the details of any of this stuff.
		The rescissions package is certainly troubling, but the pattern behind it is even worse.
		It sets the stage for even more party-line, devastating cuts in the future to health care, to education, anything Republicans decide they don't like.
		All on a party-line vote, all because of obese and fear of Donald Trump, not a conviction that he's doing the right thing.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And back to the phones now to Kenny and Wilson, North Carolina, Independent.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Kenny.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Hi.
		One guy that called, and he said that the sanctions should start today, if he was serious.
		And that is right.
		You know, with Biden, Biden had Putin on the ropes.
		Those guys have taken territory and everything.
		Putin would be glad to make a deal now if Biden was in there.
		I don't know why the Democrats are not coming out and letting people know.
		But what he's doing is stalling and letting Russia take this territory.
		He even stopped weapons from giving weapons to Ukraine.
		All this, look at the territory that Russia is gaining now.
		Good territory that they already gave.
		So all he got to do is stall and stall until Putin gets what he wants.
		And this is what is happening.
		And everybody's over here talking about, oh, you see the light.
		He's going to, Trump ever seen nothing.
		And I don't know why people just let Trump contingently fool them.
		If he wanted to help Ukraine, he would have did this from day one a long time ago.
		He's stalling.
		He's stalling for Putin.
		He stopped weapons from going to those guys.
		So he's really helping Russia.
		And he has no interest in Ukraine winning this war.
		All right, Kennedy.
		Okay.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Got it.
		Here is David, a Republican in Denison, Texas.
		Hi, David.
unidentified		Good morning.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Morning.
unidentified		I got to tell you, it's so hard to listen to this show anymore.
		It's been this way for months.
		And I'm not blaming you for any of this, but the nature of the calls, whether they're independents, in some cases, it sounds like Democrats calling on Republican lines.
		I mean, Donald Trump won the majority of the vote.
		The Republicans are definitely much more popular than Democrats these days.
		But you'd never know it from the percentage of calls coming into this show anymore.
		I mean, I've listened this morning.
		Trump gets a deal with, let's go back to Ukraine.
		They were attacked when Obama was the president.
		They were attacked when Biden was the president.
		The only time they weren't attacked was when Trump was the president.
		Trump was the first one to provide offensive weapons to them.
		Neither of the other two did.
		The Biden administration had a, when they came in, they had $125, one real big, $125 million package put together pretty quickly to offer offensive weapons.
		That was about the time that Russia started moving its troops around.
		It took them close to a year to get that 150,000 troops surrounding, pretty much surrounding Ukraine.
		Biden backed off that package to try to negotiate with Putin during that time.
		And we all know how that went.
		Trump is a negotiator.
		He doesn't call people all sorts of names and humiliate them in public and then think he's going to get them to negotiate with him behind the scenes.
		He is a tough guy.
		He is the one that shut down the biggest project, practically in the world, the something stream pipeline that the Russians were building into northern Europe.
		I mean, the Europeans were going along with it.
		I mean, don't forget several years ago, one of the first NATO meetings he had, he sat there and explained to all the NATO folks how they were going to be in so much trouble being so dependent on Russia for their oil and natural gas.
		I was watching it.
		They laughed at him.
		Now they're singing a different tune.
		He's the only one that's gotten them to pay.
		He got them to pay the 2%.
		Now he's getting them to pay the 5%.
		We have a global responsibility that these other guys don't have.
		In the last 10 years, I mean, I've done the research.
		I use AI for a lot of things.
		It's pretty good for this stuff in particular.
		In the last 10 years, if you take all the NATO countries, and that includes the ones that haven't been NATO for very long, like Finland and Sweden, if you should take it the last 10 years, we have spent $5 trillion more on defense than they have collectively.
		They have a higher population.
		They have a GEP collectively that's actually more than ours.
		And yet we pay twice as much for defense as they do.
		When Trump says, if you don't pay up, we're not going to defend you.
		Well, who provides the nuclear umbrella?
		If somebody invades one of those small countries over there and they're not paying up and they say, hey, help us, would you threaten?
		Would you protect us with your nuclear umbrella?
		They're not going to, the Russians aren't going to shoot or fire a nuclear weapon at them.
		They're firing them at us.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Not right, David.
		Here's Richard, Democrat, Sailorsburg, Pennsylvania.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		All I like to say is weapons for Ukraine was autocrated when Trump got, when Biden was in there, Trump stopped it.
		So now Ukraine has more blood than they ever had.
		And it's because Trump stopped it.
		And I can't understand how he's a felon.
		So how could he be president?
		But it's a shame that all these Republicans turn their back on Ukraine.
		America always protected the world, and now we're not.
		Thank you very much.
		Have a good day.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And also happening in Pennsylvania, this is Trump and McCormick plan a $70 billion in AI and energy announcements for Pennsylvania.
		That's Senator Dave McCormick, a Republican.
		It says that they will use a first-of-its-kind innovation summit in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, that's today, to announce $70 billion in AI and energy investments for the state, including thousands of new jobs.
		It's the inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
		It aims to, quote, ignite Pennsylvania's incredible potential to power the AI revolution.
		President Trump will be in attendance.
		Senator McCormick has drawn energy and AI leaders from around the world, including over 60 CEOs, to showcase the economic and national security benefits of building AI infrastructure, such as data centers and power generation.
unidentified		That's at Axios.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Ben in Chicago, Independent, you're next.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		I just wanted to switch gears quickly and talk about food supply in our country.
		I live in Chicago and I'm 23 years old.
		A couple of years ago, I used to work at a food pantry, and I couldn't help but notice all the food that we were cooking and making for these homeless people and low-income people was full of horrible ingredients, fillers, and not real good quality ingredients.
		So I think the food that we need to be sending these food pantries should actually be of quality, and we need to make sure that these food programs around the country have sustainable equipment to refrigerate, clean, proper training, so we're not constantly poisoning the poor people in our country.
		Secondly, soybean oil and the emissions that come from soybean oil are deadly, and nearly every fast food chain uses soybean oil.
		So there's a lot of regulatory changes that can happen.
		I was very happy seeing the FDA with natural food colorings and ice cream yesterday.
		You know, I'm just really happy that Robert F. Kennedy is in office currently at HHS trying to do something better and trying to do something that's domestic with our food and improving the quality of our food.
		Thank you so much for taking my call.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And Ben, we do have a portion of that announcement by Secretary Kennedy on taking out artificial food colors from ice cream by the end of 2027.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Here he is.
robert f kennedy-jr ▲ ● ▼		Since we came in about five and a half months ago and started talking about eliminating dyes and other bad chemicals from our food, we've had this extraordinary response from the industry.
		And Brooke just rattled off this inventory, this extraordinary inventory of national corporate food producers have all made commitments to remove food dyes from their food.
		And with this addition today of the dairymen and the dairy food producers, we now have about 35% of American food industry that has made commitments, and that's addition between 35 and 40%.
		And that is in addition to the 35% of the food industry that was already organic and healthy and chemical-free.
		Brooke and I have often talked about the fact that we can't make Maaha succeed without the partnership of the American farmer.
		And our job is to help them to open the doors, to make sure that they have adequate resources in their supply chains, and that the approvals for new chemical-free dyes are happening very quickly.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And back to the calls now in Open Forum.
		Here's Mary, a Republican in Alabama.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, this is the first time I've been there.
		To speak to the Democrat or the Independent, I couldn't hear which one he was that was talking about the food situation.
		Yes, I agree with that so much as somebody who has been in a homeless shelter.
		I was in one in one of our counties here, and they were sent oatmeal and stuff like that, and they would take all the different types of oatmeals and just put them in one big thing.
		So you would have peach, blueberry, strawberry, and all that rolled up into one.
		And some, and, you know, that's all we would be fed for breakfast sometimes.
		And people that had allergies to certain things couldn't eat it based off of that.
		So I think, yeah, one of the things that should happen is that we should treat our homeless.
		You know, everybody keeps talking about in other countries, treat the little children in these other countries, treat the defenseless over in this other country and stuff like that.
		But what about our vets?
		What about our children?
		What about our homeless?
		Everybody wants to treat Ukraine's homeless, Ukraine's children, Ukraine's vets, but nobody wants to come over here and treat ours.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Dorothy in Philadelphia, Independent Line, good morning.
unidentified		Oh, good morning.
		I'm really, really upset.
		Everyone knows that Trump is the worst thing that ever happened to the United States.
		They know it.
		And those Republicans, they're going to reap what they sell come 26.
		They're a bunch of cowards.
		They're afraid of Trump.
		For what reason, I don't know.
		He's just a man, a man.
		And he's letting himself be led by those cronies that he elected or put in place.
		Especially that Stephen Miller.
		He's a disgrace.
		And they ought to be a shame.
		Good morning.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Here's Theodore in Phoenix City, Alabama, Independent Line.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Theodore.
unidentified		Good morning.
		How are you this morning?
		Good.
		I've got a host of things that kind of have been tugging at me for a long time.
		And this is my first time actually calling.
		Now, getting back to Trump and the Ukraine and Russian situation, back in Trump's very first term, he went against his own U.S. intelligence agents in favor of Putin on national television.
		Hello?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we're listening.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Theodore.
unidentified		Okay, yeah.
		And then even now, up to now, with the Congress had allocated funds for Ukraine, and Trump and his dominions actually stopped the money along with Rudy Giuliani with this barisma issues, held up money in exchange for information regarding Hillary Clinton.
		Now, fast forward to this second term, he got this Zelensky in his office in front of the world and tried to degrade this man in favor of Putin and the Russians, telling him you don't have any cards.
		You don't have this.
		They should have given these weapons to Ukraine long, long time ago to help these people.
		So now everyone wants to praise Trump as if he's the savior now.
		And the only reason he's doing this is because NATO is going to be paying for these weapons up front first.
		You know, he's not doing this because this needs to be done.
		It's only because there's something in it for him to make him look like he's exalted like he always wants to be.
		And all of those minions of his that follow him, from Lindsey Graham to all of the people that he talked about, Ted Croons, his father, having something to do with John F. Kennedy getting killed, he's always spewing lies out of his mouth.
		Every time he opens his mouth, there's a bunch of lies come out.
		And so many people are just so over-indated with him.
		But what it really shows is the true feeling of America and what they really feel about people as a totality.
		They are in favor of his rhetoric and all those things that Trump spews.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Nashville, Tennessee, Independent Line.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Tom, good morning.
unidentified		Well, thanks for taking my call.
		I want to side with, or not, I'm glad that boy from Denison, Texas brought up a point.
		It is a little slanted this morning, one way.
		Some of these people really have some ideas about Trump that are, you know, Trump's got three and a half more years as president, and the Democrats ought to be working on somebody they can get to be president in 2028.
		He's doing the best he can with what he has where he is, like Ted Roosevelt used to say.
		And everybody's calling in.
		He's got a tough job to do.
		Nobody's talking about the Iranian thing he did about a month ago.
		That seemed to work out pretty well.
		You got to give the guy a little time.
		He's the only second president of the United States who's ever been elected with an interim president in between.
		And that interim president got 51 mail-in votes, 51 million mail-in votes.
		Biden only got 18 million votes on the day of the election.
		And I'm just amazed that the bias that y'all are a little out of whack this morning.
		I'm kind of used to, I voted for McGovern.
		That's the same year Joe Biden, first time I could vote in 72.
		And Joe Biden got elected to the Senate.
		That was a long time ago.
		I was out of the Army.
		I was back in school, back in college.
		And I mean, I'm just telling you, these people who call in, you ought to ask him, how much did you pay last year in income tax?
		I'm 77 years old, and I continue to work and look out for myself.
		I don't understand why these folks are so against Trump.
		Let him run for a while.
		He's got three and a half more years to be president.
		If somebody doesn't shoot him, they've already tried to shoot him once.
		And I just don't like the way it was going this morning.
		I liked what the boy said from Denison, Texas, and thanks very much.
		Really enjoy your show.
		Talk to you.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, Tom.
		Here is Brian, New Jersey, Independent Line.
		Good morning, Brian.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I just want to say that this is really Putin's last chance.
		If he loses this war, and you look at all those NATO countries that surround Russia, then Ukraine becomes NATO.
		That's it for Putin.
		Because then if he attacks one NATO country, you have, I don't know if it's 40, 50 nations, he's done.
		That's why he's holding on and hoping to grab the Ukraine.
		It's all over if they win, and Russia is going to lose.
		They're in worse shape than most people know.
		And that's all I got to say.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Why do you say, sorry, why do you say that Russia is going to lose and that they're in worse shape than most people know?
unidentified		Just everything I've heard from generals and different things over the computer that I think they've lost, what, close to a million men.
		It's pretty bad when they have to steal kids from Ukraine in order to allow them to grow a little bit and become a party of a party to the Russian army.
		They're really hurting.
		And then when Trump does, and first of all, Trump should apologize to Mr. Lewinsky and to Ukraine originally for the stance that he took.
		You know, how he could be so sick-headed about this, I don't really know.
		But finally, he's come around, and that's all that's important.
		And supply and weapons, I think the embargo should almost start immediately.
		There should not be any waste in time or anything, get things going because Putin is just absolutely an evil man.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		And that's all I have to say.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, Brian.
		Here's Philip, Democrat, Dallas, Texas.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Me?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Yes, talking to you.
unidentified		Go ahead, Philip.
		Well, the truth is, I hate both parties.
		They're 70% of the problems of this country.
		They don't have consideration and responsibility.
		We should have never had in the Constitution the right for the president to break the law.
		Both Donald Trump and I and Biden have.
		And his son, Biden's son, and his wife.
		And I'm not sure about Trump's family, but he's broken the law too much.
		We need to emphasize for the help of our country.
		I wish I could help the world.
		I don't know how, to be honest.
		But we need to emphasize personal quality and responsibility.
		The politicians have none.
		And the other thing is we need to emphasize managing money and managing life.
		The politicians are totally incompetent all history about that.
		45% of our income tax is for the interest on the deficit.
		Both parties wanted to increase the deficit $4 trillion.
		They're financially incompetent all history.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, Philip.
		And here's Armando in Hawaii, Republican.
		Good morning, Armando.
unidentified		Aloha.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		Man, I cannot believe the Democrats calling in and bashing Trump.
		This is incredible.
		First of all, I'd like to say that, you know, Trump, I think, really wanted to try and get peace in the very beginning with Putin.
		You know, he's trying to, they were trying to reach out and talk to him.
		But one thing I do disagree with is secondary tariffs.
		I think, you know, and one of your callers that called in earlier was spot on in saying that, you know, we cannot tell India, we cannot tell China, you know, don't trade with Russia because it's going to hurt us.
		And that's what I really feel: that if we try to put tariffs on secondary tariffs, it's going to backfire.
		It's going to hurt us.
		So that's my suggestion is to get the Europeans and other countries together to put secondary tariffs.
		Not just, I don't know why.
		Why is the United States the only country putting the tariffs?
		Why not get the Europeans involved?
		Get them together with the United States to put, and that would put additional pressure on China and India, you know, to stop trading with Russia.
		And that would, I think that would be a lot more effective.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, Armando.
		That's my and just for your schedule for later today after this program at 10 Eastern, we'll have Mike Waltz, who served as the National Security Advisor until May of this year, testifying on his nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations.
		You'll remember that Mr. Waltz was at the center of the controversy regarding a group chat used to plan U.S. operations against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
		Besides Mr. Waltz, the nominees for ambassadorships to Portugal and Sweden will also face questions.
		You can watch the live Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing at 10 a.m. Eastern.
		That's over on C-SPAN 3.
		It's on our app, C-SPANNow and at c-SPAN.org.
		And later, we'll have the Partnership for Public Services Max Steyer on to discuss the renewed efforts by the Trump administration to reduce the size of the federal government.
		But first, Judicial watches Tom Fitton on how the Justice Department and the FBI are handling information related to Jeffrey Epstein.
		We'll be right back.
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		Washington Journal continues.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back to Washington Journal and joining us to talk about the Justice Department FBI investigation of Jeffrey Epstein is Tom Fitton.
		He's president of Judicial Watch.
		Tom, welcome.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for having me back.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So remind us about Judicial Watch and your funding.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Judicial Watch is a nonprofit educational foundation.
		We're funded by the public.
		We have, I think, about 650,000 supporters these days.
		So we're one of the most widely supported grassroots conservative groups in the world.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So talking about Jeffrey Epstein, the Attorney General Pam Bondi was on Fox News in February talking about a supposed client list of Jeffrey Epsteins that she had that was sitting on her desk.
		And then just last week, she was in a cabinet meeting being asked about that and the closing of that case.
		So let's take a look at both of those clips and then I'll have you respond.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
john roberts ▲ ● ▼		The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients.
john roberts ▲ ● ▼		Will that really happen?
pam bondi ▲ ● ▼		It's sitting on my desk right now to review.
		That's been a directive by President Trump.
		I'm reviewing that.
		I'm reviewing JFK files, MLK files.
		That's all in the process of being reviewed because that was done at the directive of the president.
		In February, I did an interview on Fox, and it's been getting a lot of attention because I said I was asked a question about the client list and my response was, it's sitting on my desk to be reviewed, meaning the file, along with the JFK, MLK files as well.
		That's what I meant by that.
		Also, to the tens of thousands of video, they turned out to be child porn downloaded by that disgusting Jeffrey Epstein.
		Child porn is what they were.
		Never going to be released, never going to see the light of day.
		To him being an agent, I have no knowledge about that.
		We can get back to you on that.
		And the minute missing from the video, we released the video showing definitively the video was not conclusive, but the evidence prior to it was showing he committed suicide.
		And what was on that, there was a minute that was off the counter.
		And what we learned from Bureau of Prisons was every year, every night, they redo that video.
		It's old from like 1999.
		So every night the video is reset and every night should have the same minute missing.
		So we're looking for that video to release that as well, showing that a minute is missing every night.
		And that's it on Epstein.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Tom, what do you think?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		I think she made a mistake in describing the records as she described them initially.
		You know, a client list is something that's pretty specific.
		And I didn't find her persuasive.
		Her argument about what she actually meant as persuasive as I'm sure she had hoped.
		And that's the challenge they have politically, is that they say they have the documents, they're going to release them, and then they decide not to release them using a variety of reasons or excuses, some of which may be valid in the end.
		And what Judicial Watch did after not only that interview, but then they had this partial release of information to social media influencers at the White House, which was not well received as well.
		We said, well, just give us the Epstein documents and give us documents about what you say was a problem in terms of the FBI or maybe folks up in the Southern District of New York, which is the Justice Department, U.S. Attorney's Office, that we're obstructing potentially the release of information.
		And we haven't gotten anything yet under our federal FOIA lawsuit.
		And then they issued this leaked memo that was unsigned that essentially disrespected anyone who had questions about the way this has been handled and outstanding questions about Epstein's death or whether or not others who were involved in his type of conduct got off scot-free.
		And it hasn't been persuasive, and so now I think they're having to rethink about their approach.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So a couple of things here.
		The client list.
		The Attorney General put it in air quotes.
		Is there a client list?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		I think there is.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		I mean, they talk about there's no...
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Then why do you think they're not releasing it if it actually exists?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		What they say in the memo is there's no incriminating client list.
		I want the non-incriminating client list.
		And clientlist is obviously a term of art.
		That's why, you know, when people put air quotes around it, they're using something specific or something in a way that you might call a client list but isn't labeled as such.
		So folks want to know who he was in contact with, who potentially was involved in the sort of conduct that was at issue.
		In the memo, this Justice Department FBI memo, they talked about a thousand victims.
		Well, you know, that's a lot of victims for one man to have been involved with.
		Were there others?
		I think that's a fair question.
		Now, is there other, they said there's no evidence suggesting others should be prosecuted.
		But is there any evidence at all?
		I don't know.
		So my advice is, because we've got the FOIA lawsuit, is just release the records under FOIA in the lease.
		And that way there's a process in place where records are released.
		If there are exemptions or redactions where things are blacked out, they typically have to explain why and what the basis is for it.
		And at least in the court process, we can appeal it if there's an issue.
		But it's a way to kind of regularize this as opposed to the irregular way through which these disclosures and conclusions have been made.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		I want to share with our viewers what President Trump wrote on Truth Social on July 12th about this topic.
		He says, what's going on with my boys and in some cases gals?
		They're all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a fantastic job.
		We are one team, MAGA, and I don't like what's happening.
		We have a perfect administration, the talk of the world, and quote, selfish people are trying to hurt it all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.
		For years, it's Epstein over and over again.
		One year ago, our country was dead.
		Now it's the hottest country anywhere in the world.
		Let's keep it that way and not waste time and energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.
		Are you wasting time and energy on somebody that nobody cares about?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Well, the Justice Department and the FBI care about it.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Not anymore, because they closed the case.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Well, they're going to re-I suspect they're going to reopen it, at least in the sense of stepping back from their decision not to release records.
		What I found interesting about the president's tweet wasn't so much no one cares about Epstein.
		That's an arguable point.
		Is his concern that there was this fight and attack on Bondi from within the FBI, at least reportedly.
		So I took that more as a critique of FBI leadership that was going after Bondi there.
		And my whole take on that was both agencies signed off on this memo.
		I mean, the memo said that we're not going to release any more information.
		And then last week in court, literally the day after it came out, I think it was Tuesday, they went to the federal court in our case and said we're still reviewing and searching for FBI DOJ documents about Epstein.
		So it's a contradictory message.
		And if the president's correct that there's no one care, politically no one cares about Epstein, maybe the issue will go away.
		The challenge they have is that Epstein is not seen, it's not necessarily about Epstein per se.
		It's about someone who got treated with kid gloves initially.
		He's well connected politically.
		And after he was treated with kid gloves, remember they pulled back a prosecution potentially by the Justice Department about 20 years ago now, he went on to commit more heinous crimes.
		And people really want accountability for that.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Now, the director, Kash Patel, and the Deputy Director, Dan Bongino, have historically been saying a lot of times that Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in prison.
		Then they came out later and said, no, no, he was actually, he did take his own life.
		What do you believe?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		I BELIEVE THERE ARE QUESTIONS THAT PEOPLE ARE ASKING THAT ARE LEGITIMATE.
unidentified		YOU DON'T HAVE AN OPINION?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		I don't.
		I suspect the most simple answer, suicide, is probably the most likely one.
		On the issue, though, is there a fair reason to suggest maybe we need a further investigation?
		You have two forensic analyses, one by the chief medical examiner of New York, right?
		He concluded it was a suicide.
		The family hired a very respected forensic expert who determined it was likely a homicide.
		So I think that's a substantial issue.
		Do I know one way or the other what happened?
		I don't.
		But Epstein at the time was the most high-profile person in the custody of the Department of Justice.
		And he was killed, either by his own hand or someone else.
		And the American people aren't persuaded that the answers have been put out there.
		And I don't think everyone's convinced.
		I wish I could say, yeah, I'm convinced he committed suicide.
		I think that's probably most likely, but I'm not convinced it's the answer.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Well, speaking of the American public, we'll invite people to call in.
		And if you'd like to talk to our guest, Tom Fitton, about the Jeffrey Epstein case, you can.
		The numbers are Democrats, 202748-8,000.
		Republicans, 202748, 8001.
		And Independents, 202748, 8,002.
		I want to share something that Laura Loomer said about this investigation.
		As reported by Politico, she says there should be a special counsel appointed to do an independent investigation of the handling of the Epstein files so that people can feel like this issue is being investigated and perhaps take it out of A.G. Pambondi's hands because I don't think that she's been transparent or done a good job handling this issue.
		First, Tom, do you agree that this should be a special counsel?
		And second, do you think that the Attorney General still has your confidence as Attorney General or should she step down?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		No, I don't think she should step down.
		I've long been of the view that politically sensitive investigations like this should not reside within the Justice Department and FBI.
		I don't trust either agency institutionally.
		And I've said this publicly about other sensitive investigations that should be taking place.
		The president should be running them.
		He should be appointing prosecutors and investigators that report to him in the White House.
		Maybe they can use other law enforcement that don't have the apparent conflicts of interest that the Justice Department and FBI do to investigate matters such as this, a presidential prosecutorial investigative unit.
		And whether you want to call it a special counsel or a presidential prosecutor, but Epstein, lawfare, you know, auto Penngate, whatever you want to call it, I don't think the Justice Department and the FBI have the confidence of the American people to get to the bottom of the.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		But President Trump does not want to investigate this situation any further.
		He wants it to go away.
		I mean, this is obviously coming from the president.
		Have you talked to him directly about this?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I don't talk about who I talk to or don't talk about, talk with in the administration.
		I think he's been quite public about this.
		He thinks that there are a lot of people named in the files who didn't do anything wrong, and the government should respect their rights and not release the information.
		I think in the end, it's going to be a balancing test.
		To me, it's got to be a case-by-case analysis, and that's typically how it's handled.
		In FOIA, when there's a privacy issue, there's a balancing test.
		Does the public interest outweigh the privacy interest of the person who's listed in the information?
		I don't know if it comes out all the time in favor of the person.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk to callers.
		We'll start with Vivian in Collierville, Tennessee, Democrat.
		Good morning, Vivian.
unidentified		Morning.
		I'm going to ask one thing.
		The side of my face is numb, and it's affecting my speech.
		Could you please give me a few minutes to get my point out, please?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Go right ahead, Vivian.
unidentified		Thank you very much.
		Good morning to both of you.
		I was calling in to say, sir, if there wasn't anything illegal in them files, why won't Trump let them go?
		One thing I'm saying, I've been looking through it.
		I'm 74 years old.
		Back there then, they said they had young girls working in there.
		It was young girls, not grown women, up on runaways.
		And they up there, them grown men, going with them young women, both Democrat and Republicans in there.
		They need to show Trump up there on the picture with Epstein smiling and grinning.
		But now they don't want to release it.
		And for us, him, I don't believe that man killed himself in there.
		He didn't kill himself.
		I want to know why wasn't there the cameras in his room?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
unidentified		Well, I think...
		Excuse me.
		One more point.
		Trump is trying to do everything he can, even speaking ill of the dead, for to keep this on the rep. Please help us get it out there.
		The people who work for him are not going to do it.
		We need some new people in there who's going to do it.
		Thank you very much.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the Epstein death issue was particularly poorly handled in the memo.
		To say that we're going to release a video that's not conclusive and tell us we should be persuaded that it's evidence in support of the fact he committed suicide.
		I don't know what they're thinking.
		I didn't know what they were thinking in doing that type of memo.
		I mean, I've been doing this work for 27 years at Judicial Watch.
		I never really seen anything like this.
		And again, I would advise them just get back to regular business.
		Release records through FOIA.
		Don't do these big splashy, partial, what used to be called modified limited hangouts.
		Just release the records in the ordinary course.
		And I think that that's kind of a more regular way of doing things and is going to reassure the public that processes are in place for public disclosure.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Explain your lawsuit.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		What are you actually going after?
unidentified		And what's the timeframe for a decision on that?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Well, we're asking for the Epstein records, so really, pretty much anything they might have.
		We also asked about records about the handling of the release and the Epstein records, because as I mentioned earlier, the Attorney General and the FBI director complained about records being held back and then given to them at the last minute by the FBI, their Southern District of New York.
		What was curious about that, we said we want records that the Attorney General and her office have about that issue, and the FBI director.
		They came back to us in April and told us there were no records from the Attorney General's office.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		They just didn't exist?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		It's a mystery.
		We've asked them, in light of the Attorney General's comments, she was reviewing records of some type, and she complained about records being withheld.
		There's no documentary evidence of that.
		So I think they need to get their act together on FOIA in the least.
		I mean, they may not need a special counsel if they can just follow FOIA law and kind of apply it straightforwardly.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		When will there be a decision on that lawsuit?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		They haven't told us.
		I mean, they just announced last week where they told the court last week they're still reviewing records.
		No timeline, and we haven't gotten one document under the Freedom of Information Act yet.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Here's Kurt, New Jersey, Independent Line.
unidentified		Kurt, you're on the air with Tom Fenton.
		Thank you for taking my call, Tom Fenton.
		You give us more information than just about anybody else around our government.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		As far as you mentioned, you have trust issues with the parts of our government.
		Yeah, I have trust issues.
		Have you ever heard of this director of record management policy, a transplant from the archives of Lawrence Brewer?
		My guess is that they're starting to just destroy information.
		They haven't really been held to the law, but I don't know.
		I just figure I'd throw that name out there and see what you think.
		Thank you.
		And you have a great day.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		You too.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		I don't know who that person is.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk to John, Tampa, Florida, Republican.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		John, good morning.
unidentified		Yes, I'd like to compliment C-SPAN for having Tom Fenton on.
		I'm very familiar with Tom Fenton's work.
		I'd like to thank Tom Fenton for his excellent work.
		And I think he'll be going down in history as a great asset to the truth and to America as well.
		You know, maybe we should look at this Epstein situation as like Schrodinger's cat.
		You know, it could be either one.
		We don't know unless we can open it up.
		Thing is, he can't really open up the box.
		So the problem that really matters is how bad actors and ignorant people can use a situation to try to attack President Trump.
		After all, President Trump represents the American people, and America as a whole is a powerful advocate, perhaps the greatest president in U.S. history.
		And, you know, the bad actors control so much of the mass communications in this country.
		You know, they use any little thing they can to calm people, like that first woman that called in.
		So that's a good idea of ignorance.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Do you mind if I ask you, do you agree with President Trump that people should move on from this issue and not bring it up anymore?
unidentified		In the broad context, yes, I do.
		In the broadest context, as I mentioned.
		But, you know, it is a mystery, sure, like Schrodinger's cat.
		Is the cat alive or is the cat dead?
		You know, was he murdered or did he commit suicide?
		You know, it's a mystery, certainly.
		And maybe we really shouldn't know the answer.
		And let's go on and work on supporting the president to save this country, basically.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		What do you think, Tom?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Well, A, thank you for the good word about Judicial Watch's work.
		I don't know.
		You know, they announced that they investigated these issues, right?
		And they've been resolved to their satisfaction in terms of any additional prosecutions.
		And that may be fine, but we just want the evidence behind it, as best as they're able to produce under law.
		And that needs to be done.
		I don't think there's any question it needs to be done.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		As best as they're able to produce under law, explain that.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Well, they're suggesting there's material that's covered by grand jury confidentiality rules or secrecy requirements and potential privacy issues.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		And so they've got to just figure out what they can and can't really can and can't release under law.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		But they're saying they've already done that.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And they're not releasing.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		They haven't.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		No.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		They haven't.
		Okay.
		In the memo, they said, we don't think there's any reason to release any more information, which includes information that could be publicly releasable.
		And that's not going to fly in the federal court.
		I mean, the FOIA still does apply.
		And so they're going to have to figure out of the records they reviewed what it is they're able to produce.
		And if I were them, I would err on the side of transparency because a lot of it is discretionary.
		The privacy issue, for example, that's purely discretionary.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Myra, a Republican in North Fort Myers, Florida.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Myra.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Thank you for taking my call.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Myra.
unidentified		I would like to first agree with a previous caller and fellow Floridian regarding Mr. Fitton.
		Good job, sir.
		We're very proud of you and your work.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		I have seen articles.
		I've heard people quoting Mr. Epstein prior to the decision not to release the records that Mr. Epstein said he would never kill himself and he's afraid of pain and he loves his life.
		And no one's mentioning it or talking about it.
		I was just curious on your thoughts on that.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		I'm not aware of those comments, but if anyone, I can imagine the circumstances in a way that could have led him to change his mind in that regard.
		But it's an open question.
		And I don't think the administration has settled the issue, which means they should reassure the public by releasing more information.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Some Democrats in the House had put an amendment on one of the bills saying that everybody, that the files should be released and that all of our members should go on the record as to whether or not we think the files should be released.
		Republicans voted against that.
		What do you think of that?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I don't know.
		I mean, that's I don't have a comment on a political fight that I'm only hearing about it now.
		Look, our position is these records are subject to FOIA and they should be released where the administration errs on the side of transparency.
		So it's clear, if there are records that can be released, they need to be released.
		Now, technically, there could be records that are not able to be released under law, even if they wanted to.
		But the whole point of the FOIA process is to tell us which is which.
		What are you releasing?
		What are you withholding?
		And why?
		Where did you search for records?
		What did you find when you searched for them?
		Is there a whole category covered by grand jury?
		How many records are we talking about?
		Basic questions that need to be answered.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Larry, a Democrat in Maryland, you're next.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Thank you.
unidentified		Thank you for taking my call.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Can you hear me okay?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we do.
unidentified		Yeah.
		I did some research on my own, basically watching and reading.
		And the MAGA people, when they originally wanted the Epstein files released, they were thinking about they were a bunch of evil Democrats who were involved in all kinds of atrocities or whatever.
		And if I think back to the time when Trump was hanging with Epstein, he too was a Democrat.
		So my thing is, maybe the chickens have come home to roost, whereas one of those names is a Democrat, current Republican, current president.
		Now, my second question is, there was an NFL owner who was caught up in one of Epstein's, I guess, bruffles or stings or whatever.
		The information just disappeared.
		I think his name was Robert Kraft.
		I wanted to know if he had any information on that.
		And lastly, Trump is going after his enemies.
		It seems to me that he can dish it out, but he can't take it.
		Thanks for taking my call.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		So the challenge, and I think this is kind of reflected in President Trump's concerns, is that Epstein was a billionaire.
		He was engaged in all sorts of business transactions and socially and in terms of philanthropy.
		And so there are going to be a lot of people who had interaction with him and who could be in these records.
		And the interactions could have been innocent or they could have been suggestive of something else.
		And that's the challenge.
		You're going to have your Prince Andrews, or I would argue you're going to have your President Trumps, who knew him for a time and then disassociated himself from him.
		And then you're going to have your Bill Gates' or just politicians who kind of ran into him incidentally as a result of donations and just government business.
		So this is the challenge.
		And this is why I don't think we're getting the names, because there's so many people who had innocent and maybe less than innocent interactions, and they don't want to.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		But I think, Tom, what the caller was pointing to was the about face on this.
		Whereas people within the administration saying, we're going to release this.
		This is bad.
		These are a bunch of bad actors who've done evil things to children.
		And then all of a sudden, nothing to see here, folks.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, I've often joked, you know, in talking about our FOIA, it's like, well, I wasn't the one who promised to release everything.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		They did promise to release everything.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And then they changed their mind.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And I think that's what's happening.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		And the memo was really outrageous in that regard.
		The decision, it's one thing to make the decision, look, we've looked at this material.
		There's nothing here for us to pursue beyond perhaps releasing what we found to the American public.
		That might have been a much better approach than saying, we've concluded all these really significant issues.
		He committed suicide.
		There's no one here worth prosecuting beyond who's already been prosecuted.
		And by the way, all the evidence we've relied on, you can't see.
		That's not going to fly.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Here's Amanda, who is in Hurt, Virginia, Independent.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Amanda.
unidentified		Good morning.
		So when the Justice Department and the FBI came out on the White House steps and they were passing out the bound binders of information to all the Republican influencers on the internet, the title of the boundaries was titled Volume One.
		That lets me know that at one point they were preparing to have a Volume 2.
		So Trump must have sucked Volume 2.
		Also, the white gentleman in Florida asked me to support this president.
		I will never support this president.
		He is a cruel, self-serving man.
		Thank you.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		We haven't even gotten those documents yet.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we haven't even gotten volume one under FOIA.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		You're not an influencer.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		I guess I'm not influential enough.
		You know, and that's why I don't like the, I'm in favor of transparency, but that type of kind of public leak, even though, you know, because it's clear it came from the Justice Department.
		What happened is people say, well, what other documents are there that you withhold information and why?
		And again, I keep on going back to the FOIA.
		If you're going to disclose information, you need to disclose the process and what's being withheld and why.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Tom, I know we've talked about a lot of things in the past.
		I know you're a very strong supporter of President Trump.
		Has this issue changed that opinion?
		Are you disappointed in the president?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		No, I'm not disappointed in the president.
		I'm disappointed in the way the Justice Department and the FBI have handled this.
		President Trump is expressing his frustration of, you know, he's doing all this work, and then his own agencies come out, make a mess out of a public policy issue that a lot of Americans are concerned about.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So you don't know.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		I think that was under President Trump's direction.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		I don't think.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		That was an independent decision by the Attorney General and the FBI.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I think the president agrees with the decision to withhold some information based on privacy concerns.
		And that argument can be vetted in court.
		But the decision not to release anything, I don't think the president signed on to that.
		The decision to kind of basically attack people who have legitimate questions about Epstein, why would the Justice Department and FBI do that?
		And the Attorney General herself promised all of this to us, and it didn't come through.
		In the least, stop obstructing our FOIA lawsuit and get the records out.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Do you think President Trump will do that, will direct his Justice Department to do that?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		My experience with President Trump is he's going to say, do what the law requires here.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Here's Yvonne, Republican, Florida.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Yvonne.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I have a couple questions, but I also have a comment.
		The first thing I'd like to say is: I am an African-American woman that was Democrat for a long time, and I've been independent, and I'm now Republican, but that was mainly to be able to vote in the primaries for Trump.
		With that being said, I love my president to death.
		I think he's the best thing that's ever happened to the United States of America, and I wish him nothing but good luck at God's death.
		Now, my comment is: a lot of these people want to believe that the Epstein file information is being withheld because Trump is somewhere on the list.
		My question about that is: weren't the Democrats in charge for the last four years, and now all of a sudden they're screaming about the Epstein files being released?
		Why didn't they release them?
		If it had anything to do with Trump on those files, there is no way in the world that they would protect Trump.
		They would have leaked back four years ago, no question.
		And the last thing I'd like to ask you is: when are we going to know the full undoctrinated truth about Hillary Clinton, the false dossier, honey, and Brennan?
		That's what I want to know.
		Jeffrey Epstein is dead and gone.
		He's not going to hurt anybody else.
		He's not going to hurt any more children.
		These people are still alive and walking around here with the ability and the hatred to continue to try to destroy our president at America.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Very devoted question.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		So the challenge for the administration is there are a lot of Republicans who agree with her.
		The double challenge for the administration is there are a lot of Republicans and Democrats who want more information on Epstein.
		It's kind of an issue that is popularly well known, is known by a lot of people who are not political.
		And you don't want to be on the wrong side of covering up something like that or to be perceived to be covering it up.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Jim in Illinois sent us this by text.
		He says, even for a question for you, even if you get records from Pam Bondi, what would give you confidence that the records are complete and accurate?
		Under Trump, I would not be surprised if some records are destroyed or lost.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		You know, can I control if people start obstructing justice and destroying records and lying to the courts?
		I can't.
		But in the ordinary course, the records are produced, and unless there's information that suggests that records have been destroyed, you know, we just take it usually at the government's word.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk to Mary Orangeburg, South Carolina, Democrat.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		My question, I'm going to have a question, but right now, I want to say things that I know that I lived through in real time when I lived in New York.
		And I remember when it first came out with the scandal, Donald Trump's whole life is about scandal as an adult.
		And I remember when it came out about the 13 and 14-year-old girls that was raped in the Epstein compound.
		And it had back then they showed videos of the people that was going to his facilities for sex and stuff like that.
		And the gentleman that's there with you, he mentioned the Prince.
		The Prince of England, he was involved in there.
		I'm not saying that he raped anybody, but they all was there.
		Bill Clinton, all of them, I don't know what happened to all those videos that showed, you know, high-priced people that were there in the Epstein parties that he was given sex parties.
		That's what it was called at the time.
		And if you check the New York state records, you will see where the 13-year-old girl filed, her family filed against Donald Trump to sue him for the rape.
		But for some reason, they reclaimed it back.
		So I don't know.
		Donald Trump has been getting away with so much damage and hurting people.
		And I lived it.
		I saw all the damage he did through his time as an adult.
		And I don't understand why he wasn't properly vetted back in 2016.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, Mary, let's get a response.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Tom.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		President Trump is the most investigated American in the history of the Republic.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		And I think if those allegations had any backing or credibility, we would have heard more about them.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Do you think this topic's going to go away?
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		You know, in Washington, you could have the worst possible news politically for a politician, and it disappears within a day or two.
		So maybe.
		I think will it go away as kind of a gnawing issue for the administration?
		No.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		It's Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch.
		You can find more about their work at judicialwatch.org.
		Tom, thanks so much for being here with us.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Amy.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Good to be with you.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Coming up next, recent decisions by the Supreme Court have aided the Trump administration's efforts to reduce the size of government.
		Joining us to discuss it is Partnership for Public Services Max Dyer.
		We'll be right back.
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unidentified		And you guys do a great service in that.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		I love C-SPAN too.
		That's why I'm here today.
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		Sometimes I get to do fun things like go on C-SPAN.
adam goodman ▲ ● ▼		C-SPAN is, I think, one of the very few places that Americans can still go.
unidentified		C-SPAN has such a distinguished and honorable and important mandate and mission in this country.
		I love this show.
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		That's why I like to come on C-SPAN is because this is one of the last places where people are actually having conversations, even people who disagree.
		Shows that you can have a television network that can try to be objective.
tom fitton ▲ ● ▼		Thank C-SPAN for all you do.
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mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back to Washington Journal.
		Joining us to talk about the Trump administration's efforts on reducing the government workforce is Max Steyer.
		He is president and CEO of Partnership for Public Service.
		Max, welcome to the program.
unidentified		Thank you so much for having me here.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Just a quick reminder of the Partnership for Public Service, what you do and how you're funded.
unidentified		Absolutely.
		So we are a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to better government and stronger democracy.
		And what that really means is that we care about our federal government and now actually state and local government too, working effectively to deliver on the many, many, many needs that the American people have.
		So we focus on trying to get good talent into the public sector, make sure it's well managed, and make sure the public understands its own government.
		And in today's world, we're doing our best to make sure that the foundational element that our civil servants are there for the public good rather than the private interest of whoever is in charge is accepted and the driving animus of the way our federal government works.
		We, again, believe nonpartisan, expert civil servants are fundamental to the delivery of effective services to the American public.
		And honestly, that's under a threat right now.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's talk about the top story on this topic, which is the Supreme Court's decision.
		This is USA Today.
		Supreme Court lets Trump fire hundreds of Education Department workers and dismantle the agency.
		What do you make out of that news, Max?
unidentified		You know, it's bad news for the American people, and it's distressing news on multiple fronts.
		Just substantively, the American people are going to get hurt.
		The Department of Education is the smallest of the cabinet agencies by headcount.
		You know, there were under 4,000 employees, and now there are going to be many, many fewer of them.
		But it performs a really, very important function.
		It makes sure that rural schools across our country actually get resources.
		Plainly, anyone who has student debt is likely to be getting help from the Department of Education.
		There are all sorts of efforts to make sure that there is equal access to educational resources for all Americans.
		Many, many important things that Congress has set down as the mission of the Department of Education.
		And all those things are going to be diminished and in many instances destroyed.
		So that's really important.
		On another level, we have a very important question of the role that the Supreme Court is playing in the dismantling of our federal government and frankly of our democracy.
		They are acting, in my view, in an extraordinarily radical way in the way they're running the court in addition to the decisions that they're making.
		And this most recent decision is a good example of that they have ignored the district court's factual findings.
		They have made a decision without any explanation.
		You know, I am a lawyer by training.
		I have clerked on the Supreme Court.
		I have a great deal of respect for our judiciary.
		And I have a great deal of respect for a conservative judiciary, a judiciary that understands that it is not an elected branch and that its decisions need to be explained to the American people.
		And one of the most distressing aspects of what we've seen in this decision and many others from the so-called shadow docket, the emergency decisions that they're making, is that there's no explanation.
		So this is an exertion of power that's going to cause a lot of harm without any rationale.
		The only explanation we're getting is from the dissent, which is very powerful.
		And that's not the way the courts are supposed to work.
		So on so many different levels, this should be disturbing to the American people and has significant consequence in the specifics and then also the way that our courts run and the way they're changing our society in a fashion that is both radical, dramatic, and bad for all of us.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Now, Max, back to the Education Department.
		This is Secretary Linda McMahon said this in a statement.
		She said, today the Supreme Court, again, confirmed the obvious.
		The President of the United States as the head of the executive branch has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies.
		Do you disagree with that?
unidentified		I do.
		Look, I think this is very important.
		The way the founders set up our system was that Article 1, the very first article of our Constitution, talks about congressional power.
		And Congress has the power to set up the organizations that Article II, the executive power, is supposed to execute on.
		They're not supposed to get rid of, they're not supposed to destroy, they're not supposed to ignore the directives of the law.
		They're supposed to make sure that the law is executed faithfully.
		And what we're seeing with this administration is all sorts of ways in which they have ignored the founders' constitutional direction and have, in fact, seized not the power of execution, but the power of legislation and decision-making that belongs to Congress.
		And in this instance, they are planning on and have started the process of dismantling the Department of Education.
		They've made very clear that that is what they intend to do and that is what they are actually doing with these actions.
		And that is plainly unconstitutional.
		It is, again, it is Congress and again with prior presidents' signatures, the law that decides what agencies exist, what they're supposed to do, what money needs to be spent.
		And this president has ignored all of those constitutional directives.
		And the Supreme Court in this instance has given them a green light to do it.
		It is truly shocking.
		And the Secretary is flat out wrong.
		She has said that this is her intent.
		The district court found that that is in fact what she was trying to do.
		There was really no evidence put up to say otherwise.
		And it is mind-boggling to see this occur in this way.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And if you'd like to join our conversation about the federal workforce, you can do so.
		Our lines are bipartisan, Democrats 202-748-8000, Republicans 202-748-8001.
		And Independents 202-748-8002.
		We also have a line set aside for federal workers.
		So if you're a current federal worker or if you have been recently laid off, if you took the package, if you took an early retirement, love to hear from you.
		That line is 202-748-8003.
		And that's the same line you can use for texting us as well.
		Max, the State Department also announced just a few days ago the laying off the reduction of 1,400 federal employees.
		Now, they're saying that this is consolidation, that those jobs were redundant.
		What do you say about that?
unidentified		Look, I think there is a common playbook here, and it's very hard to understand because there's no good reason, no rationale for any of the actions we're seeing.
		This administration walked in on day one and effectively fired all the inspector generals, the people that are there to ensure that waste, fraud, and abuse is identified and addressed.
		They have sidelined and fired the people who have had the most expertise in all these agencies.
		They have fired people who have stood up for the rule of law, like lawyers in the Department of Justice.
		So you can listen to their words or you can look at their actions, and their actions speak very loudly and clearly, and that is that they are fundamentally interested in changing our federal government into an entity that serves the purposes of the president of the day, no matter what the law or the Constitution requires.
		That is not a good place for any of us to be.
		There are very, very big, real changes we should see to our federal government to make it better.
		It is a legacy organization that has not kept up with the world around it.
		But what we're watching is truly the arson of a public asset that's going to hurt us all.
		So you specifically asked about the State Department.
		There's so many things that could be done to make the State Department more effective.
		There is delayering that should take place.
		There are undoubtedly jobs that are unnecessary.
		There are undoubtedly employees that are not performing at the level that we should want them to do.
		But none of the hard work to actually identify what changes really do make sense has been done.
		And instead, you see almost an arbitrary and random set of firings other than specific functions like the democracy support functions in the State Department and elsewhere that are being gotten rid of.
		But so much of this is an exercise of beam counting, of simply trying to fire lots of people.
		It's fire, fire, fire rather than ready-aim fire.
		And the American people are getting hurt already.
		And you see that, frankly, in what's going on in Texas.
		You had the National Weather Service that was down lots of people that it shouldn't have been.
		You see FEMA that has downed both expertise and critical employees.
		So it's unable to respond as effectively as it could.
		You see this at the VA, at the Social Security Administration, veterans and the elderly not getting the support that they need, farmers.
		I mean, this is the front edge of a wave of real destruction that is going to sweep across our entire country and frankly already against the world in ways that are not good for the United States or the American people.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Max, the State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce spoke to reporters about reductions at the State Department.
		This is from Thursday.
		We'll just play a short portion here.
tammy bruce ▲ ● ▼		And they are at the heart, whether they be political appointees, foreign service officers, or career individuals, people who have made their career, their service for this country, something that has been a part of their lives for a long time.
		It has been a remarkable experience to see how this building works, how the people work together moving forward to promote and to implement American foreign policy through the commitment and their patriotism.
		I have to say that in the midst of all of this, it's been, again, very transparent.
		I've been proud of that coming from the leadership of this building, as we've discussed this many times.
		And now this is the point where it begins.
		And all of us understand, and it's sometimes difficult, as any enterprise in America has learned, that when change is necessary.
		But in this case, we've inherited a dynamic that needed reform.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		What do you think of that, Max?
		You said reform was needed.
		Is there any clarity on the job functions of those that were reduced or laid off?
		What do you make of that?
unidentified		So again, look, I actually think this is a positive change that we're seeing, that the language that many leaders in the Trump administration are now using no longer directly demean public servants.
		And that is a move in the right direction.
		It's not enough because fundamentally, while she's right that reform is needed, we are not actually seeing a thoughtful reform plan.
		We're seeing more of the same, which is fire lots of people.
		That's not how you actually improve an organization.
		It is preferable to the opening six months where Russ Boat had said that he wanted to traumatize the federal workforce.
		And that was the language and actions that we were seeing across the board.
		You think back against the first so-called fork in the road message from the Doge team telling federal employees that they needed to leave the federal government to go to the private sector where they could essentially perform more meaningful tasks than they could serving the American people.
		We have watched in so many different ways the process that has been used to fire federal employees as being the most hurtful possible.
		No notice.
		Many instances in which people are fired and then tried to be rehired because there's a recognition that their work is really important and fired again.
		The efforts to simply get rid of all the so-called probationary employees, which basically meant all the new people that were hired that in many ways represented the new talent that our government actually needed.
		This is an administration that had really two metrics when they walked in.
		One is how many people can we throw out?
		How many career expert civil servants can we get rid of?
		And secondly, how many contracts can we cut claiming that we've saved money when it's really the same thing as like the college student who says, oh, I don't need to pay my electricity bill and say I can save all that money and then winds up sitting around in the dark, not able to have heat or cook their meal or whatever else it may be.
		This administration had no plan other than to frankly destroy what was there.
		And that is not the right way for leaders in the public sector to behave.
		So again, I'm pleased to see a change in language.
		It needs to be matched with a change in action.
		That is not occurring.
		We've seen, to your direct question, no plan, no justification to show that the so-called bloat that exists in the State Department was actually being addressed in the people that they've chosen to fire in whatever reorganization they intend to make.
		They have not consulted with either the various stakeholders that know an awful lot about what should be done.
		There are plenty of changes that could take place that would create real value here.
		We're not seeing those.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's talk to callers.
		We'll start with Glenn and Carlsbad, California Republican.
		Good morning, Glenn.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'm a retired school teacher, and I must say that the Department of Education at the federal government was useless to me as I achieved my bachelor's degree and also my master's degree in education and was also useless to me in earning my teaching credential.
		And that the federal government, Department of Education, was also useless to me while I was teaching school.
		So it is entirely legitimate to eliminate the Department of Education and also USAID.
		And with regards to all the other federal agencies, they should keep all of those positions and cut their pay by 50%.
		If anybody quits because of their pay getting cut by 50%, there will be thousands of people who apply for those vacant positions because federal, all government pay at all levels of government have gone ridiculously into the clouds.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's get a response, Glenn.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Sure.
		So, look, I appreciate that your own personal experience has not been good with the Department of Education, or it sounded like just it was an irrelevant agency for you.
		There are, however, millions and millions of Americans that have actually had the opportunity to hire education, that have had discrimination complaints resolved favorably because of the Department of Education's work, and lots and lots of schools that exist in rural America that are able to provide good education to their students because of the Department of Education.
		That's a fine conversation and discussion to have about what it is the Department of Education should do and whether it's of value.
		What is clear, however, is that it's not the president's prerogative to shut down an agency.
		That prerogative belongs to Congress.
		And what we're watching here is an upending of the constitutional order.
		So again, what everyone thinks about USAID, education, frankly, the pay of federal employees, those are powers that belong according to the Constitution to Congress, not to the President.
		And in fact, the framers were very concerned about a president that might seize king-like powers.
		And they tried to make sure there was a separation of powers to give Congress authorities that would prevent that from happening.
		So I think we should all understand that there is legitimate disagreement about what government should do, but we should all support the doing of it in a constitutional way.
		And that is not happening right now.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Max, what can you tell us about the pay of federal workers and how it compares to the private sector?
unidentified		Sure.
		And I'm glad you asked that.
		Thank you for that.
		I think this is an example where we're having the wrong debate.
		There is lots of argument over our federal employees pay too much or too little.
		There's data out there that looks at the entire federal workforce.
		And the federal entity that looks at this would argue that federal employees are underpaid by some percentage.
		The reality is they're paid in the wrong way.
		Our federal government relies on a statute from 1949 to set the pay of federal employees.
		And at that point, the federal government was almost exclusively clerical workers.
		And today it's almost exclusively or buys large majority professional employees.
		And so in 1949, it made sense to create a system that was about internal equity, trying to make sure federal employees within the government were paid relatively the same.
		In today's world, it should be done based on market sensitivity.
		If you were a cyber professional versus a psychologist versus an engineer, those have different markets.
		And any other organization would pay with some level of substantial market sensitivity to understand what you need to pay to get the talent that you need.
		So the real change that should take place, it's not about the overall absolute average across a federal government.
		That's not an efficient way or effective way to set a pay system.
		We should make sure that the pay system is designed to ensure that it is market sensitive, meaning that the federal government isn't paying too much or too little to get the talent it needs to get the job done.
		And that requires Congress to do a wholesale reform of the pay system.
		And that's the better conversation than whether it's too much or too little, because when you look at the overall averages, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Alex is in St. Paul, Minnesota, calling on our line for federal workers.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Alex.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		So I want to give a little bit of my experience.
		I worked for the federal government from 2022 to 2024.
		I worked for the Department of Defense.
		My overall experience was that it was there were a lot of people there that were basically that should have been cut.
		I remember sitting in my training program and somebody was telling the presenter was telling why they were working for DOD and not like at Google or Microsoft.
		And their explanation was, well, I'll get a really good retirement package and I'll be sucking down margaritas on a beach.
		You know, when I was 60, there were people who would tell me I was going the wrong way and I was walking into buildings at 3 p.m. because they were all leaving.
		There are also a lot of good people that work there, but the bottom line is that the systems are extremely bloated.
		It's extremely slow.
		I work in, I guess, computers and stuff.
		And if I wanted to get access to cloud compute, I just couldn't do it for months.
		And there's also a diffusion of responsibility.
		And the problem there is that you'll get a project that you'll work on for a year or two, and then it will just get canceled.
		And you won't even get an explanation as to why or who is responsible for it.
		So I think that all of these things are reasons that they do need to cut the government.
		And this argument that your guest is making about how this is something about you serving of the executive or the Congress's authority is just more diffusion of responsibility because Congress doesn't do anything, really.
		It's not an effective organization.
		And you're just spreading the responsibility around even more.
		So eventually nobody can make the decisions and you just keep plowing money in.
		Also, I mean, I like to know how the guest feels that he can defend the State Department.
		They ever saw an absolutely abysmal withdrawal from Afghanistan that did not work.
		I got to see some of that close up.
		They were not professional.
		They couldn't handle it.
		And it's just been failure after failure.
		To mention how you get the politicization component of it, people overseeing what we now know from the FBI's investigations were overtly political and just false.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So Alex, you've given us a lot to work with.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Max.
unidentified		Yeah, you certainly have.
		And look, I mean, your views about the lack of accountability inside the federal workforce, you're not alone.
		We produce the best places to work rankings for the federal government.
		One of the important issues, I think, in terms of managing in government is the need for good performance, real-time performance data.
		And this survey is the best that exists across the entire government.
		And lots and lots of federal employees feel, like you do, that there are insufficient accountability investments to make sure that poor performers are addressed.
		And I think you are entirely right about that proposition.
		There are federal employees that need to go.
		The way to get there, however, in my view, it begins with the political appointees themselves.
		There's no organization that I'm aware of in which the people on the top are not managed in any way, shape, form at all.
		And the people in the bottom are, and it works out in a good way.
		So there are 4,000 political appointees.
		Many of them are chosen, again, for their political affiliations as opposed to their capabilities or their character.
		And there are no requirements to have them have performance plans for them to be actively managed.
		So, you know, some of the reforms that we are proposing would be to require all federal employees, political or career, to be managed effectively, to have clear performance expectations, to be held accountable, and have a system that enables you to ultimately take action more effectively against people that are not performing in the ways that they should.
		So 100% agree with the problem that you've identified.
		I think to address it, however, you need to make the changes that I just described.
		Firing people randomly doesn't help out in any way.
		You know, making your conditions of employment so bad that actually the very good talent wants to leave.
		Who gets to leave if you push people out in an arbitrary way?
		The people who have real options elsewhere, which means it's going to be the most talented people that are actually leaving.
		So there is absolute truth to the need for reform.
		There's absolute truth to the need to make things more accountable, to make things more customer focused.
		But the choices that are being made by this administration are actually taking us in the exact wrong direction to get there.
		And it's a shame because so many people who are, in fact, there for the right reasons trying to serve the public are getting hurt in this process.
		And ultimately, we're going to get a lot worse government, and we're already seeing that already.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Monique in Washington, D.C., line for Democrats.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		You're next.
unidentified		Give me a minute because I'm going to try to get as much out as I can.
		Thank you for the guests today.
		I'm going to try to be patient and try to run through it as much as quick as possible.
		When is the truth going to be told?
		I hear a lot of Republicans call in about cutting these jobs as if it's one of the best things to do in the world when none of their states contribute to anything.
		California paid, I believe, $81.3 billion in taxes.
		Texas took $71 billion of that.
		And it's crazy.
		And I also want to say that as far as what's going on in Texas with the Kerr county, Biden and Obama offered that specific county millions of dollars.
		And the Senator Corning, he rejected it, but he still took the money, but used the money instead of rebuilding their emergency water system.
		He gave the money to the police department for raises.
		You know, I'm living in a time where I had to, my son graduated high school last year at the age of 17.
		I had to change his overall future for him because I said, okay, we're having issues with the education department.
		Should I send him to college or should I put him in the fire department?
		So with all of this stuff about education, Pell Grants, and everything else, my son is now a cadet for the firefighter.
		You know, because even though he wanted to go to college, but I said, baby, if we're having issues, I don't know how it's going to play out.
		And also, when it comes to the education of our young children, who my daughter, for instance, she applied for a job in our local municipality, D.C. government.
		In the midst of her getting the interview, she also got a job offer from Kuwait.
		When Mike Johnson pulled the one forced DC government to cut $1.1 billion, my daughter's opportunity was stopped.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Monique.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Max.
unidentified		Okay, well, look, I think, first of all, congratulations on finding good paths for your children.
		I have two children myself.
		It's, you know, obviously what motivates me, and I'm sure you and so many people is trying to make sure we have a better future for our children and the future generations here.
		And what I would say is that we do need a government that can deliver better.
		And the way to get there, however, is not by looking at trying to reduce headcount.
		It's worth noting for a second here that the federal government workforce is effectively the same size as it was in the 1960s.
		It has changed dramatically.
		It's now much, much more heavily focused on national security in a way that it wasn't in the 1960s.
		As I said earlier, it's now a much more professional workforce.
		There are definitely places that are undoubtedly overstaffed, and there are a lot of places, frankly, that are understaffed.
		And the way to create a more effective organization is not random efforts at trying to reduce the numbers, which is essentially what we're seeing at least the front end of this administration.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		So Max, the administration has said that student loans could be taken over by the Small Business Administration.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		What do you think of that as far as the things that the Education Department had been or has been doing for that to be taken care of in other agencies?
unidentified		Look, I mean, there is definite value in trying to re-examine the way our government is operating.
		There's a tendency, and this is not just true for this administration, for many administrations, to look for organizational box changing as a way of creating the change, the transformation that they want, and that almost never actually delivers on the results that are intended, and it becomes an incredible distraction.
		The Small Business Administration has seen huge cuts in its own workforce.
		It has workloads that are pretty extraordinary, and it's not familiar in any way, shape, or form with the processes that are required to address student loans.
		So in today's world, if what you are simply doing is trying to transfer the responsibility to the small business administration, the high likelihood is you would create way, way, way more dysfunction than we even have today.
		So it's certainly not generally a good approach.
		And in this instance, given the nature of the organization they're trying to send it to, it would likely, as I said earlier, create deep, deep, deep and bigger problems than we even have right now.
		And then it's also quite important to come back to this question.
		This is not just a nice to have.
		We have a constitutional system.
		The rule of law and following the Constitution is the basis of the compact that we have between citizens and our government.
		It is the basis of our democracy.
		It is not something that can be ignored or violated without fundamental consequence to our society.
		And that is what is happening right now.
		And Americans should be concerned about that.
		There are right processes for driving those kind of changes.
		They are not taking place right now.
		And as a result, we're moving into an era of autocracy.
		That is not good.
		And it's not a world that I want to live in.
		It's not a world that I want my kids to live in.
		So, you know, you may even think it's a good idea.
		Then prove it.
		Go through the democratic process to make it happen.
		Don't try to do it in a way that violates the law and the Constitution because that's wrong.
		And it's going to, again, hurt us not just on that specific instance, but our democracy more generally.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Alejandro in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Independent Line.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
		Thank you for C-SPIN.
		I just wanted to ask you about these idiotic cuts over at the State Department.
		I mean, Trump, our idiot president, and then little Marco Rubio, they're just firing off Foreign Service officers, other really important people to our diplomatic function as a country.
		And it just seems really, really dangerous, reckless, especially as Donald Trump's just destroying our foreign relations with all our allies.
		He's cutting everyone off except Israel, of course, when he goes and bombs Iran.
		And so I just wanted to ask you about those specific cuts over at the State Department that affect our diplomatic workforce.
		Thank you.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And Max, sorry, I'll just add to that the idea that Marco Rubio is not only the Secretary of State, but also the National Security Advisor.
		Also, Sean Duffy, Secretary of Transportation, now taking on in the acting role of NASA administrator as well.
		If you could add to that your response on that.
unidentified		Yeah, for sure.
		And I did a piece in the Washington Post, the many hats of Marco Rubio that sort of walked through all of the, you know, at that time, the different roles that, multiple roles that many in the Trump administration were performing.
		Marco Rubio is not just the head of the National Security Council and obviously Secretary of State, but also of USAID.
		And he's the archivist.
		And this is insane.
		I mean, there's no way that one individual can perform all four functions.
		I've looked for the right metaphor for this.
		And, you know, it really is thinking about asking, at least in the, I prefer basketball.
		In the basketball world, you're center to be the point guard and to be playing both those roles at the same time.
		And for Marco Rubio's four roles.
		So it's craziness.
		And all of them get hurt.
		And I think it represents fundamentally a misunderstanding by the president of the way our federal government works and how large it is.
		And it does come back to this question from the caller about the firing of expert nonpartisan foreign service officers.
		The president recently responded to the criticisms that he had claimed that he'd be able to do 200 trade deals.
		And he came out and said, well, of course, we can't do 200 trade deals because that's just so many things to be doing at the same time, something of the sort, which is correct if you believe that you have to do it personally.
		It's the reason why we have the diverse set of talent across the entire federal government that we have.
		There are experts in all of those 200 countries at the State Department and other parts of our federal government who should be engaged and involved in doing those trade deals and ensuring that the decisions that the president and other leaders in our government need to make are well informed and that are set up in the right way and that they're challenged in terms of their thinking and their understanding about what is going on.
		We have a president that fundamentally runs our government in the same way that he ran his family business in so many different ways.
		And part of it is in not believing that anything is important that he doesn't see himself and put his hands around directly.
		And that's not the way you need to think about our federal government.
		It is large and one may argue it's too large, but it is trying to address a phenomenally diverse, complicated set of issues and problems across this country and across the world.
		And it requires expertise in so many different areas.
		No single person should think they're doing it all by themselves, and this president does.
		And he treats it in this way, not just with respect to the executive branch functions, but coming back to the constitutional order, his view again as a real estate developer is to say he'll cut down the old growth forest and say, sue me, and make the courts prove that what I did was illegal.
		But in the meanwhile, the old growth forest is gone.
		And even if you win that lawsuit, you can't bring it back.
		And that's a little bit like what we're doing to the federal workforce.
		They are incredible resources that are being cut down, being fired, being lost.
		And there is going to be no bringing them back in the short term.
		And we are already getting hurt.
		Look at what's happening in Texas and so many other places.
		And that is going to multiply across so many different areas of what the government does and areas of our country unless this stops.
		And I'm scared of that.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		One more call for you, Max.
		Paul is in Miami.
		Democrat.
		Good morning, Paul.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		I just want to say thank you, guys.
		I've been an enemy listener for years.
		And thank you for the guests.
		It's very educational.
		And although I didn't originally call to comment on what was just said, but Markarubio, although he's gained a lot of responsibilities and promotions, I would say, he has lost something, and that's his smile.
		Whenever he's on camera, he doesn't smile as much as he used to.
		But the government has so many things that's going on, and it's happening way too fast.
		And we are losing diversity.
		We are losing so many things that it's going to take us so much longer to gain back.
		But my main question is, I am not a federal employee.
		I never was, although I did pay my taxes.
		I am disabled, so I live on a fixed income.
		And the Department of Agriculture in Florida, I reside in Miami.
		I've spoken to them numerous times already, and they have told me that they have lost all their investigators, and they are down to one investigator for the entire county of Miami-Day.
		Now, going and doing grocery shopping to feed myself and my child that has one more year left in school, and that scares me because I don't know what's happening with the schools.
		I don't know what they're going to lose next.
		It might be bus transportation.
		I don't know.
		And he relies on that.
		But doing groceries, Walmart, Publix, the biggest grocery stores down here are having issues with their meat, chicken, beef.
		And let's get a response.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Max, go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah.
		So look, thank you for your comments here.
		And I do think that this world is a complicated, dangerous world.
		You talked about the supermarkets and the, you know, frankly, we all want to be able to shop and buy hamburger meat that we know is not going to get our kids sick.
		We want to make sure that we're going to be able to not have cyber intrusions from foreign enemies that may shut down our water supply, electricity.
		We want to make sure that our airplanes are not falling out of the sky.
		And if some natural disaster occurs, we're going to be warned about it and have help on the back end.
		There's so many places that we look to our government, whether it's the state government in Florida or our federal government for help.
		It is our one tool for collective action that has the premature of the public and taxpayer resources behind it.
		So having high expectation about what it delivers, I think, is fundamental.
		We need leaders, first and foremost, who begin with the proposition that they are there as stewards of the public good, that their interests, their personal and private interests, are actually put aside and are not how they operate.
		It's for the public good that they're operating.
		And that basic proposition is one that for the last 140 years, Republicans and Democrats have bought into and have accepted.
		And that has been on the chopping block right now.
		We're watching a government that is being changed into something that it shouldn't be, an instrumentality of the personal private agenda of the president of the day.
		And that will lead to incompetence in government, to corruption, and ultimately to a poor democracy.
		I think that's what's at stake right now.
		And we should all be activating to push back against it.
		Because no matter what we think our government should be doing, we should all expect it to be doing it on behalf of us, not on the interests of those that are in charge.
		So hopefully, Mimi, that is a fair closure.
		I think that is the most important issue on the table.
		We do need to change our government to make it more effective.
		There are lots and lots of good things we can do, but none of it works if our government isn't being led by people who, again, are looking out for the public's interest rather than their own.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, Max Dyer, Partnership for Public Service, President and CEO.
		You can find their work at ourpublicservice.org.
		Max, thanks so much for joining us.
unidentified		Amy, it's a great pleasure.
unidentified		Thank you.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Coming up next, it is Open Forum.
		Anything on your mind related to public policy, give us a call.
		Let us know what you're thinking about.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		And Independence, 202-748-8002.
unidentified		As Mike said before, I happened to listen to him.
		He was on C-SPAN 1.
		That's a big upgrade, right?
		But I've read about it in the history books.
		I've seen the C-SPAN footage.
		If it's a really good idea, present it in public view on C-SPAN.
rachel maddow ▲ ● ▼		Every single time I tuned in on TikTok or C-SPAN or YouTube or anything, there were tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people watching.
unidentified		I went home after the speech and I turned on C-SPAN.
unidentified		I was on C-SPAN just this week.
patty murray ▲ ● ▼		To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN.
unidentified		They had something $2.50 a gallon.
		I saw on television a little while ago in between my watching my great friends on C-SPAN.
		C-SPAN is televising this right now live.
		So we are not just speaking to Los Angeles, we are speaking to the country.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Democracy is always an unfinished creation.
ronald reagan ▲ ● ▼		Democracy is worth dying for.
george h w bush ▲ ● ▼		Democracy belongs to us all.
bill clinton ▲ ● ▼		We are here in the sanctuary of democracy.
george w bush ▲ ● ▼		Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼		American democracy is bigger than any one person.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected.
unidentified		We are still at our core a democracy.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.
unidentified		Nonfiction book lovers, C-SPAN has a number of podcasts for you.
		Listen to best-selling non-fiction authors and influential interviewers on the Afterwords podcast and on QA.
		Hear wide-ranging conversations with the non-fiction authors and others who are making things happen.
		And BookNotes Plus episodes are weekly hour-long conversations that regularly feature fascinating authors of non-fiction books on a wide variety of topics.
		Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org/slash podcasts.
		Washington Journal continues.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back to Washington Journal.
		We're in open forum until the end of the program, so you can call in with your comments.
		A quick update for you: the inflation numbers have just come out.
		This is the Wall Street Journal, the Consumer Price Index.
		So inflation picks up to 2.7% as tariffs start to seep into prices.
		It says prices were up for furniture, clothing, and other tariff-sensitive items.
		And you can see the graph here of the Consumer Price Index.
		It says inflation picked up in June, a potential sign that companies are starting to pass tariff costs on to the consumers.
		The CPI, the Consumer Price Index, rose 2.7% in June from a year earlier, according to the Labor Department, faster than May's increase of 2.4%.
		That was in line with expectations of economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal.
		Core inflation, excluding volatile food and energy prices, was 2.9%, also in line with forecasts.
		You can see more of that at the Wall Street Journal if you'd like to see that.
		Also, for your schedule today, the House is in at 10 a.m. right after this program.
		We'll take you there.
		Here on C-SPAN, on C-SPAN 2, the Senate comes in at 10 a.m.
		And also at 10 a.m. on C-SPAN 3 is the confirmation hearing of Mike Waltz, who was National Security Advisor up until May of this year.
		He'll be testifying about his nomination to be the ambassador to the United Nations.
		That's on C-SPAN 3 at 10 a.m. right after this program.
		Let's talk to Dennis Springfield, Virginia, Independent Line.
		Hello, Dennis.
unidentified		Thank you for taking the call.
		Got a question for you.
		Since this is open forum, we hear very little said about the family unit, the traditional family, moms, dads, and children.
		I'm really concerned about the family unit in America and beyond.
		I've written about it.
		I'm an author.
		And the situation I see is there's not enough emphasis talking about living wage jobs, job security, skilled labor education.
		This is my opinion.
		And proceeding on the basis of getting our society in a position of being productive again instead of a bunch of lousy losers who think everybody owes them a living.
		What say you?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		And this is Dan, Washington, D.C., Republican line.
		Good morning, Dan.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I just want to put the thanks for taking my call.
		I just want to put the State Department cuts in context.
		I believe the number of employees right now is around 79,000.
		I think we're talking about 1,800 to cut.
		So that's one thing.
		And many of those 1,800 that were cut were actually vacant positions.
		And that's something to think about.
		And I would encourage you perhaps to, I can't do it because I'm driving, but look up the history of State Department employees because the number of countries really hasn't changed.
		But I think it brings up this larger point of just the growth of bureaucracy.
		And everybody's known this for decades that the bureaucracy goes on whether it's Democrats or Republicans.
		And USAID is a great example.
		At one time, it was a clear mechanism for U.S. foreign policy, you know, ancillary work to support our goals.
		And then over time, it just grows into this beast where everybody's getting grants and consultants and NGOs, and it just keeps growing and growing.
		So I know it's a real shock to the people of Washington, D.C., but the bureaucracy doesn't work for itself.
		It works for the people.
		So thanks for taking my call.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		And according to state.gov, that's the State Department website.
		This is, it looks like the latest numbers that I found just with a quick search was from 2019 that the total number of State Department employees was 77,000.
		Number of Foreign Service, 13.
		So among that, 77, 77 is the total.
		That's as of 2019.
		Foreign Service at 13,000 and civil service at 10,000.
		You can see that at state.gov.
		I don't know if there's later information.
		Here's Ian, Colorado, Democrat.
		Good morning, Ian.
unidentified		Good morning.
		With regard to Mr. Fitton, I just wanted to say I've followed him for many years also.
		And in my estimation, he's really nothing more than an apologist for Donald Trump, talking about the files, et cetera.
		It's pretty obvious why the files aren't being released because people like Donald Trump are on there.
		The main reason I called was to point out something I pointed out a month or two ago, which is with all the talk of the federal government, my wife works for the federal government.
		She works for the Veterans Administration.
		She's a very highly paid professional.
		And they definitely have bloke and that sort of thing.
		But the part that I would like to know why no one on one side of the aisle is saying is the Defense Department.
		The recent great big ugly bill included $150 billion more for the Defense Department.
		There is more graft, fraud, waste, and abuse in the Defense Department than any other agency, basically.
		But under the guise of waving the flag and being a patriot, there's no questions asked.
		And you've got basically a buffoon running it.
		And so I'd like to know why they're not looking at the defense contractors, et cetera, and why our military has to be nine times the amount of money, or I'm sorry, more money than the nine closest competitors, including China and Russia.
		We spend more on defense, more than entitlements.
		And we have, I don't even know the number, Mimi, I don't want to make up numbers, but we have thousands of bases around the world.
		Why aren't they saying anything about that?
		Those are my comments.
		USAID might have got out of control, but we're rapidly just destroying our credibility in the world.
		Thank you, and I really enjoy your program.
		Keep up the good work.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, Ian, here's on the Republican line in Van Buren, Arkansas.
		Chris, good morning.
		You're on Open Forum.
unidentified		Thank you.
		I think I'm past the subject, so I'll make it quick.
		My mother-in-law turned 90, and she was a teacher for 36 years.
		My wife, 34 years, my daughter, 17 years, my other daughter, 10 years, my son-in-law, 17 years.
		And the common denominator in the last 40 years is class size for younger kids, K through 12, mainly K through 5th or 6th, 7th grade.
		But if they could get smaller classrooms where teachers could have a bigger impact on the children, that would help the kids a lot.
		Thank you.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		And we will continue taking your calls for open forum to the end of the program.
		But if you're on, do hold on because we've got Representative Laurie Trahan joining us, a Democrat from Massachusetts and Democratic Policy and Communications Committee Co-Chair, Representative Trahan.
		Welcome to the program.
unidentified		Thank you for having me.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		I just wanted to start with you on the, since you serve on the Energy and Commerce Committee and on Subcommittee on Health, Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade and Oversight and Investigations, it's very long.
		I wanted to start with Crypto Week.
		Can you explain what that is and what should we expect to be seeing?
unidentified		Yeah, so I think that there is a lot of bipartisan agreement that there needs to be rules of the road for cryptocurrency.
		I mean, this is an industry that is going to be here to stay.
		And everybody I talk to expects Congress to come up with guardrails, making sure that we're promoting innovation in this sector while also protecting working-class families from, you know, the scams that might take place in a new and emerging industry.
		And so this is a week where, you know, we'll be taking up a couple pieces of legislation.
		I know that there are many folks who have concerns about really putting in the guardrails so that we can avoid financial instability or systemic risks, making sure that we have consumer protections in place so that these laws are enduring and they're helpful in promoting cryptocurrency.
		And so I think you're going to see a lot in the coming days around these two bills.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		You are the only former Division I woman athlete in Congress.
		You played volleyball for Georgetown University.
		Well, today the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee will be marking up a bill, a college sports bill called the SCORE Act.
		Can you tell us what's in that and if you support that?
unidentified		Well, thank you for bringing it up.
		You know, as a former college athlete, I know how important college athletics is to communities big and small across our country.
		Certainly when I suited up to play volleyball, it was with tremendous pride.
		And it's just really been great to see how athletes have stood up for expanding their rights.
		That's not because conference commissioners or the NCAA has given those rights to them.
		They've really had to fight tooth and nail to make sure that they have fair treatment, that they have health and safety measures.
		And so this is a first step at marking up a bill that right now is not meeting the moment in terms of athletes' rights and giving them a solid voice at the table.
		I think there's a lot of bipartisan agreement for strengthening Title IX and making sure women have access to more opportunities in sports, closing loopholes so that international athletes have rights to NIL,
		as well as making sure that we do extend more health and safety measures because players are putting their bodies on the line every single day and they afford, they should have the ability to make sure that their health and safety is always paramount and central.
		So right now this bill that we're marking up falls short of that, giving more clout to the NCAA and to the conference commissioners and I want to make sure that we're keeping athletes at the center of this conversation and at legislation that's due to pass.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And the trans athletes, biological males playing in women's sports was a big part of the last presidential campaign.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		As a female athlete yourself, what are your thoughts on that?
unidentified		Well look, the president has already signed an executive order.
		There has been legislation that has passed.
		What I tried to do during that debate was really center on where the college sports is failing women.
		And that's denying roster spots to women to pursue playing the sports at the colleges that they dream about.
		Right now, there's no enforcement at the Department of Education to make sure that women aren't denied opportunities to play sports.
		I mean, that's really the issue with Title IX.
		And so I don't think that this debate is going to center on transgender women playing in sports.
		That's been decided by this Congress in a very lopsided way, but still, this is going to focus on are players going to be set up so that they can continue to advocate for their rights?
		Are they going to have a voice at the table that is equitable with the other voices at the table in terms of their future and the college ecosystem?
		And I want to make sure that whatever legislation passes, whatever we're debating, we're keeping athletes, women and men, at the collegiate level at the center of that debate, and not just the sports executives who are making money off of their hard work.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		I want to ask you about the one big beautiful bill that the president signed into law.
		I know that you're a supporter of abortion rights.
		Can you talk about what impact you think the bill might have on Planned Parenthood funding?
unidentified		It's going to be a disaster for Planned Parenthood.
		When you take Medicaid funding away from Planned Parenthood, that means women aren't going to be able to get cancer screenings.
		They're not going to be able to get their prenatal care.
		That is going to be disastrous for women.
		I mean, look, we're already living in a post-Roe world where women are having trouble accessing life-saving care to have a baby, to just get basic care in many rural communities, and this just makes it worse.
		So, you know, this is not one big, beautiful bill for women.
		It's a disaster for women.
		I think it's deeply unpopular across the country because of the fact that this care, this vital resource that women have relied on for decades is being ripped away.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		As you know, the President made an announcement yesterday about Ukraine and about selling American weapons to NATO that would then go to Ukraine.
		What was your reaction to that?
		Do you think that that's a welcome development?
		What would you say?
unidentified		So as someone who went to the border of Ukraine five weeks after the invasion in 2022, I made a promise to Ukrainians and our allies on the ground, as did the Republicans that I was with, that we were going to stand with them in their fight for freedom and their fight against this unnecessary aggression by Vladimir Putin.
		This is a welcome movement by the president to live up to that obligation and to that promise that we made to the courageous Ukrainian people.
		I wish it had come a lot sooner.
		For too long, this administration has been trying to engage Putin, who has no interest in ending this war.
		And I think it's time that the United States really be strong in our support of the Ukrainian people in fighting for their freedom and ensuring that tyrants like Vladimir Putin don't get their way.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		The president said that he would impose severe tariffs on Russia in 50 days if peace wasn't reached.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that that's a credible threat?
unidentified		Well, I hope so.
		I mean, we've heard a lot of talk from this administration.
		There's been a lot of delay tactics, a lot of we're working on a deal.
		I hope that that's a real deadline that we can take to the bank with this administration because I think it's really important that we get tough on Putin and make sure that they're doing their part to stop this war and to stop this aggression.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And that's Representative Laurie Trahan, Democrat of Massachusetts, member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and Democratic Policy and Communications Committee co-chair.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Thanks so much, Representative, for being with us today.
unidentified		Thanks for having me.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And we're back to Open Forum.
		We're taking your calls until the end of the program at 10 o'clock where we'll take you to the House.
		Here's John, Quakerstown, Pennsylvania, Independent.
		Hi, John.
unidentified		Hi, how you doing, dear?
		I just want to give you one thing that that young lady didn't say, and she didn't give the answer to you.
		She went around the answer about the trans athletes.
		I've been a Democrat all my life.
		I'm an independent now.
		I do not like that because my daughter, my son, were both athletes.
		Now, if somebody came in and wanted to play field hockey and not saying it's, you know, it's an all-women sport, but the majority of the women that play field hockey are women.
		So when a guy goes in there and says, oh, I want to play, or, you know, I'm a girl now, you know, and I don't understand how the people of the Democratic Party and they should have never said that we are in support of the male athletes going into a female sport because now they're women.
		That's wrong.
		My daughter, you know, she would have said, hey, I got knocked out because a trans person got my position.
		Well, I wouldn't want that male person in a locker room with my girls.
		Okay, I wouldn't want a lot of things that these athletes, because I don't understand the concept of winning.
		All they want to do is win.
		Well, I get it, and I understand that, but this is wrong.
		And this is the Democrats' Party is one of the parties that are having issues with the public because the public do if you read really and go along with the public and have a debate about it.
		I guarantee that 80, maybe 90% of the Democrats do not want it either.
		So I don't, it's not that I'm a hateful guy or anything like that, but I wouldn't want that the trans person because he wants to win or she wants to win so bad that she has to go onto a woman's team.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Got it, John.
		This is another John in Falls Church, Virginia, Democrat.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, thank you.
unidentified		Can you hear me all right, please?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we can.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Go right ahead.
unidentified		Oh, great.
		This is a weird one.
		I hope it's not too weird.
		And thank you.
		We're pushing Russia to fire their nukes.
		Does anybody have any concerns about that, please?
		And I'll open up the airwaves.
		Thanks, Mimi.
		Bye-bye.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Mike, New Iberia, Louisiana, Republican.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		You're next, Mike.
unidentified		Hi, Mimi.
		I love your show.
		I watch you guys every morning.
		I am a Republican.
		I used to be a Democrat.
		And I'm just curious on why this so-called representative who played women's sports with women years ago believes that it's okay somewhat not to criticize about men playing transgender or whatever because I have a nephew who's transgender and I love him to death.
		But it's not fair and it's not right for these women who went to all this so-called trouble through their whole lives.
		Could you please answer that?
		And thank you again, Mimi.
		You've got a great show.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Bill in Florida, Independent Line.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Bill.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Am I on?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Yes, you are.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Go right ahead.
unidentified		Very, very simple in the federal government.
		Watch the union.
		They only promote by seniority, not by knowledge.
		That's our biggest problem in Washington.
		And a very few people have control of the union.
		Thousands of people.
		We've got to watch the union.
		They'll destroy us.
		And the other point I'd like to make is regulate attorney fees.
		That's another thing that's killing us.
		Attorneys.
		Thank you, C-SPAN.
		Keep up the good work.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		On the line for Democrats in Mississippi, Otis, you're next.
unidentified		Yes, I've been trying to get in for a while.
		I won't talk about money.
		Okay.
		When Trump first got in the presidential election back here in 1916, the first year he came in, he said the gas was so cheap, we didn't need a raise.
		We didn't get a raise.
		Obama had the gas down to $1.87.
		We didn't get a raise.
		Next year, he came back with a 0.6.
		I got $3.
		My cousin got $2.
		Now, he hollered about gas $2.50.
		Now, I don't think we're going to get no raise coming up next year in January.
		And I'm going to go back to the COVID-19.
		When the COVID came out, what he's held y'all, ain't nobody paying no taxes.
		He wasn't going to wear no masks.
		He said he ain't going to tell us to wear no masks.
		Why?
		I heard through the grapevine that he had got his shot.
		He knew the stuff was coming.
		He wanted to stay in the world out.
		Look how many people died.
		All that money he's saving by not paying food stamps.
		And so you can, I got friends, relatives that died.
		There's a lot of people died by COVID.
		He knows that we're coming up with.
		He wanted it over here.
		He wanted to stay in the world.
		And that's all I got to say, but I'm going to talk about money.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And we are taking your calls until the end of the program.
		So another 15 minutes.
		If you would like to call in for open forum, you can do so.
		Our lines are Democrats 202-748-8000.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		And Independents 202-748-8002.
		Well, here is Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, yesterday on the Senate floor talking about the rescissions bill that the Republicans would like to pass.
		Here he is.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		Our Republican senators, most of them, know this is wrong, but they're so afraid of Donald Trump.
		Yesterday, he threatened any of them who voted against the full rescissions package that we have before us would face his wrath.
		What is going on here?
		Does anyone stand up to these horrible, horrible cuts that hurt the American people?
		Republicans in real time are cutting health care.
		They're cutting education.
		They're cutting aid for our veterans.
		Veterans are not getting, they ask them, the veterans know they're not getting the health care they used to.
		And making things even worse, Donald Trump's tariffs are coming in at the worst possible time.
		And in a few short months, they're going to raise the cost of groceries.
		They're going to hurt small businesses and do untold damage to our economy.
		And now this package suffocates public broadcast.
		Well, did they even know when they said they wanted to cut it?
		You know, Donald Trump doesn't seem to like it.
		How much it helps our rural communities?
		It's the only place they can rely on for local news, for weather reports.
		That farmers across rural America depend on public broadcast to get weather reports because there's no other way.
		Did they know that it guts international aid that ensures America's national security?
		Did they even think of the consequences?
		Just because Donald Trump says he wants it cut, and everyone knows he doesn't know the details of any of this stuff.
		The rescissions package is certainly troubling, but the pattern behind it is even worse.
		It sets the stage for even more party-line, devastating cuts in the future to health care, to education, anything Republicans decide they don't like.
		All on a party-line vote, all because of obese and fear of Donald Trump, not a conviction that he's doing the right thing.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And Deborah is calling us on the Independent line from Caledonium, Mississippi.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		I was just hearing all the conversations about these trans kids that are playing sports and things like that.
		I don't understand why we can't set up some sort of hormonal level for those kids.
		I mean, if they've got too much testosterone, and I don't care whether they were born female or male, they probably don't be needing to play sports against a girls' team.
		But, you know, I want to support these kids, absolutely.
		But there needs to be equality there.
		And that's all.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And Tony in Amherst, Ohio, Republican line.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Tony.
unidentified		Hi, I just wanted to say I am 64 years old.
		I'm a registered Republican, but I vote as an independent.
		I voted for Biden because he said he was going to be a moderate Democrat.
		There was nothing moderate about his administration.
		Everybody that I know and have talked to has done like I did last time during the voting season.
		They voted straight Republican because they were just plain tired of the insanity that's going on.
		As far as all these cuts in the bill, there's Love?
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes, we're listening, Tony.
unidentified		Okay, as far as cuts in the bill, there's a lot of half-truth out there about the bills as far as the cuts to Medicaid, cuts to education, and these other programs.
		I'd like to see somebody come on from both sides of the aisle and give us the truth about these cuts.
		Like I said, we just keep hearing about these unprovoked cuts to Medicaid.
		I want to hear both sides of the story.
		And I think everybody else has.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Tony, you know we had a roundtable about Medicaid specifically last week.
		So if you just go on our website, cspan.org, you'll be able to find it.
		Clifford, Birmingham, Alabama, Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Morning, thank you.
unidentified		I want to comment about this godless, greedy grip that we have in the White House.
ricky ross ▲ ● ▼		This guy seems to be intent on not bringing this country together.
unidentified		It's all about him, and we're going to keep America white.
unidentified		That seems to be his position.
ricky ross ▲ ● ▼		And the sad part about this is, I'm going to leave with this, there's a saying, I've read this, a house divided against itself can't stand.
unidentified		And this country is divided.
		And it's not going to be Russia, North Korea, or China is going to bring us down.
		It's going to be America's bringing ourselves down because we are so divided.
		Thank you.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And later this week, the Senate will vote on the first judicial nominee in the second Trump administration.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Here's what Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin said about Whitney Hermendorfer.
dick durbin ▲ ● ▼		The President has been clear that his primary concern is not about his judicial nominee's experience, competence, or integrity.
		This president is not focused on temperament, independence, or respect for the rule of law.
		He's focused on a nominee's perceived loyalty to him and his agenda and a willingness to rule in favor of him and his administration.
		When we consider the president's priorities and Ms. Hermendorfer's record, it's easy to understand why President nominated her to serve on the Sixth Circuit.
		At the office of Tennessee Attorney General, Ms. Hermendorfer leads the Strategic Litigation Unit.
		Why is that significant?
		She's not just defending state laws in Tennessee.
		She's turned the Attorney General's office into an advocacy arm for the Trump agenda.
		She's argued in support of President Trump's unconstitutional executive order that purports to end birthright citizenship.
		This executive order has been blocked by every judge who's considered it.
		One judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan, I might add, said, and I quote, I've been on the bench for over four decades.
		I can't remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one.
		This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.
		End of quote.
		And yet, Ms. Hermendorf has signed a mica's briefs in support of that and supported the president's unlawful efforts to fire inspectors general and the heads of independent agencies.
		Her record makes it clear that if confirmed, she will continue to enable rather than check an administration that has repeatedly exceeded its authority.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		That was Senator Dick Durbin yesterday.
		Here's Maurice, Portage, Michigan, Independent Line.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
bob in new york ▲ ● ▼		I've been listening to three Democrats, well, actually, three Democrats, the group that supports the parasite group.
bob in new york ▲ ● ▼		And the only one that actually did a good job and was professional was the lady, the sportswoman.
unidentified		She did a professional job of explaining her point of view.
		These other people are nothing but parasites.
		They're just protecting that group of people.
		That's all I have to say.
		Thank you.
		Bye.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Crystal in Philadelphia, line for Democrats.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		You're next.
unidentified		That guy has some nerve calling people parasites.
		Democrats parasites.
		Trump is a parasite.
		And all you cult members are calling trying to say that he's doing a good job.
		Honest to God, what in the world is going on with you folks?
		We have to realize that we have somebody in the White House that is looking out for himself, not helping the country, chasing down workers, trying to work.
		You know, they were called, they were welcomed by the shiploads through the decades.
		And all of a sudden, the Statue of Liberty is shut down.
		These people walk for years, and they walk for miles.
		Trump rides around in a golf course, and they're doing the work that you don't want to do.
		I don't want my kids cutting cabbage and picking peas and stuff like that.
		But that's proud work for them.
		You're chasing them down.
		These aren't gang members.
		Come on, America, please.
		Stop supporting this guy that just wants to help his own people and fatten his pockets with crypto coins.
		It's horrible.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		All right, Crystal.
		And more on that resilience package that Congress is expected to vote on soon.
		Here is Senator Rand Paul speaking on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday.
margaret brennan ▲ ● ▼		This Friday is the deadline for both the Senate and House to vote on a plan to claw back about $9 billion for foreign aid, including also support for NPR and PBS.
		Some of your fellow Republicans, like Rounds, like Murkowski and Collins, have said they are worried about cuts to local radio and public broadcasters in their areas.
		We looked, and in your state of Kentucky, public broadcasters provide critical emergency warnings for the government.
		If there's a storm, for example, are you concerned that these kinds of cuts are going to endanger people?
rand paul ▲ ● ▼		You know, I got my start on public television, KET, in Kentucky, being a commentator for my taxpayer group that I started.
		So, you know, I am not an enemy of public TV, but at the same time, we have a $2 trillion deficit, and what we'll be presented with is a $9 billion cut in spending.
		And can we and should we at least start cutting $9 billion?
		Yes.
		If I had my drothers and I could plan it and I could present the package, I like the idea of across-the-board cuts of a smaller percentage.
		So instead of taking 100% of public TV, what you do is you take 6% of everything.
		But the only way that works is you literally have to take 6% of every dollar and then you have to figure out how to make it work so it's not absorbed by the poor or the needy in our country.
		And you could do that with a penny plan.
		You can balance your budget within five years, but it takes a real 6% cut of everything.
		But I think people are more willing to accept a haircut on things they like if everybody is accepting the same sort of level of cut.
margaret brennan ▲ ● ▼		So are you saying there that you are still going to vote for this?
margaret brennan ▲ ● ▼		Are there 51 Republicans who are going to vote to cut all this funding and pull it back?
rand paul ▲ ● ▼		I suspect it's going to be very close.
		I don't know if it will be modified in advance, but I can't really honestly look Americans in the face and say that I'm going to be doing something about the deficit if I can't cut $9 billion, even though there are people who make arguments for it and I can make an argument for a different way to cut it.
		We're going to be presented with a $9 billion cut and a $2.2 trillion deficit.
		So we have to cut spending.
		Absolutely have to cut spending.
margaret brennan ▲ ● ▼		And a record boost to the debt ceiling that just happened in the bill you did not vote for, but Republican.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		And we're in open forum for just a few more minutes.
		Here's Sal Castro Valley, California, Republican.
		Good morning, Sal.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I just wanted to mention that sanctuary cities.
		How come the people don't vote for that thing, for that policy?
		Why is it just up to one or two politicians to put that out on the ballot or just endorse it?
		I think it's something that the people should be voting for.
		Sorry, repeat.
mimi geerges ▲ ● ▼		Adrias Cuddy, Pennsylvania, Democrat, good morning.
		Adrias, are you there?
		Does not look like he is there.
		This is the front page of the Washington Post with this article.
		Leaders evacuated camp an hour after the alert.
		It says that the Camp Mystic executive director did not begin to evacuate the young campers asleep in cabins near the rapidly rising Guadalupe River for more than an hour after he received a severe flood warning on his phone from the National Weather Service at 1:14 a.m. on July 4th.
		The family said through a spokesman, Eastland, who had run the beloved Christian Center All Girls Camp in Hunt, Texas with his wife since the 1980s, rallied family members, some of whom lived and worked at the camp on Wauki Talkies to quote assess the situation, assess the situation soon after the alert went out.
		That's according to the family's spokesman.
		And let's talk to Ronald in Romulus, Michigan.
		Democrat, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		My name is Ron Shelton from Romulus, Michigan.
		And what I'd like to know is why, if we have to pay $15 or $20 for a fishing permit or $15 or $20 for a hunting permit, why don't people have to pay every year for a gun permit?
		I mean, with $400,000, they say we got $4 million, or 400 million guns in this country.
		Just $100 permit would raise $4 trillion.
		What are politicians for if they can't figure out what causes us the most violence can raise the most money?
		All of that money that could be raised off of just a simple federal gun permit for each and every gun that's allowed in this country will do so much to help everybody.
		Four trillion a year that could pay down the federal debt in five years, you know.
		But nobody seems to think to collect money off the violence that's being portrayed in this country.

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