CSPAN - Washington Journal 07/31/2025

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July 31, 2025 07:00-10:00 - CSPAN

02:59:53

Washington Journal 07/31/2025

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greta brawner

cspan 47:36

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bernie sanders

sen/d 03:30

brian lamb

cspan 00:39

chuck schumer

sen/d 03:38

dasha burns

politico 03:30

donald j trump

admin 04:24

jerome powell

02:40

kevin hassett

admin 00:34

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patty murray

sen/d 00:04

rachel maddow

msnow 00:07

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sablo in tennessee

callers 00:08

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live.
		We'll speak with Michael Tanner of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, who will discuss efforts to combat homelessness in the U.S.
		Then the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Senior Fellow Aaron David Miller will talk about the Israel-Hamas war and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
		C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next.
		Join the conversation.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Trump economy has officially arrived.
		That, according to the President's Commerce Secretary, yesterday, Howard Luttnick, saying the president owns it now.
		This morning on the Washington Journal, we want to get your take on how the president is handling the U.S. economy.
		If you're a Democrat, dial in at 202-748-8000.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		Independents, we'll hear from you at 202-748-8002.
		If you don't want to call, you can text at 202-748-8003.
		Or you can post on facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ.
		This morning, the president is yesterday at the White House responding to the latest GDP report that showed growth in the U.S. economy.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Here's what he had to say: The number of 3% the pace in the second quarter.
		We smashed all expectations.
		They thought it would be maybe a little bit less than two, and it was three, a little bit more than three.
		Consumer spending is up.
		Business investment is way up.
		Domestic manufacturing is way up.
		Real disposable family income is up.
		And personal savings are up.
		Other than that, we're not doing so great.
		We have the hottest country, and I'll tell you, it's a great, we're having a lot of fun with it.
		At the same time, we dramatically slashed government spending for the second quarter in a row, down nearly 4%, which people were surprised at.
		We do a lot of cutting also.
		The private sector has boomed with nearly 600,000 jobs added, way above expectations, while we have reduced the federal workforce by 70,000 jobs.
		So these are private jobs that are coming back to our country.
		Federal jobs are being cut.
		Critics said that our tariffs would hurt the economy, but the data shows the exact opposite and the exact opposite is happening.
		The U.S. Treasury has taken in $150 billion from tariffs and will be adding about $200 billion next month for totals that nobody's ever seen before, frankly.
		And foreign imports were down 30% in the second quarter, while the domestic auto production surged by a stunning 36%.
		How about that number, Dr. Roz, right?
		That's good.
		That's good.
		We want to do that with your patients, too.
		We'll have a very healthy, we're going to have a very healthy country.
		At the same time, inflation continues to fall faster than expectations.
		And for the fifth consecutive month, core inflation was lower than predicted substantially.
		This is truly the dawn of the golden age of America.
		That's what we're in.
		We want to keep it that way.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		President Trump at the White House on Wednesday touting economic numbers of the first six months of his administration.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Up on Pennsylvania Avenue, the Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer had this to say on the Senate floor about the economy.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		So this morning, we got more worrying news showing how Donald Trump's administration is raising costs and sowing chaos in the economy.
		The New York Times headline put it succinctly: U.S. economy slowed in the first half of 2025 as tariffs scrambled data.
		And while the Trump administration will try to wave rosy headlines about the Q2 number, today's GDP number is in fact a mirage because some ominous numbers lurk under the hood.
		Business investment plunged in the second quarter by 3.1%.
		The fact that business investment plunged so starkly is very troubling.
		It shows that already businesses are worried about growing their operations, worried about hiring more workers, worried about trading with their international partners, and worried in general about the future.
		And this number is another data point in a larger pattern.
		Donald Trump's tariffs are weighing down the U.S. economy, spiking costs for small businesses and families alike.
		And if Donald Trump keeps up the chaos, the dangers for the economy will continue to get worse.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Democratic leader Chuck Schumer yesterday on the Senate floor responding to this GDP report, the White House is touting it as a demonstration of economic success.
		Reuters did a poll recently with Ipsos on the U.S. economy before this GDP report came out, and this is what they found.
		38% of respondents approve of President Trump's handling of the economy.
		Of Republicans, 80% of them approve while 16% disapprove.
		When it comes to Democrats, 92% disapprove, while 4% approve.
		What do all of you think this morning?
		Let's turn to our C-SPAN audience.
		How would you rate President Trump's handling of the economy?
		Kathleen in Satellite Beach, Florida, Democratic caller, good morning.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I really disapprove of the way he's handling the economy.
		In reality, the tariffs are a national sales tax for all of us.
		And what I want to see, he said that they've raised $150 billion so far.
		Well, then, I'd like to see on the national debt clock a savings of $150 billion.
		I want to know exactly where the money's going and see how the debt is being affected because it's like a sales tax.
		He got his big bill passed and then put a sales tax on all of us.
		So I want to see the debt clock show some real savings.
		All right.
		That's all I had to say.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Kathleen Schwatz there in Florida.
		Democratic caller.
		Joe's a Republican in Dayton, Ohio.
		Joe, let's hear from you.
unidentified		Good morning, Greta, from a cloudy, cloudy Dayton, Ohio.
		Greta, I give Donald Trump a AAA plus.
		And back in March or April, I was concerned with these tariffs, but he proved me wrong.
		I've been investing in the stock market since I was 14 years old, and Donald Trump proved me wrong.
		And my wife gets our statement.
		We don't take Social Security.
		I'm 64 and she's 66, so we just live off the interest and dividends on our investments.
		She goes, we made $100,000 in June, and we're on the verge of making $120,000 in July.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Joe, what do you say?
		Yeah, what are you investing in?
		And I asked, because have you already looked at the futures?
unidentified		No, I tell you exactly.
		And today, the market's going to be up skyrocket today because of Meta's results.
		And Donald Trump closed two deals on tariffs last night with Pakistan and South Korea.
		But no, Greta, what I've been investing is I got to hand it to Nancy Pelosi.
		I invested a lot of money in NVIDIA.
		And when Nancy Pelosi signed the CHIP Act, I called my broker immediately and said, put me in NVIDIA.
		And I'd made a fortune on that and Broadcom, hit home runs with them.
		And then I own AutoZone, you know, and all that kind of stuff.
		But that's what I've been doing.
		And like I said, we don't even take Social Security.
		But Donald Trump has done fantastic.
		He really proved something to me.
		And the way his trade deals is with the, you know, with Europe.
		And Greta, that energy deal, $750 million in energy with Europe.
		Greta, you know who that hurts?
		It hurts Putin because Europe has been buying all their oil from Russia.
		And this hurts Putin.
		So Trump knows what he's doing.
		So, of course, these Democrats hate him for the color of his socks.
		That's a given because they have nothing to run on.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		So, Joe, let me go back.
		You give him a triple-A.
		Is that right?
unidentified		Absolutely.
unidentified		Yes, ma'am.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Joe in Dayton, Ohio, Republican caller, sharing some news with all of you this morning as well.
		The president did announce trade deals with Pakistan and South Korea.
		And Joe was alluding to the markets this morning opening up.
		It was a mixed bag when they closed yesterday because of tariffs and because of the Federal Reserve's decision to keep interest rates unchanged.
		But in Futures Trading this morning, here's CNBC, Microsoft tops $4 trillion in market cap after hours, joining NVIDIA.
		That's the chip maker that Joe was just talking about in that exclusive club.
		Meta also posting strong numbers.
		And so in Futures Trading this morning, both those tech companies showing strong numbers heading into the market opening up later this morning.
		We're asking all of you, how would you rate President Trump's handling of the economy?
		Martha, Danville, Virginia, Democratic caller.
		Martha, what do you say?
unidentified		Well, I would say it's about 50-50.
		You know, people, he's saying all this stuff about hating Democrats and hating Republicans.
		I'm a Democrat.
		I don't hate anybody.
		I love everybody.
		I think he's about 50-50.
		I'm on Medicare and Medicaid, and I cringe what he's doing about Medicare and Medicaid.
		I'm so afraid I lose my Medicare and Medicaid.
		It's a little bit, the way he's a little bit too close to socialism, which is the borderline close to communism.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So, Martha, where do you give him good marks on?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Because you said it's 50-50 when it comes to the economy.
unidentified		Well, I would just like to know if he's going to prove Medicare and Medicaid, how long will it last?
unidentified		I mean, it's going on 2026 or what?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Rob, Port Crane, New York, Independent.
		Morning, Rob.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'd give Donald Trump an A for the economy.
		I would give C-SPAN an F because you still will not talk about the treasonous conspiracy committed by Obama and Biden and the rest of them.
		So, you know, why do you guys keep bringing up the same subjects over and over and over again?
		This is about the 10th time I've heard this subject.
		So knock it off and get on with some real news, will you, C-SPAN?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Rob.
		Well, Howard Luttnick, the president's commerce secretary, yesterday declared this is Trump's economy, that he now owns it.
		We thought it would be a good time to talk to our viewers this morning about how they rate the president on his handling of the economy.
		Front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning: Economy returns to growth.
		They report that the Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced across the economy, rose at a seasonally and inflation-adjusted 3% annual rate in the second quarter.
		This is up from 0.5% contraction in the first quarter.
		Taken together, the two quarters show an economy that is growing, but more slowly.
		GDP grew at an average annual rate of 1.2% in the first six months of this year, a step down from the 2.5% average pace in 2024.
		That's the front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning.
		And the front page of the New York Times this morning, Fed under siege by Trump keeps its rates steady.
		The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady on Wednesday for a fifth meeting in a row, despite officials splintering over the right time to restart cuts and in the face of relentless attacks from President Trump.
		In standing put, the central bank kept interest rates at 4.25% to 4.5%.
		Two members of the powerful Board of Governors dissented.
		Christopher Wallett, a governor, and Michelle Bowman, Vice Chair for Supervision, both appointed by Mr. Trump, supported the Fed lowering interest rates by a quarter percentage point.
		Now, the Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, went before reporters yesterday to talk about this decision by the Federal Reserve, announcing that there would be no change to the interest rates.
		He offered this assessment of the economy.
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼		Recent indicators suggest that growth of economic activity has moderated.
		GDP rose at a 1.2% pace in the first half of this year, down from 2.5% last year.
		Although the increase in the second quarter was stronger at 3%, focusing on the first half of the year helps smooth through the volatility in the quarterly figures related to the unusual swings in net exports.
		The moderation in growth largely reflects a slowdown in consumer spending.
		In contrast, business investment in equipment and intangibles picked up from last year's pace.
		Activity in the housing sector remains weak.
		In the labor market, conditions have remained solid.
		Payroll job gains averaged $150,000 per month over the past three months.
		The unemployment rate at 4.1% remains low and has stayed in a narrow range over the past year.
		Wage growth has continued to moderate while still outpacing inflation.
		Overall, a wide set of indicators suggests that conditions in the labor market are broadly in balance and consistent with maximum employment.
		Inflation has eased significantly from its highs in mid-2022, but remains somewhat elevated relative to our 2% longer run goal.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		The Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, noting that inflation is staying around 2%, though the Federal Reserve Chair in questions with reporters still has concern over the president's tariffs.
		Now, the president is saying he will hold firm on his August 1st deadline for tariffs.
		Here's a Truth Social postal post from yesterday.
		The August 1st deadline is the August 1st deadline.
		It stands strong and will not be extended.
		A big day for America, is what the president wrote on Truth Social.
		Now, ahead of that deadline, which is midnight tonight, by the way, a court here in Washington is going to be taking up, a block from the White House is going to be taking up the president's tariffs case.
		The Wall Street Journal reporting that the president has used emergency powers for many policy decisions.
		And the court today will be considering whether or not the president can use emergency powers for his tariffs.
		It's the latest test, they write, on whether or not to rein him in.
		The president's strategy faces perhaps its biggest test yet, the Wall Street Journal reports, when today the use of tariffs to address a range of commercial, political, and diplomatic issues he has labeled emergencies goes before a federal appeals court in Washington.
		The case is expected eventually to reach the Supreme Court.
		If Trump wins, legal experts say he could claim broad unilateral power to regulate the economy.
		Now, the president is saying that because of the fentanyl issue situation in this country, he can put on tariffs on countries, his baseline 10% tariff on countries, because of he declares an emergency situation with fentanyl in the United States.
		The website, c-span.org, also our C-SPAN radio, will have coverage today, live streaming of this court case, and then look for C-SPAN television networks to air this oral argument as well coming up on the C-SPAN networks.
		That's at 10 a.m. Eastern Time here today in Washington.
		Michael in Smithfield, North Carolina, Republican.
		Michael, what do you say?
		How do you rate the president on the economy?
unidentified		Good morning, Greta.
		I would give him a seven at this time.
		We still haven't tackled the fuel price problem.
		He did a good job his first four years keeping fuel prices down for the most part during the four-year tenure.
		So the prices at the grocery store are getting a little better here in North Carolina.
		The milk has eased off some, the price of milk per gallon.
		And we still got a long way to go on beef.
		Beef is ridiculous in the stores like grocery stores here in North Carolina.
		You know, you'll probably pay two pounds of ribeye.
		They cut is about $34 for just two steaks, two pounds of steaks.
		So it's pretty rough.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So, Michael, how are you changing your spending habits then?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What are you doing differently at the grocery store?
unidentified		Well, I'm pretty much supplementing my income with credit cards.
		And I'm growing more and more in debt slowly.
		It's not a rapid debt increase, but slowly I'm getting, I'm increasing my debt personally.
		So I'm having to use credit cards to get by, Greta.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		You're using credit cards at the grocery store for your food.
unidentified		Yes.
		What do you hope?
		I think a lot of Americans are, Brad.
		I think a lot of Americans, you know, if you look at the credit card debt in the country versus the past, I think a lot of Americans are getting by simply because they're creating more and more debt, personally.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Michael, you're touching on an article in the Washington Post this morning.
		Shoppers are stressed, but some brands are raising prices anyway.
		The Washington Post, Jacqueline Pisner, reports that Procter ⁇ Gamble, the maker of Dawn dish soap, Charmin toilet paper, Crest Toothpaste, and Title Detergent, said Tuesday it would raise prices on about a quarter of its products starting in August, in part because of the $1 billion tariff hit it expects annually.
		PNG's above move could be a harbinger of increasing prices, including on groceries, household staples, apparel, and electronics.
		While spending data shows Americans are looking for bargains, economists warn that such price increases will further strain consumers battling stubborn inflation, high interest rates, and rising personal debt and energy costs.
		Some retailers have already started raising prices.
		Walmart, a bellwether for the industry and U.S. consumers, has targeted baby gear, kitchenware, and toys, items mostly manufactured in China.
		Industry experts expect some groceries will soon follow.
		The Trump administration's 50% steel and aluminum tariffs will lead to higher food and beverage packaging costs, such as coffee tins and beer cans, according to many manufacturers.
		The Tax Foundation, a nonprofit Washington-based think tank, projects that tariffs will affect almost 75% of U.S. food imports, leading to higher prices on liquors and spirits, baked goods, coffee, fish, and beer.
		It says that still consumers are stressed and are spending less on vacations, buying more store brands at supermarkets, and trading down to budget retailers.
		They're also leaning on credit cards and buy now, pay later services.
		Echoing what Michael had to say there in Smithfield, North Carolina, the Washington Post with the headline, shoppers are stressed, but some brands are raising prices anyway.
		This morning, your rating of the president's handling of the U.S. economy.
		Matthew, Dearborn, Michigan, Democratic caller.
		Hi, Matthew.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		I'll read them lukewarm, but I'd like to give four points.
		I'll be quick about it.
		I can show you that this might not be working out as well as everybody hopes.
		First, all UAW workers here in the Midwest and in Michigan are going to lose a lot of their profit sharing because the profits are down.
		Two, Trump seems to develop more overseas properties than he does here in the country.
		In Michigan, Sandisk has canceled a $5 billion project.
		And right here in my little town of Dearborn, Cleveland Cliffs canceled their, they shut down the mill, the steel mill.
		And last, he's burning the food that they, USAID had, so they don't know what to do with it.
		But yet Gottens are starving.
		So I don't know.
		It doesn't sound like a great, I mean, to organize the meat.
		Thank you very much.
		I don't know.
		That's all I can say.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Well, Matthew, you said you said lukewarm.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		I mean, what is lukema?
unidentified		I mean, the country's not falling apart.
		I mean, completely, but I'm just giving you points here that I see.
		It ain't working so good.
		Are costs up?
		Yeah, not like they were before, that's for sure.
		But to say that this is the greatest economy ever, that's wait.
sablo in tennessee ▲ ● ▼		I mean, what he is is a businessman, and businessmen always have these rah-rah corporate get-togethers with their employees.
unidentified		And if that's the way we're going to run the country, I just think that's silly.
		That's not right.
		He has really no control over the business world in this country.
		No president does.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Matthew.
unidentified		They facilitate the best they can, and then the economy just does what it does.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So you disagree with Howard Luttnick when he says the Trump economy has to be again.
unidentified		He's a business rah-rah stock market guy.
		You know what I mean?
		He talks it up.
		He talks it up until it all falls apart.
		You know, that's what all them business people do.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Matthew.
unidentified		And then they usually do this.
unidentified		When it does all fall apart, they run to the government to bail them out.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Matthew there in Dearborn, Michigan.
		Cheryl, Houston, Texas, Independent.
		Hi, Cheryl.
unidentified		Hi.
		I think Trump is doing a terrible job.
		And my husband is a retired engineer.
		We got transferred to Europe during his career.
		Most Americans have no clue about tariffs in Europe.
		They have something called a VAT, a value-added tax, and it makes everything more expensive.
		And the expensive items, it makes them almost unaffordable for average people.
		Now, I am not totally against all tariffs if the tariffs were going 100% to pay down the national debt because Trump is just throwing money around on all his stunts about rounding up migrants and taking them on expensive plane trips to foreign countries.
		And, you know, he was a terrible businessman personally.
		He got all of his money from his father.
		He went bankrupt with all those casinos.
		You know, he used to call himself the king of debt because he borrowed so much money.
		When my husband and I were growing up, you know, we were taught you don't buy things you can't afford.
		We're retired now, and our biggest worry, we are terrified that we're going to lose Medicare.
		I'm a cancer survivor.
		My husband has very well managed type 2 diabetes.
		I live in Houston and here in Houston.
		I don't know where Trump shops.
		I doubt if he's ever shopped at a grocery store in his life.
		But prices are going up.
		He has to eat fresh fruit every morning.
		That's what the end of chronologists told him to do.
		Where I shop, we used to be able to get fresh fruit for two pints of strawberries or mangoes or grapes or, you know, melons, two for $5.
		Now they've gone up to two for $6.
		And everything at the grocery store, especially the non-food products like detergent and toilet paper and paper towels and things like that.
		I have a urine problem.
		I wear pads.
		Those are super expensive.
		You know, and, of course, Texas gets a lot of products from Mexico.
		And we don't have a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada.
		And a guy called and mentioned how expensive beef was.
		That's because we used to import a lot of our beef from Mexico.
		And also, I don't know if y'all remember, but just a year or two ago, there was a giant fire in the Texas panhandle, and thousands and thousands and thousands of herds of cattle, beef cattle, were wiped out.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Cheryl, I'm going to jump in on what you're saying here.
		You're talking about these trade deals with Canada and Mexico and the impact it's having that you're seeing there down in Texas.
		Well, the president yesterday put out on Truth Social this, wow, he said, Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine.
		He says that will make it very hard for us to make a trade deal with them.
		Oh, Canada, the president says on Truth Social.
		Now, Canada joined other countries in calling for Palestinian statehood and saying that they could possibly back that this fall.
		This is from USA Today.
		UK set to recognize Palestinian state.
		Israel must take steps to improve life in Gaza.
		That comes from the Prime Minister Kier Starmer in Britain saying that he that the country could back statehood for Palestine unless the situation in Gaza is rectified.
		On that, in the World News section of the Wall Street Journal this morning, at least 48 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded Wednesday while waiting for food at a Gaza crossing, according to a hospital that received the casualties.
		The latest violation came as a U.S. Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, was heading to Israel for talks today.
		Israel's continuing military offensive and blockade have led to the worst-case scenario famine in the enclave of some 2 million Palestinians, said the leading international authority on hunger crisis.
		We'll talk more about the situation in Gaza coming up on the Washington Journal.
		But first, your thoughts on how the president is handling the economy.
		Dale, Shackle Fords, Virginia, Republican.
		Hi, Dale.
unidentified		How are you?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Dale.
		We're listening to you.
		What do you think about the economy?
unidentified		I think the economy is going in the wrong direction.
		I've been on disability since 2013, since I got hurt.
		I spent most of my money burying my son, so I live on a very tight income and watching the prices of things.
		It's kind of sad when I have to have my sister who lives in Florida mail me eggs from her chicken farm so I can eat.
		I just don't see how this president's going to do anything that he says.
		I really don't.
		I try to support our presidents always.
		I really believe that once we have a president in office, we all should support him.
		But when you're going down this road that's hurting more Americans every day, and I'm not saying the poor, I'm saying everybody.
		You know, we talk about all these tariffs and all these things that we're going to do.
		And I just, I just, I just feel this country is heading the wrong way.
		And I don't.
		I'm sorry I voted for him.
		I apologize so much.
		I just can't believe that he's treating this country like it's a business and it's not.
		You know, these are people.
		These are real people with real problems.
		And you keep taking from all these programs.
		And I know that it's that we have a high deficit and we have all this, but let's fly over and play golf 100 times on Air Force One.
		He did it when he was in office the first time.
		And I just really, I don't know why I voted for him.
		I just thought that he would be, you know, something different this time, but I was wrong.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		And that's about all I have to say.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Dale in Virginia, Republican caller, with his insight on the economy and also saying he regrets voting for the president.
		How would you rate President Trump's handling of the economy in his first six months of his second term?
		We'll go to Dennis next, Toledo, Iowa, Democratic caller.
		Hi, Dennis.
unidentified		Hi.
		It's been reported in Iowa since Tump's been president.
		The economy sucks.
		They have town hall meetings where like Chuck Grassley and Ashley Henson and them, you know, go to the meeting.
		And the people at these meetings are telling Chuck Grassley, Ashley Henson, you will voted to represent us, not bankrupt Donald Trump, who's been banked up so damn many times.
		That's my comment.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Dennis in Iowa, Democratic caller.
		The Washington Times this morning with their front page reporting on the economy, they say that the International Monetary Fund upgraded the global economic outlook on Tuesday this week because the U.S. tariffs haven't been as damaging as feared.
		In forecast, it forecasted a 3% global growth in 2025, down from 3.3 in 2024, but better than its 2.8 forecast in April.
		There has been little indication of systematic inflation from tariffs, and job numbers remain robust.
		The Treasury has collected nearly $125 billion in tariff payments this year, or more than double the amount this time this year.
		Not everyone is sold, though, on Mr. Trump's approach.
		Importers who bring products into the U.S. mispay the tariffs, and as the levies take full effect, those costs might be passed along to consumers.
		The highest nation-by-nation tariffs will kick in during August, and companies will soon run out of non-tariff stock.
		Some companies could move operations into the U.S., as Mr. Trump wants.
		Others will raise prices.
		That's the Washington Times, excuse me, their analysis noting some numbers in the papers this morning.
		Now, the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, the editorial board, with their thoughts this morning, the weirdest GDP report ever.
		And they say this, this may be the weirdest report ever.
		The top-line growth number looks good, and the White House naturally touted it.
		This reverses the 0.5% decline in GDP in the first quarter, which was largely explained by a surge of imports as businesses tried to front-run the anticipated tariff barrage.
		Growth in the first quarter was a mediocre 1.2%.
		Says, though, most striking is that imports fell 30.3%.
		Imports are still crucial to U.S. economic well-being because consumers buy them and businesses use them as imports for what they produce and often export.
		The crazy swing in imports shows how much Mr. Trump's up-and-down trade policies have disrupted business decisions and left companies scrambling to adapt.
		This seems to have had a negative effect on private domestic investment, which fell 15.6% in the second quarter after a surge in the first.
		Non-residential business investment contributed only 0.27% to the GDP as businesses rapidly drew down their inventories.
		Chalk this up as another result of the uncertainty caused by on-again, off-again, on-again tariffs.
		The Wall Street Journal editorial board concludes saying, there's no recession signal in the second quarter numbers, but there's no boom either.
		The best path to a real golden age is to calm trade and migrant deportation uncertainty, ease regulatory bottlenecks, and unleash American business to invest and create jobs.
		In the White House driveway yesterday, the President's top economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, had this to say about the U.S. economy.
kevin hassett ▲ ● ▼		It's really one of the best GDP announcements or releases that you could imagine because there's blockbuster growth way above expectation.
kevin hassett ▲ ● ▼		And there's also a real, real, almost collapse in inflation.
unidentified		Went down by about a percent and a half all the way down to 2.1 percent, which is the Fed's target.
kevin hassett ▲ ● ▼		And so, to have high growth with low inflation and also high income growth, personal income growth was 3 percent.
unidentified		That's just like about a sweet spot for a GDP release.
kevin hassett ▲ ● ▼		And I will add that all of this happened while $127 billion in tariffs was raised, which is clearly not harming the American consumer.
kevin hassett ▲ ● ▼		And we've been downsizing government in order to be more fiscally responsible.
unidentified		70,000 federal jobs have been reduced at 5%.
unidentified		There was a 5% reduction in federal government spending while all this was going on.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Kevin Hassett, the president's National Economic Advisor, there yesterday.
		We are asking you what you think about the President's handling of the economy.
		How would you rate him?
		Ed in Ocean City, New Jersey, independent.
unidentified		Ed O'Donnell, the very small businesses, which my charity helps are having a very poor time.
		And there's trillions of dollars in the bank accounts of our nation's charities.
		You take that money, you hire unemployed people, and they pass out coupons and literature for the small businesses to get them customers.
		The second thing: neither party is doing anything about these obscene CEO salaries, you know, $65 million a year.
		You cut those salaries and you give big pay raises to the people at the bottom of the structure.
		The poor, the poor, always the poor.
		So both parties are doing a very poor job on the economy.
		It's all for the rich.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Ed there in Ocean City, New Jersey, Barbara in Rossville, Georgia, Democratic caller.
		Barbara, it's your turn.
unidentified		I'll tell you one thing right now.
		When he goes to play golf, he's already spent $151 million playing golf, not counting his golf cart that he bought, bulletproof golf cart.
		And he opened the golf course with our money, taxpayers' money.
		So not only is he doing a bad job on the economy, he's also doing a bad job on everything else, I think.
		I can't think of anything that he's doing a good job on.
		So I would like to see him being impeached.
		I would like to know all these jobs that he's cut.
		Where did the money go?
		I would like to know that.
		Did he pay it on the deficit?
		No.
		All right.
		Now then, you're going to be lucky.
		All these people, I'm on Medicare and I'm on Medicaid.
		I have to live off of $1,000 off of $1,000 a month.
		I have to pay insurance and everything else.
		I've gotten to the point to where I can't even go to the grocery store.
		You know what?
		I live, I stop and get me a hamburger.
		I get these deals that these fast food places run.
		And you know something else?
		I worked all my life.
		I worked for 33 years.
		I've never asked for food stamps.
		I've never had to draw welfare.
		I've worked all of my life and I've had a child to raise.
		And I hadn't asked for nothing.
		And I'll tell you one thing right now: when he starts cutting Medicare and Medicaid, that is absolutely, oh, I'd like to impeach him.
		I'm going to tell you something.
		I despise him.
		I can't wait for him to get back out of there.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Barbara's thoughts there in Georgia.
		Some headlines for you to share in the papers on tariffs.
		This is from the New York Times.
		Trump threatens India with tariffs, adding a penalty over India using Russian oil.
		That's from the New York Times this morning.
		Moving on to the Washington Post this morning.
		The U.S. has new trade deals with 11 of top 15 partners.
		Now, ahead of this August 1st deadline that the Trump administration has set, the U.S. has trade deals with 11 of our top 15 partners.
		And this from the world section of the Washington Time.
		President Trump imposes a 50% tariff on Brazil, says order is retaliation for country's treatment of Bolsonaro.
		Now, in the business and finance section of the Wall Street Journal this morning, they have this headline.
		Brazil duties threaten to raise coffee prices here in the United States.
		There's more headlines this morning to share with you on tariffs.
		And this is from the Washington Times.
		Trump celebrates Day of Making Trade Agreements.
		The president touted his trade deals in a social media post Wednesday saying that he's spoken to many countries that want to make the U.S. extremely happy.
		The deal calls for 15% on goods from South Korea and includes $350 billion in U.S. investments by Seoul and agreements to purchase $100 billion worth of U.S. energy products.
		The deal also requires South Korea to be completely open to trade with the United States, including accepting American products such as cars, trucks, and agriculture.
		Those are the headlines in the papers this morning on tariffs.
		We're talking about the president's handling of the economy.
		Let's go to Ed in Columbia Station, Ohio, Republican.
unidentified		Yep.
unidentified		Good morning, you there.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Morning.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We're listening.
unidentified		I give the, you're asking people grading first.
		I give them an A or a B.
		Okay.
		Tell us.
		Tell us what.
		People forget the last four years we just had.
		If they would have won, it would have been 10 times worse than it is now.
		You can't turn it around in six months.
		He's been in office.
		And he does more.
		I hear these callers, low information, fake news.
		That's all they live on.
		They don't get any other information.
		The Democrats, all they do is obstruct.
		They did the last four years.
		I mean, like, there's one one that just calls when he goes coughing.
		He was in Scott on the golf course he built.
		He spent, he was there.
		He spends, he does more one day than Biden did in a year.
		I mean, the guy slept all through four years and they covered up for him.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Ed.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So why would you give him a B on the economy?
unidentified		I'd say an A or a B.
		Okay, things don't take time.
		Okay, even a B. Who wants to say a B?
		Fine.
		But these doom and gloomers, non-stop, I hear a calling.
		They didn't plan nothing in their whole life.
		I mean, inflation, you can't stop it on a dime like a train.
		You stop five miles before it stops.
		Listen, all they do right now, the Democrats, obstruct, scream, yell.
		You name it.
		Look at one policy.
		Inflation's at all.
		The only thing they made hiring.
		Our GPA is great right now.
		Hiring is 3% of GPA.
		Everything's doing good still.
		It takes time.
		Democrats, the only thing they had in hiring in four years, the thing that grew in this country was all federal workers from Washington to all the state workers on the taxpayer.
		Just the trillions we waste alone on these illegals they pumped in.
		Hundreds of billions in one city alone, putting them in hotels, the crime we got to spend money on to get them out.
		It's sad.
		They destroyed this country in four years, and it would have been another four years.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What do you think of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell saying yesterday that it's tariffs and the president's immigration deportations that give him pause about changing the interest rates?
		That if the deportation impacts the economy overall, losing workers, in other words, that gives him concern.
		Ed, you there?
unidentified		Give me a break.
		There's 20 million alone in this country, probably, that don't even, they don't work.
		They've been told he's already deported a million almost every country.
		Another one, self-deport.
		I mean, how much can you, when you added open border loan was destroyed?
		That they did for politics.
		Okay, get the census.
		Well, you get more for more people in your districts, you get more Senate seats.
		They sold out our country than every department.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Ed's thoughts there in Ohio Republican caller.
		In other news this morning, this is in the Washington Post.
		Committee chair has yet to subpoena files, the Epstein files.
		The panel voted on Epstein records a week ago, but its chair, Mr. Comer James Comer of Kentucky, has left D.C. Washington Post reports that a week after the House Oversight Subcommittee voted to subpoena the Justice Department for records released related to Jeffrey Epstein, the chair of the full committee still hasn't issued the order.
		The delay stands in contrast to the subpoena Representative James Comer, the House Oversight Chair, issued and signed within 24 hours of a similar subcommittee vote that compelled the Epstein associate, Ghisalaine Maxwell, to testify before Congress.
		And it has raised questions about Republicans' willingness to hold the Trump administration accountable for its failure to release the Epstein files in the face of significant backlash from the president's Republican base.
		Related to that article is this from the New York Times: Senate Democrats invoke Rule of Five over the Epstein files.
		Under a section of the federal law, commonly referred to in the Senate as the Rule of Five, government agencies are required to provide relevant information if any five members of that committee with oversight, which is the chamber's chief oversight panel, request it.
		That provisions, which became law in 1928 and sets a seven-member rule for the House Oversight Committee, effectively offers a way for members of the minority party to compel information from the executive branch.
		Here is the Democratic leader Chuck Schumer on their efforts.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		And this morning, I was really proud to join every single one of my Democratic colleagues on the Homeland Committee in invoking a century-old and little-known law known as the Rule of Five to compel the Department of Justice to release the full and complete Epstein files.
		Under federal law, when any five senators on the Homeland Security Committee call on the executive branch, the executive branch must comply.
		Our request covers all documents, files, evidence, and other materials in possession of the DOJ, the FBI, related to the case of United States versus Jeffrey Epstein.
		While protecting the victims' identities can and must be of top importance, the public has a right to know who enabled, knew of, or participated in one of the most heinous sex trafficking operations in history.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		That was the Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer yesterday announcing efforts by his party to force the release of the Epstein files.
		We're talking about how you would rate the president's handling of the economy.
		A new poll by Reuters Ipsos that was released yesterday, this is before the GDP report came out, found that 38% of respondents approved the President Trump's handling of the economy.
		When they break it down by party, Republicans say 80% of them say they approve, while 16% disapprove.
		Democrats, though, 92% disapprove and 4% approve.
		Lewis in Salisbury, North Carolina, Democratic caller, what do you say?
unidentified		Yeah, top of the morning.
		Wow, I tell you, I don't know why people are kind of like shocked of what this president is going to do or doing.
		We already seen the first episode where Trump went on and did tariffs on the farmers with China.
		Now we're giving the farmers, and people don't want to talk about it, but we're giving the farmers welfare.
		We gave them over so many billions of dollars.
		And nobody's saying nothing about that.
		And they always talking about welfare for the needy or the poor or people getting this or socialism and all that.
		And they're giving farmers billions of dollars.
		So when I know I voted for Tom Aline Waltz, right?
		Because Trump already told you guys he had a concept of a plan.
		That means that it haven't even been drawn up yet.
		So you can expect anything from the gentleman.
		This is another thing.
		You remember when Lewinsky was in the overall office and he was telling Trump, you're going to feel it.
		You're going to feel it.
		Every American right now, and all they talk about, even the guy said A and B, A must stand for awful and B must mean bad.
		But I do know this.
		When Lewinsky told Trump that you're going to feel it, people didn't believe that.
		They didn't believe that all America is going to.
		And can somebody tell me where is all this tariffs of billions and billions of dollars that he keep telling the American people that they gathered?
		We don't see it.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Lewis in North Carolina, another caller calling on the Trump administration to show where this money from tariffs is going into the U.S. government and how is it being spent.
		Jay in Edgewater, Florida, Republican.
		Morning, Jay.
unidentified		Good morning.
		On the economy, I'd rate him a B.
		He is getting a lot of pushback from a lot of different organizations, Democrat Party plus the mother country.
		So, you know, I mean, a tariff trade war we don't have.
		Tariff negotiations, we do have.
		Jariffs are good.
		They do help our economy out.
		They're not a bad thing.
		People are blowing out of proportion.
		They really haven't taken effect right now.
		I just want to understand one thing is a lot of these callers are calling in and giving you a big sob story about how, oh, my gosh, I'm paying more for this.
		I'm paying more for that.
		I'm paying more for this.
		There's a couple of issues.
		One, I just don't believe what they're saying when I see the gas prices dropped 25 cents in the last three weeks.
		I'm in Florida.
		It's one of the most expensive areas in the country.
		And gasoline is cheap here now all of a sudden.
		Well, not cheap, but it's gone down considerably.
		It's under $3.
		It's down to like $2.86 a gallon.
		So, and I shop twice a week at the grocery store.
		Yeah, there are some items that have gone up, but you can't expect everything to go back down.
		That's what I don't understand.
		Everybody says, oh, we're going to lower the prices.
		You lower the prices, you crash the market.
		All of a sudden, you don't have the money to pay the employees.
		So you close the businesses.
		It's an easing.
		And if you don't take it easy on it, then it just collapses.
		So I think he's doing a pretty good job on that.
		The other thing I have, I wanted to discuss with you is the vile language that comes out of the Democrats that call in.
		They start off with some of the most grotesque things I've ever heard about individuals.
		And you let them roll on.
		I understand that.
		You don't try to get involved in what they're saying.
		But it's just constant and constant.
		And they just rail on and rail on and call him names and call him this and call him that and do this and do that.
		It is so disrespectful to the office, let alone the individual, that I think you shouldn't just start curtailing some of this language.
		And I think it would be a lot better for all of us.
		So you have a wonderful day today.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Jay.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Barry in New Jersey, Independent.
unidentified		Yes.
		I just wanted to point out that Donald Trump was given a great economy by the Biden administration.
		All right.
		There are those of us that have had civics.
		And in my high school years, Ms. Batista taught us what tariffs really were.
		Tariffs are put in place to raise the prices of foreign goods for the purposes of competing with expensive U.S. goods.
		Those tariffs are paid by U.S. companies and paid by Americans.
		All right.
		Chinese do not pay the tariffs.
		Europeans do not pay the tariffs.
		That money that Donald Trump is talking about, that they have accrued, those are all U.S. dollars paid by Americans.
		Lastly, there are two economies in the United States.
		There's the economy that we all live with, and then there's the economy that Donald Trump lives with, where he's gripping with his crypto coins.
		Look at how much money he is making linking his crypto dollars to the U.S. dollar.
		What happens if those crypto dollars drop in value?
		Who's going to pay for that?
		Thank you.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Steve, Alexandria, Indiana, Republican.
		Hi, Steve.
unidentified		Yeah, I rate him about a B. Our prices here in Indiana has gone way down.
		We were paying $4.50 for a gallon of milk.
		Now we're paying about $2.50 a gallon.
		Our gas has gone down, like the fellow from Florida said, about $2.87.
		We were paying around $4 a gallon last year.
		And we're also things seem to be running along pretty smooth.
		At least we don't have to worry anymore about Iran and his nuclear bombs that he's been trying to put together over there.
		I believe we're doing pretty good here in Indiana right now with prices.
		Also, eggs.
		Eggs were $7 a dozen last year.
		Now they're down to $2.50 a dozen.
		All right.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Seaver, Republican in Indiana, giving the president high marks for his handling of the economy.
		Kerry in Illinois, Independent.
		What's your rating?
unidentified		I give him an A for being a good con man, and I give him an F for being the president trying to run the economy.
		But what the thing I don't understand, Greta, I'd like to say good morning to you first, though.
		Morning.
		But the thing I don't understand is that the people who voted for him get on here and call him and talk about how bad the language is that Democrats put out to him, but they do the same thing.
		But my main concern is this.
		I've never seen people who put yard signs out.
		Trump vans Trump Trump for president.
		Why don't they just change their yard signs to, I don't want anything.
		I want to give the billionaires everything.
		I want to give them all my taxes.
		I want my tax dollars to go to the billionaires.
		I don't understand people who complain about gas prices but give their tax dollars to billionaires.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Kerry.
		Got your point.
		We'll go to Mississippi.
		Sam, Republican.
unidentified		Hey, Greta.
		I'm a Ronald Reagan conservative.
		And, of course, I'm going to give Trump an A-plus.
		The economy is much better.
		The tariff, I mean, he's winning every day, especially over in the other countries that he visits.
		We talk about tariffs.
		And then, of course, obviously, things are going down.
		Gas is less here in Mississippi.
		You know, the inflation, actually, the wages are outpacing inflation now.
		And, you know, I don't understand some of these people calling in, you know, saying he's doing a terrible job only because they're Democrats.
		But if they look at, if they basically do a little research, they'll find out that he is doing a fantastic job with the economy.
		And then, of course, the border, what can you say?
		I mean, he's fantastic there, too.
		Again, I'm not a Trumper or anything like that, but I'm also being real, you know, being as objective as I can be about what he's doing, and he's doing a good job.
		And I will tell you, in the beginning with the tariffs, I am retired now.
		I'm a 401k, or my retirement took a hit, but it's come back, and I was wrong.
		I actually criticized him on another source about that, but it's come back, and he is making things happen with the tariffs because we have been bombed in years past, and no other president has ever really tried to handle that.
		And he has.
		He is doing what he says he's going to do.
		Do I agree with the way he talks?
		Again, I'm a Reagan conservative, but do I agree the way sometimes he doesn't sound very presidential, but as far as I'm concerned, as long as he's doing the job that he said he was going to do, that's all that matters.
		And these people who are calling in, just ripping him, and as someone else said, that about the foul language and everything else, they're right on Democrats.
		I don't know what it is about the Democrats, but to me, they're just an evil party.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Sam, I'm going to leave it at that point.
		Got some other headlines to share with folks this morning.
		Front page of the New York Times, a story to watch as the Texas GOP redraws maps to suit President Trump.
		The gerrymander hopes to flip five House seats in favor of Republicans.
		Look for more news out of Texas today on that front and on our C-SPAN networks.
		Below that fold, the former vice president Kamala Harris foregoes governor race in California is the headline in the New York Times this morning.
		She will not run for California governor, announced that she has decided not to run for that top office in her home state, opening up a possible bid again for the presidency.
		And then there is also this in the Washington Post this morning from the front page, a host of failures outlined in crash, a hearing by the National Transportation Safety Board that is underway in Washington yesterday founding a host of failures in that midair crash that happened here at the Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.
		The hearing continues today, and we'll have live coverage of it at 9 a.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN 3, C-SPAN Now, our free video mobile app, and online and on demand, excuse me, at c-span.org.
		Also, I want to share with you from yesterday at Capitol Hill, Vermont Independent Center, Bernie Sanders, spoke about how nursing homes and those who receive care there could be impacted by the passage of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill.
		He made these comments at a news conference.
bernie sanders ▲ ● ▼		According to a study commissioned by the Department of Health and Human Services, 70% of seniors in an aging country, we are an aging country, will need some kind of long-term care during their lifetimes.
		This can include assistance with activities of daily life like eating, bathing, and dressing.
		In some cases, family members can provide this type of care, but it requires from that family member enormous time, effort, and skill.
		And when you are dealing with horrific illnesses like dementia or Alzheimer's, it is also terrible stress on that family member.
		And that is why families throughout the country seek our support through home health care providers, through senior centers, or nursing homes.
		And let's be clear, even before the implementation of Trump's horrendous bill, nursing homes and long-term health care providers were already struggling.
		So it's not like we had a great situation.
		We have a very bad situation, which is only going to be made worse.
		When you cut Medicaid by over $900 billion, as this bill does, nursing homes and long-term health care providers will be losing a major source of their revenue.
		In other words, you have institutions all across this country that are struggling today, and now there's going to be a significant decline in their revenue.
		We're going to be talking in a moment from our guests about what those cuts will mean.
		According to a recent survey, as a result of this legislation, some 27% of nursing homes have indicated that they will be forced to close their doors, and 58% will be forced to substantially reduce staff at a time when many nursing homes are already grossly understaffed and under-resourced.
		When it comes to home and community-based care, the problem may be even worse because states aren't legally required to cover these services under Medicaid.
		States could cut benefits for long-term home care altogether.
		And what does that mean for families across the country?
		It means that people who need long-term care will probably rely on a family member to care for them.
		And what that will do is put enormous stress on family members.
		So right now, I want people to appreciate this.
		If you have a mom or a dad or somebody in your family who is in a nursing home or a home daycare center, if that person can no longer be in that facility and has to be at home, how does it impact you?
		Well, guess what?
		You're not going to work anymore.
		You're going to stay home taking care of that family member.
		And if you don't go to work anymore, you're not having any income coming into your house.
		How does that impact people in our country, 60% of whom are living paycheck to paycheck?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Senator Bernie Sanders on Capitol Hill yesterday on the so-called big beautiful bill.
		And other news to share with you from C-SPAN.
		Here's the Associated Press headline: From Crossfire to Ceasefire, C-SPAN executive launches program that promotes common ground.
		Joining us at our table this morning is Dasha Burns.
		She is going to be the new host of C-SPAN Ceasefire, and she's currently Politico's White House Bureau Chief.
		Congratulations.
dasha burns ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for being here.
dasha burns ▲ ● ▼		I'm so happy to be here.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, tell our viewers a little bit about your background.
dasha burns ▲ ● ▼		So I started at Politico in January.
		I'm the White House Bureau Chief there and chief playbook correspondent.
		So I've been spending a lot of time at the White House and running around Washington trying to get everyone to understand what exactly is happening in this administration and the why behind it.
		And I host a show called The Conversation, which is Politico's sort of alternative to the traditional Sunday show where I bring on leaders from across Washington and beyond to have kind of an unconventional chat, a little bit more personal and more conversational than you would get in your typical traditional Sunday show.
		So I love creating spaces where Democrats, Republicans, Independents people from across the political spectrum feel like they're going to get a fair shake, like they're going to be able to have a substantive, meaty conversation.
		And I'm excited to do that here.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Is that what drew you to ceasefire?
dasha burns ▲ ● ▼		Was that?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Is that what drew you to ceasefire?
dasha burns ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly.
		I mean, look, I think that we are living in a time where most of what we see is partisanship, polarization, conflict.
		What if we had a space where that wasn't the case?
		What if we had a space where people actually could come and try to find some common ground and move the ball forward on real issues affecting Americans?
		And that's what I really want to see with this program.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		How will it be different?
		Give our viewers an idea of what it's going to look like.
		Who's going to be sitting across from you at the table?
dasha burns ▲ ● ▼		Well, we're going to have folks that typically don't sit at a table together, or at least don't sit together ready to try to agree.
		So we're going to have people from across the aisle and maybe people that are secretly friends but don't really typically promote that.
		I mean, I think what'll be fun is pushing people out of their comfort zones to try to agree out of their partisan comfort zones.
		I think people are used to trying to be in conflict with each other.
		But I really do feel like at this point, the sugar high of watching conflict and the clickbait of that, what happens when you get a sugar high?
		You get a crash afterwards, right?
		So I think people are a little bit tired of that and are ready for some meat and potatoes of real conversation and substance that will actually energize them and they'll walk away not crashing and depressed, but walk away energized and hopeful about what we can do as a nation.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		You're at the White House.
		You know how Washington works.
		Will viewers be surprised at how many people across the aisle get along and work on different issues together?
dasha burns ▲ ● ▼		That happens so much more behind the scenes than people realize.
		I mean, look, polarization is a real thing and people do get heated and people do get into it.
		But they also have like best friends sometimes across the aisle.
		And even this White House, look, there are times when they do reach out and they do work with Democrats.
		And I think and hope it will be a pleasant surprise for viewers to realize that sometimes we can get together and get stuff done.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And as the host, how will you approach this?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What's your goal here?
dasha burns ▲ ● ▼		Well, look, I like to make people feel comfortable.
		I like to get a little bit personal, maybe bring a little charm, a little levity, but also really push people.
		Let's not, you're not going to be yelling at each other on this show.
		And if you do, I don't know, maybe we have like a dollar jar or something for that.
		We'll have to find a way to get people to do this because it is, this is not something you see on television.
		And especially when cameras turn on, politicians tend to turn on that side of themselves.
		And we'll have to train that out of them a little bit here.
		So that's going to be a fun challenge to do something so different in this political moment.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Dasha Burns, Bureau Chief for Politico, and now C-SPAN's host of our new program, Ceasefire.
		Congratulations.
		Thank you so much for being here.
		We're going to take a short break when we come back later on in the Washington Journal.
		Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Aaron David Miller joins us to discuss the Israel-Hamas war and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
		But up next, after the break, Michael Tanner of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity discusses efforts to combat homelessness in the United States.
		We'll be right back.
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		Washington Journal continues.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		At our table this morning is Michael Tanner.
		He is the Social Mobility Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity here to talk about efforts to combat homelessness in the United States.
		Mr. Tanner, thank you for being here.
		I want to begin with President Trump's executive order on homelessness, where the White House wrote this, shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.
		Surrendering our citizens and cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens.
		My administration will take a new approach focused on protecting public safety.
		Mr. Tanner, what did you make of this executive order?
unidentified		Well, like so many of the president's executive orders, this is sort of a vague wish list for policy rather than a specific directive on exactly how things are going to take place.
		So a lot depends on the implementation and the details to follow.
		But it's sort of a design to help make it easier or to at least encourage the states to pursue the involuntary commitment of individuals who are mentally ill or suffering from substance abuse and are basically not able to care for themselves.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		The Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, the top-ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee in the House, had this to say about the executive order.
		Let me be very clear.
		Forcibly removing people from the streets and institutionalizing them is not just cruel and inhumane, but also blatantly ineffective.
		Trump's order also undermines evidence-based solutions to addressing this crisis, is what she had to write, like housing first, and instead doubles down on the type of criminalization and policing that have consistently proven unsuccessful.
unidentified		Well, we certainly don't want to criminalize homelessness and we don't want necessarily the police involved in enforcing these mechanisms.
		But we should recognize that even folks on the left side of the spectrum from California like Governor Newsom or Scott Wiener from the legislature have said basically there's nothing compassionate about letting people die on the street because they are suffering from mental illness or substance abuse.
		Now, we're not talking about all homeless people.
		We certainly want to build in safeguards to the system, but certainly there are some people out there who are simply not capable of caring for themselves.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Well, according to the government estimates, at least 653,000 Americans are experiencing homelessness in January of 2023.
		We'll take your questions and your comments on homelessness in the United States here this morning with Michael Tanner.
		If you live in the eastern central part of the country, dial in at 202-748-8000.
		Mountain Pacific 202-748-8001.
		And if you've experienced homelessness, we'd like to hear your story at 202-748-8002.
		Remember, you can text instead of calling at 202-748-8003.
		Michael Tanner, before we get to these calls, what leads to homelessness?
		What are the factors?
unidentified		Well, we should be careful not to try to lump all people who are experiencing homelessness into one single category.
		There are actually a variety.
		The majority of people are people who simply can't afford housing for whatever reason, or they're experiencing a life crisis and they've ended up falling to the street because they can't find affordable housing or shelter.
		And the other group that's out there is probably 20 to 40 percent, and those are people who have serious mental illness problems or their substance abuse problems that prevent them from taking the actions that would help get them off the street.
		And these folks require very different looks, very different types of sets of solutions to deal with.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		I just gave the numbers from the government on their estimates of how many Americans are homeless or suffering from homelessness in this country.
		How does that compare to recent years and decades?
		Is it getting worse?
unidentified		It actually is.
		We are at some of the highest numbers that we've seen in a long time.
		So basically, homelessness has gotten worse in America over the last several years.
		Some of that has to do with COVID, some of it has to do with the rising cost of housing, but there's basically a lot of people on the street than there used to be.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What about the current price of housing has led to this situation?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		I mean, how big of a factor is that in the rise of homelessness?
unidentified		It's a surprisingly big proportion of this.
		There's been studies out there that show that for every 1% increase in rents, you get about a 1% increase in the number of people on the street.
		And especially in areas where most homelessness occurs, about half of all unhoused homeless are in California, for example, which is one of the most expensive housing markets out there.
		When I did some work out there and met many people who were experiencing homelessness, I met people who were certainly employed, teachers, government workers, even emergency room nurse who were basically living out of their cars because they couldn't find apartments.
		When an apartment, you know, average apartment in San Francisco costs some $3,000 or so for a one-bedroom apartment, it's very difficult if you encounter some sort of temporary interruption in your income or a problem of that nature.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So what are cities' governors, I mean, who is in charge of homelessness policy?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Is it the mayor or is it the governor of the state?
unidentified		Well, it depends on state laws.
		But basically the person who's going to have the skin in the game and be most dealing with it is going to be the mayor, essentially, the city councils in these areas.
		Certainly there can be funds from the state government and certainly they can pass some requirements and some laws both to increase the housing supply and also to deal with people who have mental illness issues.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What are some laws that are being passed in recent years as the numbers have risen?
unidentified		Well, for example, California has taken steps in recent years to try to lower the cost of housing to basically deal with a lot of the zoning issues, restrictionary, exclusionary zoning and other issues that prevents new houses from being built, new apartments from being built, get a supply and demand problem that drives up the cost of houses and apartments in those communities.
		So they've made it easier to build houses and that's a good step in the right direction.
		They also created in California something called a conservancy court, which is basically not widely implemented yet, but the goal is to be able to make sure you're protecting the rights of homeless individuals and at the same time permit the imposition of some sort of treatment plan on those people who are unable to make decisions or appreciate the decisions for themselves.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We're talking about homelessness in the United States this morning.
		Michael Tanner is our guest related to this conversation.
		And what Mr. Tanner was just speaking about is this headline in the Washington Post.
		Senators make rare bipartisan effort on housing package.
		After the unlikely duo of Senator Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren, Republican of South Carolina and Democrat of Massachusetts, teamed up to write the measure, it passed unanimously out of the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday.
		Excuse me.
		Lawmakers stress the urgency of the nation's housing crisis as they come together to move the package forward.
		What do you know about this package?
unidentified		Well, it's largely symbolic, again, because most of the laws that block the construction of new housing are at the local level.
		They have to do with individual, local zoning ordinances, exclusionary zoning, things of that nature.
		But there are certainly some steps that the federal government can do to encourage states to make changes.
		And hopefully this package will do something to that effect.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, thank you very much for jumping in there as I get a drink of water.
		We'll go to Laverne, who's in South Carolina.
		Experience with homelessness.
		Laverne, welcome to the conversation.
		Tell us your story.
unidentified		Good morning.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Laverne in South Carolina.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
unidentified		Hello.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Laverne, I'm going to move on to Janetta, who's in Granite Falls, Washington.
		Janetta, good morning.
		Welcome to the conversation on homelessness.
		What's your question or comment?
unidentified		Thank you for taking my call.
		First of all, I was, for the past year, I was sort of facing homelessness myself.
		And my situation has pretty much worked out, thank God.
		But it was a terrifying experience.
		And the only reason that I was facing homelessness was I've rented the same place for 30 years, and all of a sudden things changed.
		But I don't make enough on Social Security to cover the rents now, which is a real problem in this state.
		It's very expensive living here.
		But my question for the gentleman there is, in hearing about this executive order, what is going to happen to these people if they're rounded up?
		Because I did a little research myself and there are no facilities available.
		They're all full.
		The jails couldn't absorb the overflow because they're full too.
		And especially with all these cuts that are going on, budget cuts, where are these people going to go and what's going to happen to them?
		And as somebody who is facing living on the street, I've got to tell you, it's a terrifying, terrifying thought, especially for somebody like myself who's worked all my life.
		And the only reason that I was facing it was because I didn't make enough money.
		So I guess I'll leave it there unless you have any questions.
		No, you raise a huge point.
		And the executive order does direct the government to see if any of the federal resources can be made available, but there aren't a great many federal resources available for this either.
		And we know that in states like California, the substance abuse waiting list for treatment is enormous.
		We know there's not enough beds to handle all the homeless population on any given night.
		So certainly localities and probably the states as well are going to have to inject more resources into the problem.
		You can't, you have to have someplace to put people if you're going to just go in and pick them up.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to John next in Florida.
		John, good morning.
		Question or comment on homelessness.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'm homeless, thank God, but I try to help the homeless.
		I'm in Florida, in Hernando County, and the prices of real estate and rentals are very, very expensive.
		The prices around where I live, I live in a manufactured home.
		The prices have tripled in the last 12 years.
		And people getting like $1,000 on Social Security just can't cut it.
		They usually try to get a bedroom in somebody's house.
		But I know some people that are living in the woods in tents and it's private property, then people come along and say, you've got to move out.
		I know a woman living in a car with two dogs for the last year and a half.
		And with this heat here, it's terrible.
		I wish the county or the state would allow access to free land or public land and almost like wooded land and provide tent space, you know, and also provide port-a-potty so they have a place to, you know, have sanitation facilities.
		Michael, let's get Michael Tanner's response.
		Yeah, as I've said, we need to address both ends of that equation.
		We need to bring down the cost of housing, and that is largely a question of deregulating the housing market that's very restrictive right now in terms of building.
		And on the other side of that, we do need to find some sort of way to care for the people who are on the street today.
		That needs to be done, of course, in cost-effective ways.
		It's the famous million-dollar public toilet in San Francisco when they tried to deal with the port-a-potty issue there.
		But we do need to find ways and places for these people to stay.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		You have some recommendations that you've made recently.
		Let's go through them.
		Institutional care is one of your five strategies to address homelessness.
		Enact stricter conservatorship laws to manage those who cannot.
		What are these laws?
unidentified		Well, essentially, conservatorship allows someone to take temporary control or charge of someone else's life.
		We can go back, we all remember the Brittany Spears issue around conservatorship, but it's actually generally used much in a larger way.
		Certainly, I've known people whose son or whose sister-in-law or whatever was mentally ill and was on the street.
		Someone needs to be able to come in and compel them to take their medication or to seek treatment in some way.
		Or in some cases, it may be necessary to actually institutionalize them because they are unable to care for themselves.
		Now, we need to be very careful in how this is done.
		There's huge abuse in the past, LGBTQ families, women who were recalcitrant wives once upon a time could be committed, things of that nature.
		So, we need to be very careful how this is done to protect people's rights and the lifestyles, even if we don't approve of them, can't be the excuse for locking someone up.
		That said, there are clearly people out there who are a danger to themselves and others, and they probably need to be taken off the street.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Your second strategy is invest in treatment.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		How much money are you talking about and who is doing or what entity is doing the investing?
unidentified		Well, as I say, I think primarily it's a municipal function, but probably some state funds are going to need to help support municipalities which can't always afford these things.
		I mean, we can look back to, for example, the Grants Pass case that just the Supreme Court ruled it was okay to break up homeless encampments.
		Grants Pass had no shelters, had one private evangelical shelter, had no public shelters of them all.
		So, the question was: you're going to break up these camps, where are people going to go?
		They were mostly interested in moving them to the next town over, so it's someone else's problem.
		But eventually, that circle runs out.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We've talked about your third strategy: build more housing in this country to address the housing shortage as well as the affordability.
		Your fourth strategy, enables state and local experimentation.
		What are you talking about here?
unidentified		Sure.
		We should be very careful about imposing a one-size-fits-all strategy.
		Communities are different.
		They have different levels of homelessness.
		Dealing with a place like California, which has 50% of all the unhoused homeless, is very different than what you're going to encounter in some small town in rural Alabama, for example.
		You're going to have a different number of people, different solutions, different types of homelessness.
		We should be flexible enough to allow those communities to adapt to whatever their particular problem is.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And your fifth strategy is broader social mobility policies.
unidentified		We should recognize that a lot of homelessness takes place in light of poverty overall, and we should be addressing ways to reduce poverty.
unidentified		That is certainly going to make it much easier for people who face a temporary crisis to get through without ending up on the street.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, for our viewers, you've seen Michael Tanner's five strategies to address homelessness.
		We can take your thoughts on those strategies and other aspects of this debate here in Washington over how to address homelessness in this country.
		Gregory, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
		Good morning, Gregory.
unidentified		Good morning.
		How are you, ma'am?
		I'm sure to appreciate C-SPAN.
		I'm an older gentleman.
		This is what happened to me.
		I became homeless at 70 years old.
		At the start of the coronavirus, I was kicked out of my place October the 5th that year, and I've since lived in motels, hotels, and stuff.
		This is because these real estate companies are coming in, buying up properties, kicking out the people who are established or have been there.
		I've been in my apartment almost three years, kicking them out, moving in a new crowd, jacking up the rent.
		It's affordable housing.
		And there's a symbiotic relationship between the homeless people and the police.
		I personally experienced this.
		Somebody stole my stuff.
		I kind of roughed him up.
		I did.
		I wanted my property back.
		And next thing I would have agreed to rush about the police, they're trying to put drugs on me.
		I'm sober.
		I don't do anything.
		I'm clean.
		I volunteered in Vietnam, went to college, married over 40 years.
		I just don't get it.
		My wife is dead.
		And I have to experience this in my old age.
		It's pretty tough.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Tanner.
unidentified		Yeah, that really sounds terrible.
		And I certainly hope you find housing soon.
		I wish you the best for that.
		And I think you also mentioned a couple of particular problems that are out there.
		Rents are too high, but it's largely a problem of supply and demand.
		There's a lot more people looking for housing than we have housing right now, which drives up the cost.
		If we could build more housing, we could bring down that cost of rent and make it easier.
		COVID was another big issue that did increase homelessness to a significant amount during the pandemic.
		We haven't bounced back from that yet.
		And policing is very tough.
		I mean, it is tough for police to deal with homeless encampments.
		There's a lot of problems there, but it's on both sides, and you do get a lot of police abuse to the homeless population as well.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Lexington, North Carolina.
		Dennis is watching there.
		Good morning and welcome to the conversation.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'd like to address the issue with the homeless.
		I was homeless at one time.
		I'm a disabled veteran that served this country for 21 years.
		I was in Iran or Iraq war, came home, and a lot of things were different before I came home.
		The problem is, it's a lot of veterans that come home from Fed de Polo and the whole world had changed.
		we deal with ACEs every day.
		And then a lot of us are becoming homeless.
		And they don't commit suicide because right now the problem is if 22 veterans a day kill commit suicide.
		And the ones that do not commit suicide are homeless.
		The population of homeless are part of veterans that have displaced, don't know how to deal with things.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Dennis, let's take up the VA and this issue of veterans and homelessness.
unidentified		Yeah, there's actually some good news here.
		Veterans hopelessness was rising very rapidly, but both the federal and state governments have prioritized dealing with homeless veterans, and the result has been that they have actually declined in the last couple of years, the percentage of homeless that are veterans.
		So some good news on that front.
		A lot further to go, obviously.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What does the VA do?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		I mean, how do they try to address this issue?
unidentified		Well, it's less the VA than other areas, but they've basically prioritized funding for homeless vets, prioritized getting them into shelters.
unidentified		And in areas where there's a great deal of homeless, they've done more outreach and things of that nature to try to make sure that the people know where the resources are and are available for them.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Is it largely a mental health issue when it comes to our veterans?
unidentified		It's a little bit of both, but certainly it's sometimes difficult to sort of separate the pieces of the onion here.
		I mean, did mental health issues lead you to losing your job that then let you become homeless?
		Or was it other problems you came back and didn't have the skill set?
		And so how you exactly parse these things is often very difficult.
		But certainly mental health issues play a big role in this.
		And the VA has not had the best record when it comes to dealing with mental health and veterans.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Bob in New York, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I was in Syracuse, Law, maybe back in the late or excuse me, early 70s.
		And we had some fellows that came to class about closing down the mental hospitals in central New York.
		And they referred to the individuals as what they were going to do is called dumping.
		And they closed all the various mental hospitals around central New York.
		And these people just went on the street.
		Fast forward to 2010, I was involved in homeless services in Onondaga County.
		And we had, if somebody was homeless, they could come to the county.
		We'd house them, help them find a job, get services.
		And what I saw was that 95% of these people were either mentally ill, drugs, alcohol, or a combination of all three.
		And I think it would help if some of the worst cases were more ushered into some kind of service required to do that.
		Otherwise, the problem just kind of goes on.
		Yeah, I mean, we should recognize deinstitutionalization has pretty much been recognized as a failure now.
		But at the time, it was broadly popular.
		It was bipartisan support for the idea.
		And it was driven in part because there were really horrible abuses going on in many of the mental illness settings.
		There essentially was no treatment.
		They were warehoused, often in rags and filth.
		And there were some exposés, Life Magazine.
		Geraldo Rivera won an Emmy, I believe, for his expose of one in New York.
		So there was certainly real reason to consider that the system at the time was not working.
		They thought getting people out into community settings for treatment would be better.
		It doesn't look like that that's worked quite the way that people intended.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Will's in Atlanta.
		Good morning too, Will.
		What's the situation like there in Atlanta on homelessness?
unidentified		Well, I believe this is the new Jerusalem.
		I think civilization pivots on urban culture, and Atlanta just didn't come up with Reverend King for no reason.
		We are a community that loves, sees God in each other's faces and loves one another.
		And that's what America was built on, e pluribus unum, where we're one people, one God, one law, one flag, one language.
		And we've forgotten that.
		In fact, there are interloping cults that actually deny God.
		And that's the source of a lot of the mental illness that promotes homelessness because people are actually ritually sodomized as toddlers and they're literally demon-possessed.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, we're going to move on to Kathleen in Mississippi.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Kathleen.
unidentified		Good morning.
		This is Mississippi.
		It's been like this even before I was born.
		My mother had me by midwife.
		My father and mother had 10 shoes.
		We had one health department.
		It's gone.
		We had one hospital at Malbau.
		It was gone, but it came back.
		But you can't get the service you need.
		I have a sister with breast cancer.
		I have a sister with cervical cancer, but we can't get what we need.
		We're paying for everything, but we're not getting nothing.
		If you work your whole life, your whole life, don't have a pension that's getting $988 a month with one food box of mutt is sad that the person at the top of the white house told everybody on that bus except himself.
		We that member waste day at $720 here, but if you'll believe me, come to Mississippi.
		Say to yourself, oh, the rich get richer and the poor get poor.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Kathleen there with her thoughts.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's not just housing that's expensive for folks.
unidentified		Certainly, the cost of living is expensive, and we know that inflation actually hits low-income people harder than it does people at the top of the income scale.
		The new tariffs that have been imposed are going to hit low-income people harder than they're going to hit people at the top.
		So we're going to drive up costs even further.
		But I think the larger point is that we need to address poverty in this country.
		We need to find ways to create the opportunity for people to rise out of poverty and be able to achieve their ambitions.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Don, in Los Angeles, good morning to you, Don.
		We've been talking about the state of California, the number of homelessness in your state.
		What are your thoughts on it?
unidentified		Yeah, I'm in the capital of homelessness, LA, Hollywood area.
		And it seems to be like a big business here.
		We have these charitable places, allegedly charitable, 100%, you know, non-profit people, the organizations that try to say that they're involved in getting you housing.
		And what they do is they have these huge, huge contracts with the government or grant money or whatever, multi-millions of dollars flowing in for free.
		And then they harbor us into hotels and say that we're off the street.
		And then they kick us out later.
		That's basically what it is.
		It's making money off of people who have no money off the government.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Mr. Taylor, do you have some thoughts on that?
unidentified		Yeah, California is a good example of how some of these things do work.
		They had a referendum in California.
		I believe it was called Triple H that provided, that basically used money taxing from the marijuana industry and then was going to use that to build new housing.
		They built very few new houses and at an enormous cost per unit.
		It has not been a story of success.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Janine in Erie, Pennsylvania.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Janine.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'd just like to say that I'm 74 years old and I live on a fixed income and I live in a trailer court and the lot rent has gone up $80 in the last two years.
		Well, that's $80 that I don't have.
		And I really feel for these veterans and these homeless people, as I could be one step away from it, I do have one option.
		But it's getting so bad, the cost of everything is outrageous.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Michael Taylor.
unidentified		Thank you.
		Yeah, and we know that seniors are the fastest growing category of homeless today.
		So that's something we've got to watch because they do live on a fixed income.
		As housing prices rise, that's going to be a problem.
		And because there's often more mental challenges, mental illness challenges among the elderly population.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And how does that compare to previous administrations, previous decades, that this rise in seniors not having a place to live?
unidentified		Yeah, the numbers that we have are not from the first six months of the Trump administration.
		So there's no idea what the impact is right now in that regard.
		So it largely came under the Biden administration, and it was a significant rise.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		How did the Biden administration approach homelessness versus what we've seen now with this executive order from President Trump?
unidentified		The Biden administration focused almost exclusively on what's called housing first, which is the idea that you simply take the homeless population, you put them into some sort of permanent supportive housing, subsidized by the government with no preconditions or no requirements to do that.
		That's sort of been the trendy thing.
		It was big in California.
		It's been big in New York, a lot of the states that have large homeless populations.
		And it's pursued advantage by the Biden administration.
		It's very expensive, and the studies that are coming out suggest that it does not do a particularly good job of keeping people off the street long term.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Why not?
unidentified		Basically, because a lot of the underlying causes of their homelessness do not go untreated, whether it's substance abuse, whether it's mental illness, whether it's lack of education, whether it's lack of a job.
		They're not addressing the root causes.
		They're simply warehousing people in very nice warehouses.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And the taxpayers are paying for that?
unidentified		Yes, indeed.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to Suzanne, Washington, D.C. Hi, Suzanne.
		What's it like here?
		How would you describe it here, the homelessness?
unidentified		Hi.
		Well, I'm from Los Angeles, so here doesn't seem particularly awful to me, but I just want the problem is so intractable.
		But I want to just talk, no one's really talking about private equity owning so much housing stock and it takes 10 years to get an in-law permit.
		But really, if we really wanted to solve this, I think more people would be talking about the unused office space and the sheer amount of square feet available all over the nation.
		I mean, we should really address that.
		It just seems like the obvious, you know, solution.
		Yeah, that is one of the solutions for the problem there.
		They can't use a lot of this space because of the way it's zoned right now, and they would have to go in and make changes to the zoning law.
		I know that the federal government's been looking at the possibility of federal office space and allowing that to be turned into housing.
		There are some states that have taken steps in this regard, allowing commercial space, whether they're malls or office buildings to be used, to be turned into housing units.
		So I do think that there's a real opportunity there rather than let these things sit empty.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Anthony is in Brawley, California.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Anthony, where's Brawley, California?
unidentified		I'm lower near San Diego in the Pearl Valley.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And do you have an issue there?
unidentified		Yes, my comment was, can you hear me?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we can.
unidentified		My comment was that here in the Pearl Valley, there's a lot of homelessness and it's very bad.
		And the thing is that there's a lot of mental health and drug abuse that are lacking in those communities.
		And there needs to be more resources.
		There's a resource available, but there needs to be more output people to give them understanding that it's available to help them get out of that drug abuse and poverty and get them into housing.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Anthony there in California.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Michael Tanner, though, when you have resources available, as he's describing, what is the hurdle with people who have mental illness to get them to use those resources?
unidentified		Well, it's sort of the chicken and egg here.
		The fact that they have mental illness, they're suffering from mental illness, makes it more difficult for them to then pursue the resources they want.
		If you don't have the wherewithal to make decisions or to understand the consequences of your decisions, it's very difficult to get people into treatment.
		That is why I'm suggesting that we, in some cases, need to pursue some sort of mandatory treatment, mandatory institutionalization for some of these folks.
		Be very careful in how we implement it, but I think we're going to have to go down that route.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So you said to be careful because it's been abused in the past.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		How do you suggest going about conservatorship?
unidentified		Well, I think someone has to look after the interests of the individual that we are talking about placing in conservatorship.
		Again, I think the idea behind the conservatorship courts in California is a good one.
		We're a public advocate, sort of like a public defender's appointed to look after the interests of the homeless person that's going to be required to seek treatment in some way so that we're not getting abuses of it and that we can ensure that his civil rights are protected.
		But I think that we are going to have to accept the fact that some people are not capable of making these decisions.
		And there's certainly no compassion about simply allowing these people to starve to death or freeze to death or whatever it is on the street.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Are there any states that have conservatorship laws that you would point to as sufficient and successful?
unidentified		I think about 49, I believe, of the 50 states have a conservatorship law.
		And California, as I say, the new conservatorship court deserves something to look into.
		It has not been widely adopted.
		There's a lot of reasons that.
		There's been a lot of pushback from municipalities.
		There's been a lack of resources to be able to do it adequately.
		But there has been some effort to move in that direction.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Christina, who experienced homelessness, calling from New York.
		Go ahead, Christina.
		Tell us your story.
unidentified		My name is Christina Spring.
		I'm a motorized wheelchair user.
		My children and I are age disabled adults who are experiencing homelessness.
		We're supposed to be protected under Violence Against Women's Act.
		And we were displaced when I refused traffickers from trafficking and then discriminated against, including by the county, where there were people related to who are funding the problem in Erie County that were in the homeless department.
		My concern is that my children are not getting proper housing.
		We have been discriminated against.
		I've been sent out of the county, including away from medical care, and the statements that we need to acquire appropriate shelter and housing And left homeless, including last year on the street in the cold and in the prior year while I was being treated with medical injury out of state.
		I was also in granted office in 2023, experiencing being stopped while I was homeless and victimized after being injured and sent out of state by doctors who now left the state.
		I need appropriate resolutions.
		I'm speaking on behalf of three adults who are supposed to be protected, and my children are unaccounted for.
		I will tell you that the county and Erie was using false diagnostics to admit people and intimidate people, and they sent me out of the area where I would need to get statements, including this last week.
		Well, I also did not get transportation with a motorized wheelchair to a proper location last night.
		I was left for four hours on buses and making my condition worse and sent out of the county where I could not get care, just like in 23 when I was sent out of the county and was promised rapid rehousing by a judge, including Judge Carney specifically, who promised my children my rapid rehousing comicals who were better than the two bedroom we were displaced from illegally.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Christina, I'm sorry to hear about your situation.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Michael Tanner, does it sound familiar?
unidentified		It actually does.
		Intimate partner violence is another reason why there's a rise in homelessness among some populations.
		Women who flee abusive marriages and so on often have no place to go and end up homeless or end up in shelters on that.
		In addition, the fact that the local bureaucracies are often not very sensitive to the situation people have, I've certainly seen, out in San Francisco, I was talking to a gentleman who was homeless.
		He was in a wheelchair and they said, We found your housing.
		It's on a five-floor walkup.
		So I think sometimes there's a certain lack of sensitivity to the problems people face on the street.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Michael Tanner is the Social Mobility Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity.
		Thank you for the conversation with our viewers this morning.
		We appreciate it.
unidentified		Been a real pleasure, and I hope that the people we've talked to find their situations improved.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We're going to take a short break.
		When we come back, we'll turn our attention to the Israel-Hamas war.
		Joining us will be Aaron David Miller.
		He is with the International, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
		Stay with us.
		Why are you doing this?
unidentified		This is outrageous.
		This is a kangaroo.
		This fall, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity, ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins.
		Join political playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns as host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue to find common ground.
		Ceasefire, this fall, on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		The patriarch C.F. Seabrook was hailed as the Henry Ford of agriculture.
		His son, Jack, a keen businessman, was poised to take over what Life magazine called the biggest vegetable factory on earth.
		His son, John Seabrook, has written about his grandfather and father in his book called The Spinach King.
		It's subtitled The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty.
		Work on the spinach gang started in the early 1980s when John Seabrook was with the New Yorker magazine.
		John Seabrook says, I had a grandfather who was a champion of white supremacy, a true believer in the superiority of the Nordic Christian male.
unidentified		Author John Seabrook, with his book, The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty.
		On this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
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donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		As Mike said before, I happened to listen to him.
unidentified		He was on C-SPAN 1.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		That's a big upgrade, right?
unidentified		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.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		They had something $2.50 a gallon.
unidentified		I saw on television a little while ago in between my watching my great friends on C-SPAN.
		C-SPAN is televising this right now live.
		So we are not just speaking to Los Angeles, we are speaking to the country.
		Washington Journal continues.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Joining us this morning is Aaron David Miller.
		He is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here to talk about the Israel-Hamas war and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
		Aaron David Miller, let's begin with food security experts who are recognized by the United Nations saying that this is the worst case scenario of famine.
		According to this organization, it says the entire population in Gaza is facing high levels of acute food insecurity with half a million people, one in five, facing starvation.
unidentified		I mean, Gaza is a nightmare.
		Certainly for the 2 million Palestinians over the last 18 months who have been exposed to a humanitarian catastrophe.
		And I think the prospects of delivering aid reliably and predictably by the UN and other NGOs in wartime Gaza is virtually impossible.
		Even in the wake of the two seas fires in November 2023 and January of this year, even then, while the number of trucks between January and March neared almost the total that Gaza was receiving before October 7, the issue is distribution within Gaza, not getting the assistance to the Israeli-Gaza border.
		So I don't dispute these figures.
		I know the Israelis do.
		Whether it's malnutrition, food insecurity, starvation, famine, Palestinians are dying.
		And the reality is without a ceasefire and ultimately an end of the war, which would free the hostages and create a measure of stability and predictability in terms of the delivery of humanitarian assistance, the situation is going to go on.
		And I might add, the headlines here are very bad.
		And the trend lines, to me, right now, maybe they could change for the better, are frankly even worse.
		I mean, let's just remember a couple basic realities here.
		We're now almost two years since October 7.
		October 7, Hamas, in a blunder strategic, galactic character, decided to roll the dice.
		and to mount what is tantamount to a military operation, the deaths of 1,200 Israelis, at least 800, 900 civilians, the indiscriminate and willful killing of men, women, and children, the sexual predation, the mutilation, the taking of hostages, the execution of hostages, was followed three weeks later.
		Israelis imposed a virtual blockade on everything getting into Gaza, into Gaza during their first three weeks, and then opened up with a prosecution of a war in which they clearly expanded the numbers of Palestinians, innocent civilians that were prepared to die with regard to their prosecution of this war.
		And you have, whether the Gaza Ministry of Health stats are reliable or not, 50,000, 60,000, at least 15,000 to 20,000 by American and Israeli estimates are Hamas fighters.
		You've seen a level of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, a degree of brutality and trauma that is virtually unprecedented in the entire history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
		During the Nuqba, the great disaster, the catastrophe, 15,000 Palestinians were killed, 750,000 displaced, were forced out of what was then Palestine, mandatory Palestine.
		But what's happened now even exceeds that.
		And it's left very little room, it seems to me, having negotiated these issues for the better part of 20 years between Israelis and Palestinians, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, leaves very little room and or hope for creating a better pathway out of this.
		I mean, I'll save you the bottom line here.
		Without leadership, leaders who are masters of their political constituencies, not prisoners of their ideologies, leaders who are willing to go beyond the basic fact of keeping their seats and political survival to think about the security and prosperity of their respective populations, we're going nowhere.
		And we don't have that leadership.
		We don't have it in Israel.
		We don't have it in the Palestinian National Movement.
		We don't have it in Washington.
		And frankly, having watched key Arab states with respect to this conflict, including Israel's treaty partners, Israel and Jordan, and the Abraham Accord countries, who have done absolutely nothing.
		The Emiratis have done quite an extraordinary thing alone among the Arab states in terms of assisting Palestinians, but key Arab states have done nothing to impose a single cost or consequence on either Israel or the United States.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Aaron David Miller, going back to the food situation, the starvation situation in Gaza, you talked about food aid groups, but who is in control of getting the food to the Gaza population?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Is it these intraditional aid groups or is it the Israeli government?
unidentified		Well, first of all, this is a collective failure.
		It's been a collective failure since October 7, partly as a consequence of the fact that Hamas had every incentive or stake to basically expose the Palestinian population to what they were exposed to.
		The more civilians died, the greater the urgency and the asymmetry of power, which the Israelis clearly have, the more Israel's image was blackened, and the more the durability. of Hamas's message.
		On the Israeli side, the Israelis never had from the beginning any sort of strategic commitment to assisting Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
		Whether that was driven by coalition politics, anger or hatred at Palestinians for the seizing of hostages, the Israelis clearly, Hamas set it up, the Israelis played their part.
		And now you have a situation where it's exceedingly difficult, exceedingly difficult, because of the role played by both Hamas and the Israelis in getting into Gaza the kind of assistance that is required.
		It's not a question that the UN doesn't have the assistance, but it's the delivery.
		And with a breakdown of law and order, with desperate hungry people storming food trucks, the UN cannot provide, and the NGOs cannot provide security.
		And let's distinguish between the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is a concoction that the Israelis and the Americans put together.
		President said the other day that the U.S. had funded this organization with $60 million.
		It's roughly half that.
		But there are four distribution sites in central and southern Gaza.
		They're open for a very short period of time.
		The boxes delivered require cooking oil and water.
		It's mostly dry foodstuffs.
		It's not enough.
		You need hundreds of distribution sites.
		Only the UN, World Food Program, and other credible NGOs, facilitated by the UN and facilitated by the Israelis, with help in securing at least the corridors that would allow the UN to deliver this assistance.
		And even then, how do you basically get around the fact that you have essentially self-distribution in so many cases?
		We've watched the pictures of desperate, hungry, starving Palestinians trying to collect and gain food for themselves and their families.
		How do you fundamentally unwind that problem?
		The answer is you need a period, an extended period, certainly at the beginning.
		Two months, that's the issue on the table now in the negotiations.
		But you need an end to the war in Gaza, and we are no closer, in my judgment, to producing that.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		The latest numbers out of Gaza and the situation that Aaron David Miller is talking about from the World News section of the Wall Street Journal, at least 48 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded Wednesday while waiting for food at a Gaza crossing.
		According to a hospital that received the casualties, the latest violence came as the U.S. Mideast envoy, Steve Witcoff, was heading to Israel for talks today.
		Aaron David Miller, with the U.S. envoy on his way to Israel for talks, there are these headlines that are sure to come up.
		You have Palestinian recognition.
		Canada is the latest to say it will recognize a Palestinian state.
		That headline followed yesterday after the UK prime minister said that they would be willing to recognize a Palestinian state if the situation in Gaza is not addressed.
		Your thoughts on that?
unidentified		Look, I understand the impulse.
		The Europeans, particularly the Brits, Kirst Armer was a human rights lawyer.
		He feels these issues emotionally.
		I'm sure the Canadian Prime Minister and Macron are the same way.
		But let me be very clear about something.
		And I do believe, frankly, the least bad alternative, the least bad solution to this conflict, if there is one, is separation through negotiations into two states.
		But let's be very clear.
		I was at the last serious effort 25 years ago this month to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
		Then President Bill Clinton, Bad Yasser, fought Palestinian leader who, unlike Mahmoud Abbas, had actual control of the Palestinian national movement, Ehud Barak, who put proposals on the table that couldn't end the conflict, but went farther than any other Israeli prime minister had gone.
		And yet at the end of that 13-day summit, the gaps on the core issues, and there are five, borders, security, refugees, Jerusalem, and end of all conflict and claims.
		The gaps on those issues were as wide as the Grand Canyon.
		And nothing over the course of the last 25 years has done anything to narrow the gaps on that issue.
		In fact, October 7 has produced the kind of trauma for both Israelis and particularly for Palestinians in Gaza that allows very little space.
		And in the absence of leadership, the notion that somehow you could sit down with the current government of Israel on one hand, and even Mahmoud Abbas, a nepotistic, corrupt, authoritarian leader who is in single digits with respect to his population, the notion that you could negotiate these issues is tethered,
		it's a concept tethered to a galaxy far, far away, not back here on planet Earth.
		So while I understand the impulse, this recognition seems to me to be virtue signaling and will do nothing to change the situation for the better for either Palestinians or Israelis on the ground.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's get to calls.
		John in Michigan, Democratic caller, good morning to you.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, this is John in Michigan.
		It's raining here.
		I am a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.
		I'm exactly 11 months older than our president of the United States, which I appreciate very well.
		I also remember the Milai massacre that took place with Lieutenant Kelly and Captain Medina when I was overseas during the Vietnam War.
		Spent a lot of time on the DMZs.
		First of all, in my area in Michigan, we have a strong Jewish and Arabic community, and I blame both sides of the misdirection and the handling of the whole situation and not recognizing the mess that both sides have done.
		I blame both the Israel government and Hamas organization for the slaughter that's taking place in Gaza.
		I am a stamp collector.
		Gaza is an official place that's been operated by the Palestinian Authority or the government or whatever you want to call it under the auspices of Israel for at least going back into the 1940s and 1950s.
		My main call is the fact is I am absolutely thoroughly disgusted as a combat veteran of the situation.
		I know what refugees are like.
		I know what it's like for the medical corps and the medical people that are over there feeding the poor, the indigent and the starvation, and doing all the surgeries and things of this nature.
		I don't know if they're Jewish people or Arabic people or American or whatever they are, but these people belong in the area of sainthood for the operation they are taking care of the horrible, disgusting situation that's been going on.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Understood, John.
		Aaron David Miller.
unidentified		John, first of all, I spent seven wonderful years in Ann Arbor.
		I love Michigan.
		Look, I have to say one thing, John.
		I applaud the fact that you recognize that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a morality play that pits the forces of goodness on one hand against the forces of darkness on the other.
		It is a terribly complicated conflict in which both sides bear an extraordinary amount of responsibility.
		We can talk all day about the power of the strong, which the Israelis have, settlements, land closures, targeted killings.
		Palestinians, however, also have a power.
		It's the power of the weak.
		And Hamas demonstrated.
		Hamas does not speak for all Palestinians, but Hamas demonstrated on October 7 the absolute terror and trauma that the weak can visit on the strong.
		So the notion that you are actually attributing a measure of responsibility to both sides, in my judgment, even though Israelis and Palestinians would never acknowledge this, is, I believe, the point of departure for any human who wants to seriously take a look at this conflict and try to figure out what to do about it rather than root for your favorite side.
		So John, I take your point, and thank you so much for your service.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Aaron David Miller, your response to the president who just posted on Truth Social this morning, the fastest way to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is for Hamas to surrender and release the hostages.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Will that, if that were to happen, would that resolve the situation?
unidentified		I mean, I think what it would resolve would be the hostage crisis.
		Would it end the war?
		Would Hamas somehow be transformed as an organization?
		Would it deal with the profound suffering of the Palestinians?
		By some estimates, it'll take, what, 10 years and $100 billion to begin the reconstruction of Gaza?
		No.
		I understand, and let me be very clear about domestic politics here.
		I know you have a Republican line, a Democratic line, an Independent line.
		I spent almost 30 years of my life working on behalf of the interests of this republic.
		I worked for Democrats and Republicans.
		I voted for Democrats and Republicans.
		And I've always believed that the line for an effective U.S. foreign policy is not between left and right, not between conservative and liberal, and not between Democrat and Republican.
		It's between dumb on one hand and smart on the other.
		And the only question that Americans need to decide is which side of the line do they want America to be on?
		The smart side or the dumb side?
		If you want it to be on the smart side, then you believe in something called the national interest, which transcends party politics, which transcends partisan rancor, and which essentially allows an American president and every American president is shaped by domestic politics in a democratic polity that is perhaps its lifeblood.
		But the reality, presidents also need to keep that national interest in mind.
		And they need to be able to turn the M in me, turn the M in me upside down so it becomes a W in we.
		And I find it extremely difficult, having served in six administrations, Republics and Democrats, to accept.
		This is off the line of our conversation, but it's critically important.
		Accept the kind of damage and destruction that is being done to the norms and institutions of this republic in the interests of the me, not we.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		You said domestic politics is obviously important for a president here on this issue.
		I want to share a few headlines for you and get your reaction.
		The Hill newspaper noting this morning the action in the Senate on the Senate floor yesterday, Senator Sanders offering a number of amendments.
		And the Hill headline is, record number of Senate Democrats vote to block weapon sales for Israel.
		The number of Democrats increased the highest number they've seen on this issue.
		And it matches, they note in the Hill newspaper, the unfavorable rating for Prime Minister Benjamin Yetanyahu, which is at 52%, its highest since 1997 for the prime minister.
		On top of that, you have headlines about the MAGA movement.
		This is President Trump, the Politico with this headline.
		It says, MAGA is turning on Israel over Gaza, but Trump is unmoved.
		And then you also have the Hill newspaper, Marjorie Taylor Greene, calls Gaza humanitarian crisis a genocide.
		What is the domestic politics right now, Aaron David Miller?
unidentified		You know, I think it's fascinating.
		I've watched this for decades now.
		And the U.S.-Israeli relationship was once a bipartisan issue.
		It transcended party politics.
		You had strong support on the part of the Democrats and the Republicans and independents, and that was reflected in public opinion polling.
		Over the last 20 years, I think it's quite clear, as Israel has moved to the right, that Israel's image in America has undergone a transformation.
		In some constituencies, absolutely that is the case.
		But it's always been my contention that the adhesive that binds these two countries together basically depends on one element, and that is value affinity.
		The perception that America and Israel share common values.
		A pluralistic, humanistic tradition, a democratic tradition, despite the complexities of the Israeli political system and the differences from ours.
		I think that's changing.
		The image of Israel in the mind of America, as I would describe it, is changing.
		It's clearly generational in character.
		There's no doubt about it.
		Look at 2023 and the eruption of protests on college campuses.
		Still a minority, but extraordinary.
		I was at the University of Michigan in the late 60s, early 70s, and you had protests over Vietnam, but not since Vietnam.
		Has any foreign policy issue gripped campuses as Israeli and Palestinian issues have.
		So I think the image of Israel, yes, is changing.
		The Pew Polls suggest that.
		And I think it's in large part driven by the fact that Israel has moved to the right, particularly under the tenure of Benjamin Netanyahu, who in my judgment has worked in many respects in tandem with Republicans over the course of the last decade.
		He's now the longest governing prime minister in the history of the state of Israel, working with Republicans and helping and doing his part to turn what had been a bipartisan relationship into one that is now very partisan.
		Yes, there are MAGA voices.
		Marjorie Taylor Green that talks about Israeli committing genocide.
		You have Republicans.
		They're still outliers wanting to end all U.S. military and other assistance to Israel.
		But the Republican Party, by and large, has become the go-to party, the Israel right or wrong party.
		On the Democratic side, that's where the change to me is most striking.
		And during the course of the last 18 months, you had the three Chris's, Van Hollen, Murphy, and Kuhns, all at one point or another raise the issue of conditioning or restricting U.S. military assistance to Israel.
		And now you have the Senate vote.
		What were the final numbers, 70 to 20, 70 to 20, something like that?
		But a quarter of the Democratic Senate is calling for a halt to military assistance to Israel.
		So these are headlines.
		My question, and I'm still debating this and I don't have the answer, will the headlines turn into what I would describe to you as trend lines?
		Has the image of Israel over the course of the last 20 years been so profoundly shaped by some of its policies, particularly into the tenure of one Benjamin Netanyahu?
		And has the Republican effort, on the other hand, which has also sought to paint the Democrats as being hostile to the state of Israel, which is clearly unfair, has that helped?
		And I think both are eroding, in my judgment, the one necessary and essential requirement for a strong and healthy U.S.-Israeli relationship.
		And let me be very clear about this relationship.
		We have a special relationship with Israel.
		We do not have an exclusive relationship with Israel, nor should we.
		We have our own interests.
		We need to pursue them.
		Israel is a partner, a friend, and I still believe an ally.
		And I would point out to you that if I were to find what is an American ally, what are the three ingredients that make countries around the world allies of the U.S.?
		Well, there are treaty relationships.
		We have alliances, formal treaty relationships with Japan and, for example, with South Korea.
		We do not have a formal treaty relationship with Israel.
		But there are still three elements.
		A high degree of coincidence of interest.
		That's one.
		A high degree of coincidence of values.
		That's two.
		And a strong base of domestic support, or at least a favorable base of domestic support.
		Canada's an ally, France is an ally, Germany's an ally, Australia's an ally, New Zealand's an ally, Germany's an ally, Japan's an ally.
		I worry greatly about the three elements that defines an American ally when it comes to Israel.
		I worry greatly.
		Is there a common coincidence of interests which makes sense for both countries?
		Is there a coincidence of values?
		Of course, we've seen huge democratic backsliding on the part of the United States.
		Freedom House reported in 2019 that the world's two largest democracies, the U.S. and India, suffered the most precipitous decline in the norms and institutions of democratic political life.
		I mean, I take a long look at our democracy.
		before I'd start casting aspersions about others.
		But again, Israel's base of support in the U.S. is eroding.
		We have, in my judgment, acute differences with the Israelis on several key issues.
	And I worry greatly about the values.
	And I don't see, I see more disharmony now in the way the Israeli government behaves, including the current government's efforts to rearrange the Israeli political system to emasculate the judiciary and end the influence and judgments of the Israeli Supreme Court.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		We've got calls waiting for you, Aaron David Miller.
		I'll just note in the votes in the Senate, senators voted 27 to 70, 27 in favor, 70 to defeat Senator Sanders' resolution, which sought to block more than $675 million in weapons sales to Israel.
		Robert, Nashville, Tennessee, Republican.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, with filibuster with your guests here.
		It's unbelievable.
		With friends like Israel, who needs friends?
		You have listed here Israel-Hamas war.
		This is not a war.
		This is a slaughter.
		Hamas has no naval ships, has no tanks, has no Air Force.
		And as usual, the party that's in power here has all the control.
		And what we're seeing, you know, we've been, the United States has been led by their nose, pulled by their nose by the Israeli government to the point where we've given them 30 billion over the last year.
		And where has it gotten us?
		Okay.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Robert, let's, Aaron David Miller, take Robert's characterization there and respond to it.
unidentified		Look, well, there's Director Robert, he's a Republican, right?
		So maybe he voted for Donald Trump, maybe he didn't.
		But I would direct Robert's, at least one of Robert's points, to the fact that you have a U.S. president who essentially won't embrace an end of the war and continues.
		I think if Donald Trump has his head of drugs, and I think he actually has intimated this over the course of the last several days, he would simply allow Benjamin Netanyahu to continue Israeli military ops in Gaza for as long as it took, not just to hollow out Hamas as a military organization.
		Robert's correct in terms, he hasn't spoken to Hamas's capacity, but the Israelis have hollowed out Hamas as a military organization.
		But Hamas still exists as an insurgency.
		It still lays IEDs down.
		Israeli soldiers continue to die and are wounded there.
		And Hamas maintains the power of the weak.
		I pointed this out earlier.
		Israel is the most vaunted, powerful military actor in the Middle East.
		And yet on October 7, Hamas managed to inflict a degree of pain and suffering on Israeli soldiers and civilians unprecedented in the history of the Arab-Israeli-Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
		The single bloodiest day, October 7, since the end of the Nazi Holocaust.
		So, I agree, I agree, again, by inference, I agree with Robert that the Israelis have destroyed Hamas as an organized military organization.
		But by no means is Hamas over and done as an insurgency.
		And that's exactly what Hamas is counting on now.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What has Israel done to the Palestinian people?
unidentified		Look at the casualty numbers.
		Look at the death tolls.
		They speak for themselves.
		Even if you deduct 15 to 20,000 of the 58,000 that the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health is reporting, that's an extraordinary toll.
		And it's driven by the fact, in my judgment, the Israelis have prosecuted a war against Hamas, an organization that essentially embeds its military assets in and around and below civilian structures.
		But even given that, the Israelis have engaged in what I call risk transfer.
		They have clearly upped the numbers of Palestinian civilians that they are willing to tolerate in terms of deaths and injuries in an effort to prosecute this war.
		And that in part accounts, it seems for me, for the elevated, extraordinary, exponential rise of Palestinian deaths.
		Not to mention, I might add, and we talked about it before, Greta, the humanitarian catastrophe, which has taken its toll.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Lance is next in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
		Democratic caller.
		Morning, Lance.
unidentified		Good morning, Greta.
		Good morning, sir.
		Let's put aside the hyperbole and the philosophy, and let's talk facts.
		I'm speaking as somebody whose great-grandfather worked with Ziero Herzol to create the state of Israel, whose grandmother helped make that state a beautiful place.
		There are forests dedicated to my grandmother in Israel.
		And I was raised with it and taught by people who had the numbers on their arms, who told me what the Gestapo was really like.
		And I have watched all my life in one point or another, as the Israelis have tried to deal with the Palestinian question, which is based on a lie called the Nachbah, which never happened.
		The Arabs living in that area were welcomed into the state of Israel, were begged to join, and many did.
		And many serve in the army, and the Knesset is only open four days a week to honor all the religions that live in that area.
		But there were some, and you need to remember during World War II, the people that were in control of that area were very friendly with the Third Reich.
		And that's the people that went, when the state was created, said, I'm not going to live next to the dirty Jews.
		I'll leave and we'll join together and we'll attack and we'll annihilate them, which has been their idea since then.
		It's the only real idea of genocide that's in there.
		What Israel has ever done to the Palestinians is not genocide.
		They are not a single, single ethnic group like Armenians.
		They have brothers in Jordan and in Saudi Arabia.
		And no one's talking about killing all the Arabs.
		The only genocide that's preached here is Hamas.
		The goal, and that is their drive.
		In 1967, I was on the beach in Gaza, a beautiful stretch of Mediterranean beach that could have been developed with all the foreign aid that came into Gaza and into the PLO, and they never did it.
		In 1967, my last day in Israel, I spent eight hours in a bomb shelter as insurgents from Gaza crossed over and attacked the agricultural school that I was staying at.
		Real dangerous military target, a bunch of children and teenagers at an agricultural school.
		And I had to spend eight hours in the bomb shelter as the IDF fought them off and dealt with them.
		And the only way that one can deal with them is to kill them.
		And through the years, I have watched Israel try to trade land, try to bend over backwards to suit these people, to give them a chance.
		But the same idea of I'm not going to live next to the dirty Jew is still there.
		They try to accord and have numbers.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to surge your points.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to turn to Aaron David Miller to get his response.
unidentified		Look, I mean, what can I say?
		I profoundly disagree with almost everything that the caller has said.
		I think it's a view that refuses to take into account that in essence there is another side to the story.
		I would never want to exonerate Palestinians or the Arabs for their own role and their own complicity in perpetuating this conflict.
		There's no question about that.
		But it's also been my view that this is not one-hand clapping.
		It is a complicated requirement.
		It is Goethe's definition, I would argue, of a tragedy.
		I would argue you have two competing justices here.
		The caller won't concede that.
		The caller suggests that it's essentially a morality play.
		I don't believe that.
		And we can argue all day long about history and who did what to whom.
		The question, I think, becomes, what do we do now?
		How do we reconcile the requirements of Israel and Palestinians?
		And frankly, if you ask me right now, is there a way, an easy way to do this?
		I would say absolutely not.
		I spent the better part of 25 years working with Israelis and Palestinians, Israelis and Syrians, Israelis and Jordanians to test the proposition that in essence there can be agreements based not on an imbalance of power, but on a balance of interest.
		That's why agreements last, whether it's good marriages, good business propositions, good friendships, or good diplomatic agreements.
		It's a balance of interest.
		Israel and Jordan found that balance.
		Israel and Egypt found that balance.
		We worked for decades trying to get Israelis and Syrians into direct negotiations.
		Syrians refused.
		And now, in an extraordinary turnaround, you have the government at Ahmed Shara, a former Jabbat al-Nusra, head of a Syrian al-Qaeda derivative, shedding that image, to be sure, now, meeting directly at senior levels with Israeli officials.
		And Israelis and Lebanese have managed, and I think can find a way.
		The question is whether Israelis and Palestinians can.
		And frankly, I don't know the answer to that.
		I would like to think, yes, despite what they've done to one another, despite the asymmetry of power, which the Israelis clearly have, that they can find a way.
		And I don't, I mean, maybe the caller has already agreed it's impossible.
		I got two kids and four grandkids.
		And I have to tell you, to say never, to basically abandon the notion that there can actually be a conflict-ending solution.
		I don't have a right to do that.
		And neither does the caller.
		I'm on this planet for a very short period of time.
		I don't have the right to mortgage my children's future, my grandchildren's future, let alone the futures of Israelis and Palestinians.
		So I have to be open to, and I will continue to be open to the possibility that with the right leaders, we can find a way forward.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What have the Arab countries that you mentioned done to help the Palestinians?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		And do they have a responsibility to do so?
unidentified		Well, they certainly, in their rhetoric for decades, each for their own reasons, particularly the confrontation states, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon.
		With the exception of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, the three of them, all had bloody confrontations with the embodiment of Palestinian nationalism, the PLO.
		The Abraham Accord countries removed from the confrontation line, but all of them essentially, year after year, decade after decade, talked about the importance of redeeming Palestine.
		The Egyptians and the Jordanians were very supportive of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians during the 90s and the early aughts.
		But I just find it remarkable that none of them, they've watched largely with rhetoric.
		The Emiratis have done stuff practically on the ground.
		The Egyptians have taken significant but not large numbers of Palestinians for humanitarian reasons.
		Jordanians, fewer, but some.
		And the Jordanians have provided humanitarian assistance through airdrops and overland truck deliveries.
		But have any of them imposed any costs on the current government of Israel?
		I'm not arguing for breaking relations, but it's extraordinary to me.
		And it's a stunning reminder and reflection of how the Middle East has changed over the course of 20 years.
		The redemption of Palestine is simply no longer as acute, certainly for the Arab authoritarians and for the Gulf states, as it was.
		Just amazing.
		The Emiratis and the Israelis have the most extraordinary relationship.
		They've gone far beyond what the Israelis and Jordanians have been at peace with one another since 1994 and the Egyptians, the Israelis, at peace since 1979.
		The Emiratis have gone far beyond that in terms of human-to-human contact.
		The kind of stuff, Greta, that you and I would recognize as normal peaceful relations, which the Jordanians and the Israelis, the Egyptians and Israelis don't have.
		But at the same time, they've done very little in terms of trying to get the Americans and the Israelis to change their policies.
		I just find it stunning, frankly.
		It would not have been the case 20 years ago, but it is the case today.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
		Thank you, sir, for the conversation this morning.
		We appreciate it.
unidentified		Thank you, Greta.
unidentified		It was great being with you and the callers.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		Up next, we're going to turn our attention to the economy front page of the Wall Street Journal: Economy Returns to Growth.
		And Howard Luttnick, the president's commerce secretary, says: It is now a Trump economy.
		We want to know how you would rate the president's handling of the economy.
		There are the lines on your screen.
		We'll get to that conversation in just a minute.
		Why are you doing this?
unidentified		This is outrageous.
		This is a kangaroo quarrel.
		This fall, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity: Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins.
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		Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend.
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		Then at 9 p.m. Eastern, national political reporters Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf offer a behind-the-scenes account of the 2024 presidential election that sent Donald Trump back to the White House for a second non-consecutive term after a litany of criminal and civil investigations and two assassination attempts in their book, 2024.
		Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
		Washington Journal continues.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We are back this morning with how you would rate President Trump's handling of the U.S. economy.
		His commerce secretary yesterday said the era of the Trump economy is here and that he owns it now.
		That follows a positive GDP report.
		The Wall Street Journal, The Economy Returns to Growth.
		GDP rose at 3% rate in the second quarter, but signs of weakness emerge.
		Listen to President Trump's analysis of the state of our economy yesterday at the White House.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		The number of 3% the pace in the second quarter was smashed all expectations.
		They thought it would be maybe a little bit less than two.
		And it was three, a little bit more than three.
		Consumer spending is up.
		Business investment is way up.
		Domestic manufacturing is way up.
		Real disposable family income is up.
		And personal savings are up.
		Other than that, we're not doing so great.
		We have the hottest country, and I'll tell you, it's a great, we're having a lot of fun with it.
		At the same time, we dramatically slashed government spending for the second quarter in a row, down nearly 4%, which people were surprised at.
		We do a lot of cutting also.
		The private sector has boomed with nearly 600,000 jobs added, way above expectations, while we have reduced the federal workforce by 70,000 jobs.
		So these are private jobs that are coming back to our country.
		Federal jobs are being cut.
		Critics said that our tariffs would hurt the economy, but the data shows the exact opposite and the exact opposite is happening.
		The U.S. Treasury has taken in $150 billion from tariffs and will be adding about $200 billion next month for totals that nobody's ever seen before, frankly.
		And foreign imports were down 30% in the second quarter while the domestic auto production surged by a stunning 36%.
		How about that number, Dr. Roz, right?
		That's good.
		That's good.
		We want to do that with your patients, too.
		We'll have a very healthy, we're going to have a very healthy country.
		At the same time, inflation continues to fall faster than expectations.
		And for the fifth consecutive month, core inflation was lower than predicted substantially.
		This is truly the dawn of the golden age of America.
		That's what we're in.
		We want to keep it that way.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		President Trump at the White House yesterday on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
		Democrats read the GDP report a little differently.
		Here is Democratic leader Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		So this morning, we got more worrying news showing how Donald Trump's administration is raising costs and sowing chaos in the economy.
		The New York Times headline put it succinctly.
		U.S. economy slowed in the first half of 2025 as tariffs scrambled data.
		And while the Trump administration will try to wave rosy headlines about the Q2 number, today's GDP number is in fact a mirage because some ominous numbers lurk under the hood.
		Business investment plunged in the second quarter by 3.1%.
		The fact that business investment plunged so starkly is very troubling.
		It shows that already businesses are worried about growing their operations, worried about hiring more workers, worried about trading with their international partners, and worried in general about the future.
		And this number is another data point in a larger pattern.
		Donald Trump's tariffs are weighing down the U.S. economy, spiking costs for small businesses and families alike.
		And if Donald Trump keeps up the chaos, the dangers for the economy will continue to get worse.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Democratic Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer with his insight into that GDP report.
		How do you rate President Trump's handling of the economy?
		A new poll by Reuters that was released today before the GDP report found that 38% of respondents approved of President Trump's handling of the economy.
		80% of Republicans approve while 16% disapprove.
		And 92% of Democrats disapprove while 4% approve.
		Let's hear what all of you have to say on this.
		Isaiah and Kansas City, Missouri, Independent, how would you rate the president's handling of the economy?
unidentified		Well, to be true, which I was trying to get in on the line when you were talking about Palestine and Israel, you know, and I thought that's what he was taking calls on.
		But, you know, since I'm already on, You know, I don't know.
		I mean, as far as my personal self, I don't see no different myself.
		You know, I'm just being truthful about it.
		You know, I don't see no different.
		I still got my same bills, you know, and some of the prices of stuff have gone higher, you know, than it normally is.
		So I don't know.
		I'll leave that for the so-called experts.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		All right.
		Shane, we'll go to you in Delaware, Democratic caller.
		How would you rate the president on the economy?
unidentified		First of all, Greta, it's such a pleasure to talk to you.
		I love Thursdays.
		The president's rating on the economy, I just look at it as all negative.
		When you don't have people with health insurance, I don't know what to say.
		But, Greta, I, like the previous gentleman, is I'm calling about the Israeli mess over there.
		When I look at Israel, let's look at, let's just talk about it being an apartheid state.
		Remembering that when South Africa was an apartheid, Israel and the United States were the last two supporters of that regime.
		You know, when you have the Palestinians in a limited space, they can't leave because of checkpoints.
		And I'm wondering how the grandkids of apartheid are going to feel.
		All right.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Shane, I'm going to stick to the topic here this morning.
		We're talking about the economy and the president's handling of it.
		Sandra, in Ashland, Virginia, independent caller.
		Sandra, go ahead.
unidentified		I'm sorry.
unidentified		My name is Kendra, not Sandra.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Kendra.
unidentified		Hi, I would like, I would say I would rate Trump and E for effort in making steps towards fixing the economy.
		However, I'm wondering why this question wasn't asked like in 2023 or 2024 when Biden was president.
		Within a week of Trump's presidency, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have been getting on TV complaining that Trump said he would lower prices and prices are not lower.
		It's almost laughable to think that an economy can do a full 80 in six months or seven months, let alone a week.
		All right.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Kendra, go back and look into the archives.
		I am sure you will find many times that here on this program, we talked about the former president's handling of the U.S. economy.
		Ruby in California, Democratic caller, how would you rate President Trump on the economy?
unidentified		His economy has done nothing for women.
		They've been subjugated in every way.
		And his economy, by slashing programs, are threatening the health of this country.
		I'd like to know what he's doing with all these billions and billions of dollars that he's getting from tariffs.
		And maybe he could skim that off and restore people's eligibility or access to health care.
		And when somebody says, oh, we've got to cut, we've got to cut.
		We've got this million dollars.
		Well, maybe you could just shave off a little bit of the tax breaks that his economy has provided.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Ruby's thoughts there in California.
		On tariffs this morning, here's a headline to share with you from the Washington Post.
		Shoppers are stressed, but some brands are raising prices anyway.
		And the Washington Post reports that Procter Gamble, the maker of Dawn dish soap, Charmin toilet paper, crest toothpaste, and tide detergent, said Tuesday would raise prices on about a quarter of its products, starting in August, in part because of the $1 billion tariff hit it expects annually.
		PNG's move could be a harbinger of increasing prices, including on groceries, household staples, apparel, and electronics.
		While spending data shows Americans are looking for bargains, economists warn that such price increases will further strain consumers, battling stubborn inflation, high interest rates, and rising personal debt and energy costs.
		Some retailers have already started raising prices.
		Walmart, a bellwether for the industry and U.S. Consumer has targeted baby, has targeted baby gear, kitchenware, and toys, items mostly manufactured in China.
		It also goes on to say that many Americans are using debt credit cards as well as pay later services to consume goods and services in the U.S. economy.
		Shoppers are stressed, but some brands are raising prices anyway.
		Part of our conversation here this morning as we get your thoughts on how the president is handling the U.S. economy.
		By the way, the president has set an August 1st deadline for tariffs to go in effect without any trade deals.
		And he posted on Truth Social recently, the August 1st deadline, tomorrow, is the August 1st deadline.
		It stands strong and will not be extended.
		A big day for America.
		Now, that's midnight tonight here on this July 31st that this will go into effect.
		Ahead of the deadline that the president has set, across from the White House today, an appeals court will be taking up the issue of the president's tariffs policies, whether or not he can use an emergency order based on fentanyl in this country to impose tariffs from other countries.
		That will happen today at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.
		And you can follow along with this court case if you go to our website, c-span.org, and also listen to our radio app, which you can find if you download the C-SPAN Now app, which is our free video mobile app.
		10 a.m. Eastern Time, an appeals court here in Washington will take up the issue of emergency order for tariffs.
		Gary in St. Louis, Independent.
		Gary, how do you rate the president?
unidentified		Yeah, so I think it's kind of questionable that we're trying to rate Trump's job on the economy.
		You know, he's just five, six, seven months into his current term, and a lot of what he's doing with the tariffs and his tax policy, we're not going to see the true effect that that has until the future.
		But I will say that, for instance, the tariffs, you know, they're on again, they're off again.
		They're 10%, they're 30%, they're off.
		That creates so much confusion for construction companies, for the automobile companies, for farmers who have to try to gauge their prices for the, you know, for what's coming up in the future.
		So right now, I think one person said, you know, I'm not seeing any change in prices when I go to the store.
		Rent is still high.
		People can't, if they can't afford things, they still can't afford things.
		And if they get a cut in taxes, well, that won't be taking place really until they do their taxes.
		And then even then, some of the tax cuts they have, especially for the lower income folks, that is supposed to sunset within a couple of years.
		So they might see a temporary benefit, and then it's going to change again.
		So I think the biggest problem with Trump's job on the economy is it's just uncertain.
		He's playing games.
		The manufacturers and home builders and people like that, they don't know what the prices for the goods and materials are going to be from one month to the next.
		So there's just a lot of uncertainty as with so much of what President Trump does.
		And so people are just clinging on to do the best they can.
		But I think when the tax cuts go into effect, just like his previous administration, we will see a growth in the national debt because tax cuts means less revenue into the Treasury.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Gary in Missouri with his thoughts.
		William in Wurzboro, New York, Republican.
		We'll turn to you.
unidentified		Yes.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We're listening.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Yeah, I'm here.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, go ahead.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Tell us your rating for the president.
unidentified		I don't know, like a B, I guess.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Why do you say that?
unidentified		I don't know.
		I think he's doing good on everything.
		I mean, for trade-in and tariffs.
		The only thing is that the, well, I live in New York State, so the prices are still high, pretty much high up here.
		I don't know if it's different in other states, but it's high.
		And, you know, used to be like $5.99 for a 24-pack of soda.
		Now it's like $18 for a 12-pack of soda.
		I mean, it went down to like maybe $10.
		Everything is going down.
		Gas went down, too.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, William with a B for the president.
		Volcker in Royalton, Minnesota, Independent.
		Good morning to you.
unidentified		Morning.
unidentified		Yeah, my opinion, the economy should consider planning the economy, should consider the environment, the impact we have on the environment, the carbon dioxide, monoxide production, and everything.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, and is President Trump doing that?
unidentified		If I remember right, no.
unidentified		Okay.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Tasha in Santa Clara, California, Republican.
		Good morning.
		Go ahead, answer the question.
		How would you rate the president's handling of the economy?
unidentified		Currently, I would probably give him a D.
		And the reason why I look at the prices here in the grocery stores and outlets, and everything is increasing quite a bit, especially ground beef.
		That was one thing that shocked the heck out of me.
		A pound of ground beef, the price doubled since he's been in this administration in Safeway.
		I see things going worse as far as economic conditions.
		I don't have anything particular I'm looking at.
		It's just the whole situation and all of the things that he's been enacting and these tariffs and things like that.
		I see, it's almost like we're at the tip of an iceberg and everything.
		We're about to go way down.
		That's all I want to say.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Tashay in Santa Clara, California.
		Program note for all of you.
		Tonight, we'll begin actually with this morning, 10 a.m. Eastern Time, coming up here on C-SPAN.
		The Senate Health Committee will have a hearing on healthcare costs and affordability, an issue that has been brought up this morning already on the state of the U.S. economy.
		We'll have live coverage of that here on C-SPAN on C-SPAN Now, our free video mobile app, as well as online on demand at c-span.org.
		Again, that's 10 a.m. Eastern Time.
		And then this evening, tonight, former President Biden will address the National Bar Association at its annual gala in Chicago.
		The event is part of the Association's Centennial Convention, and we'll have live coverage at around 8 p.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN.
		And you can also watch on the free C-SPAN Now video app or online at c-span.org.
		We will hear from the former president when he delivers remarks before the National Bar Association.
		Back to Calls in the Economy.
		David in Lansing, Michigan, Democratic Caller.
		David, good morning.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
		If people are hurting around this country and he's making a great deal for on taxes for the auto industry, the foreign auto industry, Toyota, Nonda, and it shows that Celantis and GM, The profits they're losing are lost.
		That goes to show the grade that the President Nell and his group in Washington is doing for the American businesses and people.
		Thank you.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		David's thoughts.
		Janet, Frostproof Florida Independent.
		Janet.
unidentified		Good morning.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Morning.
unidentified		Hi.
		I don't know what's the lowest grade I could give him, probably a double X, because I live on Social Security and I just read that Medicare is going to go up $21.50.
		And so people like me, it's really going to hurt us.
		I live in the state of Florida and everything has went up down here.
		Your power, your insurance, car insurance, and everything.
		And I don't know where they get to piss tariffs.
		It's not a tax.
		I guess it's all the Kool-Aid they drank.
		I don't know.
		All right, Janet.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So listen to a worldwide economic organization, that's the International Monetary Fund, upgraded the global economic outlook Tuesday because the U.S. tariffs haven't been as damaging as feared.
		It forecasts 3% global growth in 2025, down from 3.3 in 2024, but better than its 2.8 forecast in April.
		There's been little indication of systematic inflation from tariffs, and job numbers remain robust.
		The Treasury has collected nearly $125 billion in tariff payments this year or more than double the amount this time last year.
		Next to this article in the Washington Times is a headline about the President securing another trade deal before this August 1st deadline, which is midnight tonight.
		And it's a deal with South Korea.
		The deal calls for 15% tariffs on goods from South Korea, includes $350 billion in U.S. investments by Seoul and agreements to purchase $100 billion worth of U.S. energy products.
		The deal also requires South Korea to be completely open to trade with the United States, including accepting American products such as cars, trucks, and agriculture.
		The president announcing that deal on Truth Social yesterday, and another headline to share with you this morning is that 11 out of 15 trade partners have secured a deal with this administration.
		Yesterday in Washington, the Federal Reserve Chair went before reporters after the Board of Governors voted to keep interest rates unchanged.
		Two of the members who are appointed by Trump voted to lower interest rates, but the others voted to keep them unchanged.
		Listen to the chair, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's analysis of the economy.
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼		Recent indicators suggest that growth of economic activity has moderated.
		GDP rose at a 1.2% pace in the first half of this year, down from 2.5% last year.
		Although the increase in the second quarter was stronger at 3%, focusing on the first half of the year helps smooth through the volatility in the quarterly figures related to the unusual swings in net exports.
		The moderation in growth largely reflects a slowdown in consumer spending.
		In contrast, business investment in equipment and intangibles picked up from last year's pace.
		Activity in the housing sector remains weak.
		In the labor market, conditions have remained solid.
		Payroll job gains averaged $150,000 per month over the past three months.
		The unemployment rate at 4.1% remains low and has stayed in a narrow range over the past year.
		Wage growth has continued to moderate while still outpacing inflation.
		Overall, a wide set of indicators suggests that conditions in the labor market are broadly in balance and consistent with maximum employment.
		Inflation has eased significantly from its highs in mid-2022, but remains somewhat elevated relative to our 2% longer-run goal.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		The Federal Reserve Chair in Washington yesterday, President Trump this morning posting on Truth Social this about the chair.
		Jerome, too late Powell has done it again.
		He is too late and actually too angry, too stupid, and too political to have the job of Fed chair.
		He's costing our country trillions of dollars, in addition to one of the most incompetent or corrupt renovations of a building in the history of construction.
		Put another way, too late is a total loser, and our country is paying the price.
		Brad in International Falls, Minnesota, an Independent, how do you rate the president on the economy?
unidentified		I think he's doing a great job, and I keep listening to some of these people making these wild claims.
		I would tell them to really stop watching the likes of MSNBC and CNN.
		I think that they're being led down a path that's just because they control a Democratic Party.
		That's the bad part of it is that our Democratic Party is controlled by the media.
		And so, you know, good luck with them and their lives because they just don't have anything better to do than just live with the stupidity that they hear from that each day.
		And they wake up every day hoping that Trump fails.
		I mean, that's how un-American they've actually become.
		So that's all.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, we'll go to Jane, who's in Memphis, Tennessee, Democratic caller.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Jane, how would you rate the president on the economy?
unidentified		An F. Gax prices are still high.
		Food prices remain high.
		Utilities remain high.
		RIT too high.
		Credit card interest rate too high.
		What has he done?
		He has not done anything but help the rich and his cronies.
		That's all he has done.
		I give him an F.
		And it's not going to get better.
		We have seen from professional economists that shows that the inflation rate is going up constantly.
		I suspect by September, the inflation rate is probably going to double because at that time, the tariffs would have all come into effect in our economy.
		And it is bad, and it's going to get worse.
		Thank you for listening.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, James Fossaire, Charlie in Rosalind Heights, New York.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Republican, Charlie?
unidentified		Yeah, hi.
		I tried to get through.
		I'm not a Republican.
		I'm an independent progressive.
		I would give him an F too.
		He's making America more exploitable.
		And that's bad news for the American people.
		Everything is going to be more expensive.
		It's going to be harder to live.
		If you look at his foreign policy, as well as his national policy, I think he's indirectly responsible for the genocide in Gaza because he's supporting Netanyahu.
		This is not going to be good for us internationally, okay?
		Not only is it morally wrong, but it's not going to be good for us.
		He's doing the same thing over here.
		He's making everything more expensive, more exploitable with his attack on Medicaid.
		They estimate that 56,000 people are going to die.
		Handicapped people are going to be dying every year because of this.
		I think he's a fascist.
		He's not even a capitalist.
		He's a fascist.
		I believe he's running with a social Darwinian mindset where the poor people are supposed to die and only the rich people are supposed to inherit the earth.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Charlie there in New York with his opinions.
		Now, up in the Senate today, the Senate Health Committee, the Health Committee is holding a hearing, as we said, on high-income nations spending about half as much per person on health care as the United States.
		So, the cost of health care is the topic there.
		You can see the room there on Capitol Hill, and the chair has entered the room, Senator Cassidy.
		We expect other senators to follow here shortly.

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