CSPAN - Washington Journal 08/07/2025

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Aug. 7, 2025 07:00-10:00 - CSPAN

02:59:55

Washington Journal 08/07/2025

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Main

dr amesh adalja

14:30

tammy thueringer

cspan 33:54

Appearances

donald j trump

admin 01:45

jerome powell

01:13

mike flood

rep/r 00:52

Clips

donald j trump [ai]

admin 00:01

gen douglas macarthur

00:13

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mark in connecticut

callers 02:06

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		And the ways both political parties have used it over the years.
		With University at Buffalo political science professor Sean Donahue and later senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Dr. Amesh Dalja talks about recent changes made to U.S. vaccine policy by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
		Washington Journal starts now.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		This is Washington Journal for Thursday, August 7th.
		About half of U.S. adults say the cost of groceries is a major source of stress in their life right now.
		That's according to new AP Nork polling.
		The cost of housing, health care, and student loans are also among the sources of economic stress on the list.
		To start today's program, we're asking you, what's your biggest economic stressor?
		The lines for this first hour are regional.
		If you're in the Eastern or Central time zone, your line is 202-748-8000.
		If you are in the Mountain or Pacific time zone, it's 202-748-8001.
		You can text your comments to 202-748-8003.
		Be sure to include your name and city.
		You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ.
		Good morning, and thank you for being with us.
		We'll get to your calls, comments in just a few moments, but wanted to share more from that new polling.
		This from the Associated Press says about half of all Americans say that groceries are a major source of stress in their life right now, while 33% say it's a minor source of stress.
		It's according to poll from the Associated Press and Norwick Center for Public Affairs Research.
		Only 14% say it's not a source of stress, underscoring the pervasive anxiety most Americans continue to feel about the cost of everyday essentials.
		The story continues to say that groceries are one of the most far-reaching financial stressors affecting the young and old alike, the poll fines.
		While Americans over the age of 60 are less likely than younger people to feel major financial anxiety about housing, their savings, child care, or credit card debt, they're just as worried about the cost of groceries.
		It was yesterday at the White House that President Trump talked about the state of the economy as well as his efforts to bring down prices.
		Here is a clip from that.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Costs are way down.
		You know, I listen to these horrendous frauds on CNN and various other fake news networks, and they say costs are up.
		No, no, costs are down.
		Gasoline is down.
		It's going to soon, I believe, be less than $2 a gallon.
		It's around $2.40 right now, many places other than California where they tax you out of business, and a couple of others.
		But gasoline is way down.
		The price of groceries are down.
		How about eggs?
		When I first came here, my first week, the press hit me very hard on eggs.
		Eggs had quadrupled or something.
		I said, I didn't know about it.
		Give me a chance.
donald j trump [ai] ▲ ● ▼		I've just been here for four days.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Well, eggs are down.
		Everything's down.
		Price is down.
		The only thing that's up is stock prices.
		That's really up, and that's through the roof.
		The stock market has been hitting all-time records, all-time highs.
		Last week, it was announced that our economy grew at levels that we haven't seen in a long time.
		But the real levels of growth are going to be judged in a year from now when you start seeing some of these incredible plants because we have car plants opening.
		They're coming in from Canada, from Mexico, and from all over the world.
		And they're coming in because they like the way the election worked out, but they also like the fact that they don't want to pay tariffs.
		And the tariffs, I think will be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs.
		I won't be so specific other than to say because we don't even know what the final number is.
		We just made a deal, as you know, with the EU where they're paying hundreds of billions of dollars.
		Japan paying hundreds of billions of dollars and numerous other countries paying hundreds of billions of dollars.
unidentified		And we're not even completed there.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Here is a look of other economic stressors.
		The list, you can see this dark purple column is a major source of stress.
		The lighter purple there in the middle is a minor source.
		And the pink on the end is not a source.
		Breaking this down, the cost of groceries, 53% are saying it is a major source.
		The cost of housing comes in next at 47%, saying that it's a major source of stress.
		The amount of money you get paid is tied with 43% with the amount of money you have saved.
		When asked about the cost of health care, 42% said that is a major source of stress.
		Credit card debt, 29%.
		Student debt, 18%.
		And that is also tied with 18%.
		It goes with the cost of child care.
		For the first hour of today's program, we're asking your biggest economic stressor.
		The lines there on your screen of phone lines are broken down regionally.
		If you are in the Eastern or Central time zone, it's 202-748-8000, Mountain or Pacific.
		It's 202-748-8001.
		We will start with Janice in Orlando, Florida.
		Good morning, Janice.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		How are you today?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Doing well.
unidentified		Good.
		Well, my problem is multifold.
		I can't say that there's one thing that's the biggest, but since I live in Orlando, our insurance rates have gone up.
		The cost of, I'm still buying a house, I still have a mortgage, and everything has increased so fast that every single time you turn around, you're spending more money on just, you know, keeping your house, number one.
		I would not say, and the big stress factor about food is food is very expensive.
		And the biggest stress factor, as I just heard on your program, is that Trump is lying to us and saying, oh, it's never been so good.
		Eggs are up.
		This is up.
		Why do we have to listen to this nonsense from this buffoon who just, even when people ask him a question, he can't even answer the question directly.
		So for this person who's in the White House saying that eggs are up, everything's up, nothing's been better, that's stressful just to hear that coming from somebody who's supposed to be leading our country.
		So yes, food and also the cost of keeping my home going.
		Janice, you mentioned the cost of insurance.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		How much have what kind of rate increase have you seen?
unidentified		I would say about 20%, which is a lot.
		My house, to give you an example, when I was paying, and I'll just tell you the number, I was paying $719, which is very low because I got a low percent, you know, my rate was low.
		I paid 2.8 and what a low rate that you could possibly get on paying for your home.
		But I was paying $7.19.
		It's up right now to $7.51, and it's going to change again very shortly.
		And God only knows what it's going to be.
		So it keeps going up, up, up.
		I'm on Social Security.
		I have some savings, but I can see that I'm having to put that to other things.
		Right now, air conditioning went bad, so I spent $4,000 on that.
		Right now, it turns out because the house was built in 1984, I'm going to have to, I've been told, pay $4,700 to have pipes completely done throughout the house.
		So everything is attacking everyone, not just yours truly, but everyone across the country.
		The only people who are doing okay are the people who already have plenty of money.
		I went recently, I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area in Bethesda, Maryland.
		I'm here right now visiting people and trying to make a little extra money because I work on the side.
		Social Security isn't enough, and I'm almost 80 years old.
		And I'm strong enough to work.
		I'm trying to sell beans.
		I've been doing it for years.
		But I went back to look at the house I grew up in.
		My grandfather was a retired doctor.
		He bought our place.
		It was a farm right outside of D.C.
		And doctors in the Depression did not make a lot of money.
		So he sold all the land to WC and A.N. Miller.
		It turns out that Bill Clinton's one of his lawyers is now living in the house I grew up in.
		I went back to look at it, and boy, has it changed.
		But at any rate, that house now is worth supposedly three.
		Well, my brother thought three million.
		He's always checking on things.
		Now it's worth $5 million, according to his neighbor.
		And I'm thinking the rate of inflation has gone up so much that people, what you could use in the 50s was a dollar in what you could get.
		I could make $110 a week working for Eastman Kodak back then and survive.
		But you can't do that now.
		People have to make a fortune just to be able to hang on for dear life.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Janice in Florida.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Robert, who's in Worcester, Massachusetts.
unidentified		Good morning, Robert.
		I appreciate that woman from Polarida.
		What she just said.
		She hit it right on the nail.
		I'm going to tell you one thing.
		When this woman said what she just said, she was talking about Donald Trump is talking about we the people.
		He's talking about white people.
		He needs her.
		Anytime you see Donald Trump on television, he takes this white car fist.
		If you watch him, you're going to watch the fifth.
		He gives a white car fist and fucks TV as propaganda.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll leave it that there.
		We'll go to Carl in Rockland, Maine.
		Good morning, Carl.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		How are you doing this morning?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Do you know well, Carl?
unidentified		Yeah, I'm on.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You are?
unidentified		Yeah, yeah, I don't know why President Trump keeps saying that gas prices are down and grocery prices because I live in Maine and when Joe Biden left office in Maine, gas was $2.89, so we're 20 cents higher a gallon.
		And practically everything you buy, even with these tariffs, are not really taking effect yet a lot.
		Everything's gone up.
		My car parts has gone up.
		And so I don't understand.
		So I wish on TV once in a while that why don't they show a chart of these states?
		If he keeps saying stuff is so low, I'm getting pats on the back.
		My phone's ringing off the hook.
		Gas prices are down between $2 and $2.40 a gallon.
		Groceries are way down.
		They show charts for everything else.
		Why don't they show a chart up there?
		I'd actually like to see him put a little something behind what he's saying and he shows us How much tariffs he's taken on countries on charts every day, but but but I but basically, I live on social security and uh I get a thirty six hundred dollar a year pension and last year I'm single a veteran.
		I made sixteen thousand dollars and now roughly it's probably costing me get on car parts and everything else.
		The price of cars going up.
		It's costing me enough.
		I could barely get by what I was getting.
		I had a little money saved, but but but it's just getting worse.
		And I'm really what I'm really upset about in the story is what why are the American if we if we the American taxpayers pay these politicians to work with, but I like to ask these senators in Congress what exactly they're doing?
		They're letting somebody run an authoritarian government.
		They're letting them sue all sue all half of the lawyers' buildings, the attorneys.
		They're suing the colleges.
		Yesterday he's got he's got Kennedy cutting that off half the vaccines that he said he wouldn't do in his confirmation.
		And everybody says why they keep picking on Donald Trump.
		Well, if he wouldn't quit breaking so many laws and if he wouldn't keep going back on his word and when he was elected he said I'll be leave it there Carl we'll go to Donna in Michigan.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Donna.
unidentified		Good morning, good morning.
		I live just outside Detroit.
		It's groceries.
		I'm retired, you know, living out of pension and Social Security, and to see Trump out there absolutely gaslighting people lying, it's just hard to take.
		I guess that's all I have to say.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Donna, what kind of price increases have you seen at the supermarket?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What have you noticed going up?
unidentified		Beef which, from my understanding, has a lot to do with the drought, and feeding, you know cows whatever, but everything, everything's up, and not just groceries, all our goods are up.
unidentified		That was Donna in Michigan.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		This headline from Axios says, good luck finding rent under $1,000.
		It says America's affordable apartments are disappearing as luxury rentals multiply a car, according to Harvard research.
		It says that renters already burdened by high costs have fewer low-priced options to choose from.
		It says over the decades, units renting for under $1,000 a month that's ingested for inflation fell by around 30 percent, per report by Harvard Joint Center FOR Housing Studies says.
		Meanwhile, a building boom focused on upscale apartments helped nearly triple the number of units costing at least two thousand dollars A month.
		Highlights here, it says the big picture.
		It says a record 22.6 million renters, renter households, about 50%, are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than the recommended 30% of their income on housing and utilities.
		We're asking you, what's your biggest economic stressor for this first hour?
		Let's hear from Steve, who's in Lawrence, Kansas.
		Good morning, Steve.
unidentified		Hey, guys, good morning.
		You know, I think from the 30,000-foot cloud view, the biggest economic stressor is the allowance of the socialist Democrats to destroy all of our inner cities with these socialist mayors.
		We've got to make sure that these people like Mem Dani are never going to get elected.
		And you just wait till we start instituting.
		These are hammer and sickle old socialist Soviet Union kind of politics.
		This is not friendly, Bernie.
		We have got a crisis on our hands that the Democratic Party has abdicated and is going to lay back and watch these socialists go to the fore in the next two years, watch them crash and burn, and then Kamala is probably going to swoop in in four years from now and run.
		I mean, we cannot let our cities, our biggest cities, go to pot under communism and socialism.
		So we've got to make sure, do all the research you can, and then destroy the Mem Dani candidacy and make sure that he never sees election.
		And same thing for a girl in Seattle, same thing for Chicago, all these communist strongholds of the inner cities.
		God bless you.
		And MAGA forever.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Steve in Kansas.
		John, who's in Maryland.
		Good morning, John.
unidentified		Hey, guys.
unidentified		Can you hear me there?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, John.
unidentified		So in regards to biggest stressors, I think I can speak to the youth.
		I'm in my mid-30s, and I think the biggest problem is a lot of us were kind of sold a dream when we were in our middle school years and high school years that if we went away to university, there would be that ideal job waiting for you post-graduation.
		And a lot of us came out to a crash in 2009 if you graduated in the early 2000s like myself.
		And I know that there's a good amount of the baby boomer generation that looks around at us and says, you know, why haven't you settled down yet and gotten married and having kids?
		Well, there's a tremendous amount of us who have been stressed and weighed down by $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 plus worth of college debt, even more so if you went through your master's or your doctorate.
		And in an area like mine, Montgomery County, or in Maryland, or in any of these job havens that weren't as affected by the economic crashes where you have to live to get good work, the cost of living is through the roof.
		Your prior article said something to the effect of we can't find an apartment for less than $1,000.
		My current apartment, a two-bedroom, is $2,600.
		You've got to earn it from cover your rent, to cover your grocery bills, to pay for your car.
		And then that leaves you very little margins to take those next great steps in your life.
		So I would say there's a hidden problem that most folks aren't talking about.
		If you look at the birth rate of my generation and you look at the familial efforts of my generation, they are all being put on standby until we feel like it's safe enough to make a move forward.
		And unfortunately, for about a decade plus, it has not been safe enough.
		There are not enough margins.
		And people are really just kind of fighting to keep their head above water, especially in areas that both have the correlation and make and make great money, but at the same time, they cost a severe price to live within that area.
		That's all I got for you guys.
		And gosh, you know, all I can say is we can't always count on our government, guys.
		Love thy neighbor.
		Look out for each other.
		Potlucks, family time in the neighborhood.
		Come together and let's look out for one another.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was John in Maryland responding to our question.
		Your biggest economic stressor, that's our topic for this first hour.
		It was last month that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell spoke about when he expects to see more tariff-driven prices increase, cause increase in prices.
		Here is a clip from that event.
jerome powell ▲ ● ▼		I think you have to think of this as still quite early days.
		And so I think what we're seeing now is substantial amounts of tariff revenue being collected on the order of 30 billion a month, which is substantially higher than before.
		And the evidence seems to be mostly not paid only to a small extent through exporters lowering their price.
		And companies or retailers, sort of people who are upstream, institutions that are upstream from the consumer, are paying most of this for now.
		Consumers are, it's starting to show up in consumer prices, as you know in the June report.
		We expect to see more of that.
		And we know from surveys that companies feel that they have every intention of putting this through to the consumer.
		But, you know, the truth is they may not be able to in many cases.
		So I think we're just going to have to watch and learn empirically how much of this and over what period of time.
		I think we've learned that the process will probably be slower than expected at the beginning, but we never expected it to be fast.
		And we think we have a long way to go to really understand exactly how it will be.
unidentified		So that's how we're thinking of it right now.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We're taking your calls on our topic, your biggest economic stressor.
		Also getting responses on social media.
		You can also give us, shoot us a text.
		This coming in on Facebook from Jimmy says, college-age kids, very expensive.
		This from Scott says, yes.
		Oh, you mean which one?
		I'll go with home ownership if only the local and state would knock off the tax increases.
		And this also from Scott saying, housing costs in my area, you have to have a six-figure income to afford one.
		And apartments are just as high in cost with a two-bedroom fetching a minimum of $2,000 a month.
		Back to your calls.
		Let's hear from Michelle calling from Michigan.
		Good morning, Michelle.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Can you hear me?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I can, Michelle.
unidentified		Hi, I'm a baby boomer.
		And I'm like caught in between everything.
		And my biggest stressor is affording food and housing costs.
		That eats up my whole budget.
		I'm self-employed.
		I work seasonal.
		Therefore, I have to save money for like three or four months.
		And each year, well, the last three years, I haven't even been able to save enough to make it throughout the rest of the year.
		And what is this man talking about?
		Prices of food is down, gas is down.
		When the last time he's been to the grocery store or had the pump gas, that's what everyone elected him to do was to bring down inflation.
		But what is he doing?
		Playing games with these tariffs, being a bully about the tariffs.
		It's not really about making money for us.
		It's about strong arming these countries that he's imposing the tariff for.
		That's all I have to say.
		Everybody, wait, one more thing.
		America, please, we have to wake up.
		We are paying for those folks in Washington.
		They do not go without health insurance, without food, without money in their pockets.
		We are the Americans.
		We pay their bills.
		Let's stop paying taxes.
		Taxation with no representation.
		Thank you.
		That's it.
		And that was Michelle in Michigan.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Charles is calling from Livingston, Tennessee.
unidentified		Good morning, Charles.
		Yes, ma'am.
		One of the biggest things is the price of food.
		It's just going through the roof.
		And when they quit calling these tariffs, it's a tax.
		That's all it is.
		It's not, I mean, call it whatever you want to.
		Steal money out of your pocket that you don't have.
		And we're led to believe it's the poor working people that's getting some little something that's breaking us.
		It's not.
		It's the wealthy people sitting up there that's breaking us.
		They're getting all these big tax credits and stuff.
		They're the ones that's breaking us.
		They get, I mean, look how much money they're going to get.
		Elon Musk gets, what, $8 million a day from the government?
		Well, my goodness, that third is more than a lot of people down here in Tennessee makes in a year.
		And I tell you, the next big licks, when they start cutting Medicaid, you ain't seen nothing yet.
		People will not be able to have health care.
		And I don't know what old people are going to do.
		Should I just die?
		I mean, this is pitiful, but please quit calling this a tariff and start calling it a tax.
		Because down here, property taxes are going through the roof.
		I mean, it's below towns, they're raising 25%, 30%.
		It's just crazy.
		But it's not the poor people that's breaking us.
		This fellow is getting $100 worth of food stamps a month or whatever and stuff.
		It's the people that's sitting up there that's getting all this money.
		They talk about health care.
		All their health care is free.
		I mean, they get everything given to them.
		So give the working man a change here.
		And I thank you very much.
		Bye.
		That was Charles in Tennessee.
		Pete is in Massachusetts.
		Good morning, Pete.
		Yeah, good morning.
		Yeah, I will echo a lot of the sentiments I've heard.
		How about insurance costs, personal and auto insurance?
		Just terrible right now.
		Yeah, and the basics, groceries.
		But the rent thing is really bad.
		And I know people that have gone to fine institutions that can't find a job.
		I'm talking about good jobs that they thought they were going to come out with.
		But so, yeah.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Pete, you mentioned you talked about insurance costs.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What kind of increases have you seen with your rent or mortgage and car insurance?
unidentified		I would say depending on the state, 20, 30%.
		It depends on the results of that state for personal auto.
		It's, you know, that's something for people to keep their eye on for sure.
		One thing I'd like to add to my MAGA brethren is that he went to Scotland for five days of golf, came back for three days of golf.
		If you really think that this fellow is working for you, take another look because he is watching a lot of TV, eating a lot of fast food, and playing a ton of golf.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Pete in Massachusetts and Pete talking about the cost of insurance.
		He mentioned car insurance.
		This is from News Nation, the headline, car insurance costs could rise 7% by year's end amid tariffs.
		It says that car insurance premiums have skyrocketed in recent years.
		President Donald Trump's tariffs could drive them even higher.
		It says the cost of full coverage car insurance could jump by 7% to an average of $2,472 A year by the end of 2015, if prolonged tariffs lead to significant insurer losses, according to new Insurify analysis, says even without tariffs, drivers can expect a 4% rate increase in the second half of the year.
		The insurance comparison site projected in its forecast says in some states like Rhode Island, Michigan, Maine, and Delaware, insurance costs could be up more than 12% by year's end.
		Goes on to say the latest projections mark a sharp turnaround from the first half of 2025 when car insurance rates held steady nationwide and even fell in 27 states.
		Insurify said, back to your calls, hearing from you on your biggest economic stressor.
		Let's hear from Al, who's calling from Illinois.
		Good morning, Al.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		I'm just amazed at the price of groceries.
		My average cost is like, I used to be like $40.
		They weren't much more than that when I ordered.
		All of a sudden, it's gone up to $60.
		What difference?
		Nothing.
		The same product, the same amounts, but yet I'm paying 20, 50% more now than it was just a couple of years ago.
		This is amazing to me.
		And these tariffs are not going to help.
		Do you know this guy thinks he's going to take us over by creating such chaos and such issues in this country that we will be so concerned about putting food on our table, a roof over our head, we won't be watching what he's doing.
		And that's going to be the shame of it all.
		We live in a republic and we're about to go to some kind of over, I don't know what we're going to be next, a dictatorship, from anything I can see.
		This man is a bad, bad man, and he's not doing anything good for anybody.
		And I cannot believe there are people that adore him, adulate him the way they do, while they're paying more out of their pocket and working for less.
		To me, it's an issue that should be confronted by every single citizen in this country.
		I don't care what your ideology is.
		I don't care what party you belong to.
		The fact is, we are in a country right now where the old saying was, united we stand and divided we fall.
		Well, they're doing everything in their power to make sure we stay divided.
		And this is going to be an issue that we're all going to have to deal with someday, and we're not going to be very happy.
		The midterms right now, they're trying to seal the midterms already.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll leave it there, Al.
		We'll go on to Bob in Brainerd, Minnesota.
		Good morning, Bob.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yeah, Donald Trump brings up the price of eggs.
		Well, Virtu took care of that problem.
		And I live 40 miles from a farmer that lost 40,000 chickens in a barn fire.
		He doesn't seem to understand that you can't keep lying to the people, the people who's about to internet.
		But that's the way it's going.
		Every day, we're taking in billions and billions and billions.
		He never says that he gave 25 cents toward the national debt.
		I never heard that on TV.
		Ever.
		And I watch all kinds of news channels.
		Never has he said he's given 25 cents toward the national debt, but yet we're taking in billions.
		Thank you.
		That was Bob in Minnesota.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Victoria is calling from Wachball, Texas.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Victoria.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		Right now, the biggest stressor that I'm going through is the elected officials propaganda.
		What we're seeing in Texas right now, the elected officials walking out, leaving voter spills on the table unfinished.
		Redistricting is not the problem.
		I hope some people would educate themselves.
		If they go back to the Census Bureau hearing, that was oversight hearing in December of 2024.
		Some of that would explain the problem we're having with redistricting, the undercounting and overcounting in many states, not just Texas, Illinois, New York.
		Quite a bit of space was affected by the Census Bureau.
		Okay.
		And the other one that I'm dealing with is I'm a senior citizen, retired disabled veteran.
		Senior citizen lives on fixed income.
		Homeowners insurance have increased drastically.
		I know because of some of the disasters we're having.
		God bless the people that just had this disaster in Texas.
		My insurance was going up within six months by $1,000.
		So I had to change insurance, and it's difficult for senior citizens to do that to find reasonable insurance at this time.
		So those are the things.
		And I just want to say, I hope the people will bring God back, put these things and political views about others.
		It's not the person in the office.
		It's a demon that we're fighting, bigger than us.
		And I hope that we could come together.
		And democracy is for all people, but we have to have our legislators and our elected officials standing up, standing up, not fighting against each other.
		And I just pray, God bless Texas, God bless the United States, and God bless America.
		We need strong leaders.
		And I do know if we give our leaders a chance to do things and deal with these terrorists we will see the benefit.
		God bless America.
		Thank you.
		That was Victoria in Texas.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Victoria, just to let you know, at about eight o'clock, we will have a guest joining us talking about redistricting and what that looks like, how it's done, what goes into the process.
		If that's something you're interested in, stick around.
		Let's hear from David, who's calling from Florida.
unidentified		Good morning, David.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What's your biggest economic stressor?
unidentified		Well, I thank you.
		There's many, many.
		I live in Florida, okay?
		And first of all, I would say my most recent is the fact that my property taxes increased annually by about $5,000.
		Okay, so that goes up while our governor is taking $450 million worth of FEMA money and putting it into an immigration camp, okay, which is like ridiculous after last year's hurricanes.
		And then at the same time, I'm in my late 50s.
		And what's happening is our like social safety net is slowly being targeted by this Republican president.
		And I have to say to the woman who was just on who was like saying about God and let's all get together, the big problem is greed.
		And the greed is not helping us at our portion.
		I paid my entire life for that social safety net.
		And by the time he gets out, if he ever gets out, it'll all be privatized.
		Okay.
		And so that is the biggest stressor.
		These property taxes on a state-by-state basis, they're going up.
		And Medicaid and Medicare and our insurance premiums are all going to go up because of this big, beautiful betrayal that was just jammed through.
		And the one person who's winning, all the people who are winning, are these hundreds of thousands of millionaires that are out there.
		When I say that, I mean Jeff Bezos makes 230,000, he has $230,000 million dollars.
		It could take him just a million dollars a year to give his people benefits, but he won't do it.
		Okay?
		So it's agreed.
		And the uncertainty that this guy is sowing into America right now is going to destroy us for years.
		Our trade partners are all walking away.
		All these headlines that he talks about, they are fake.
		So I'm just frightened that these people who are so uneducated to support this guy, it's just going to undermine everything that we've built over the last 200 years.
		So that's my uncertainty.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was David in Florida.
		David talking a little bit about the tariffs.
		This is a headline from the Associated Press just a couple hours ago.
		It says Trump's broad tariffs go into effect just as economic pain is surfacing.
		It says that President Donald Trump began levying higher import taxes on dozens of countries Thursday, just as the economic fallout of his months-long tariff threat has begun to create visible damage to the U.S. economy.
		It says just after midnight, goods from more than 60 countries and the European Union became subject to tariff rates of 10% or higher.
		Products from the EU, Japan, and South Korea are taxed at 15%, while imports from Taiwan, Vietnam, and Bangladesh are taxed at 20%.
		Trump also expects the EU, Japan, and South Korea to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. Tariffs were one of the topics at a recent town hall that was hosted by Republican Representative Mike Flood in Lincoln, Nebraska this week.
		Here's an exchange between the congressman and one of his constituents during that event.
unidentified		In June, the transfer case in my car failed.
		I looked to get it repaired, but the price of the part had increased 30% since the start of the year, driven primarily by tariffs.
		With my car totaled, I started looking for a new car.
		In the two weeks I spent looking, I watched prices increase 10 to 15 percent on a variety of vehicles.
		The impact of tariffs had arrived.
		The car I settled on increased 12 percent.
		This is more than any tax savings I will see from the bill that was recently passed over the course of the next 10 years.
		When you return to DC, will you enforce Congress's power over tariffs granted under Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution?
		Will you protect average Americans like me?
mike flood ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I didn't get the second part, but I'll answer the first part.
mike flood ▲ ● ▼		We'll come back to it.
unidentified		We need to be a country that makes things.
mike flood ▲ ● ▼		And we found out during COVID that our supply chains were failing us.
		We want more American workers.
		We want to reinvigorate American manufacturing, which means we have to have free but fair trade.
		Why is it that we have to sell our cars into Europe at a high tariff rate and they sell into our market at much less?
		If we're going to fix this, it's going to require some decisions that may be temporary, but as we saw during the first Trump administration, our relationship, our trading relationship with Canada and Mexico and China improved, which meant more money for American farmers, better deals for manufacturers.
		We just have to onshore more jobs in America, and we need to be a nation that makes things.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		About 20 minutes left in the first hour of today's program asking your biggest economic stressor.
		Let's hear from Alexis in Michigan.
		Good morning, Alexis.
unidentified		Good morning.
		It's housing.
		And without stable, affordable housing, nothing else can flow from it.
		For people who are complaining about egg prices and beef prices, in this day and age, people are still eating cows.
		I can't believe it.
		Most of the world lives on beans and rice as a complete protein.
		And that's where this country is heading.
		So get used to it.
		Start buying your beans and rice now because people will not be able to and probably should not even be eating pigs and cows.
		Anyways, so back to the housing thing.
		And this is all because our government has failed to protect us from the Wall Street speculators.
		After the crash in Obama's administration, all the speculators came in and swooped up the dead neighborhoods that had been abandoned by people who could not afford their mortgages.
		They bought all those houses, and now they're charging thousands and thousands of dollars for them for rent.
		Or as the first caller today explained, you know, the house she grew up in the 50s in the DC area is now worth $3 to $5 million.
		Our government does not protect us from the Wall Street speculators.
		And my recollection is back in the 1800s in this country, if you are a land speculator, you are hung.
		And we need to get back to getting Wall Street out of our housing markets.
		It's unaffordable.
		Now, I have one other comment for you, Tammy.
		I know you're relatively new to this job, but I really wish you'd take a point from Pedro and Mimi, who do an excellent job.
		Open forum is open forum.
		When you start off your first hour with a topic, what is your major economic stressor?
		And you had some lunatic call in talking about the Democratic Socialists in New York, and you had the other one talking about a demon in Texas, you need to cut those people off and say, on topic, what's your economic stressor?
		Redistricting is not an economic stressor.
		Thank you.
		That was Alexis in Michigan.
		Let's hear from Bob in Florida.
		Good morning, Bob.
		Hi, good morning.
		I'm a retired veteran.
		I served 26 years, and I'm here in Hillsborough County.
		And, you know, before Trump even took office, every year prices went up in every element of the economic structure as we see it-auto parts, housing.
		There's not an economic stressor in the whole country that has not gone up every year from real estate to insurance to automobile parts.
		Here in Hillsborough County, I just got these letters saying I got to pay extra money for water purification in the county for trash And TECO, their prices are going up.
		And all this has been going on before Trump.
		It's just the way it happens.
		But I've been ordering parts from Italy, from the UK.
		And I saw all these stressors way before Trump took office.
		And it's not going to stop until people get together at the county level.
		and in the communities and look at the people in charge and say, why are we paying so much for these extra charges of water and trash when you're making a salary of $200,000 a year?
		That was Bob in Florida.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Harvey is in North Carolina.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Harvey.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yes, ours was our homeowners insurance, and we moved because of it.
		We were paying $8,000 a year where it started at $700 after 20 years.
		And we moved further away from the coast because we couldn't retire if we were going to continue paying $1,000 a month for homeowners insurance is what is now there.
		So we ended up moving away from the coast because we couldn't retire and live comfortably with paying the, we had a house that was paid for, but we were making a payment that was equal to a house payment until we moved.
		And now we're comfortable.
		It's a shame that we had to move away from where our kids and our family were.
		And the guy in Florida?
		He's so right about greed.
		That's probably our biggest sin.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Harvey in North Carolina.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Gloria is in Virginia.
unidentified		Good morning, Gloria.
		Good morning.
		My major stresses happens to be utilities.
		Now, I'm very fortunate that I was able to pay them and so forth.
		But the bottom line is a lot of people are not.
		For example, electric bill went up $100 this month.
		Gas also went up.
		Everything everybody said this morning, there's a little bit of truth in all of it.
		Because, for example, even with the cars, for example, I'm trying to buy another car.
		I cannot believe the prices.
		It's almost like a house payment.
		As a matter of fact, some of the monthly car payments are as much as what your house cost originally.
		Bottom line is that a lot of folks are getting so they cannot afford this, and I'm having difficulty too.
		But the bottom line is that the new thing in Virginia here is the no spend on Friday.
		Now, on Friday, you're not even supposed to go out to eat because even the restaurants have gone up.
		Because now, when you see your bill, it says at least 22% and more if you would like to.
		So that means, you know, 22 more, 22% more going on to your fabric, having dinner out.
		So as I said, something's going to have to be done about the utilities going up the weight.
		This is not including the air conditioning and stuff because we expect that.
		But it's getting so now that people are having to make a choice as to if they're going to eat or if they're going to pay the utilities.
		And you know, if you don't pay your utilities, you don't have any light, and you certainly haven't any television.
		So I have a feeling that Americans will have to tighten the belt now because times are changing.
		And when I say times are changing, nothing is going down, no matter what they tell you.
		Grocers are still stable because the farmer has to eat also who produces those things.
		And as far as the rent goes, I don't see how people afford it.
		Thank you.
		That was Gloria in Virginia.
		Ruth is in Temple Hill, Maryland.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Ruth.
unidentified		Good morning.
		My biggest stressor is loss of democracy.
		Democracy.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Ruth, just to appease Michelle, we're talking about economic stressors.
unidentified		I'll move on to the economic stressor.
		30 years ago, I'm in my 80s.
		30 years ago, I purchased long-term care insurance.
		About five days after that big, ugly bill was passed.
		I received a letter from my insurer telling me that my long-term care insurance was rising 55-0, 50%.
		I'm retired.
		My income is fixed.
		And now that I'm in my 80s, I get this letter saying 50%.
		How in the world is a person going to be able to pay that?
		The other economic stressor is food prices.
		I can't believe it.
		When I go to the grocery store, I just stop buying some things and only buying basically beans and rice.
		Something has to give here.
		But I'm not going to stay long.
		Just wanted to say basically that's my biggest stressor economically.
		It's all over the place.
		It's also homeowners' insurance.
		It's just like one woman said, utility prices.
		It's everything.
		Maybe AIDS have gone down, but you're not going to eat them anyway.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Ruth in Maryland.
		Ruth talking about her stressors, economic stressors.
		She mentioned groceries.
		That came in at the number one source of stress, of major stress, in a new AP Nork polling.
		One of the other costs or stressors on the list at 42% is the cost of health care.
		Ruth also talking about health care premiums.
		It was last month that President Trump announced that he was telling drug makers to bring down the price of prescription drugs.
		This is from NBC News.
		It says President Donald Trump sent letters to more than a dozen major drug makers Thursday demanding that they lower the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. within 60 days.
		It says in the letters which Trump published on his social media platform Truth Social, the drug makers were told to offer quote the full portfolio of their existing medications to Medicaid patients at the same prices paid abroad, known as the quote most favored nation rule.
		It says he also told drug makers to guarantee that patients on Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance get the same lower prices that are paid abroad for all newly approved drugs both upon launch and moving forward.
		Says that he also demanded that drug makers return any additional revenues earned to U.S. taxpayers and create a direct-to-consumer option for certain medications that would be offered at lower prices.
		About 10 minutes left asking you, what's your biggest economic stressor?
		We'll hear from John, who's in North Carolina.
		Good morning, John.
unidentified		Hey, how are you, ma'am?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Doing well, John.
unidentified		My biggest grip is all this cost of everything going up.
		Me and my wife got a hamburger yesterday and a water and a drink, and it was $16.
		And I used to get that for three, and I'd be 82 years old over my wife's 80.
		We didn't make a lot of money back, so we didn't pay you.
		We don't go a lot.
		That's all we get.
		But anyway, if it wasn't for having to send all week and eagles out, we'd have more money in the economy.
		But he's cost us a lot of money and still is.
		Steal is costing.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was John in North Carolina.
		Leonard is in North Dakota.
		Good morning, Leonard.
mark in connecticut ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Thanks for having me on.
		I think my biggest economic stressor is insurance cost.
		My homeowner's insurance has gone up about 70%.
		When I first bought the home, it was $200 a month.
		Now they want $500 a month.
		The land taxes have went up also about 100%.
		I was paying, when I first bought the home, it was about $150 a month.
		Now they want $500 a month for insurance.
		It's just gone crazy, the food prices.
		I see some real economic hard times for the country if things don't change.
		These inflationary costs are affecting every sector, which is increasing everyone's bills at once in every sector.
		So it's unmanageable.
		Hopefully we can get it under control.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Leonard in North Dakota.
		Kelly is in Illinois.
		Good morning, Kelly.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'm in the middle of a lot of my insurance cycles, so I haven't seen increases there yet, but I do worry about them.
		I did, however, go through my grocery prices.
		I have one of those grocery store things where you can see what you've purchased previously.
		And I found that my purchases between January 15th and March 15th totaled $989.
		And if I put all of those items in my cart today, they would cost $1,232, an increase of 25%.
		What I'd like to see C-SPAN do, what I see the CPI inflation numbers, but what I feel is much higher than those, is could you sometimes get somebody on who could explain what factors go into calculating the CPI numbers so I could have a better understanding of why my experience is so much higher than the published numbers?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Kelly in Illinois.
		Julie is in Ohio.
		Good morning, Julie.
unidentified		Hi.
		I am concerned about housing.
		There are so many single-family homes that have been purchased by investors, and that has caused the prices to go up and also forces some people to rent a house at ridiculous prices.
		I don't think that investors should be buying up our housing.
		And between that and the fact that we have so many new migrants to this country, our housing volume is extremely low.
		And seniors can't find a new place to live.
		Say if they have a two-story house, they cannot find a ranch that they can afford, therefore not moving the market so younger people could purchase their homes.
		The housing in Ohio, the greater Cincinnati area, has increased way over 100% in about the past five or six years.
		That is my biggest concern.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Julie in Ohio.
		Julie mentioning the talking about the cost of housing.
		That came in second on the list of economic stressors at 47%.
		27% said that housing is a minor source of economic stress.
		25% of respondents saying it's not a source of stress.
		Let's hear from Richard calling from Pennsylvania.
		Good morning, Richard.
unidentified		Good morning.
		The house insurance is definitely a problem.
		It went up like two, three hundred dollars.
		The auto has been the same.
		I have area insurance.
		It hasn't gone up in three years.
		I don't know why that is.
		I'm 83 years old.
		I guess that's maybe the good thing.
		I know we complain a lot, but the deficit is $37 trillion, man.
		If we don't straighten it out somehow, it doesn't matter what happens.
		Our country will go bankrupt.
		And then what?
		Then interest rates will be 20, 30%.
		And a lot of times when I go shopping, I know the prices are high, but I wait till an item goes on sale like butter.
		It's a ridiculous $4.49, but I can get it for $2.99.
		So I buy four or five at a time.
		You have to think a little bit what to do instead of complain.
		So that's all I have.
		And thank you for taking my call.
		That was Richard in Pennsylvania.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Virginia is in Kansas.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Virginia.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		My concern is: I'd like to know why or how the government estimates minimum wage state to state.
		For instance, Washington State is $16.25, Kansas is $7.25.
		The lower states, Georgia, Louisiana, all of those in their $7 bracket for the state minimum wage and the federal minimum wage.
		And I'd like to know what the government is going to do to make this equal all across the board.
		I mean, I don't understand how these kids that are graduating from high school can even afford their rent or even to get married.
		Two incomes at $7.25 cannot make, they can't make it.
		They just can't.
		And I don't understand why there's such a difference in the fluctuation from state to state on these minimum wage.
		Why are we not all on board with the same across the board?
		I mean, that would certainly help alleviate some of that stress on the lower income.
		I just, that's all I have to say: is I just, I'd like to know what is going to happen with that.
		Is it ever going to get better?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Virginia in Kansas.
		Virginia talking about the minimum wage.
		The amount of money you get paid is also on the list from the AP Nort poll showing most economic stressors for U.S. adults.
		The amount of money you get paid, 43% saying it is a major source of stress.
		32% saying it's a minor source.
		24% saying that it is not a source of stress for them.
		Just a few minutes left asking about your biggest economic stressor.
		Linda is in Colorado.
		Good morning, Linda.
unidentified		Good morning, sweetheart.
		My biggest stress, I join all the other groups, food, whatever, but my biggest is my life insurance policy.
		I didn't know I lived to be 80, and it has come to my attention.
		I am now worth more dead than alive.
		I can't keep affording my life insurance policy.
		And yet, I have a disabled son.
		I've been fighting breast cancer since for over half my life now.
		Little bills.
		I've always been good with money.
		I have always managed.
		I'm down to eating a meal every other day.
		My family doesn't realize that.
		But just trying to save money so that I can keep my life insurance in force.
		As I said, I'm now worth more dead to them than I am alive as far as money goes.
		And I don't know what they're going to do once I'm gone.
		That's it.
		It's the cost of everything.
		I don't know what's going to happen to my son when we're dead.
		He's on Medicaid now.
		He needs a hip replacement.
		I'm just gobsmacked, I think is the best word.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Linda in Colorado.
		George is in Missouri.
		Good morning, George.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		My biggest stress, I've got him my biggest stresses.
		The guy that's running this country, he's the biggest stressor.
		He's raising his stress.
		George, is that an economic stress for you?
		Yes, man, it is.
		Yes, ma'am, it is.
		It's the biggest, they better do some of us guy.
		He's running this country.
		That was George in Missouri.
		We'll get in a couple more calls.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Alex is in Alexandria, Virginia.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Alex.
unidentified		Good morning.
		While housing costs are probably the highest economic demand, I'd say the biggest stressor would probably be child care in our case.
		As an hourly employee, not only are we worried about covering the cost of child care, but also associated additional decrease in income when there are breaks in school or holidays and so forth for parents, particularly of young kids.
		I've had this conversation with several friends who are kind of in the same boat stressing about covering the cost of child care and balancing work with them.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Alex in Virginia.
		Alex talking about child care.
		Also on the list, it came in at 18%.
		Say it is a major source of stress for them.
		This is the headline from Oregon Capital Chronicle.
		It says, pay more for child care than your mortgage.
		You're not alone.
		The article says that the average annual cost of care in 2024 was $13,128.
		It's a 29% increase since 2020, outpacing even inflation.
		That's according to an estimate from Child Care Aware, a national child care advocacy group that calculates average prices every year.
		It says the rapid price of child care costs is swallowing larger portions of families' income.
		On average, a married couple earning the median annual income in their state is draining about 10% of their earning on child care.
		A single parent spends 35% of their income on child care.
		Let's hear from John in New Jersey.
		Good morning, John.
		John, are you there?
		Give one more try for John.
		We'll go to Michael instead.
		Good morning, Michael.
		You're in Washington, D.C. Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		I went to the store yesterday and I got hot dogs because I've seen them on sale too for five bucks.
		And man, it's crazy that you have to go and grab those things because the food is so high.
		You know, I used to enjoy steak, but it's just so high now.
		And you just have to get the little things that you see on sale.
		And I just hope that these bag won't prices go down.
		I mean, we really got to do something about that.
		But I appreciate you letting me stress myself with this economical thing.
		But yeah, we have to get these prices down.
		So thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Michael in Washington, D.C., our last call for this first hour.
		Next, or later this morning on Washington Journal, we will talk with Dr. Amish Adala-Adaljev from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security about recent changes HHS is making to vaccine policy.
		But first, after the break, University at Buffalo political science professor Sean Donahue joins us to discuss how congressional redistricting works and how both political parties have used it over the years.
		We'll be right back.
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		And we'll continue exploring America's founding with a walking tour of Boston's Freedom Trail, featuring stops at the site of the Boston Massacre, the Old State House, Fanyl Hall, and the Old North Church.
		Exploring the American story.
		Watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history.
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		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Joining us now to discuss how congressional redistricting works, including the process and how political parties have used it over the year, is Sean Donahue, a political science professor from the University at Buffalo.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Sean, thank you so much for being with us this morning.
unidentified		Nice to join you this morning.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We know we've seen the headlines recently.
		Texas is looking at redrawing its congressional districts.
		Other states may follow.
		Explain how often congressional districts are typically redrawn.
unidentified		Well, generally, congressional districts are redrawn in the year following the decennial census.
		This has been the case for about the last 60 years.
		And the reason I say that rather than, you know, kind of go back to the founding is that there was a period of time in the country where you didn't have as much redistricting because until the 1960s, there was not a requirement that the districts be of the same size as far as population.
		And you mentioned the census data in there.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What kind of information from the census is used and how important is that new information that comes out every 10 years?
unidentified		Well, the census provides quite a bit of important data for redistricting because it not only tracks how many people live in a state and where they live within the state, but it also has racial and ethnic data that gives us information to be able to draw, let's say, majority-minority districts or see if potentially things with the Voting Rights Act are violated, you know,
unidentified		and other information that would be relevant for drawing districts.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Normally, redistricting wouldn't make the kind of headlines that we're seeing right now.
		Why is it that Texas wanting to redraw its districts is getting the attention that it is?
		How common is it for adjustments to be made outside of that typical 10-year time gap?
unidentified		Well, it does happen, you know, outside of the year following the census.
		But usually whenever you have redistricting that happens outside of that period of time, it often is more because you have some type of judicial ruling, let's say, that strikes down certain districts or maybe requires some type of redistricting.
		What's more unusual that we're seeing right now is that this is a redistricting that's going on in Texas that is more by choice rather than something that's being required.
		And also, you know, what you're seeing in Texas is that Republicans are seeking to redraw districts that they actually drew themselves four years ago.
		So, you know, it's not that they're trying to replace, let's say, districts that were drawn by Democrats.
		I mean, they're trying to replace the districts that they drew themselves just a few years ago.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And as we look at the actual process, how these districts are determined, explain how that works and who can be involved in those.
unidentified		Well, it's something that is more determined at the state level.
		So the Constitution leaves this pretty well open because it says that states are going to be the ones that redraw districts.
		Now, some states have created commissions of some type.
		Sometimes you have independent commissions, bipartisan commissions, citizen commissions.
		But in most states in the country, it is the state legislature that redraws districts.
		And in addition to that, you have where governors have various veto thresholds.
		But what we're seeing in Texas is that this is a process that the legislature and the governor are in charge of right now.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		There can be, you mentioned some of them, but state legislatures can make the decision, advisory commissions, backup groups, or I'm sorry, backup commissions, political, politician commissions, and independent commissions.
		There is a possible push for more independent commissions to be drawing these and getting away from some of the bipartisanship.
		How has that shifted in recent years?
unidentified		Well, what you have seen is that in the past, you know, 10 to 15 years, you have seen at least mostly in states where you have the initiative and referendum process, where you have seen a move to take away some of this power from state legislatures to draw districts.
		For instance, you saw this in this decade with the redistricting in Michigan.
		But you've also seen states like Virginia and New York do this via the legislature and then where the constitutional amendment process requires that voters vote on these changes.
		So those are states where you saw that the power was taken away partially from the legislature.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Texas is a state where they are, the process would go through the legislature.
		This is something that they're trying to get done for midterm elections next in 2026.
		How long does it typically take the beginning of the process to final implementation to put congressional district changes into effect?
unidentified		Well, it can be done pretty quickly.
		You know, you just, you know, in states where it's the legislature that does the drawing, you know, you have various committees and things that where you're going where you would see where you would see some of these things go through hearings and such.
		But basically what you just need in Texas is that, you know, to have the state house and the state Senate pass identical versions and then send it to the governor for his signature.
		And then upon that, you know, you would have, you definitely would have Democratic groups and other and other citizens in the state probably are going to file lawsuits, but that would go into effect for the 2026 midterm elections, which you would actually, you know, you would need to do it a little bit sooner than you might think, even though the election is in November for the general election, because Texas has fairly early primaries and you have to consider people signing up, filing deadlines and such.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Our guest is Sean Donahue.
		He is a political science professor at the University at Buffalo.
		He's joining us for our discussion, explaining how redistricting works, how the process works, and how political parties have used it over the years.
		If you have a question or comment for him, you can call in.
		Starting now, lines are broken down.
		Republicans, you can call in at 202-748-8001.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		Sean, I wanted to ask you about a commentary piece that is in the Washington Times today.
		The headline, I know you can't see it, but it's gerrymandering is destructive no matter who does it.
		But this is a quote from it.
		It says, right now, 13 House Democrats represent districts.
		Mr. Trump won in 2024, while three House Republicans represent districts carried by former Vice President Kamala Harris.
		As recently as 2000, there were 86 districts where voters voted for one party for a president and a different one for one of their members of Congress.
		While split tickets and split districts make politics more challenging, they tend to make governing easier as those elected in such districts need to find a way to appeal to a broader constituency.
		When we hear redistricting, we often also hear the word gerrymandering going along with it.
		Remind our audience about gerrymandering and the impact it can have, as well as if there are any upsides to it.
unidentified		Well, I mean, some critics of gerrymandering say that it's essentially that instead of the voters choosing their representatives, it's the representatives choosing their voters.
		Because, you know, if you just think about this, let's say you're doing redistricting during the 1980s.
		You know, I've heard stories where, you know, you would have rooms with large maps all over the floor.
		You know, you would have, you know, spreadsheets of data, which now the thing is, is that the average everyday person can do redistricting on their own laptop or probably even phone.
		So another thing that we have to consider too is that, you know, we're also wrapping things up with that we have an increasingly amount of polarization in the country.
		So you know, we think about, let's say, the seven swing states from the 2024 election.
		Well, you know, outside of those seven swing states, you know, if you think of your red states and your blue states, there are no Democratic U.S. Senators now because Democrats lost their seats in West Virginia, Ohio, and Montana in the red states.
		And as far as Republicans in the blue states, the only person left there is Susan Collins in Maine.
		So I think that it's something where, yes, gerrymandering might be playing a role there, but we're also seeing the same thing within Senate races, which the thing is, is that you can't really gerrymander Senate races because it's a statewide election.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We have callers waiting to talk with you.
		We will start with Evelyn, who's calling from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, on the line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Evelyn.
unidentified		Good morning.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Evelyn.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		I was wondering how many blue states already have gerrymandering and why the Democrats are so against it when they do it all the time.
		Well, usually what you see as far as gerrymandering and parties criticizing it is that when it's their party that seems like that they're the victim of the other side trying to engage in partisan gerrymandering, that they're the ones complaining about it and vice versa.
		You know, one thing that we saw, you know, in the last round of redistricting, you know, about 10 to 15 years ago after the 2010 census, is that Republicans just had a lot more opportunities to gerrymander than Democrats did.
		What we have seen in the more recent round of redistricting is Democrats had slightly more opportunities than Republicans had a little bit less because you had where you had court-drawn maps in, say, Pennsylvania, an independent commission in Michigan.
		But yes, I mean, if you look at different states around, the state that is most often criticized for Democrats engaging in gerrymandering clearly is Illinois, where out of 17 House seats, you have where Democrats control 14 and Republicans control three.
		So what Democrats, if you look at the map in Illinois, did, is that you have a big concentrated amount of Democratic votes in the Chicagoland area, while the suburbs start to get bluer, then more purple, and then you get more red areas as you go out into other parts of Illinois.
		So what Democrats did is that they tried to unpack some of the concentration of Democrats in the Chicagoland area out into some of the redder areas.
		While in Texas, what you see is that Republicans have all this area in the rural areas and exurbs in Texas, that they're trying to unpack some of that by cracking some of the Democratic support in some of the major metropolitan areas in Texas like Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Sean, we had a question come in on X from Aztec says, has there been any state that has redistricted without bias or partisanship?
		So please explain why any state, quote, needs to redistrict.
		Why is this done?
unidentified		Well, one of the reasons that states need to redistrict is that every 10 years we get the census.
		And outside of, let's say, a state like North Dakota or Delaware that only has one member of the U.S. House, you know, there are population shifts that happen within a state.
		You have where the case, let's say, you know, in basically every census for the last 60 years, New York has lost seats, while states like Texas and Florida gained seats.
		So you have to readjust the populations of the districts so that they are roughly equal.
		Now, that's a little bit tricky of a thing to look at whenever you're talking about, you know, do you have a fair map or an unbiased map?
		Because social scientists and lawyers have been trying to come up with, let's say, is there some type of a test where we can look at data, where we can look at different things, maybe we look at shapes of districts to see if there's no bias or no, let's say, partisan gerrymandering going on.
		Now, this is something that going back to the 1980s, the Supreme Court had a majority of the court said, you know what, we think that partisan gerrymandering can be a constitutional issue.
		But the problem was you could never get five members of the Supreme Court to agree on anything as far as a test, as far as what could constitute an unconstitutional gerrymander.
		And then after Justice Kennedy retired in 2019 in a case called Rucho versus Common Cause, the Supreme Court said that we're saying that this is a political question because we never have been able to come up with a test of what is partisan gerrymandering.
		So that means that federal courts are not able to really weigh in here.
		Now state courts can, though that there's some limitation as far as weighing in on congressional maps from Moore versus Harper, a case involving something called independent legislative theory.
		But, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, what are you looking at?
		You know, are you wanting to have more competitive elections within a state?
		Are you looking more, let's say, is there some type of proportionality between how the state generally votes and let's say how the members of the U.S. House delegation or a state legislative delegation is put together?
		Because what makes it a little bit tricky is that in some states, voters are, for maybe one party or another, are very inefficiently distributed.
		So, for example, you haven't had a Republican House member in Massachusetts in 20 years.
		Is that because Democrats have really made the district lines to their advantage?
		Now, clearly, some Republicans probably are going to say yes, but one of the big problems is that Democrats are distributed pretty efficiently around the state of Massachusetts.
		You know, you have some states where Democrats are not well distributed, like in Wisconsin, not to the degree that you see in Massachusetts.
		But it's something that's kind of a little bit harder to kind of look at.
		You know, as far as in the two election cycles that we've seen in this round of redistricting, you know, you would probably, I would probably have to say that, you know, we've had a decent amount of competition in the maps, let's say, in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
		One in Michigan drawn by a citizen commission in Pennsylvania drawn by a special master.
		Susan is in Biloxi, Mississippi, calling on the line for independence.
		Good morning, Susan.
		Good morning.
		I have two questions, or one I'm more interested in.
		How many times in the past 60 years has a president of the United States called a governor of a state and demanded they redistrict?
		Do you want me to hit that one first?
		Yes, go ahead.
		Well, I mean, I think that there was a push by the Bush White House, though I can't say whether George W. Bush personally had called folks in Texas to try to get the state to redraw its lines about before the 2004 elections.
		But having a president getting directly involved is a little bit unusual.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Oh, we lost her.
		We're not sure what her second question was, but we'll go to Rachel, who is calling from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Rachel.
unidentified		Good morning.
		You know, I listen to you guys a lot, and I'm really starting to get concerned.
		When we read the Declaration of Independence, you know, if you don't mind a second, it says, you know, when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for the one people to dissolve the political bands that have connected them.
		And when it gives a list here, you know, what we're talking about today, it's like combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged to our laws, given his assent to their pretended legislators, you know, and abolishing our free system.
		It seems like everything that is listed in the Declaration of Independence is going on today.
		And it concerns me.
		I have children, and I'm not sure what I'm trying to say.
		I'm just really concerned.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to James in Atlanta, Georgia, on the line for independence.
unidentified		Good morning, James.
		Good morning.
		My question is in line with the last two callers.
		So I understand gerrymandering, and it generally happens after a census.
		Is it true that that's what the issue is in this instance, that it's out of sequence and out of line with when gerrymandering would generally occur and it's at the behest of a president?
		Doesn't that meet a standard of inappropriate gerrymandering?
		Well, I think that one thing that we have to, two things we have to kind of disentangle from each other is that every 10 years you have to do redistricting.
		Gerrymandering is something that, you know, that one side or another is going to say, is going to charge, let's say, the other side with.
		And, you know, you can have partisan gerrymandering and also racial gerrymandering.
		I mean, that's something that the Supreme Court has considered.
		But the one thing is, is that unless a state has within its, let's say, state constitution or state laws that prohibit mid-decade redistricting, while it is uncommon that it would happen outside of, let's say, some judicial intervention, it is not prohibited.
		You know, that's something that we saw that the Supreme Court weighed in on after the 2004 mid-decade redistricting in Texas.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Sean, when did Texas last redraw their congressional maps compared to now?
unidentified		They would have redrawn their maps prior to the 2022 election.
		So the current map was used in 2022 and 2024.
		And if and when this new map is put into place, it would be put into place for 2026, 28, and 30.
		Absent, they're absent, again, having a new redistricting, which is possible, or some type of judicial intervention striking down some of the new districts.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Zemay, calling from Maryland on the line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Zemay.
unidentified		Good morning.
		In line with Susan of Mississippi and the gentleman from Georgia, my comment is this.
		Professor Donahue, you're answering these questions as though everything is normal in our federal government.
		You have a president that has demanded that Texas redraw their lines because he knows his policies and everything he's doing is not working.
		So he's afraid of losing the midterms.
		So please answer the question as though what we're experiencing is that we have an idiot in the White House and the GOP in the House and the Senate are nothing but sycophants and idiots as well.
		Well, one thing that I would tell you is that in the last three elections, the margin in the House has been five seats or less.
		Currently, it's three seats whenever you fill all the vacancies in the House.
		So I think that one of the things that the current president is probably looking at is that whenever Democrats controlled the House during the second two years of his first term, things did not go well.
		And I think that he is probably thinking that if his party can pick up seats in Texas and Ohio, Missouri, and you can keep the control of the House of Representatives in Republican hands, that that would be pretty advantageous to him.
		I mean, I think that the push for so much of this mid-decade redistricting clearly is kind of new.
		And it's kind of set off a little bit of a tit for tat where Democrats are saying, you know, we're going to redraw districts in California and maybe some other states.
		Where they are definitely at the disadvantage is that there are more states with Republicans in control of the redistricting process without any commissions or anything than you have Democratic states that have free reign as far as redistricting in their states.
		Because for instance, in New York, thanks to former Governor Cuomo, Democrats gave up this power.
		And you have Governor Hochul is looking at maybe trying to give the legislature back some of this power.
		But the earliest that that could happen would be 2028.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Donnie is in Louisville, Kentucky, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Donnie.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yeah, the reason I was calling, I wanted to know, the Democrats always said that redistricting in Texas was illegal.
		And if they say it's illegal, why didn't they just stay and vote and take it to court, just like the Republicans did when Chicago did it?
		I mean, Illinois, New York, and I think Massachusetts, when they did it, they took them to court.
		And I think when the courts made them go back and redo some of the maps.
		So rather run off and waste your vote and do it the way you're supposed to do it.
		Why did they leave?
		Well, one thing is that Democrats have in Texas have basically been pretty powerless for the last 20 years.
		Now, you can file lawsuits and things against redistricting maps.
		And, you know, Texas has had issues with some of its maps going back to the 1970s.
		But you did not have in Illinois or Massachusetts where courts struck down any of the maps that were drawn by Democrats.
		So basically, basically the only kind of tool Democrats have left in Texas is that the Texas Constitution requires two-thirds of members be present to constitute quorums.
		So quorum breaks are something that have been in the history of the Texas legislature.
		You know, actually going back to actually in the 1980s where there were a group of Democrats whenever it was a heavily Democratic dominated legislature that were acting against some of the more conservative Democrats at the time.
		Now, I mean, Democrats could file a lawsuit against the new map in Texas, but they would have very little chance of having much happen within the Texas courts.
		And Texas is within the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is the most conservative or among the most conservative federal court areas in the country.
		And the other thing is, is that without Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which was the pre-clearance provision, you can file lawsuits.
		But, you know, you currently have a lawsuit against the current map that is still running its course.
		So, you know, you've had two elections.
		So the different lawsuits and things can take a long period of time.
		And what we have seen is that, you know, unless you have often a favorable state Supreme Court for one party challenging some of these maps, they tend to stay in, they tend to stay in place for the decade.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Sean, we have one last call for you.
		It's Moses, who's calling from Akron, Ohio, on the line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Moses.
unidentified		Thank you, Tammy, for taking my call.
		And I'd like to ask Mr. Donahue what he thinks about the idea of just getting rid of gerrymandering, which would mean that we wouldn't have to worry about redistricting.
		We would have to challenge the fact that the Electoral College would have to go away.
		It's not a new idea, but it's one that has to be looked at seriously because the way we're going now, we're going nowhere.
		Both sides use it.
		Get rid of it and then go to one man, one vote.
		And all those things about gerrymandering things go away.
		Each state would keep their senators.
		You wouldn't have to go through this thing about one state having a lot more population than the other.
		It would just simplify everything.
		And I guarantee you, more people would feel like voting because there are millions in this country who don't vote.
		And the reason why they don't, because they don't feel their vote really counts.
		And the last thing, think about this, Mr. Donahue.
		I'm willing to bet you if you went around the country and you asked the average American to explain the Electoral College, they couldn't.
		I understood it because we got it in civics, but I'm 83 years old, and some states don't even teach it anymore.
		So please explain to the listeners why it would be simpler if we just got rid of gerrymandering and went to and got rid of the Electoral College and just started one man, one vote.
		I guarantee you, this country would come a lot closer and a lot better together because right now it's chaos.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Moses, we'll run you short of time, so we'll get a response from Sean.
unidentified		Well, there's quite a bit in the caller's questions there.
		I mean, to get rid of the Electoral College, I mean, that would require a constitutional amendment.
		I mean, I don't want to speak for the caller, but I'm assuming that they probably would prefer a national popular vote for president.
		You saw some movement towards this in the early 1970s.
		You actually had a constitutional amendment that was passed by the House a couple of times, but it never was really taken up in the Senate.
		You know, as far as the other part, you know, you have countries like Canada and the United Kingdom that use first-past-the-post individual districts for their House of Commons.
		And there really isn't a lot of charge of gerrymandering those seats because they have boundary commissions that draw those lines.
		But I think that potentially what you could look at, you know, if you didn't want to have to have districts, I mean, what you could have is a system of proportional representation that a lot of other Western democracies have.
		Now, one of the things that, you know, in systems that have proportional representation, you generally do not have a two-party system.
		You have a multi-party system where you have to rely on coalitions and things to put together a government.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Sean Donahue is a political science professor at University at Buffalo.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Sean, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
unidentified		My pleasure this morning.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Later this morning on Washington Journal will talk with Dr. Amish Adaljev from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security about recent changes HHS is making to vaccine policy.
		But first, it's open forum.
		You can start calling in now.
		Here are the lines.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		We'll be right back.
gen douglas macarthur ▲ ● ▼		Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.
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		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back for the next 35 minutes or so.
		We are in open form.
		If there's a public policy issue you'd like to talk about, you can give us a call.
		We will start with Daphne, who's in Mulberry, Florida, Line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Daphne.
unidentified		Daphne, are you there?
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Daphne.
unidentified		Yes, I just heard your segment about redistricting.
		And my question is: if we were to have on both sides for redistricting an equal number of representatives, what would happen if those individuals just voted on the issue at hand?
		That way it would come from their experience, their ideology, and how they feel about that particular issue.
		And that's my question.
		Have a great day.
		That was Daphne in Florida.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Peaches is in Maryland, Line for Independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Peaches.
unidentified		Good morning.
		My question is not really a question, but I really don't understand why so many people of the world hate a man like Trump so much.
		It tells me he's doing something right, number one.
		And I've always been an independent, but last I voted for a Republican.
		I voted for Trump because I never seen a president to do so much in six or eight months as he has done and trying to do for this country.
		This country was in a mess.
		Yes, I voted for Obama in 2008, but I tell you like this, I did a lot of research, and now that I understand what's going on in this world, the United States was in a mess.
		And only Trump is trying to straighten it out.
		It's not his character or integrity.
		He was put there to build up this country and make it safe.
		And that's what he's trying to do.
		And I go along with it 100%.
		Thank you.
		That was Pietches in Maryland.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Ron is in San Clemente, California.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		On the line for Republicans.
unidentified		Good morning, Ron.
		Hey, Timmy, how are you doing?
		Listen, this is important.
		I have a thing about sadly the Epstein issue.
		And it's not going to go away for Trump in this particular case.
		It's not going to go away.
		And I'll tell you why it's not going to go away.
		First of all, when the suicide was reported, they started off with one minute of missing videotape.
		Then that expanded over to 3.5 more minutes added to that.
		And in that particular case, what happened was they didn't come back when they had the autopsy.
		They had four different reports on the autopsy.
		One, and all of them included three broken bones in the neck.
		The neck was broken three times, including a major bone in the neck, and even strangulation, maybe strangulation remarks around the neck.
		So without the videotape of showing Epstein's death, this is never going to get resolved.
		And, you know, the other thing is with Lissell Ghelan Maxwell is I wouldn't want to be this person.
		She's a loose end.
		And whenever you have a loose end in a process like this, you've got a problem with the fact that at any time, I don't care whether she's in an open camp or most secure president in the world.
		They can get to you.
		And if they release her, they can get to her there too.
		So I'd be looking over my shoulder if I was Ghelene Maxwell.
		And I certainly wouldn't, you know, that's, that's just, those are just the basics.
		Now, on the fun part of this, I've never seen a worse hacking golfer in my life than watching, if you, everybody that watched the Scotland golf tournament with Trump, I've never seen a worse hacker.
		I train kids that are 10 and 12 years old to play golf, and they can hit better than he can.
		And it's just a joke.
		Anyway, I just thought I'd bring up the thing about Epstein and the, unless they resolve that critical issue on the suicide, this is never going to go away.
		Thanks a lot.
		Bye.
		That was Ron in California.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		This is a headline in today's Washington Post.
		Soldiers shot at Fort Stewart Army Base in Georgia.
		The article says a soldier shot five fellow service members Wednesday morning at Fort Stewart, a U.S. Army base in Georgia.
		Officials says it says Cornelius Radford, 28, allegedly opened fire at the base shortly before 11 a.m., injuring five soldiers.
		He was apprehended, and all five victims are expected to recover.
		It says officials believe Radford used a personal handgun, not a military weapon, in the shootings.
		That's according to Brigitte General John Lubis, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division.
		He told reporters, a motive remained unclear as of Wednesday afternoon.
		It says the accused shooter is an active duty soldier assigned to Fort Stewart.
		Lubis said he is from Jacksonville, Florida, and enlisted in January 2028, according to his service record provided by the Army.
		It says he has been assigned since 2022 to Fort Stewart, where he served as an automated logistics specialist overseeing warehouse duties and maintenance.
		He has not served in a combat deployment, Lubis said.
		Goes on to say officials were not aware of any previous behavioral issues with the accused shooter.
		The soldiers injured Wednesday were taken to Wynn Army Community Hospital for treatment, and all were in stable condition, Lubis said.
		Three required surgery and two were brought to Memorial Hospital in Savannah, Georgia.
		Back to your calls.
		Let's hear from Nancy in Westchester, Pennsylvania, Line for Democrats.
unidentified		Hi, Nancy.
		Hi.
		In my opinion, redistricting for political purposes during the mid-decade is definitely wrong.
		Can you imagine the chaos of every state every two years redistricting for political reasons?
		That would be horrible.
		And it's very clear that it's the wrong thing to do.
		And I believe Donald Trump and the Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for using this tactic to stay in power when the people do not want them in power.
		Thank you.
		Bye.
		That was Nancy in Pennsylvania.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		George is in Newark, New Jersey, line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, George.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I've got one question I need to ask.
		I haven't heard anybody ask this question.
		And the Spanish people and the Spanish-speaking people and the Palestinian ICE is gathering of all these people.
		I never heard of anybody talk about the Israel student.
		Are the Israel students in this country illegal?
		Are there some of them illegal?
		I'd like to ask that question.
		Does some of them illegal?
		That was George in New Jersey.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Adrienne is in Patterson, New York, line for independence.
unidentified		Good morning, Adrienne.
		Good morning, Tammy.
		I just want to address the conversation that was had with your guest, Sean, regarding the redistricting.
		Here's my point.
		And I don't think any of your Republican audience, nor your Democrat or Independent audience, for that matter, realizes this.
		Did you know that the reason why the gerrymandering for red districts is so overwhelmed is because they've redistricted themselves out already.
		And when I say that, I mean they have, this is what they do.
		They build prisons in rural areas, and then they stop those prisons with prisoners and encount them as part of the population.
		And that's why there's overrepresentation in a lot of these red districts because they use that as a tool to falsely claim that this is the size of the population.
		And this has been going on ever since gerrymandering started.
		That's why when you look at a map, everything is so red.
		A lot of those rural areas have the prisons built there, and then they bring people from all over the country and they put them in those prisons, and then they claim that that's their address.
		And that's not true.
		And this is how the Republicans have been able to maintain these representation seats throughout the country because it's false numbers.
		It's almost like the three-fifths of a person.
		And that's what they do.
		And they count the population of inmates from all across the country in their towns so that they can increase the population numbers and then get more representation.
		And that's the key to the whole gerrymandering scheme.
		Thank you.
		Have a good day.
		That was Adrienne in New York.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Ronald is calling from Haynes City, Florida, on the line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Ronald.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		What I would like to see on this soldier that shot these other five men, I'd like to see him go before a firing squad.
		We could save a lot of court costs.
		And I think just put him in front of a firing squad to give him a taste of what he was trying to do.
		Thank you.
		That was Ronald in Florida.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Barb is in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the line for Democrats.
unidentified		Good morning, Barb.
		Good morning.
		I'm just calling.
		I am so tired of the Republicans taking away women's reproductive rights, claiming to be pro-life when they are doing, first of all, no sensible gun laws, cutting SNAP, cutting Medicaid, cutting vaccines now that are life-saving vaccines for children, cutting financial safety nets for the country, and denying climate change.
		All things that are going to result in millions of deaths across this country.
		So I'm just really tired of them saying they're pro-life when they clearly legislate against life.
		Thank you very much.
		That was Barb in Iowa.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Lewis is calling from Holmes, Pennsylvania, on the line for Republicans.
unidentified		Good morning, Lewis.
		Good morning.
		I have a few things to say.
		First of all, I'm 79 and a former New Yorker.
		When I was in the 60s and 70s, I remember one thing.
		The government was for the people.
		They would always back them up.
		And then JFK came along, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and the Bay of Pigs, and all this stuff we find out after 70 years that the government was behind all of this.
		Yes, an assassination was one of our presidents and a lot of other well-known people.
		So now I can't trust the government.
		I noticed that the police in the 60s and 70s, they upheld the law.
		Today, what I see on television, the police trying to make the law.
		And the judges and most of the lawyers go along with that.
		So I can't trust the legal system.
		Then comes up the doctors.
		Well, everybody knows all their mistakes are in the graveyard.
		And this is what I grew up with.
		And I'm supposed to just take things the way they are.
		Donald Trump was elected the first term because a majority of people and with their votes made it possible for him to do that.
		He righted our country.
		He had our borders protected.
		He had our trading with other countries put more on a level line or something that maybe for once favored us.
		Okay.
		He had his four years.
		And then there was a whole big thing by the Democrats that he did this and he was connected with Russia and all these other things, which were later, he stood up to that and they were dismissed.
		Yeah, okay.
		He went to court in New York, which was run by the Democrats, couldn't do anything with the judges that were there.
		And, all right, he was found guilty of a number of crimes.
		However, when Joe Biden got into office, he reversed everything, put our country in a third-class situation compared to the other countries.
		And then it was Pamela Harris that was after him, and she went even worse.
		And you're complaining now about our president Donald Trump that he did this and that and the other.
		He didn't do anything more than try to correct everything that was turned upside down and flipped after he got it all settled for us.
		Got to remember, people, he was put into office by the majority of Americans.
		That was Lewis in Pennsylvania.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		This headline from Politico, Marsha Blackburn mounts a run from governor.
		It says, staunch mega Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn announced a campaign for Tennessee governor Wednesday.
		It goes on to say that Blackburn announced her bid to replace Republican Governor Bill Lee, who is term limited.
		She announced that with an ad yesterday.
		It says she's widely considered to be a formidable, formidable candidate for the August 6th primary, which also includes Republican Representative John Rose.
		A January survey from Trump's pollster, Tony Fabrizio, found Blackburn had an 82% approval among the state's primary voters.
		It also notes that if elected, Blackburn would not only appoint her successor in the Senate because she's not up for re-election until 2030, but she would become the first female governor in state history.
		Also recently announcing a bid for a governor is Nancy Mace, the first district Republican out of South Carolina.
		This is a headline from the Greenville News.
		It says, Representative Nancy Mace kicks off Town Hall Series in Myrtle Beach.
		I am Trump in high heels.
		She held that event last night.
		During it, she talked about her bid for governor.
		Here's a clip from that event.
unidentified		I mean, I'm just saying I've done a lot for the president.
		And if you talk to him, I would really like his support for a governor because Ori's leading the way, and it's incredible here.
		Like, I feel so refreshed.
		You are God-fearing.
		You love the president.
		You have been there with the president through thick and thin, and you're going to carry South Carolina for this governor's race.
		I cannot do it alone.
		I can't do it alone.
		I've got to do it with God's grace, and I've got to do it with every single voter in Horry County who is ready for the truth, who is never going to back down, and who is going to hold the line for every hardworking South Carolinian.
		It happens right here.
		You are my first town hall on the road to governor of South Carolina right here in Horry County.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You can find that entire event along with other town halls that C-SPAN has recently covered on our website at c-span.org.
		Let's hear from Donna, who's in Columbia, South Carolina, on the line for Democrats.
		Hi, Donna.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		I have a question, and it's just a simple math question because I'm a math dummy.
		I would like to know all of these millions, millions of dollars that are going to be raped in through these tariffs, according to the president.
		I would like to know: will those dollars be applied to the deficit?
		That's my question.
		Thank you for taking my call.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Donna in South Carolina.
		Jim is in Boca Raton, Florida, line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Jim.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yes, I'd like to comment on two issues, if I may.
		First one, the shooting at Fort Stewart, rather, in Georgia yesterday, the media is very curiously not identifying the shooter's race.
		I had to see it on, I think, on Instagram.
		He's black.
		Now, that doesn't condemn all black people, but I was curious to know about the racial makeup of his victims.
		So, this is politically correctness.
		And even C-SPAN identifying a picture of this perpetrator who tried to kill in cold blood five of his fellow soldiers is just a great example of political correctness and walkness and what's happening in our society.
		Secondly, changing subjects relative to President Trump and his effectiveness, especially in terms of immigration.
		I am a strong supporter.
		And the whining and the crying, especially like what's going on in Los Angeles, is just amazing.
		This is a man, Donald Trump, who is doing what he said he was going to do when he ran for office, which is atypical of almost all politicians, presidents included.
		I live in South Florida.
		We have a lot of immigrants.
		A lot of my neighbors, their first language is Spanish or Portuguese from Brazil.
		Don't have a problem with it.
		They are here legally.
		That said, the president, President Trump, has effectively shut down our southern border from the mess that he inherited from President Biden and the probably 20 million plus illegals that flowed into this country.
		And we will pay a price for that for generations.
		Thank you very much.
		That was Jim in Florida.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Jimmy is in Missouri on the line for independence.
unidentified		Good morning, Jimmy.
		Good morning.
		I would like to know: I don't know too much about politics, but I know about working on the farm.
		Who's going to work on our farms doing the hand labor?
		Growing up, I was a migrant farm worker, and the ones that worked on the farm then was the poor southern white people, the poor southern black people, and the Mexicans.
		Well, guess what?
		The only ones we got out there to work on the farms now is those immigrants that come across the border, and most of them are Spanish-speaking people.
		Our people in the United States are too lazy, too lazy to work on the farms because it's too hard to work and they won't do it.
		So, why don't we just gather up the bad ones and leave the people alone that came here to work to make a living so they can either send money back to their families or let them come here and become Americans like so many of, well, everybody did except for the American Indians.
		They were already here.
		Thank you.
		Goodbye.
		That was Jimmy in Missouri.
		Bill is in Florida, line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Bill.
		Good morning.
		Yeah, I got a couple things.
		One is we talk about our debt and the interest that we're paying on our national debt, which is a trillion dollars a year.
		And everybody says, well, that's just, you know, that's more than the defense budget.
		The trillion dollars a year that we're spending in interest, we are borrowing the trillion dollars to pay the debt.
		We're borrowing money to pay interest.
		And it is so completely unsustainable.
		And that's what adds the money supply and devalues our currency.
		Our money really does not buy a lot.
		Rents are going up because we've increased the money supply.
		And it's like adding a quart of water to a gallon of gasoline.
		Yeah, you've got more, but it doesn't have any punch.
		So that really, that really bothers me.
		And another thing that I hear is everybody asks this rhetorical question: well, why did the Biden administration let so many people cross that border illegally?
		Why did they open the floodgates?
		What is that all about?
		And really, it has to do with this whole gerrymandering that we've been discussing.
		When you flood these people in, now they reside in the country and now the Census Council.
		And that's what's happening.
		People will be leaving California and they would be losing population to Texas and the places that they're moving to.
		And if that were the case, California would be losing representation because their population would be falling.
		But with the illegal immigration and all these millions of immigrants, California is able to maintain this population and maintain the Democrats are able to maintain a number of congressional seats.
		So it's really about maintaining congressional seats.
		It's a sort of gerrymandering that's going on there.
		I went to ChatGPT and I asked the question, how many immigrants would it take for California to pick up three congressional seats?
		And, you know, notwithstanding the other factors, it's between 700,000 and 800,000 immigrants it would take to pick up seats.
		So that's what it's about.
		It's really about affecting the vote, but not on the individual basis, more on the number of congressional seats.
		So that's what it's all about.
		I wish people would start talking about that because our system is being manipulated.
		So when Texas is talking about Gerrymandering and trying to trying to pick up seats.
		It's a response to all the illegal immigration that's happened over the last four or five years.
		That's my comments.
		Thanks for taking them.
		Have a good day.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Bill in Florida.
		This is a headline in today's Washington Times.
		It says, battle over Texas redistricting escalates.
		It says the Supreme Court of Texas has ordered the top Democrat in the Texas state legislature to respond to a lawsuit filed by Governor Greg Abbott that seeks to remove him from office.
		In an escalating battle over Texas redistricting, Mr. Abbott filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, accusing state Representative Gene Wu of renouncing constitutional mandates, quote, by fleeing the state of Texas to break quorum, obstruct legislative proceedings, and paralyze the Texas House of Representatives.
		It goes on to say in the lawsuit, Mr. Abbott called Mr. Wu the quote runaway ringleader of the derelict Democrats.
		The Supreme Court ordered Mr. Wu to respond to the lawsuit by Friday afternoon.
		It also says that Mr. Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton this week ramped up efforts to punish the absent Democrats.
		Mr. Paxton set a Friday deadline for Democrat state lawmakers to return to work in the legislature or else face removal from elected office.
		Mr. Paxton, a Republican, says he'll ask a court to declare vacant the seats of every House Democrat who fled the state earlier this week and a bid to block GOP plans to redraw congressional district lines.
		The unprecedented move would likely require suing to remove each lawmaker individually in what would be a lengthy and complicated process.
		If successful, Mr. Abbott would call a special election to fill the vacancies.
		C-SPAN has been airing the Texas Senate redistricting hearings.
		There is another one happening today at 10 a.m.
		The Senate Redistricting Committee in Texas reconvenes for a second day after Republican members' new map was released last week.
		Again, many Texas House Democrats have left the state to prevent a quorum from being formed, which is required to vote on the redistricting bill.
		And in response, officials, including Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, have threatened to vacate their seats if they do not return to work by Friday.
		You can watch the special committee hearing this morning from Austin.
		It will be live at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
		You can also find it on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and also online at c-span.org.
		Josie is in Indiana, Pennsylvania, line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Josie.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'd like to talk about first, history is very important.
		And I listen to C-SPAN, and I hear so many people who don't understand the history of this country.
		Gerrymandering has been a problem since 1812.
		The gentleman who called in and talked about all the Hispanics or illegal immigrants who would influence the number of representatives in the state of California seems to forget that in the United States Constitution was originally ratified, slaves were considered three-fifths of a human being so that representation could take place in the South.
		We need to remember that our history teaches us many lessons.
		The gentleman from Pennsylvania who spoke a while ago and talked about how the current president has put everything in the right perspective and is moving in the right direction and right being the correct word.
		I need to say the people of Italy were very, very happy with Mussolini because the saying was he got the trains to run on time.
		He got a more unified, so they thought, Italy at a great cost.
		Our Constitution is being ignored.
		Our courts are being ignored.
		We have lawlessness that is occurring on the side of those who are just supposed to be upholding the law, not breaking the law.
		We pick and choose, it seems, some of our politicians pick and choose which laws they're going to follow and which court orders they aren't.
		The American people seem to forget that we have checks and balances.
		That's what made our Constitution so great.
		And obviously, it's made it weak for this time of Trump.
		We need to understand that as getting back together as a nation is going to require more dialogue and less picking at one another.
		It is, as I listen, I think about the immigration problem, and someone said it's four or five years ago it exploded.
		If you go back in history, and a short history, 40 to 45 years ago, the United States government helped destabilize those countries in Central America, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador.
		Go back and read your history.
		Those nations were destabilized and they doubled their population.
		That was Josie in Pennsylvania.
		Mike is in Stockton, California, on the line for independence.
		Good morning, Mike.
		Good morning.
		Good morning.
		I just wanted to talk about a couple words that are in the Bible.
		One of them, you spell it, R-A-C-A, and you find it in Matthews 5, 22.
		It's only found in Matthews 5.22.
		The Jews use it as a word of contempt.
		It is derived from a word, root word meaning to spit.
		And when you're calling that N-word, if you look at Matthews 5, 22 and you look at all the different explanations of that word, I see it as equivalent to that N-word.
		And you're forbidden, and you only find in the Bible, I think, once or twice, this is one of them, from Jesus.
		You're forbidden to use that word to talk that way.
		And that's why a lot of people, I would say, let me back up a little bit.
		I'm going too fast.
		We'll leave it there, Mike.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to James, who's in San Diego, California, on the line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, James.
unidentified		Well, good morning, and thank you very much.
		You had a gentleman there that called in from Florida who hit the nail right on the head.
		But you also had a gentleman there as a visitor who spoke about redistricting.
		Well, redistricting is started because of populations.
		And the amount of House of Representatives is based upon populations.
		So now that we have 700,000 people from the state of California that have left the state of California, you would think that we would lose representation in the House of Representatives.
		But we don't because we count citizens.
		Or no, we count populations, not citizens.
		So now that we have 700,000 illegals in the state of California, we're not going to lose anything.
		Whereas in Texas, they have an overpopulation because people left states, left certain states, a number of them went to Florida, a number of them went to Texas, and therefore their population is changing also.
		So therefore, they need to redraw the lines in order to accomplish an increase in members of the House of Representatives.
		If you look at Massachusetts, which has zero, zero Republican districts, even though they have 47% Republicans in the state of Massachusetts, why are there no Republican districts in the state of Massachusetts?
		Thank you very much for your time.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was James from California.
		Another piece of news to note this in this morning's New York Times.
		Trump says he'll meet with Putin soon.
		It says that President Trump intends to meet in person with President Vladimir Putin of Russia as soon as next week, and he plans to follow up shortly afterward with a meeting between himself, Mr. Putin, and President Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine.
		According to two people familiar with the plan, it says Mr. Trump disclosed his plans on Wednesday in a call with European leaders, which included Mr. Zelensky.
		The people said the meeting would include only the three men and would not include European counterparts.
		It goes on to say several European leaders on Wednesday's call were surprised by Mr. Trump's plan and expressed skepticism afterward and that it would be effective, according to one official who was briefed on the call.
		Another person familiar with the call said the Europeans appear to accept that Mr. Trump said the Europeans have tried to coordinate the end to the violence between Russia and Ukraine while supporting their European neighbors.
		Just a couple minutes left in open forum.
		Joe is in Illinois on the line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Joe.
unidentified		Good morning, what's left of America?
		I want to say to a lady from Indiana, she hit it right on the head.
		This man is nothing but evil.
		He has taken the playbook right out of Adolf Hitler and play it page by page.
		He's managed to manipulate anything he wants to.
		He doesn't believe in data when they say that the inflation's up, jobs are up, are going down.
		He don't like those.
		He just fires them, calls them fake or rigged or a witch hunt or something.
		The people in Texas down there, you better wake up, folks, because this man is a dictator.
		He wants to take over this whole whole state.
		He wants to take over the whole country and run it the way he wants to run it, which is straight in the ground.
		This man is evil, people.
		Wake up.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That is Joe in Illinois.
		Our last call for open forum.
		Next on Washington Journal, we'll talk with Dr. Amish Adalja from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security about recent changes HHS is making to vaccine policy.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books.
		Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend.
		At 2.15 p.m. Eastern, Carol Mosley Braun talks about her political life as the first African-American woman senator, presidential candidate, and ambassador in her book, Trailblazer.
		Book TV commemorates the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with several author conversations.
		Beginning at 3.15 p.m. Eastern, Ari Hota looks back at the attack on Pearl Harbor from the Japanese perspective.
		Then at 4 p.m. Eastern, A.J. Boehm recalls the challenges that President Harry Truman faced during his first four months in office.
		Max Hasting explores World War II from the personal point of view, using detailed stories of the lives of everyday people as they struggle to survive at 5.45 p.m. Eastern.
		And at 6.45 p.m. Eastern, Susan Southard examines the impact the atomic bombing of Nagasaki had on the city and its people.
		We also continue our celebration of America's 250th with author conversations on the American Revolution.
		At 10 p.m. Eastern, Andrew Roberts looks back at the reign of King George III and argues that he has been misunderstood in his book, The Last King of America.
		Then, historian Harlow Giles Unger, author of First Founding Father, recounts the efforts of Richard Henry Lee in the Revolutionary War, from his call for independence from Britain in the Second Continental Congress to his exploits on the battlefield.
		And National Constitution Center president and CEO Jeffrey Rosen talks about how the founding fathers thought about virtue and were influenced by classical writers in his book, The Pursuit of Happiness.
		Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Joining us now to discuss recent changes HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made to vaccine policy is Dr. Amish Adalja.
		He is with the center with the John Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
		Dr. Adalja, thank you so much for being with us this morning.
unidentified		Sure, thanks for having me.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		There's been a lot in the news recently about vaccinations.
		Yesterday, it was announced that HHS is ending hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for mRNA vaccine development.
		Explain what mRNA vaccines are and how they're different from other vaccines.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		mRNA vaccines are a major step forward in the way that we develop vaccines.
		The prior traditional way of making a vaccine was to take a pathogen, a bacteria, a virus, whatever it might be, and expose your body to a part of it or some of it or even all of it and then allow the immune system to then develop a response.
		What mRNA does is take that kind of one step earlier.
unidentified		It gives your body the gene of the protein of the virus that you want to engender immunity to.
		And you inject that gene, the structure of that gene, the code of that gene, not the DNA, but the mRNA, which is going to become important in a second.
		But the mRNA in your body's cellular machinery then takes that formula and makes that protein.
		And by doing that, you kind of don't have to work with the pathogen itself.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		You're just dealing with the genetic code.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		And you can adapt it as you need.
unidentified		And that's why when it came to COVID-19, we had mRNA vaccines against this pathogen, which had not been known for over a year, like less than a year that people had known about it.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		We had those within a year.
		Because of the elegance of the mRNA platform, they could move very, very rapidly.
		They had vaccine candidates within days to hours of knowing the genetic sequence of the virus.
		So mRNA vaccines give us a major, major head start and advantage when it comes to an infectious disease emergency versus traditional vaccines, which take longer.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		How long have mRNA vaccines been in development?
		And you mentioned COVID.
		What other types of mRNA vaccines have been used before?
unidentified		So mRNA vaccines were sort of a holy grail.
unidentified		People had been looking at mRNA vaccines as a tool.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		at least for 20 years prior to COVID-19.
		They were something that had been, had a lot of promise, had some early development going on and promising results, but never really were able to kind of hadn't yet made it to the commercial market prior to COVID-19.
		I had been working in the pandemic space since 2008.
unidentified		And around 2016, 2017, there was a lot of buzz around mRNA vaccines being a game changer when it came to pandemic preparedness.
		And companies like Moderna were really engaging in the pandemic preparedness process, saying this technology we have is going to be really revolutionary.
		COVID-19 was kind of something that happened at the time that the mRNA vaccine technology was ready and poised to move forward.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		So the COVID vaccines made by Moderna and BioNTech with Pfizer were the first mRNA vaccines that were available to humans.
		Since COVID-19, we've had an RSV vaccine using mRNA technology also approved.
		But the point is that mRNA vaccine technology was something that had been a decades-long process to develop.
		And at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, they were kind of at the right place at the right time to really show their promise.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Dr. Adalja, you mentioned that you had been working with these types of vaccines since 2008.
		You also used the phrase a holy grail.
		Explain the impact that pulling mRNA vaccine development projects could have on future public health emergencies or pandemics.
unidentified		It could be disastrous.
unidentified		When you think about an infectious disease emergency, an outbreak, an epidemic, a pandemic, speed is of the essence.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		The quicker you can get a countermeasure into humans to protect them from the consequences of that infection, whether that be severe disease, hospitalization, death, contagiousness, whatever it might be, that that's going to be decisive in your control of that outbreak to prevent it from getting worse, to prevent the cascading impacts from occurring all over the globe.
unidentified		So when you look at all our different vaccine technologies, and they're all important and they all have roles, I'm not privileging one over the other.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		When it comes to speed and adaptability, I don't think that there's anything that's going to beat mRNA in the near future.
unidentified		So when you're trying to think from a government perspective, how do we prepare ourselves for the next outbreak, the next disease X, the next unknown pathogen that may emerge in humans and spread, having mRNA vaccine technologies poised to attack the problem is the best way to minimize the damage that such an outbreak can cause.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		So if you're removing HHS's investments in mRNA vaccine technology, not only does the U.S. government not have that technology, you're also basically putting a nail in the coffin for mRNA vaccine technology because this is something that has grown kind of in conjunction with pandemic and biosecurity efforts.
unidentified		And if organizations in HHS like BARTA are not going to be investing in it, some of that is going to dry up.
		And private investors may support some of it.
		The Department of Defense may support some of it.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		But it's not going to have that same robust funding mechanism in place, which will only lead to it kind of dwindling and us becoming less resilient.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Dr. Amish Adalja is with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
		He's joining us for a discussion talking about recent HHS changes to vaccine policy.
		If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now.
		The lines for this segment are regional.
		If you are in the Eastern or Central time zone, your line is 202-748-8000.
		If you are Mountain or Pacific, it is 202-748-8001.
		Dr. Adalja, I want to ask you about another recent change, and that was that several last week, several medical organizations were removed from the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
		Explain the purpose of that group, who typically serves on that committee, and your reaction to the decision.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		So, the ACIP or the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices is a group that CDC convenes that helps us determine the best way to use vaccines.
		Who are the risk groups that are going to most benefit?
		Where is the vaccine cost-effective?
		What are the side effects that we should look out for?
		What groups should we not vaccinate?
unidentified		How do we adapt our vaccine schedules to new vaccines or new epidemiology?
unidentified		Maybe we don't need a new vaccine, or maybe we need to add another dose.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		All of that happens through the ACIP process.
		And typically, ACIP is constituted by subject matter experts in infectious disease and vaccination in both adult, pediatric, geriatric, and OBGYN populations.
		And as part of that, they also have major medical organizations kind of serving as liaisons, like the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Disease Society of America, the National Foundation for Infectious Disease, American Academy of Pediatrics, and American Academy of Family Medicine, so that they can actually help disseminate that information and help convey their member physicians' viewpoints.
		So, that's kind of how it's happened, how it's been going on for decades.
		But what's happened since RFK Jr. has been installed as HHS secretary is he has basically disrupted the entire vaccine ecosystem in the United States, and part of that was his dismantling of ACIP, firing all of the members, and stacking it with his own cronies, most of which I think only one is actually really qualified.
unidentified		All the rest of them are not so qualified and have really great anti-vaccine bona fides.
unidentified		He stacked them that way, and his next step was to remove all of the medical organizations' liaison role.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		So, what it actually is, is an attack on expertise.
unidentified		It is a way to make the road for vaccine developers very hard.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		It is to decrease the value of vaccines in the minds of Americans.
		And this is exactly what you would expect when someone like RFK Jr. is put in a position of power like this.
		He is an anti-vaccine advocate.
		He does not see value in vaccinating against anything.
		He doesn't even believe in the germ theory of disease.
unidentified		So, if someone doesn't believe in the germ theory of disease, they surely can't believe in the power or efficacy of vaccines.
unidentified		So, to me, this is not surprising, but it is a sign of the times, and it is very dangerous because what you're seeing is the voice of the dark ages.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		This is how societies move backwards.
unidentified		And that's what RFK Jr. represents when it comes to vaccines and health in general.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We have callers waiting to talk with you.
		We will start with Nelson, who's calling from Hollywood, I'm sorry, Hollywood, Florida, on the line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Nelson.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Good morning, Dr. Adalja.
		First of all, I'd like to thank you for the hard work that you do.
		I know that you don't have an easy job.
		I do have a question regarding the issue of vaccines.
		I'm 76 years old.
		We raise our children and they got all of the vaccines that normally are applied when they're growing up, et cetera.
		But I do know that about 20 years ago, there was a case where too many children were getting asthma.
		And one of the things that was blamed for that was the overprotection of our children in the administration of vaccines, of being so careful that they didn't have an opportunity to be exposed to the natural environment to the extent that they were able to build up resistance to diseases.
		And I'm wondering where do you, sir, come to the point where you conclude that perhaps there is a problem with too much care, if I may put it that way, to the point that it can be harmful to the population and especially to children.
		And thank you for your answer.
		So what the caller is talking about is something called the hygiene hypothesis.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		And this is a long-standing theory about exposure to microorganisms when you're a child, when your immune system is learning, when it's adapting, when it's growing.
		And if it is too sterile an environment, there is this theory that you are more prone to autoimmune diseases like asthma, like eczema.
		And I think that there is evidence to support that.
		But it's not that we're vaccinating too much.
unidentified		The hygiene hypothesis has to do with exposures in an overly sterile environment, meaning when a child's bottle falls on the ground, the mother will grab it or the father will grab it and wash it off and not let them touch it.
		Or they're limiting exposure to certain animals, dogs, cats, farm animals, dirt.
		All of that does play a role.
		Those exposures in early life are less likely to then have you get asthma at a later age.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		But it's not that vaccines are the problem here.
		This is just a general overly hygienic environment in terms of dirt.
		And it's primarily bacteria that we're talking about here.
unidentified		So one thing I would tell the caller is the overuse of antibiotics, that has a lot, actually has evidence behind it.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		So the more antibiotics a child gets as a child, the more likely they are to get asthma.
		So yes, there is something to the hygiene hypothesis, but it's not related to vaccines.
		And many diseases like RSV, for example, many infections like RSV and upper respiratory infections might lead to asthma.
		So when we have vaccines to protect children against RSV, you might actually get less asthma.
unidentified		But yes, I think it is important when you're dealing with a growing child to make sure that they are not getting too many antibiotics that are unnecessary.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		And remember, 80% of antibiotic prescriptions are completely unnecessary and they affect all the bacteria in your body.
unidentified		And that may have a role in the development of autoimmune diseases like asthma.
		Lucy is in 8 Mile, Alabama.
		Good morning, Lucy.
		Good morning to you.
		Good morning.
		Good morning, Dr. Amesh.
		I'm calling you from Mobile, Alabama, and I am a full-time cancer survivor.
		I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.
		I started getting the vaccine the first time you all put the vaccine out.
		And I've been taking it ever since then.
		But I'm a little bit worried.
		Will the vaccine be available this fall for individuals like myself?
		And how do you see the safety of the vaccine if they're going to pull, you know, the MR in a attribute, you know, from the vaccine?
		How do you see that?
		So, the vaccines will still be available in the fall.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		There'll be an updated version that would be available for someone like you that has pre-existing conditions that put them at high risk for severe COVID.
unidentified		So, you shouldn't worry about that.
unidentified		And the mRNA vaccines that are already on the market, the mRNA vaccines from against COVID, from Moderna, from BioNTech Pfizer, as well as the RSV vaccine from Moderna, those aren't going anywhere.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		What RFK Jr.'s decision does is make it harder for new mRNA vaccines to flourish, to be developed.
		So, what's already out there, I don't see any, there's not going to be a removal of those vaccines.
		They will still be available to people.
		It's what's happening in the future.
unidentified		And for the next time, we need to develop a novel mRNA vaccine.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Dr. Adalja, in May, HHS Secretary Kennedy announced COVID-19 vaccines are no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women.
		What is the process for making a policy change like that?
		And what are your concerns?
unidentified		The process for making a policy change like that would be convening the Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices from CDC to look at the data and see: are these people actually benefiting from the vaccine?
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		Is this a cost-effective, is this risk outweighed by the benefit?
		But RFK Jr. didn't really do that when it came to those decisions.
		He kind of did it by fiat.
		And it was the exact opposite of the science because when you come, when you look at pregnant women, for example, they are at higher risk for severe COVID.
		They are higher risk for pregnancy complications if they get COVID.
unidentified		So they are somebody, a group of people that definitely should be vaccinated with each pregnancy.
unidentified		And they also pass the antibodies that they generate on to the developing fetus, who is then protected for its first months of life from the mother's vaccination.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		So it's the exact opposite of what you would recommend for pregnant women.
		For children, I do believe that children benefit from getting the initial series of vaccinations when they are eligible at six months, because children, even if they're healthy and have no medical problems and they were born term, they still have higher rates of hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and probably the first two years of life than we would want to have.
		So I do think children should get the initial series.
unidentified		Healthy children after that initial series, I think that's debatable where the value is if they have no other medical conditions.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		But the larger point is that RFK Jr. didn't go through any kind of rigorous examination of the data or consult experts.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		This was more of his anti-vaccine rhetoric being actually transformed into policy.
unidentified		And again, not surprising, but it does completely overturn the way that vaccine policy has been made in the past.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Mark is calling from Middletown, Connecticut.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Mark.
mark in connecticut ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
		Good morning, Doctor.
		I want to thank you for coming on.
		Thank you for cease being to have you on.
		I've always been a vaccine believer, and I've always been at that mindset.
		When COVID hit, I took the Pfizer mRNA vaccine in 2021.
		I took two of them, and I was still working.
		I was a healthy 63-year-old and non-diabetic, no heart issues, no blood pressure issues, et cetera.
		Cholesterol is good.
		August of that year, I was stricken with a vascular occlusion along my optic nerve in my right eye, which led to subsequent partial blindness in my right eye.
		Following that, I took two additional boosters over the course of the next few months.
		And in May of 22, I was driving to Maine to see my son with good vision still in my left eye, legally blind in my right eye.
		And I was stricken again with another vascular occlusion in my left eye.
		And I haven't been able to drive since then.
		I'm legally blind.
		And I'm 66 now.
		And I haven't taken another one since.
		I don't know.
		I guess my question is, I heard of a study that was relating some vascular occlusion issues to these mRNA vaccines in the presence of the virus in the body.
		My neuro-optimologist indicated that she hadn't heard of anything specific.
		I don't know if anything, if you're aware of any such things like that.
		I've heard a lot of weird stories about people with blood clotting and whatnot.
		Mine happened to affect me in my optic nerves, leading to neuropathy and permanent vision loss.
unidentified		So I don't know of any evidence that that's related to the mRNA vaccines.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		I think it's important to have that investigated to talk to your neuro-ophthalmologist about what they think was the cause, especially since you had it in more than one eye and happening kind of sequentially.
		I also think that it is the case that COVID itself causes blood clots.
		So it's hard to disentangle some of that.
		But I think this is an important area for investigation.
		But in my knowledge, in my reviews, I've not seen any conclusive evidence that this is something that's caused by the mRNA vaccines.
		But I think it's important to investigate it.
		And I think it's also important to remember that there are rare side effects that happen with vaccines, and those are really important to investigate and understand so that we can have much more precision guided recommendations like we did with the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which is no longer available, which had the problem with blood clots, which was a non-mRNA vaccine.
		I would also tell you that there are other options other than mRNA vaccines that are available to you if you want to continue to protect yourself against COVID.
		There are other, there is Novavax, which is a non-mRNA vaccine that's available as well.
		But I think, I don't think that there's enough evidence to say that this is conclusively caused by the vaccine, but I think it's important to investigate that and continue your discussions with your neuro-ophthalmologist.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Lulu is in Tampa, Florida.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Lulu.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		I have a question about the vaccines that they give babies when they're born.
		My granddaughter was given a hepatitis B shot at birth.
		There's three of them that have to be given for hepati.
		But my question was, why are they giving these shots in some states to newborn babies?
		Hepatitis B. Mother never had it and father never had it.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		So hepatitis B is a virus that can cause hepatitis.
		It can also cause liver cancer.
		And it is much more likely to cause liver cancer if you acquire it from your mother during birth.
		And hepatitis B vaccines were developed and we were giving them to children kind of at an early age, but we were still getting, we were still missing people.
		People were still catching hepatitis B from their mother at birth.
		So they changed the policy and made the recommendation to give hepatitis B vaccination, the first dose, to a newborn before they leave the hospital to cut down on the cases of hepatitis B that were being transmitted from mother to child or in the perinatal period.
unidentified		So that's why the hepatitis B vaccine is given to birth, to get that protection in as quickly as possible because we were missing cases.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		Not every person who delivers a baby has all that blood work done to know if their hepatitis B or positive be positive or negative.
unidentified		So that's why that vaccination was moved up.
		And I think we've seen great results with moving it up in terms of mother-to-child transmission of hepatitis B.
		It's a major success story.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		And the hepatitis B vaccine is very, very safe.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Dr. Azalja, when we talk about child vaccines, that's something else that Secretary Kennedy's team is looking at.
		They are re-evaluating, re-examining the current federal childhood vaccine schedule.
		Explain what that is, who follows this schedule, and how often is it revised or reassessed?
unidentified		The childhood immunization schedule is the schedule that CDC puts out that most pediatricians, most primary care physicians are going to follow.
		And what it deals with is which vaccines are recommended for which groups and at what age group that they're recommended.
		Do you get this one at age five?
		Do you get this one at age 12?
		That whole schedule.
		And if you go to a pediatrician's office, you might see it hanging on the wall.
		And that's kind of the way people determine which vaccines to give at each visit.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		And it is continuously revised.
		Anytime there's new data, new epidemiological data that this disease is going away or this disease is coming back or the strains are changing for this disease, they're updating it, or a new vaccine is available or a new formulation or a new way of giving the vaccine or a new dosing schedule.
		So it's continuously evaluated and updated every year or even sooner if necessary based on new data.
		What I worry about is that with RFK and his group in charge of everything, it will be completely disrupted.
		And decisions will be made not based on science, but based on pandering to RFK Jr.'s acolytes.
		And we've already seen that happen.
		So I would not be surprised that the CDC immunization schedule completely gets scrambled, things disappear.
		That hepatitis B at birth shot that we just had a question about, I would not be surprised if they try and remove that in absence, even in the absence of evidence, because this is something that the anti-vaccine group has already been attacking for some time.
		And what will happen then, I think, is that the immunization schedules that pediatricians and primary care physicians use are going to be the ones that are generated by their professional society, like the American Academy of Pediatrics, like the American College of Physicians.
		And that's likely where physicians are going to have to turn for evidence-based, objective information about when to give vaccines and to whom.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Jonathan is calling from Plano, Texas.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Jonathan.
unidentified		Good morning.
		My question is: why are you recommending people to get vaccinated if the last one had four sakes?
		My son at the time is 12 years old.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to Brian in Pennsylvania.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Brian.
unidentified		Good morning, Dr. Adalja.
		Thank you for your time.
		I really appreciate you being on here today.
		I have two quick questions.
		I hope you could respond to both.
		And my first question is: Are mRNA vaccines being produced or created due to laboratory enhancement of potential pandemic pathogens?
		Or is it the reverse?
		Or is it potential pandemic pathogens that are being created in laboratories that make mRNA vaccines more possible?
		My second question is, in your opinion, was the COVID-19 virus a purely natural virus or was it laboratory enhanced?
		Thank you for your time.
		I'll wait for your response.
		So for the first part of the question, mRNA vaccines are a response to the threat of pandemics, whether those pandemics are natural or they are man-made.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		So the fact that countries like North Korea, the former Soviet Union, China developed biological weapons, and the fact that we've got many pathogens in nature, that necessitates us getting better, mastering this problem.
unidentified		And mRNA is a way to master that problem by using new technologies.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		And mRNA vaccines didn't come out just for pandemic pathogens.
unidentified		They were actually studied initially as cancer vaccines.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		And that's how Moderna was founded.
		And that's still what the big push is in mRNA vaccine technologies to make tumor vaccines.
		It just so happens that they're really great at pandemic pathogens as well.
		And we do face pandemic pathogen threats from hostile nations as well as from nature itself.
unidentified		Whether the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic or SARS-CoV-2, I think there's still inconclusive evidence.
unidentified		There is some evidence.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		There is evidence pointing to the wet market.
unidentified		And there are lots of irregularities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in terms of their biosafety.
		I don't think we're going to get to the bottom of this.
		This may have been a natural spillover.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		This also might have been something that came from a laboratory accident or a laboratory leak.
unidentified		There's no evidence that this was an engineered virus, but we do know that lax biosafety, even with the natural virus, could infect somebody who could then go on and spread it.
		But I don't think that we're going to get to the bottom of this until there's more transparency from the Chinese government.
		And I think it's important to know which way this actually, where this actually originated, because this is not the last coronavirus that we will face as a pandemic threat.
		Neil is calling from Rockville, Maryland.
		Good morning, Neil.
		Good morning.
		You have told us that this COVID vaccine was made from a genetic material that came from the actual virus.
		Is that correct?
		No.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		What happened was the virus was isolated.
unidentified		They sequenced the genetic material and then basically to use it, to print it off.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		They printed off the sequence, the codes of the code of the gene of the spike protein after they figured out what that code was.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		So they used the genetic material to decipher what was going on, and then the mRNA is generated synthetically.
unidentified		I know.
		Well, we don't have, unless you know something that I haven't heard of yet, we don't have any clinical information that describes what this type of material does to the human body.
		And I think that's the criticism that's going on.
		We know what the other vaccines do.
		They're made from the actual material.
		And this is like a piece of it.
		And you can't tell the people listening right now that when you use that material, it will not affect your eyes.
		It will not affect your brain.
		It's just never been tested that way.
		And you're so critical of Robert Kennedy Jr. that he raises these issues.
		He wants to know whether or not there's any danger for using this.
		And you gave the wonderful example, you're giving vaccines to women who have never had hepatitis B, and you're compelling their babies to get vaccinated.
		And the vaccination has no value for a baby that has never had a mother that had hepatitis B. Why are you doing that?
		And then I thought to myself, well, why are they doing it?
		Money.
		Drug companies.
		This man, and I don't know whether you can disclose this or not, but don't you have some relationship with these companies?
		It's just hard for me to believe that a real scientist would go along with this scenario, which is becoming propaganda that I hear everywhere now about how terrible Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Neil, we'll get a response from Dr. Adalja.
unidentified		So a couple of things.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		I can tell you that mRNA is a natural product.
unidentified		mRNA exists in our body.
		mRNA exists in everything that we eat or ingest.
		So there has been no safety signal with respect to mRNA.
		And there has been decades of work showing the safety of mRNA prior to its use as a vaccination.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		But remember, we have mRNA in our body.
		That's part of how we make proteins.
		That comes from mRNA.
		So this is not some kind of alien molecule that's going to have unpredictable effects.
		And it has been studied, and we've done multiple safety studies in the five years since the COVID vaccines have been out and have not seen a major safety signal, especially in pregnant women, like you mentioned.
unidentified		With respect to hepatitis B, we talked about the fact that there are women who present for delivery, that you cannot do it.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		There's not enough time to get the blood testing done.
		We are missing mother-to-child transmission.
		We are trying to protect the baby and there are no untoward effects from hepatitis B vaccination of newborns.
unidentified		And when he talks about dealings with the pharmaceutical industry, you have to remember the pharmaceutical industry saved the world from COVID.
		They are heroes, and I'm tired of people disparaging them because we would be nowhere.
		We wouldn't have any vaccines if it weren't for the ingenuity of the pharmaceutical and biotech industry that turned vaccines into vaccinations.
		So I don't think that there is any problem with having dealings with the pharmaceutical industry.
		And remember that vaccines are a money loser for pharmaceutical industries.
		We've seen vaccine companies disappear because it's not lucrative compared to cancer drugs or hypertension drugs or antidepressants.
		So vaccines have never been a major revenue generator for pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
		So these are all anti-vaccine RFK Jr. talking points that are easily debunked if someone actually opens their eyes, has an active mind, and actually tries to understand this issue.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Dr. Adalja, it's hard to believe, but we are approaching flu season.
		In June, the CDC vaccination advisory committee recommended against flu vaccines containing thimerosol.
		I don't know if I said that right.
		Explain what that is and what the concern may be over it being included in flu shots.
unidentified		Thimerosol is a mercury-based preservative that are used in multi-dose vials of certain vaccines.
		And that allows you to get more than one dose out of a vial.
		And thimerosol keeps that vial sterile free from contamination.
		So it makes it safer.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		What's happened is thimerosol has become a target for the anti-vaccine community because thimerosol is a mercury product.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		But it's important to know there are types of mercury.
unidentified		There is ethylmercury and methylmercury.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		Methylmercury is insoluble.
unidentified		It's what you worry about when people have mercury poisoning.
unidentified		Ethylmercury is soluble.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		You excrete it, just like you excrete ethyl alcohol, but don't excrete methyl alcohol, which is what some people drink when they can't find alcohol, and that's toxic.
unidentified		But what happened was people painted with a very broad brush and went after ethylmercury.
		And several years ago, the FDA and CDC and other organizations asked to remove companies that voluntarily removed thimerosol from vaccines as a confidence-building measure, even if there was no risk.
		And I think that was a bad precedent, and I've written about that.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		But what's happened is there's still been some level of thimerosol in certain vaccines.
unidentified		Only about 4% of the flu vaccines that are used in the United States.
		But this, again, was a talking point of the anti-vaccine movement.
		So you saw ACIP, with one notable exception, vote to remove, have thimerosol removed from flu vaccines.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		And this is a recommendation that RFK Jr. accepted.
unidentified		And so now our flu vaccines will not have thimerosol, but 96% of flu vaccines given in the United States did not have thimerosol anyway.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		This was just another gift to the anti-vaccine movement to kind of take one of their myths and turn it into government policy.
unidentified		But what it does is it makes it harder.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		If you're going to a nursing home and you want to do a vaccine drive, it makes it harder because you can't use, they're not going to be multi-dose vials.
unidentified		Or if you're going into rural areas and you want to use multi-dose vials to get to people to give them protection against flu, it's going to be harder to do that.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		And it's going to have a chilling effect on the global use of thimerosol.
unidentified		So this was just another bad decision, but one that was completely predictable if you'd listened to RFK Jr.'s rhetoric prior to this.
		Charles is calling from Buffalo, New York.
		Good morning, Charles.
		Good morning.
		Good morning, doctor.
		You know, I think the real virus we have here in this country is trust.
		And I think we've really lost trust on all sides.
		My son at 34 years old got uveitis in both eyes, about as serious as a thing that you could get.
		We saw nine different doctors, neurologists, and they all told us, do not get a vaccine again.
		And we're like, oh, what are you seeing?
		We're seeing what we're seeing.
		And we would recommend that he not get the vaccine.
		That's my side story.
		What I'd like to do is ask you: do you know Marty McCary?
		Isn't he a cohort of you at Johns Hopkins?
		And isn't he on the committee with Mr. Kennedy?
		And why is it that, you know, the two of you from Johns Hopkins, which I think is great, that you should have a debate.
		And why can't we have a debate about it if two experts like yourselves are kind of against each other?
		I'm smelling a lot of politics here.
		I'd like to know your comment.
		Thank you.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		With respect to the uveitis, yes, there are rare side effects that can happen with vaccines.
unidentified		And I think, as I said earlier, it's very important to run those down and to understand them and get medical advice about future vaccinations.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		That's always been the position when it comes to vaccines.
unidentified		With respect to Dr. Macri, I do know him.
unidentified		He's a friend of mine.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		He's someone that I think has been a colleague of mine.
		And we talked a lot during COVID-19.
		We talked even up to his appointment as FDA commissioner.
unidentified		He doesn't sit on any committees with RFK Jr.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		He's the head of the FDA and RFK Jr. is the secretary of HHS.
		So he is subordinate to RFK Jr.
		I haven't had any discussions with him, but in general, I find him to be a very reasonable and scientifically based person.
		I think it's a difficult position to be in any department run by RFK Jr.
unidentified		And you can already see that he's had one of his deputies fired by the political process in Washington.
		He wants that person back.
		I'm talking about Vinay Prasad.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		So I don't really see much of anything that I would really debate with Dr. Macri.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		I think we agree on most of the scientific principles.
unidentified		We may disagree on some of the policy implementations, but I mean, it's the same science.
		And I consider him a friend.
		Michael is calling from Maryland.
		Good morning, Michael.
		Hey, good morning.
		Thanks for having me.
		I guess, you know, the main thing I want to say is I support Robert Kennedy, you know, 100%.
		And the reason is, is because, you know, I think what we rank 26th, 28th in the world for health, I mean, that's pretty low.
		You know, there's countries underneath of us don't get this vaccine schedule, don't have all these pharmaceutical things, don't have doctors prescribing, you know, insane amounts of pills to their clients.
		And, you know, they're healthier than us.
		So, I mean, that's saying something is wrong in this country.
		Something is seriously wrong.
		And going to the vaccine thing, if you don't mind me saying something about that too, is that with the vaccine schedule, you know, it seems like what they're doing is, like you said, it was a loss to the companies.
		Well, maybe they're setting themselves up, you know, getting us sick later in life with these things, causing a cancer later on in life with a vaccine or a new technology, as you put it.
		And later they got all these pharmaceuticals for those people because sick people are more profitable to this system or to the pharmaceutical companies than healthy people are.
		You know, Robert Kendall is a healthy man.
		He seems like a healthy person.
		I would rather take my advice from a person that's healthy than a person that's working as a vice CEO of a pharmaceutical company or being transferred back and forth out of the pharmaceutical industry into the FDA or into the testing for these drugs, and then they just pass them.
		Robert Kennedy said there was no test for any of these.
		There's no tests.
		There's been no conclusive tests for any of the vaccines.
		There's been no conclusive tests for a lot of the pills and drugs that they put out.
		They just put them out, wait for people to get sick, come up with some other drug to give them.
		But that's all my comment.
		Thanks for having me.
		And hopefully other people can think about that too.
		Thank you.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		I would just say that, yes, there is a chronic disease problem in the United States, but vaccines aren't part of that equation.
unidentified		Vaccines have added to the lifespan of every American in terms of what our average lifespan is.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we've got problems with diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease.
unidentified		And I don't think RFK Jr. is the one to solve those because he doesn't even believe in the scientific method.
		And if you're going to solve those chronic disease problems, you actually have to believe in the scientific method.
		He doesn't even believe in the germ theory of disease.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		The other point is, is that when you talk about, you know, in dealings with pharmaceutical companies, remember that RFK Jr. will refer people to law firms for lawsuits against vaccines like the HPV vaccine, Gardasil.
dr amesh adalja ▲ ● ▼		So I think you can't have it both ways, that if physicians and experts deal with the pharmaceutical industry, but RFK Jr. is giving, is referring cases for lawsuits, I think that there's, you know, there's people are kind of evading that issue.
unidentified		Steve is in Charlotte, North Carolina.
		Good morning, Steve.
		Good morning.
		It seems like we're going to have to relive the whole reason that vaccines were developed in the 20th century.
		My uncle grandma had measles when she was pregnant, and he was born with a birth defect that kept him from working for the rest of his life.
		I'm really sorry to see this come about.
		Yes, I think that's something that happens.
		We live in a time when we have the luxury of not knowing people who've had severe diseases from vaccine preventable illnesses in our classrooms or in our neighborhoods because vaccines have been so successful.
		Not even our grandmothers can remember this now.
		And I think, unfortunately, it does take, it sometimes will unfortunately take that, seeing these diseases come back, seeing complications for people to actually understand that vaccines were a great human achievement, probably the greatest human medical achievement ever, and that people painstakingly fought to develop vaccines because they were trying to solve these problems, to allow humans to flourish.
		And unfortunately, we're going backwards.
		This is, as I said, how societies turn away from their science and technologies.
		And this is kind of a mini dark ages.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Our guest, Dr. Amish Adalja, is with Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

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