CSPAN - Washington Journal 08/08/2025

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Aug. 8, 2025 07:00-10:00 - CSPAN

02:59:53

Washington Journal 08/08/2025

Participants

Main

greta brawner

cspan 49:03

Appearances

benjamin netanyahu

isr 01:38

bill hemmer

fox 00:42

donald j trump

admin 01:02

greg abbot

01:42

kathy hochul

00:49

Clips

al green

rep/d 00:04

andrew allen brown

00:05

kaitlan collins

cnn 00:12

mark goldman

00:16

patty murray

sen/d 00:08

phil king

r 00:16

sean duffy

admin 00:04

victor blackwell

cnn 00:22

willie nelson

00:02

Callers

jack in texas

callers 00:07

jimmy in texas

callers 00:04

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		On C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll take your calls and comments live.
		Then a look at the Trump administration's influence over American universities and recent settlements to restore federal funding with Ted Mitchell of the American Council on Education.
		And George Mason University Salim Firth discusses proposals for increasing housing supply and reforming land use regulations.
		Washington Journal starts now.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, everyone.
		And this Friday, August 8th, will begin this morning with that redistricting battle in Texas where President Trump wants to pick up five more seats in Congress before the midterm elections in 2026.
		Texas Democrats face a deadline of today to return to the states, or Republicans say there will be civil arrest and lawsuits to vacate their seats.
		This morning, we want to get your take on this dispute, sparking a redistricting war across the country.
		Republicans, dial in at 202-748-8001.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Independents, your line this morning is 202-748-8002.
		Texas residents dial in at 202-748-8003.
		And you, all of you, can text if you don't want to call at that same line.
		Just include your first name, city, and state.
		Or post on facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ.
		We'll begin with the latest on Texas.
		Let's begin with the Governor Greg Abbott, the Republican on Dana Losh's program yesterday on actions the state is taking to return those Democratic state lawmakers to the state.
greg abbot ▲ ● ▼		We have arrest warrants out for all of them.
		If there are some in Texas, which I understand that there may be, the Texas Department of Public Safety is searching for them.
		We'll find them and we'll arrest them and take them to the Texas Capitol.
		Those who are out of state think that they are beyond the reach of Texas law enforcement, and they may or may not be.
		But for one, when they come back, they're not going to go to their cozy home.
		They will be arrested and taken to the Capitol.
		But know this.
		It's my understanding that the FBI is going to search for these derelict Texas House members in whatever state they may be in and help identify for them and maybe work with us to bring them back.
		Point one.
		Point two is these Democrats, they have received money and benefits at their request to support them while they are gone.
		It is a direct violation of the Texas Constitution as well as Texas bribery laws for them to receive a benefit to skip a vote.
		They could be charged with second degree felony for committing bribery in the state of Texas.
		Third, and it happened yesterday.
		I filed a petition in the Texas Supreme Court that begins the removal process of these absconding Democrat members.
		And the Supreme Court responded immediately last night and told the leading Democrat in this cause, his name is Gene Wu, that he has to respond to my petition by Friday, where we're going to begin the process of trying to remove these absconding Democrats from office.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott there yesterday.
		Now, the state Democrats in Texas fled the state on Sunday.
		Some of them went to Illinois, New York, Massachusetts.
		Here's Texas state rep Vince Perez, who fled the state of Texas for Illinois, dismissing the FBI's involvement and Governor Abbott's threat to remove them from office.
victor blackwell ▲ ● ▼		What is your reaction today from Senator Corner's office when he says that it has now been granted this request that the FBI help locate you all?
unidentified		Well, I think it says a lot about the level of intimidation that the government is willing to go to to silence the folks who are here protesting this terrible map.
		I think any American who took a look at this map and really looked at the details and saw what Republicans were trying to do, I think would be appalled.
		Whether you're Republican or Democrat, black, white, Latino, all Americans should be appalled at the level of discrimination that's inherent in this map.
		It really is the worst map that Texas has ever seen since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
victor blackwell ▲ ● ▼		What's your degree of concern that the governor will follow through on his threat to potentially remove you and others from office?
unidentified		You know, again, you know, the governor spends Monday through Friday acting like a king, you know, saying he has all kinds of power.
		They filed legal briefings here in Illinois trying to get us extradited back to Texas.
		But again, when it came to the Texas Times of Mead during the floods, the governor claims that he's powerless and he needs the legislature to take care of it.
		Otherwise, he can't do anything.
		You know, the governor just, you know, he's going to threaten when he wants to threaten and intimidate.
		But again, these maps are so bad.
		And I think that when Americans look at the level of detail and discrimination, Texas Latinos will become the most underrepresented group in all 50 states in the United States.
		That's what's at stake here with the passage of this map.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		From CNN yesterday, we're getting your thoughts on this Texas redistricting dispute sparking a wider redistricting war across the country where other governors start redrawing the congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
		President Trump has asked Texas and other state governors where there are Republicans to do the same in order for Republicans to pick up seats.
		As you know, they have a thin majority in the U.S. House.
		We're getting your thoughts on this this morning.
		Republicans dial in at 202-748-8001.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		Texas residents, we want to hear from you this morning as your state legislators face a deadline today to return to the state.
		You can call in at 202-748-8003.
		You remember, all of you can text us at that same number, 202-748-8003, or join us on these social media platforms.
		Now, let's take a look at the reporting from the Washington Times.
		As we said, the Texas Democrats fled the state on Sunday.
		On Monday, the GOP-led Texas House of Representatives voted to issue civil arrests for these state Democrats that left the Lone Star State.
		Civil arrests can only be enforced within the Texas boundary.
		The FBI then agreed to a request from Senator John Cornyn, who represents Texas, to help locate these Texas Democrats in other states.
		Governor Abbott and the Texas Attorney General Paxton want state courts now to declare Democrats' seats vacant if they don't show up today.
		And you heard the governor talking as well about civil arrests and possibly charges of bribery.
		And removal of these Texas Democrats from their seats would require individual lawsuits that would be lengthy and complicated.
		This is from the Washington Times reporting today.
		Punch Bowl News this morning about a wider fight across the country.
		They say Republicans are hoping to net a minimum of three House seats in Florida as Punch Bowl scooped on Thursday, and that to the and add that to the five seats in Texas, one each in Missouri and Indiana, plus two or three in Ohio, where state law mandates a redraw ahead of the 2026 elections.
		The Supreme Court also has yet to rule in a high-profile Louisiana redistricting case on the 1965 Voting Rights Act that could further alter next year's congressional landscape.
		So already across other states, Republican governors and Republican legislators are talking about redrawing their maps as well.
		We want to get your thoughts on this this morning.
		For the Democrats, Governor Kathy Hochle of New York on Monday stated that Democrats now have no choice but to also explore redistricting in the states where they are in control.
		Listen to what she had to say.
kathy hochul ▲ ● ▼		If Republicans are willing to rewrite these rules to give themselves an advantage, then they're leaving us no choice.
		We must do the same.
		There's a phrase: you have to fight fire with fire.
		That is a true statement of how we're feeling right now.
		As I've said, another overused but applicable phrase: all's fair in love and war.
		That's why I'm exploring with our leaders every option to redraw our state congressional lines as soon as possible.
		Our state legislators' leaders, Carol Houston, Madrilla leader Andre Stewart Cousins, they're on board, as are their members.
		We're already working on a legislative process, reviewing our legal strategies, and we'll do everything in our power to stop this brazen assault.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul of New York saying Democrats will respond.
		We're getting your thoughts on a wider redistricting war across the United States ahead of the midterm elections in 2026.
		Adding to this, President Trump yesterday on Truth Social saying, I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate census based on modern-day facts and figures.
		And importantly, using the results and information gained from the presidential election of 2024, people who are in our country illegally will not be counted in the census.
		That is what the president had to say yesterday on his Truth Social website.
		We're getting your thoughts on redistricting across the country.
		Do you agree or disagree that this should happen?
		Charles in Temple, Texas, Independent.
		Hi, Charles.
unidentified		Hi, how are you doing today?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Morning.
unidentified		And my problem with all of this: if you look at the blue states and see how they've gerrymandered for years and that there's almost no Republican representatives, then this is the I don't know a good word to say for it, but the caught calling the kettle black.
		And they need to get some intestinal fortitude and go back and do their jobs.
		They're just a bunch of cowards.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Charles' thoughts there in Temple, Texas.
		You want the Democrats back.
		Do you know if you're represented by a Republican or a Democrat in your state house?
unidentified		In the State House here, there's a gentleman named Carter that represents my area, but he doesn't do anything.
willie nelson ▲ ● ▼		All he does is collect money.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Charles in Temple, Texas.
		Chris in Maine, Democratic caller.
		Chris, what do you think of this?
unidentified		Hi, I think the Democrats are really blowing the messaging on this.
		In what way?
		So, what they need to be saying is: look, when we elect people, it's based on the will of the people, right?
		And it's the will of the people.
		For instance, in Texas, in the last election, Democrats got about 43% of the vote.
		But Republicans are proposing that they get over 80 to 85% of all the House seats.
		That's not the will of the people.
		That's simply fixing the system.
		So, likewise, in other states, for instance, in Illinois, Trump got 44% of the votes.
		But in that state, Republicans only got 18% of the seats.
		Well, that's a little skewed.
		Pennsylvania and North Carolina, for instance, it was the same.
		You know, Democrats win more votes, but Republicans get the most House seats.
		North Carolina, Trump got 51% of the vote.
		Republicans have 71% of the House seats.
		In South Carolina, Trump won 58%.
		But Republicans control 86% of the House seats.
		That's not the will of the people.
		And so Democrats need to be talking about this as, look, the idea is that Congress represents the people and the will of the people.
		But consistently, and the first caller was just completely wrong.
		Even in New York, Republicans have more seats than they win in total number of votes.
		So we've got to frame this right.
		But Democrats are terrible at messaging, and currently our messengers are terrible between Schumer and Pelosi, you know, and the speaker of the House who just want to scratch your eyeballs out when you're.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Well, Chris Pelosi's, Pelosi's not in leadership anymore.
		Hakeem Jeffries took over for her as Democratic leader in the House.
		How do you think he's doing on this?
unidentified		He's even worse.
		When you listen, listen, this is the way Hakeem Jeffries talks.
		We in America believe, you know, just talk like a human.
		And Democrats right now just sell it.
		They're all in a darn script.
		Talk about the fact that the House should be representing the number of people that want the type that want a Democrat or Republican.
		And Republicans across the board are simply trying to skew the system in their favor against the will of the people.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Chris in Maine, Democratic caller with his thoughts.
		Al Fitzgerald, Georgia, Republican.
		Al, good morning to you.
		Al in Fitzgerald, Georgia.
		It's your turn, Al.
		All right, Al, I'm going to move on.
		Maybe you can call back.
		John, Dearborn, Michigan, Independent.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		So Trump needs five more seats, I guess.
		And, well, because he probably senses a loss coming.
		And, you know, why would he lose?
		Because his base wouldn't get out and vote for the Republicans.
		They're not going to be excited.
		Why aren't they going to be excited?
		Because Trump's been betraying every promise since he got in there.
		I mean, look at Ukraine.
		That's still going big as much as ever.
		It's even more of a quagmire now, Ukraine, than he said 24 hours.
		So much for that.
		Look at Israel and Gaza.
		Even Marjorie Taylor Greene is kind of calling out Trump for putting Israel first, not America.
		He's breaking so many promises.
		What about Operation Warp Speed?
		He knows his base doesn't like that, but he's still bragging on it.
		And talk about the X team files.
		That was the last straw.
		There's no enthusiasm in MAGA.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, John there in Dearborn, Michigan, saying the president is trying to redraw congressional maps ahead of the 10-year census for the reasons John just outlined.
		The Wall Street Journal this morning with their reporting, Republicans currently hold a narrow 219 to 212 House majority with four vacancies.
		Trump said in July that he wanted Republicans to pick up five more House seats in Texas after redistricting ahead of the midterm elections.
		Typically, congressional maps are redrawn every 10 years after the U.S. Census to reflect population changes.
		The maps were last redrawn in 2021.
		Democrats say the unusual mid-cycle redistricting is cheating.
		Texas Republicans have called it fair play and necessary to keep the party's national majority.
		What do all of you say?
		Michael, North Little Rock, Arkansas Democratic caller.
		Hi, Michael.
unidentified		Friday flags this morning, the Chief flags.
		Long sir.
		Okay, thanks.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Michael, your turn.
		We're listening to you here.
		All right, Gloria, Derby, Kansas, Republican.
		Gloria, good morning.
		We're talking about the Texas dispute sparking redistricting wars across the country.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, I just wanted to say that Chicago, New York, California, Maine, Massachusetts, the Democrats have districts done their districting to make the Democrats have a lot more.
		And Trump got more percentage of voting in those states than the Democrats are allowing him to have in their districting.
		And the reason you don't hear anything about that is because the Republicans are adults and they abide by the law.
		The Democrats throw fits and they don't follow the law and they get mad when the Republicans are redistricting in Texas now and they are following the law.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So Gloria, what do you say to Republican Governor Mike Braun from Indiana, who conceded in an interview yesterday to Fox that it is unusual for Republicans to try to redraw maps ahead of a midterm election outside of this 10-year census?
unidentified		Yeah, why?
unidentified		But the only, but one thing I can think of is that Democrats let so many illegal aliens in, and there's so many people now, and a lot of the Democrats have been really upset in the Democrat states, and the Democrats have been moving to Texas and Florida from New York and California and all over because they're upset with the Democrat leadership.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Gloria, on illegal immigrants being counted in the census, the president at Truth Social ordering a new census to be counted to exclude illegal immigrants.
		Washington Times front page reporting, it says if it comes to fruition, it could shift several seats from states with large illegal immigrant populations, but it would also spark some hefty constitutional questions.
		They go on to say it tests the Constitution, which calls for seats to be doled out based on a count of the whole number of free persons.
		It excluded Indians not taxed and included the infamous three-fifths compromise for counting enslaved Africans.
		The Constitution also called for the count and apportionment of seats based on that count to happen within every subsequent term of 10 years and left it to Congress to legislate how.
		Whether that covers a new count as Mr. Trump envisions is likely to be tested in the courts.
		Joseph, Kalamazoo, Michigan, Democratic caller.
		Hi, Joseph.
unidentified		How are you doing?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I think my decision, I think the Democrats are doing just fine like they do them.
		They're fighting for Texas and they're in Texas.
		And Dr. Seyd, they're doing more than the Republicans are doing.
		As a matter of fact, they're sitting there down in D.C. right now, making all kinds of rules, lying rules, making up rules.
		As a matter of fact, they took the January 6th people.
		Then they killed a few police officers and damaged a few of them and then let them run free.
		You know, so I mean, we got criminals representing the White House right now.
		Even the president on down to the president.
		We don't know what he is.
		But what people are thinking about him right about now, the rules that he got in here and the changed rules and turned around, half the stuff that he said, he can't do.
		All right.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Joseph, I'm going to go to Bill, who's in Columbia, Maryland, Independent.
		Bill, good morning.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		So my idea is rather than do it the way they've been doing it, at the end of the next census, which I guess would be 2030, what they should do is have AI go in, identify where the people are, and try and draw congressional districts based on, you know, common sense,
		logical circumference of where the population is.
		And then on top of that, overlay it with look at the percentage of Democrats and Republicans in the entire state for the previous 10 years, take an average and factor that in,
		and then take the political maneuvering out of it and just let the facts be what they are and have the congressional districts set up that way and then focus on policy instead of all this warfare over rules and regulations to try and get the advantage and focus on policy.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Bill in Columbia, Maryland with his thoughts and independent.
		This morning, we're getting your take on whether or not this Texas dispute is going to spark a redistricting war, whether it should spark a redistricting war.
		If you're a Democrat, do you want to see Democratic governors responding in kind to what the Texas Republicans are doing?
		Governor Hochl, Kathy Hochl of New York, says that she will.
		We want to get your thoughts on this this morning.
		Republicans, call in at 202-748-8001.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		Texas residents dial in at 202-748-8003.
		The deadline Republicans in the Lone Star have set is today for the state Democrats to return to the Lone Star State.
		The House legislative session in Texas begins at 2 p.m. Eastern Time.
		Look for our coverage at c-span.org and our free video mobile app, C-SPAN now.
		2 p.m. Eastern Time is when the Texas House will gavel back in to see if they have a quorum to move forward with the redraw of their congressional districts.
		The Democrats, the state Democrats say they do not plan to return.
		And the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, is saying there will be lawsuits to remove them from their seats.
		There will be civil arrests when they return to Texas.
		And he's also looking at bribery charges.
		This is from the Washington Times.
		Mr. Paxton, the Attorney General in the state, also launched an investigation Thursday into the Texas Majority PAC, funded in part by liberal billionaire George Soros.
		Mr. Paxton said the PAC faces scrutiny for bankrolling the out-of-state exodus of the Texas Democrats.
		Republicans say funding the operation in exchange for Democratic opposition to the redistricting measure amounted to bribery.
		That's the Washington Times.
		Now, the Wall Street Journal this morning on this bribery charge, they say Texas Governor Greg Abbott, the Republican, has suggested that the Democrats' fundraising off the quorum break and relying on donors to help them pay for their travel could constitute bribery.
		Attorneys specializing in Texas ethics said it is unlikely the Democrats could be charged with bribery, saying that their actions appeared similar to typical political fundraising.
		Now, Abbott and the Attorney General, a fellow Republican, have also said the Democrats could be removed from office.
		The governor filed a petition to the Texas Supreme Court first seeking the removal of state representative Gene Wu, the Texas House Democratic Caucus chair, arguing that his leaving the state constitutes abandonment of office.
		On X, Gene Wu, who leads the Democrats in the House, in the state legislature, said this: I took an oath to the Constitution, not a politician's agenda.
		Denying the governor a quorum was not an abandonment of my office, it was a fulfillment of my oath.
		He's also quoted in the New York Times saying this: You want to remove me from my seat?
		He asked.
		That will immediately provoke a special election, and I will immediately be reelected.
		Let's go to Stephen, who's in Brooksville, Florida.
		Republican, Stephen, your turn.
		What do you think about this redistricting fights possibly across the country?
unidentified		Yes, ma'am.
		I think we have to look back at the data.
		How many illegal immigrants have we had in this country over time?
		I sent you a little Pew research data.
		So, if you go back to 1990, just a short picture ago, we had about 3 million illegal immigrants according to that data.
		Today, we probably have about 20 million.
		The Pew research stopped at 2022.
		They lost count at like 12 million, 11, 12 million.
		So, the question needs to be: do we want to continue to allow illegal immigrants to govern this country?
		I say no.
		It's time.
		It's time to change this.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, so Stephen, you agree with efforts in Florida as well to redraw the maps maps don't mean anything, ma'am.
unidentified		We need to stop counting illegal immigrants in this country.
unidentified		And they do not need to shape policy or legislation.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Anthony in D.C., Democratic caller.
unidentified		Hello.
		This is my suggestion.
		Most MAGA Republicans live in the South.
		Why don't we divide the country in half?
		All the MAGA people move to the South, and all the Democrats move to the North, and they can have their own separate country.
		Trump can remain president for life, like a North Korean leader, and he can just be president for life.
		You know?
		So, why don't we do that?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Anthony.
		Yeah.
		A deal.
		Miami, Florida, independent.
		A deal.
		What do you make of this?
		Oh, we lost a deal.
		We'll go to Neil in Nevada, Republican.
		Hi, Neil.
unidentified		I think they should.
		Hi.
		I think they should continue to focus on some areas of California areas that have a lot of immigrants that are legally here, focus on those areas.
		I think that he should just, I think, wait till one more year and then see how many they can deport and then start working on those areas to try to redistrict.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Randy, Tampa, Florida, Independent.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Randy.
unidentified		Good morning, America.
		Thanks, C-SPAN.
		The question is, do the seats automatically go away automatically, or do they still have to vote in the redistrict places to be able to get the new seats?
		Because it's kind of unclear to me that once they redistrict immediately, he gets five more seats, or does it have to wait for the next election?
		And secondly.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Well, the election would determine who controls those seats, but what they're trying to do is redraw these seats so that they favor a Republican candidate.
unidentified		Yeah, okay.
		So they still have to vote.
		So if they still have to vote, as long as they don't do things like when you look at the Illinois map where it's all there's, like he said, drawn by a kindergartner, you know, as long as they make like blocks like the United States are 10 blocks where there's clear borders and stuff, I don't see a problem with it.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		There was Randy's thoughts in Tampa, Florida.
		Linda, Richmond, Indiana, Democratic caller.
		Good morning to you, Linda.
unidentified		Hi.
		I just wonder why nobody has compared this yet to Mike Johnson closing up the House and leaving before legislature can be passed.
		It doesn't seem right that they're complaining so much about this when they do pretty much the same thing.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Kevin in Nebraska, independent.
unidentified		Kevin, what do you say?
		I just want to say that I live in a very conservative state.
		It's always voted Republican.
		It just seems like your vote doesn't matter here in Nebraska.
		And I just watched the town hall with Mike Flood, and everybody was really, really angry about what Trump's doing to our country.
		Whether it's, you know, I just think this is a ploy by Trump to try to get as many congressional seats as he can because he knows what will happen in the 2026 election.
		But the Democrats will take a lot of seats.
		It won't happen.
		Maybe Flood will lose here in Nebraska.
		I can only hope we have an independent who I really like, Dan Osborne.
		And he came real close to meeting Doc Bacon last time.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		So, Kevin, let's give you an update on Nebraska because the New York Times this morning has this piece, redistricting wars, where to next?
		Both parties mobilize to weigh redrawing congressional maps.
		If you go down the article, you'll see they mention California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Maryland.
		Goes on to say potential Republican gerrymandering beyond Texas includes Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, South Carolina, and Nebraska.
		So let's take a look at the state of Nebraska in this article.
		Redistricting could help Republicans prevent one swing district from flipping.
		The Omaha area seat held by Representative Don Bacon, a Republican and frequent critic of President Trump.
		With Mr. Bacon retiring, Democrats view the district, which Kamala Harris easily carried in 2024, as one of their best opportunities to gain a seat in 2026.
		The chairwoman of the Nebraska Republican Party said she would welcome mid-decade redistricting.
		So that could happen also in the state of Nebraska.
		This morning, we're getting your take on a redistricting war that could break out across the country.
		We just mentioned all the states that are looking at redrawing their congressional maps, Democrats and Republicans alike.
		We'll continue to get your thoughts on that here this morning on the Washington Journal.
		But first, a news update for all of you.
		This is a story that is on the front pages of many of the newspapers this morning.
		Israeli control over all of Gaza is declared the goal.
		Here is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking on the takeover plans on Fox News yesterday ahead of a security cabinet meeting that ultimately approved the plans.
bill hemmer ▲ ● ▼		Will Israel take control of all of Gaza?
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		We intend to in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza and to pass it to civilian governance.
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		That is not Hamas and not anyone advocating the destruction of Israel.
bill hemmer ▲ ● ▼		That's what we want to do.
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		We want to liberate ourselves and liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas.
bill hemmer ▲ ● ▼		And you were in the Gaza strip today.
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		You met Palestinians who are fighting Hamas because finally they see that they have a future.
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		They can rid themselves of this awful tyranny that not only holds our hostages, but holds 2 million Palestinians in Gaza hostage.
bill hemmer ▲ ● ▼		That's got to end.
		Are you saying today that you will take control of the entire 26-mile Gaza Strip as it was 20 years ago to this month in 2005?
		Well, we don't want to keep it.
unidentified		We want to have a security perimeter.
		We don't want to govern it.
		We don't want to be there as a governing body.
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us and giving Gazans a good life.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		The Prime Minister of Israel yesterday, in other foreign news this morning, the president was asked yesterday in the Oval Office about his deadline today for Russia and whether or not it would hold and touched on, he also talked about on the killing that has continued on both sides and noted the long waits for peace talks.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Here's what he had to say in the Oval yesterday.
unidentified		Is your deadline still standing for Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire tomorrow, or is that fluid now?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		It's going to be up to him.
		We're going to see what he has to say.
		It's going to be up to him.
		Very disappointed.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Oh, do you have to meet with, does Putin have to meet with Zelensky in order and before you and Putin have to meet?
		No.
		Are you holding it?
		So you're willing to.
kaitlan collins ▲ ● ▼		That's actually important because President Putin said this morning he was pretty dismissive of this idea of meeting with President Trinity.
unidentified		President Putin was.
		I don't know.
		I didn't hear.
		He doesn't have to agree to meet with Zelensky.
		Is that what you're saying?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		No, he doesn't.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		No?
unidentified		No.
unidentified		So wouldn't you think that means that?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		They would like to meet with me, and I'll do whatever I can to stop the killing.
		So last month, they lost 14,000 people killed last month.
		Every week is 4,000 or 5,000 people.
unidentified		So I don't like long waits.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		I think it's a shame.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		President Trump in the Oval Office yesterday talking about his deadline that he had set for today for Russia.
		Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting this this morning that the Russian president Vladimir Putin says a meeting with Trump could be held in the UAE.
		The Russian leader also dismissed the possibility of meeting with Ukraine's president in the near term.
		One more story to share with you in other news.
		Front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning, the president chooses an economic aide to fill one of the seats on the Federal Reserve Board.
		It says that the president said he would nominate Stephen Moran, the head of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, to fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors on a short-term basis.
		Trump tapped Moran in December to lead the CEA, and he was confirmed by the Senate in his current post in March.
		The president said Moran would fill the role until the term expires in January.
		Front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning with that news.
		Back to our conversation with all of you about this redistricting battle in Texas sparking a war across the country to redraw congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
		There are the lines on your screen.
		We want to hear from all of you this morning.
		We have a line for Texas residents as well.
		We'll go to Ben in Corpus Christi, Texas, Republican.
		Ben, what do you make of the efforts by Republicans in your state?
		Do you agree with that?
unidentified		Yes, I do.
		Well, look at Minnesota in Massachusetts.
		There's no Republicans in Congress from Massachusetts.
		All of them are Democrat.
		Texas has the right to redistrict, and I want Abbott to go ahead and approve the district regardless whether the Democrats come back to Texas or not.
		That would kick them out of office.
		So I'm for the redistricting in Texas.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Ben, a Republican in the Lone Star State there.
		Billy in Carrier Mills, Illinois, Democratic caller.
		Billy.
unidentified		Yeah, I would say, why don't we go back to what we used to be doing?
		All this stuff about redistricting stuff like that.
		The President of the United States don't want all this going on, but he wants to redistrict stuff.
		Well, just go back to what we all used to do.
		And that would be better than what they're doing now.
		I'm going to buy everything.
		Okay.
		Because we didn't have all these problems before.
		All right.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So, Billy, you say stick to the 10-year census as outlined in the Constitution.
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		All right.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		James, Waco, Texas, Republican.
		James.
		Republican as well.
		Do you agree with what the leaders are doing in your state?
unidentified		Actually, I don't.
		I've seen several of the hearings that they held in the state, and the majority of the people don't want this.
		And it seems to me that they're just, you know, ignoring the people's choice and doing what they want to anyways.
		So I'm all about the government for the people.
		And I don't think that's happened.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		James in Waco, Texas, he's said that he's been watching the hearings.
		There have been hearings on the House side in the Texas state legislature and on the Senate side as well.
		There have been proceedings in the House as they try to get a quorum to pass the new map.
		The House in the Texas state legislature has a map.
		The Senate has their own map.
		They've got to pass these maps in order for this.
		Both bodies have to pass a map in order for this to be implemented ahead of the midterm elections.
		C-SPAN has been covering the action down in Texas for the past couple of weeks, and you can see our coverage if you go to c-SPAN.org.
		Again, the House, the Texas State House is going to gavel in today at 2 p.m. Eastern Time.
		We'll have coverage of that if you go to c-SPAN.org and our free video mobile app, C-SPANNOW.
		Let's go to what happened yesterday in Texas during a Senate special committee meeting on congressional redistricting.
		Here's Republican State Senator Brian Hughes defending the maps by citing partisan redistricting in Democratic-controlled states.
unidentified		Discussion going on about this.
		Let me just ask you a couple of questions.
		Have you heard, have you heard remarks by the governor of California and the governor of Illinois and the governor of New York criticizing this process and accusing us of being partisan and improper in what we're doing?
		Have you heard those comments?
phil king ▲ ● ▼		Yes, a number of times.
unidentified		I have too.
		Did you know that the state of Illinois currently sends 17 members of the U.S. House?
		So of those U.S. House members, 17 of those are in Illinois.
		Now, you probably know that current numbers show us that 56% of the vote in Illinois is going to Democrats, 56%.
		Did you know that of those 17 congressional districts in Illinois, 14 are electing Democrats?
		So that means though the vote is 56%, 82% of the seats are going to Democrats.
		Are you familiar with that?
phil king ▲ ● ▼		I wasn't until a couple of weeks ago when all this started popping up, and I've seen a number of reports on different states that their districts are drawn in an exceptionally or severe partisan manner.
unidentified		Senator, to your point, is you know that in the state of New York, where they have 26 members of the U.S. House, 26 in their delegation, Democrats get about 58% of the vote, but they have 19 of those 26 districts, 73%.
		And then perhaps the loudest critic and the one who's threatened to do more redistricting might be out in California.
		I can't recall the governor's name, but the governor of California.
		California, for now, has a larger congressional delegation than we do.
		Of course, their population is shrinking.
		Ours is going up, but we're going to catch up to them.
		We're going to catch up to them if there's a fair census, unlike the 2020 census that under-counted Texas and under-counted Red States, but that's another topic.
		But in the state of California, where about 62% of the voters are voting for Democratic candidates, they have 52 members of Congress, and 43 of those, 43 out of 52, 82% are drawn to elect and are electing Democrats.
		I would note that they claim to have a nonpartisan redistricting commission there.
		Doesn't sound very nonpartisan to me.
		So a little context, Mr. Chairman, as we think about the partisan approach to these maps.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		From a Texas Senate hearing yesterday, our coverage, you can find it on c-span.org, the Hill newspaper on that hearing with the headline, Texas Senate panel advances the new House maps amid standoff.
		So that at the end of an hours-long hearing yesterday, which included public testimony, this Senate panel went on to advance the new House maps, and that should be headed to the Senate, state Senate floor for a vote.
		Now, here's Texas State Senator Boris Miles, Democrat of Houston, condemning the Republicans' efforts to remake in remarks before this vote took place.
		Here is him condemning the Republican efforts before the vote.
unidentified		You do not have to call someone a racist slur to be a racist, Mr. Chairman and members.
		Sitting back participating in an August process in an inherently discriminatory process, disenfranchising black and brown people is racist in all parts.
		For those of us watching this from out of state, just know, as Texas goes, the country's going to go.
		Texas may be the first to be redistricted or redistrict, but your state is next.
		Finally, for those of you who watching, yes, the Republicans have stacked the debt.
		And the passage of this map may happen.
		But I want all of you to know who are watching, they want you to be discouraged.
		They want you to be dismayed.
		They want to give you a reason to stay at home on election, but don't let them do it.
		This is my call to arms for you.
		Your vote is your weapon.
		I repeat, your vote is your weapon.
		Show them how you get down.
		And you know how you get down.
		Make sure that these maps don't give them what they want.
		Take yourself, take your neighbor, take your friend, take your parents, take their family, take them all to the voting box.
		Show them who we are and let them understand that you are Texans.
		And Texans, we stand for something.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Boris Miles, a Texas state senator Democrat there from yesterday's hearing.
		As we said, President Trump is requesting that states like Texas and others redraw their maps ahead of the midterm elections to pick up some seats because of the thin majority.
		House of Representatives, which is 219 to 212 and with four vacancies.
		Now, in a news analysis piece in the New York Times, Tyler Pager argues, says this, that the argument from President Trump about the maps, the congressional maps and district not representing the popular vote, Mr. Trump's popular vote win in Texas does not automatically translate to more Republican seats in the state's congressional delegation.
		His strategy in the redistricting fight echoes one from the 2024 Republican primary when Mr. Trump and his team worked behind the scenes to twist the primary and delegate rules in ways that made it easier for him to lock up the nomination.
		So Tyler Page in a news analysis piece with the headline, Trump's redistricting drive tests his power in the state.
		We're asking all of you to give us your thoughts on this this morning.
		Bob in Tampa, Florida, an independent.
		Hi, Bob.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		Hey, I wanted to actually ask about something that you said because you called the three-fifths compromise infamous.
		Why did you characterize it that way?
		Because I'm concerned you got it backwards about who was supporting it and who wasn't.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		No, no, Bob.
		I didn't.
		I was reading from the newspaper.
		It was the Washington Times that put it that way.
		And I can show you the front page of the Washington Times this morning.
		Trump orders count to exclude illegal immigrants.
		I was reading from their reporting this morning.
unidentified		Because I've seen lots of folks discuss this on C-STAN in the past.
		And just for everyone else that's watching, the folks that Wanted the slaves to count as a whole person for determining representation were the southern slave owners.
		The folks that held it, it was a compromise that were able to hold it to three-fifths, reduced the representation the South had in Congress, therefore weakening them.
		Now, don't know if that actually advanced the timeline of the Civil War, but the pro-slavery wanted them counted as a whole person, and the anti-slavery position put the compromise in to reduce the southern representation.
		That's all I wanted to discuss this morning.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Michael, Columbus, Ohio, Republican.
unidentified		Hi.
		Much every morning.
		Thanks for C SPN.
		So this is really important.
		Nobody's mentioned this, but what we know about redistricting is that the politicians are trying to take control over who gets elected, but the voters actually have more control than the politicians think they do.
		So what do we know about primaries?
		Fewer people vote in them than do in general elections.
		Approximately only 20% of voters participate in primaries compared to general elections.
		So, sorry, I'm nervous.
		In gerrymandered districts, what do we know happens with the election?
		The winner of the primary is likely to be the winner of the general election.
		So what can people do to fix that?
		Is if you're an independent, unaffiliated, or a Democrat, and you live in one of these gerrymandered districts, your only option to fix the problem is to vote in the Republican primary.
		You need to vote in your primary for the least partisan, most centrist candidate.
		And that can flip what the politicians are expecting the outcome of the election to be by taking over control of the opposite party's primary.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Michael, let's review from Punch Bowl News this morning.
		House Republicans are now aiming to pick up a dozen or more House seats in an unprecedented move, Donald Trump-backed redistricting drive, looking to head off a Democratic wave in the 2026 midterms and cement the president's power.
		Republicans are hoping to net a minimum of three House seats in Florida as Punch Bowl scooped on Thursday, and that add that to the five seats in Texas, one each in Missouri and Indiana, plus two or three in Ohio, where state law mandates a redraw ahead of the 2026 election.
		Plus, the Supreme Court has not yet to rule in a high-profile Louisiana redistricting case on the 1965 Voting Rights Act that could further alter next year's congressional landscape.
		That's Punch Bowl News reporting this morning.
		They also go on to note what's happening by Democratic governors.
		And they note California Governor Gavin Newsom, a 2028 hopeful, is doing everything he can to sidestep his commission, but he'll need Golden State voters to back his efforts in a special election.
		This will be extremely expensive and may not work.
		If it does, the prize could be five new blue seats, which could negate the proposed Texas map.
		Texas dispute sparking redistricting wars.
		That is our conversation this morning with all of you.
		Michael in Columbus, Ohio, Republican.
		Hi, Michael.
unidentified		Hi.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Oh, we just talked.
		I'm sorry.
		I'm going to go on to David, who's in Indianapolis, Democratic caller.
		Hi, David.
unidentified		Hi, how are you doing?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Morning.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Yes.
		I think the Republicans are trying to cheat to win the midterm elections, and they don't need to be doing that.
		Yes, I think that's wrong, and I don't think they ought to be doing it.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		David, the White House is eyeing up your state.
unidentified		Yes, yeah.
		And yeah, that's flat out wrong.
		That makes me mad because that is just flat out cheating the way that Republicans are doing that.
		It's wrong.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, David, from the New York Times reporting, Vice President JD Vance visited Indiana on Thursday to press lawmakers into redrawing their House maps.
		But so far, Governor Mike Braun, a Republican who recently just served in the U.S. Senate with JD Vance, has been cautious about calling a special session.
		Some experts are unclear over the legality of such a move, but many Republicans, legislators are eager to flip the state's most competitive seat in northwestern Indiana, now held by Democrat Frank Mervan, and give the party eight out of the state's nine House seats.
		Right now, they have seven of the nine.
		Joe in Baltimore, Maryland, Independent.
		Hi, Joe.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I think this is a real tragedy.
		Our Republic functions with voting on essentially a highly ritualized warfare.
		This is what we all do instead of getting our guns and killing each other.
		And that relies on respect and adherence to process.
		And what we have, I mean, you know, I live in Democrat-controlled Maryland who gerrymanders the heck out of it and has, you know, deregistered third parties time and time again.
		Because this is about power.
		And it's not just power for a party.
		It's power for individuals.
		Like the personal betterment of these legislatures is always helped by gerrymandering.
		If you remain in power, it's much harder to remove someone with a primary, if you're already an incumbent, than it is with a complete election where they have someone from the other party running against them with a serious chance of victory.
		And like Congress could do something about this to restrict states from gerrymandering, but the House of Representatives, everybody in there benefits from gerrymandering.
		You know, you could use zip codes.
		You could use convex shapes.
		There are plenty of easy solutions to this.
		But we need to get Congress on board by giving them something in a package bill that would allow them to prosper.
mark goldman ▲ ● ▼		One thing that I think we could do is, and this sounds weird, I know, but if you attached it to a bill where you codified and legalized and allowed congressional insider trading in order to let them make themselves rich,
unidentified		but also tied it to like proportional investments in the American stock market to fund Medicare and Medicaid with the same and Social Security with the same stock picks as Congress makes.
unidentified		We could fund Social Security and Medicaid, and we could use it as something really, really, really sweet to offset the danger that they personally feel from something like fair redistricting.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Joe, there's also the possibility of a non-partisan redistricting commission.
		According to a YouGov poll that was recently done, when they asked, do you support or oppose requiring that redistricting is conducted by a nonpartisan commission?
		38% of all adults said they strongly support that idea.
		21% said somewhat support.
		Only 7% somewhat oppose.
		And 4% strongly oppose.
		While 30% of adults said they were not sure.
		Milton in Philadelphia, Democratic caller.
		Hi, Milton.
unidentified		Thank you for taking my call.
		Before I make my comment, I'd like to thank Almighty God for allowing me to see another birthday.
		My point is this.
		What are we becoming to be a banana republic?
		What Texas is doing is I've never seen it done before.
		It's in the middle of a decade, and all of a sudden they want to redistrict their entire state.
		If you allow, if Texas does it, next thing you know, New York and California and other states are going to do the same thing.
		They don't like the result next year of the election.
		So the year after that, they're going to change their maps.
		What are we becoming?
		It's all because the Republicans refuse to stand up to this dictator, Donald Trump.
		I don't know what kind of country we'd be becoming.
		We used to have a set of principles in this country where people care more about their country than a political party.
		But it seems like all they care about is their own self-interest.
		And I don't know what's happening to America.
		I'm praying for our country, but with this dictator in there and the Republicans refuse to get a spine, I don't know what's going to happen to our country.
		That's my point.
		Thank you.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Abigail, Nashville, Tennessee, Independent.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Morning, Abigail.
unidentified		Thank you for taking my call.
		And I loved what the last gentleman had to say.
		As far as the redistricting, this is just simply gerrymandering.
		That's all it is.
		And until Congress gets together and passes a bill saying no mid-census time redistricting and absolutely no gerrymandering.
		And all this is being done because the Republicans are scared to death and know that they can't win without cheating.
		I mean, that's what the Republican Party under MADA has become.
		Thieves, liars, and cheaters.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Abigail's thoughts there in Tennessee.
		We'll go on to Lexington, Kentucky.
		Jackson's a Republican.
		Your turn, Jackson.
unidentified		Yes, I'd like to see y'all really pulling the water for the Democrats today.
		I mean, it's like they've never gerrymandered at all.
		I mean, really, can you not go through some of the states they've done?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We showed you the state representative from Texas, a Republican, making that exact argument, Jackson.
unidentified		Well, one little blip.
		I mean, come on, guys.
		You know that the Democrats do this too.
		And they do it way worse than the Republicans.
		And as far as telling lies, I mean, they rigged their last three presidential primary elections, and they're supposed to be Democrats.
		I mean, they rigged them to the fact to the point to where they had to pull off, duly won the primary, Joe Biden, and put another person in.
		I mean, how screwball is that?
		You're talking about lives?
		Geez.
		Thank you.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Jackson in Lexington, Kentucky.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Chase in Georgia, independent.
unidentified		Good morning.
		One of the things that I want to point out is we're getting into a case of whataboutism, right?
		Of, you know, the Republicans are doing this, but what about the Democrats?
		And then they say, well, what about the Republicans?
		If we move to a system of proportional representation, such as in the Netherlands, they don't have issues of gerrymandering because districts don't exist.
		You have multi-winner districts or even a system of star voting, right?
		Where you would allow for lesser-known candidates and third parties to have a better chance of winning.
		And it's interesting to me that both sides want to point out the other side gerrymanders, but they don't want to address the underlying issue and possibly put, you know, proportional representation to the test in this country.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Stephen, Los Angeles, Democratic caller.
		Stephen, what do you think about the threat from Governor Gavin Newsom to do the same and redraw maps in California?
		Do you think he could get a special election to get Golden State voters to approve his efforts?
unidentified		No, I don't think he should.
		And it breaks my heart that the people in Texas are going through this.
		I mean, the fact that they're holding all of these meetings, you know, and asking the public what their opinion is, and having 98% of the people come in say that they don't agree with it, and seeing these Republican governors in Texas just kind of turn around and have this sort of indifference to everything that they're hearing is just super, super sad.
		I encourage all of my friends in Texas to register to vote right now.
		And even if you're a Republican, you know, go to the ballot box and do not vote for these Republican governors, or not governors, Republican congresspeople to be elected again.
		They do not care about your best interests and they do not care about what you're going through.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Justin Flagstaff, Arizona, independent.
		Justin, your turn.
		Oh, lost Justin.
		Donna, St. Louis, Missouri, independent.
		Morning, Donna.
unidentified		Hello, good morning.
		Three things.
		First, the Republicans won the House, Senate, and presidency in 2024 without redistricting.
		The Republicans are doing all this now because they know they're going to get slaughtered in 2026 and they want to take our minds off that Epstein stuff.
		So they need to do this to really try to rig the election before 2026.
		Secondly, Trump is the craziest, most immoral president I've ever seen.
		Independents are smart enough, and we really are a majority.
		We're more Democrats than more Republicans.
		We are in the majority, and independents are not going for this person again or his party for quite a while.
		I mean, think about how he had the FBI wrestle the senator from California onto the floor.
		All these tariffs we're going to have to pay on the things we buy.
		What they're doing in the gaza, killing kids, trying to get food.
		And he backsnett and Yahoo.
		He's crazy like he is.
		I mean, you know, I don't know what to say to convince people, but I think most people have seen enough of Trump in the last six months that they are getting slaughtered in 2026.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
		Donna's arguments there in St. Louis, Missouri.
		The president marking his 200th day in office this week in his second term.
		Donna mentioned the House of Representatives.
		The majority right now for Republicans stands at 219, and there are 212 Democrats.
		So they have a seven-seat cushion to pass legislation right now, a thin majority, and there are four vacancies.
		Republicans trying to redraw the map in Texas so they could potentially pick up five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
		And as we said, Republicans are looking at other states as well.
		Democrats are responding in New York, California, et cetera, looking at possibly redrawing their maps as well.
		Michael in Florida, Republican.
		Michael, what do you make of redistricting wars across the country?
unidentified		So redistricting has been going on for longer than I can remember.
		We used to live in Illinois and we moved to Florida because our vote didn't count due to redistricting in Illinois.
		The map in Illinois looks like a big bowl of spaghetti with small little lines going all over the place.
		So it's funny that Texas would go to Illinois to complain about redistricting.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, there's Michael's thoughts in Florida, former resident from Illinois, Bill, Fredericksburg, Virginia, Independent.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Bill.
unidentified		Oh, good morning.
		I must admit, it disturbs me a bit that only a few callers have really mentioned what used to be called the elephant in the room.
		It's not an elephant.
		It's a gerrymander.
		And a gerrymander has been depicted as a monster, a huge lizard.
		Those particularly Republicans and particularly Democrats who are openly accusing the other side need to look deep into their souls and listen to us voters because gerrymandering, at least according to the Gov poll, is the wrong way to go.
		We need to get rid of gerrymandering.
		Thank you, America.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, there was Bill in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
		A couple of you have mentioned the congressional map in Illinois looking like a bowl of spaghetti.
		This is from Wikipedia's website.
		So I just wanted to show you that as we end this conversation this morning on redistricting wars.
		We're going to take a break later on this morning on the Washington Journal, a conversation with Saleem Firth from Mercatus Center at George Mason University on efforts across the country to address the lack of affordable housing.
		But first, when we get back from our break, we'll turn our attention to the various financial settlements between the Trump administration and several Ivy League universities over DEI and other policies.
		That conversation with Ted Mitchell from the American Council on Education.
		Stay with us.
unidentified		Have been watching C-SPAN Washington Journal for over 10 years now.
		This is a great format that C-SPAN offers.
		You're doing a great job.
		I enjoy hearing everybody's opinion.
		I'm a huge C-SPAN fan.
		I listen every morning on the way to work.
andrew allen brown ▲ ● ▼		I think C-SPAN should be required viewing for all three branches of government.
unidentified		First of all, if you say hello, C-SPAN, and how you all covered the hearings.
		Thank you, everyone at C-SPAN, for allowing this interaction with everyday citizens.
		It's an amazing show to get real opinions from real people.
		Appreciate you guys' non-biased coverage.
		I love politics, and I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices.
		You and C-SPAN show the truth.
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greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back to the Washington Journal.
		Ted Mitchell is joining us now.
		He's the president of the American Council on Education, here to talk about the Trump administration and higher education in this country.
		Ted Mitchell, let's just begin with a review of the administration's efforts to influence higher education in this second term of President Trump.
		What have they done so far?
unidentified		Well, you know, great to be with you, Greta.
		Thanks for having me.
		It really started on day one with the set of executive orders and then a memo from the Office of Management and Budget declaring a couple things.
		First, declaring that American universities and colleges were anti-Semitic, they were soft on anti-Israel protests.
		Second, that they were woke and that they had way too much emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI for short.
		And that there was general waste in the system, including waste in the research enterprise.
		And so the administration has gone after higher education on those three grounds from the very start.
		So it's been a tough road for higher ed, mostly because it's very difficult to defend yourself without an opportunity for due process.
		And that's the other thing that I would say is that the administration has pushed aside due process and has exerted fines and penalties and freezes on research without any sort of open, open process, open hearing attempt to try the case, as it were, before the American public or in judicial hearings.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		How have these universities responded?
unidentified		Well, you know, I think that first, this is an environment of fear and chaos, and nobody does well in an environment of fear or chaos.
		I think that's probably a part of the point that the administration wanted to put universities on the back foot, and they've done.
		And so universities have responded in a variety of ways.
		Most importantly, I think, and even before the Trump administration, universities and colleges took last spring's protest as a wake-up call.
		And so they have redone their student conduct policies.
		They've held hearings for students involving students who broke the rules.
		They've exerted punishments.
		They have increased their work to develop programming on anti-Semitism.
		So I think that universities are well on their way to addressing the anti-Semitism problem.
		The research issue is an interesting one because there are two things going on.
		First, there is an attempt by the various funding agencies to scrub research projects of anything having to do with gender, race, differential health impacts on different groups of people.
		And that's really willfully blinding us to the importance of research having to do with these categories.
		But the other thing that's been going on is just a blanket unilateral freeze.
		And so we've seen freezes of federal funding in the hundreds of millions of dollars at Harvard, at Duke, at now UCLA, at Columbia, and at Brown.
		And those freezes are having a really negative impact on research.
		It means that clinical trials can't continue.
		It means that labs shut down.
		It means, frankly, that we are seeding our leadership as the world's leaders in technology, biotechnology, AI.
		We're just giving that away by freezing all of this research.
		So lately, and I think that this is where we're going to end up on our conversation this morning, lately institutions have taken a hard look at this and they figured that the best thing that they can do is go to the administration and ask what's it going to take for us to get back to the research that we do, the teaching that we do, doing what we're supposed to be doing for America.
		And so we've seen settlements over the last week and a half or so from Columbia and from Brown.
		And I know that there are discussions going on with Harvard and with UCLA similarly.
		And those, you know, frankly, those discussions are a lot like discussing a hostage crisis.
		There's no connection between what the government wants in terms of financial recompense to the problems that they're talking about.
		So take Columbia, for example.
		Columbia has offered to, has agreed to give the federal government $200 million.
		Will a dollar of that help Jewish students?
		No.
		Will it help Jewish faculty?
		No.
		And so it's unclear how these penalties are anything more than just a ransom that's being paid to the federal government by universities to allow them to go back to the business of building America.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Let's take a look at these settlements that you were just referencing, Mr. Mitchell.
		Columbia settled with the Trump administration a $200 million payment to the federal government, a pledge to end diversity programs, compliance with the administration interpretation on sex discrimination, new vetting and reporting on international students.
		This from reporting for the Associated Press.
		Review of its Middle East curriculum and faculty changes, adoption of Israel-related anti-Semitism definition and restrictions on campus protests.
		That's from the Columbia settlement.
		Now onto the settlement with Brown University in the Trump administration.
		50 million in payments to state work development programs, not the federal government.
		Adoption of the government's definition of male and female, and removal of any consideration of race from the admissions process.
		Trump administration threatened $510 million in funding to Brown University.
		And also, other schools have reached a deal back in July.
		Per the Associated Press, it agreed to modify a trio of school records set by transgender swimmer Leah Thomas and said it would apologize to female athletes disadvantaged by Thomas's participation in the women's swimming team.
		Ted Mitchell, what do you make of these settlements and the details that we've heard here?
unidentified		Yeah, I think, Greta, it's great to turn to those details.
		The dollars have been the headline.
		But I think you rightly point out that the settlements have brought the federal government way into the internal affairs of colleges and universities.
		So, I mean, a couple of things.
		Race and admissions.
		We've been clear about that since the Students for Fair Admissions Act.
		So there's nothing really more to be done there, even though there seem to be efforts afoot to try to continue to gather new data.
		But universities have been working since Students for Fair Admissions to eliminate race as a consideration in admissions.
		It's the law, and universities will comport with the law under any circumstances.
		The other things that you mentioned, though, really do get into what we think at the American Council on Education are sort of three red lines that define institutional autonomy and define the ability of institutions to have diverse missions serving in different elements of the country, whether they're religious colleges, historically black colleges, or universities.
		And those are who we teach, what we teach, and who teaches.
		And so I think that the settlements get close to those lines in, for example, Columbia's settlement that will change the way they think about their Middle East studies program, or in Harvard's case, the appointment of a special monitor who will look into every aspect of hiring and as well as student admission.
		And I worry, and we worry, that the relationship between the federal government and higher education has always been one of partnership.
		And we see this now as just stipulating that there will be an antagonistic relationship between the two sectors.
		And we don't think that that is good for America.
		We don't think it's good for higher education.
		We don't think it's good for the things that the Trump administration seems to care about.
		Transgender athletes, a lot of news, a lot of noise, and institutions are following not only the Trump doctrine there, but also the NCAA's rulings.
		So we've been working on that one ourselves as well.
		The admissions thing I mentioned, we have worked hard to eliminate race as an upfront consideration in admissions.
		At the same time, the Supreme Court in its ruling reminded us that diversity on college campuses is important.
		We just can't use race as the dominant way of achieving that.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Ted Mitchell, remind our viewers who is we, what is the American Council on Education?
unidentified		Yeah, the American Council on Education has been around for 107 years.
		We represent all higher education institutions, public, private, two-year, four-year.
		And we do that mostly in informing federal policy discussions and debates, but also in bringing our institutions together around important issues, such as making sure that university degrees are valuable in the workplace, that colleges are addressing the completion issue, and that colleges are as affordable as they can be for every young person and adult in America.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Ted Mitchell here to talk about higher education and the Trump administration influence over it.
		We want you to join the conversation with us this morning.
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		Mr. Mitchell, the headline from CNN, Trump takes executive action to target race-based university admissions.
		The president took executive action yesterday to expand the type of admissions data given to the federal government from colleges and universities, a move aimed at boosting transparency regarding race-based admissions.
		What do you make of this action by the president?
unidentified		Yeah, and I referred to that obliquely a second ago.
		You know, I think that this is, there's really no change here.
		The president is asking for information that in large part is already provided by universities to the government.
		And so I think that that's good.
		We're all in favor of transparency.
		As I mentioned, we support students for fair admissions.
		And if there are places where we've not been up to par, well, good for us to hear about that and see that so that we can correct our work.
		But let me be clear, colleges and universities in America understand that using race as a primary criteria for admissions is against the law.
		And we will proceed accordingly.
		What the Trump administration seems to be a little bit confused about is that much of the information that they're asking for is unavailable because of the very fact that we're not taking race into consideration anymore.
		We'll know the race of students who enroll at our institutions in the fall.
		We'll know that because institutions typically do a census and report that information already to the federal government.
		What we can't do because of privacy regulations and won't do is deliver to the federal government specifics on any individual applicant.
		And so again, I think we're constrained by the existing structure, but we will certainly do everything in our power to provide the administration and the public with the information that they know, that they need to be reassured that institutions are taking students for fair admissions seriously and that we are searching for ways to make diverse classes without discriminating against any other.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Mitchell, walk our viewers through your resume here, your work in higher education over the years.
unidentified		Yeah, so I'm an old veteran.
		I began my teaching career at Dartmouth College, taught there for 10 years, and then moved to Stanford where I worked as chief of staff to the president, then to UCLA, where I was dean of the School of Education, and then vice chancellor for a number of administrative parts.
		I went to Occidental College where I was president, and then moved to the, spent some time supporting educational entrepreneurs with work in Silicon Valley for the new schools venture fund, and then spent the second Obama term as Under Secretary of Education there, and from there moved to ACE.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Let's go to DL, who's in Levine, Arizona, Independent.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, and thank you for the show and quite an impressive list of accomplishments by the guests.
		I just want to go back to the direct question here, race and college admissions.
		Race has always played a role.
		Initially, they kept individuals out, and now we're using it as one way to codify and qualify individuals.
		What then will be used to allow qualified students the opportunity to attend colleges across this great country?
		That's the right question.
		And there's no doubt that higher education institutions had used race as one of many considerations in identifying qualified applicants.
		The Supreme Court has ruled that that is no longer possible to do, and so we will adhere to that.
		But I think institutions are looking at ways, and again, to make sure that everyone who is qualified has an opportunity to attend.
		And so looking at things like first generation status, looking at things like the economic profile of a family, the economic circumstances of the high schools that students attend, because we know that inequality is not just a higher ed matter, it's a K-12 matter as well.
		So trying to take all of those things into consideration without focusing directly on race is what we need to be doing, not as proxies for race, but as a way of creating a diverse class that will include racial diversity.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Times.
unidentified		So it's a great question.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, talk about the 2023 Supreme Court decision on affirmative action and reminder viewers how that changed the admissions process.
unidentified		Yeah, so that was the case, I've referred to it a couple times as students for fair admissions, and those were the plaintiffs who brought the suit.
		And basically their argument was that the current application of affirmative action in college admissions was in itself discriminatory, that it essentially set aside seats or took seats from other qualified applicants solely on the basis of race.
		And the Supreme Court generally agreed with that argument, while at the same time agreeing that the diversity of a class is really important, both for the uplift that it provides to every student who's in the class, but also because of the well-known fact that diversity of opinion, diversity of background,
		diversity of perspective is an important part of what college is, and it's how it widens all of our apertures as we're looking at the world around us.
		So A, diversity is important.
		B, you can't use race.
		C, the Supreme Court was actually quite helpful in identifying a number of ways that they specified could be used.
		One, targeted outreach programs, not about applying, not about judging admissions applications, but reaching out to students of different racial groups, different socioeconomic groups, to encourage them to take the courses that they need to qualify for college, to encourage them to apply for colleges and to expand their horizons beyond what they may have been in the past.
		That's one.
		Two is that the Supreme Court also recognized that every applicant's lived experience is important to who they are and what they want to be when they grow up.
		And for many students, their racial identity is a part of that.
		So the Supreme Court explicitly allows admissions offices to inquire, to ask students about who they are, where they came from, what they want to do when they grow up.
		And so the Supreme Court has allowed statements about how race has influenced students to be a part of the application process.
		What's interesting is that there's conflict there, Greta, between what the Supreme Court says and the way the Trump administration has interpreted SFFA.
		And so in that executive order you referenced yesterday or executive memorandum, the Trump administration is asserting that those two things, outreach and expression of sort of self-expression of who students are and the role that race might have played in their lives, that the administration believes that that violates SFFA.
		So we have a little bit of a conflict between the executive branch and the Supreme Court on a couple of very important issues.
		My guess is that those will play themselves out over the next year and we'll see SFFA, Students for Fair Admissions, sort of re-litigated, maybe all the way to the Supreme Court.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		A couple of viewer texts for you here, Ted Mitchell.
		This is from Steve in Tampa, Florida, who writes, if the universities that allowed anti-Semitic behavior and their educational leaders to promote anti-Semitism had immediately responded appropriately by ending anti-Semitism there, there would have never been a question about having to pay a fine to continue with receiving huge financial payments from the government.
		And then you have Diane in Morristown, New Jersey saying the fine for Columbia as punishment is absolutely appropriate after what the university allowed to happen to their Jewish students.
		Ted Mitchell?
unidentified		Yeah, a couple things.
		One is there's no doubt that many universities were slow to act last spring.
		And we, as a sector, have been looking at why and how.
		And we could talk for the rest of the time about how these protests were different than others.
		It's one of the first times that the protests pitted students against students and importantly, students against faculty and faculty against students.
		We were ill-equipped to deal with that.
		And last spring was not a proud moment for higher education.
		And I agree that we did not respond well or effectively.
		We're better at that now.
		And I guess my argument about the fine is it does nothing to change the circumstance on the ground.
		It does nothing to change the way student conduct is adjudicated.
		It does nothing to support Hillels or other organizations on campus that advocate for and provide programming for Jewish students.
		It does nothing to help socialized faculty to the importance of maintaining a balance in their teaching and their informal conversations.
		So, I wouldn't mind it if the 200 million had been spent in somewhat the way that the Brown settlement seems to be, which is to provide positive momentum and an investment in the future either of the university or of other social purposes like the workforce development program in the workforce development program in Rhode Island.
		So, the punishment doesn't fit the crime.
		The punishment doesn't help the crime, help mediate the crime, and it, I think, is backward looking in a way that doesn't really support what institutions have done and are doing to reject anti-Semitism on campus.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Couple calls for you here.
		John is first in North Carolina, Independent.
		Morning, John.
unidentified		Yeah, hello.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, John.
		Question or comment.
		We're listening.
unidentified		Well, I don't object to every neighboring friend and any of our friends coming to college, but all these foreign countries are sending them in there to give information all they can.
		That's what they're up there for.
		And they don't mind paying the money.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, John, I'm going to take your point.
		John is referring to what some have called espionage, sending foreign students into our universities to exert influence and to get information about our country.
		Ted Mitchell, is this an issue?
unidentified		Yeah, thanks, John, for your question.
		And thanks, Greta.
		It is an issue.
		And I think we would be silly to argue that it's not.
		Espionage is a problem.
		Graduate student espionage, especially in scientific fields, has been an issue of concern for our institutions, for funding agencies, for the security apparatus.
		And we've been working to root that out.
		And we, by we, in this instance, I mean all of us, education leaders, security officials, granting agencies, and so on.
		And are we perfect at it?
		No.
		Are we going to find a spy in our midst occasionally?
		Absolutely.
		But let's remember, too, that the other side of the coin is that we are essentially recruiting the very best and the very brightest from every country in the world to come and participate in the American experiment.
		Most graduate students, most undergraduates who come have hopes of staying, hopes of contributing to the American economy, to our society.
		If, for example, you look at the number of immigrants who came to this country as students, who have started phenomenal businesses or now the CEOs of established businesses, it's a disproportionate number.
		We gain through the international student flow.
		Let's look at one other piece of this, which is if students go back, what do they go back with?
		Well, some of them go back with marketable assets in the form of intellectual property, and we need to stop that.
		But the majority of them leave with a strong feeling of connection to America.
		And they, when they return, disproportionately attain positions of leadership in their country.
		So we win if they stay, we win if they go back, with the exception of the very few who come with nefarious purposes.
		And we're doing everything that we can to create an environment in which our discoveries are secure.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We recently covered a discussion on foreign espionage in higher education here on C-SPAN.
		You can find it on our website at c-span.org.
		Gina, who's in Mount Vernon, New York, an independent.
		Hi, Gina.
		Welcome to the conversation.
		Question or comment here for our guest, Ted Mitchell.
unidentified		Yes.
		Excuse me, I do have two right quick, but the first one is that we did.
		I did hear it when he was talking about diversity at the college because to me, I feel as though that this is something that is very important to urban students.
		Okay, we have been shut out for a long, long, long, long, too long, you know, and it is something that needs to happen that has to put in place.
		I don't understand why it is so difficult to have a small percentage of urban students to actually go there.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Gina, let's take that.
		Ted Mitchell's shaking his head.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, Gina, you know, it's a real question.
		And I think that we at ACE spend a lot of time trying to answer the question: what is it that's preventing urban students and also rural students, I might add, from applying to and going to college.
		And there are a couple of things.
		We know that most families look at the sticker price of colleges and universities and say, whoa, that's way above our ability to pay.
		And that's partly our problem, right?
		Because we advertise the sticker price.
		But in truth, most families pay half of that.
		It's called the discount rate.
		And it's a sort of understudied, underunderstood part of higher education, particularly in private institutions, independent institutions.
		That while, yes, there is a high price that a few pay, the majority, through federal student aid, through private student aid, through institutional aid, get a lot of help to go to college.
		So we need to do a better job talking about that.
		I think second is that it has become clearer as the economy changes that there are plenty of jobs out there that don't require a college degree that may require not a four-year college degree.
		They may require an associate's degree or a certificate.
		And we're very, very bullish on giving students a start wherever they want, but making sure that those experiences can eventually translate into a four-year degree if students want it.
		So price, cost, other opportunities for jobs.
		And I think the final one is that we continue to think of the college experience as one that is different from everyday life.
		And so, you know, lots of adult students, 24 to 36-year-olds, have started a family.
		They've started a job.
		We need to be more flexible in how we offer courses.
		Some of that will be online.
		Some of it will be just changing the time of day that courses are offered.
		We need to fit our curriculum and our structure around the needs of students rather than the other way around.
		And we're slowly doing that, but we need to do it faster and harder.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Joe is in Butner, North Carolina, Democratic caller.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Joe, let's hear from you.
unidentified		Yes.
		I am concerned about Ted Mitchell's statement about anti-Semitism and how it costs Columbia and other Ivy League schools.
		I have not yet heard of a single lawsuit, a single injury, or the reduction of the plurality of Jewish students at Ivy League schools as a result of the protest.
		The APAC seems to have made an impression on him and the government to take up this campaign.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Well, Joe, let's get a response to that because you're accusing him of being influenced by AIPAC, which is a Jewish lobby effort in the United States.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Ted Mitchell, I want to give you a chance to respond.
unidentified		Yeah, thanks.
		Thanks.
		And thanks for giving me the opportunity to go back to my overly long monologue.
		I'm trying to, I agree with you.
		And that was, I was trying to make that point and obviously didn't.
		The problem here is that the government has made all of these assertions that institutions are anti-Semitic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
		And at no point has there been an opportunity to examine that.
		There have been no lawsuits.
		There have been no the normal way we do this is that there's a complaint.
		The complaint goes to the Office of Civil Rights.
		The Office of Civil Rights gathers information.
		They make a recommendation.
		And the university sits down with the Office of Civil Rights and comes up with a solution to the problem.
		When I said that the government has not obeyed due process, this is exactly what I mean.
		They have asserted a crime.
		They have exerted a punishment.
		And at no point has there been a legal process to justify either.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Ted Mitchell, Wall Street Journal article recently with the headline, Trump comes for public universities with UCLA now in his sites.
		University of California system agrees to negotiate after more than 500 million in federal research funds are frozen.
		How do you think this effort will be different with public universities versus private?
unidentified		Yeah, it's a great question, and it's obviously an unfolding story, so we'll watch it closely.
		I think that this is the third effort around public universities.
		Let's not forget the University of Virginia system, George Mason University and UVA that were in the Trump administration's target zone just a couple of weeks ago.
		In both of those cases, rather than going to the freeze research, demand a payment and move on, which is the Columbia and Harvard model, they have demanded that the president resign.
		In the case of University of Virginia, that has happened.
		Jim Ryan resigned and has been replaced by an interim.
		At George Mason, the demand that Gregory Washington resign has been rebuffed, at least for the moment, by the board at George Mason.
		So I think we're seeing the Trump administration starting to probe at the defenses of public institutions.
		And now we'll see what happens at UCLA.
		It's a very, very different setting because in a public institution, the purse strings are not just campus purse strings.
		They are system purse strings.
		And they are, at the end of the day, state purse strings.
		And so any significant settlement with any public institution will need to eventually be okayed by the governor and perhaps the state legislature.
		That's going to be a very different case in California where Governor Newsom has already been clear that he has no interest in participating in this kind of hostage taking, I believe is the term he used.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to Murrell next.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Wilson, North Carolina, an independent caller, your turn.
unidentified		Yes, I got to suggest that I think you guys should interview some of the students.
		I haven't heard anything about what the students had to say.
		I'm saying the regular American students, you know, the students that we send, that Americans born Americans.
		I have talked to them.
		I talked to quite a few of them.
		And their biggest complaints is that they are favored, that the Jewish, that they have created, like the last caller, that CPAC has created this thing of anti-Semitism.
		And if you look at the one thing they complain about is Jewish students, they get free education, free health care.
		Our students over here, they're burdened with hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans that we charge them for going to school, but we turn around and give Israel trillions of dollars over the time that it has been existed, trillions of dollars, which they have been built up their economy and they get everything free.
		And we don't get anything.
		And, you know, we got states over here going bankrupt and need money, but we find the money to give them.
		And nobody is, we got Netanyahu came over here on the TV and called all of our students a bunch of idiots when they was out there protesting.
		And if you check, man, we have a right to protest.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Murrell, I'll have Mr. Mitchell jump in now.
unidentified		Merrel, great points.
		And I think that one of the things, and foreign policy is way above my pay grade, but I do think that it's important to recognize that the students who are on our campuses today are they are borrowing money.
		They are paying them back.
		The good news is that the average student debt hasn't changed much over the last 15 years.
		It's about $30,000.
		It's not the hundreds of thousands of dollars that we sometimes read in the headlines.
		And that the majority of students are able to pay back their loans within the time period specified.
		The students who have difficulty paying back their loans are students who come to college and leave without the benefit of a degree.
		There's a degree bump that makes you eligible for all kinds of other jobs that pay more.
		And if you leave with, say, two years of college and two years of debt, that's going to be a harder road for you.
		And I hear your point about the way that we have chosen domestically to spend our money.
		And I think that that's something that Congress was working hard on in the so-called big beautiful bill, is to do things like cap the amount of money that graduate students could borrow, make sure that the loan payment programs were clear and simple for students.
		And I applaud both of those.
		But I hear you that if you step way back and you look at aid to Israel, for example, against the aid that we provide to American students, we've got a long time discussion about how we set priorities in this country.
		And in particular, how we set priorities around education, which is clearly the way we support our future as a country.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Ted Mitchell, I want to go back to foreign students attending universities and colleges here in the United States, because Brookings put together a piece recently where they estimated that the cost of eliminating foreign students, international college students, is $44 billion.
		And that would be the economic blow, they say.
		And it would add to the trade deficit, harm many college budgets, and badly damage businesses in many college towns.
		What do you think?
unidentified		100% agreement.
		The struggle against international students, to me, seems to be three strikes.
		Strike one is that you eliminate a group of people who are paying substantially more than the average domestic student actually lowers the cost to American students.
		That's one.
		Two, these are students who provide incredible diversity to the institution along with their purchasing power in local communities.
		And three, as I mentioned before, the net result of international enrollment is either a boon to our economy as people stay and contribute or a soft power diplomacy as those students go back and assume positions of authority in their home countries.
		Education, higher education, is the fifth leading export in the U.S.
		It's right up there with car manufacturing.
		So I think we've got the telescope on backwards here, and we really need to look at the importance of international student recruitment as a positive for not only American higher education, but the American economy.
		And 40 billion is the number in addition to the Brookings study.
		That's sort of where our analysts have been as well.
		If you eliminate foreign students, that's what happens.
		One other thing that I'd mentioned, Greta, is that foreign students are not equally distributed across all the campuses in the country.
		And so there are institutions in America that are basically afloat because of the work that they do to bring international students in and to educate them.
		And so if there is a substantial cut in international student enrollment, I think that we'll not only see restaurants losing the benefit of individual foreign student lunches, but we'll see whole towns losing the benefit of a college as those colleges need to close.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Ted Mitchell is the president of the American Council on Education.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, sir, for the conversation with our viewers.
unidentified		Thank you, Greta.
unidentified		Pleasure to be here.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, we're going to take a break.
		When we come back, we'll turn our attention to the lack of affordable housing in the United States and how states are stepping up to boost the supply.
		That conversation with Salim Firth from the George Mason University.
		Stay with us.
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 Hocha 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-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		So you interviewed the other night I watched it about two o'clock in the morning.
unidentified		There was a little thing called C-SPAN, which I don't know how many people were watching.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Don't worry, you were in prime time too, but they happen to have a little rerun.
patty murray ▲ ● ▼		Do you really think that we don't remember what just happened last week?
patty murray ▲ ● ▼		Thank goodness for C-SPAN, and we all should review the tape.
unidentified		Everyone wonders when they're watching C-SPAN what the conversations are on the floor.
al green ▲ ● ▼		I'm about to read to you something that was published by C-SPAN.
sean duffy ▲ ● ▼		There's a lot of things that Congress fights about, that they disagree on.
unidentified		We can all watch that on C-SPAN.
		Millions of people across the country tuned into C-SPAN.
		That was a make-for-C-SPAN moment.
		If you watch on C-SPAN, you're going to see me physically across the aisle every day, just trying to build relationships and try to understand their perspective and find common ground.
		And welcome forward to everybody watching at home.
		We know C-SPAN covers this live as well.
		We appreciate that.
		And one can only hope that he's able to watch C-SPAN on a black and white television set in his prison cell.
		This is being carried live by C-SPAN.
		It's being watched not only in this country, but it's being watched around the world right now.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Mike said before I happened to listen to him, he was on C-SPAN 1.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		That's a big upgrade, right?
unidentified		Washington Journal continues.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Joining us this morning is Salim Firth.
		He's a senior research fellow at George Mason University here to talk about efforts to increase housing supply across the country.
		Mr. Firth, let's just begin with the status of housing.
		What does the supply and the demand look like?
unidentified		If you know anybody who's looking to buy a home in 2025, you know it's really tough around the country and it's not that much better if you're renting either.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		So what are the numbers?
		Depending on where you live, it changes obviously.
		But overall, how much of a shortage is there?
unidentified		So people will try to estimate this and they'll talk about millions of units, 4 million, 20 million, 7 million.
		I don't know that that's the most helpful approach to thinking about it.
		A healthy housing market is one that is elastic, responsive, that as trends and demand and prices change, the market changes.
		It delivers different kinds of homes in different places, depending on what's going on in the economy, depending on demographics and what people need.
		And so, you know, I think the risk of trying to put a number on it is that then you think, well, if we just do that, then we can be done.
		And the reality is you're never done.
		Just like we need farms to keep producing food year after year, we need a housing market that will keep producing homes and evolving and changing year after year and decade after decade.
		And we just have not had that really since the Great Recession in 2007.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What impact are interest rates having on supply and demand?
unidentified		Yeah, so interest rates have done two things.
		So one, they kind of directly raise the monthly cost of getting a mortgage, right?
		And so that's sort of easy to understand.
		The second is they lock people in, right?
		So folks like me who were lucky enough to refinance when interest rates were really, really low, we're kind of in the golden handcuffs right now.
		If I wanted to move to take a different job or find a different community, I would have to walk away from my really low interest rate and get a new one that's three or four times as high.
		And so that would be kind of a big price jump.
		Everything else, you know, being equal, I'd be paying a lot more to move.
		And so that means fewer of us are putting our homes on the market.
		So if you're looking to buy now, you're both faced with paying higher interest rates and just fewer homes to choose from.
		There's just fewer people changing houses and kind of shuffling things around than there would be in a kind of a normal market where interest rates had kind of been flat for a long time.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		How long has this lack of supply been the situation in the United States?
unidentified		So it's been the situation in some key coastal cities for a long time.
		You know, Bernard Friedan wrote a book in around 1980 talking about how the San Francisco Bay Area was systematically blocking new housing and it was creating high prices and boxing people out.
		And 50 years later, 45 years later, nothing has changed there.
		Instead, what we've seen is the cost crisis has spread.
		And it's not exactly the same in Kansas City or Buffalo as it is in California.
		I don't want to say that they have exactly the same problem, but there's some spillovers.
		And particularly any place in the Western U.S. is seeing large numbers of Californians who are essentially cost refugees, either cashing out from their expensive homes or moving because they can't afford to buy that first home.
		And so they're moving from California to Boise or Phoenix or Las Vegas and driving up prices there.
		And so there's a number of factors also related to the pandemic, supply disruptions that sort of cost builders some time and increased homebuyers' power.
		So prices have gone up in places that traditionally we don't think of as having any kind of supply constraint, but they just haven't been able to maintain the affordability that people in a place like Buffalo or Des Moines are accustomed to.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Well, what is happening in Florida then with the oversupply of housing?
unidentified		Yeah, so Florida, I think, was on like a one-year delay from the rest of the country.
		I haven't studied that in depth, but you need oversupplies, right?
		So if you only have the boom and you don't have the bust, then you're on a one-way ratchet.
		And that's kind of what we've seen, you know, in a place like Boston or Los Angeles, where, well, when things are booming, prices rise, and then the economy cools off, but prices don't really fall.
		They just flatten out.
		And that feels nice if you're a homeowner, right?
		Because then you're like, well, sometimes I gain value and sometimes my home value stays the same.
		But if there's no bust, if you never come back down, then prices are just going to get higher and higher.
		And, you know, Florida, yeah, they've got a little bit of price decline now, but it's not like they're back down to 2019 levels.
		They need even more home price decline to get anywhere close to the affordability they had just six years ago.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		I want to invite our viewers to join in in the conversation.
		Here is how we'll divide the lines this morning.
		If you're a homeowner, call us at 202-748-8000.
		If you rent, your line this morning is 202-748-8001.
		All others can call at 202-748-8002.
		And remember, you can text if you don't want to call at 202-748-8003.
		Celine Firth, you put out a policy paper recently with the title, Pro-Housing Legislation Goes Vertical in 2025.
		What did you find?
unidentified		Yeah, that's right.
		So this was work with my colleague Eli Khan.
		And what we found is that state legislatures all over the country, both coasts, but also in the middle, are taking housing costs really seriously and doing far more work on housing supply than they've done in previous sessions.
		So last year, 2024, was the busiest legislative session on housing that anyone can remember.
		And this year doubled that.
		This year tripled 2023.
		And most state legislatures do most of their work in the first half of the year.
		And we're seeing, I think we counted 123, 125 bills in the last 12 months that have passed state legislatures.
		And those range from tweaking the process to make it quicker to approve housing to legalizing housing in commercial zones to expanding homeowners' rights to build an accessory dwelling unit, like a backyard cottage or a basement apartment in land they already own.
		And so legislators, both parties, North and South, they're trying everything and they're working with people like me and Eli and people at research centers around the country to say, hey, what really works?
		We don't want to make things worse and we want to understand how this problem works, how the market works.
		And I'm incredibly impressed, actually, with our state senators and representatives around the country in an era of pretty sharp polarization.
		And you see some really nasty fights in a number of these state legislatures.
		And these folks are able to set those aside.
		Sometimes in the same legislatures where there's name-calling and viciousness, when it comes to housing, they have been able to, in most cases, set aside those differences and say, all right, well, we don't agree on a lot, but we do agree that people in our state need a place to live and we're going to take the research seriously and try to find solutions.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Before we get to calls, what's happening at the federal level?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Last week here on the Washington Journal, we read about a proposal by Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren, you know, Republican and Democrat, not exactly two people that see eye to eye, working on housing legislation to address the supply issue.
unidentified		Yes, I think that was really impressive.
		There's been a number of calls to do something huge and muscular at the federal level.
		I think that's wrong.
		I don't think the federal government has the knowledge or the capacity to do something that's big, powerful, and large.
		So the Warren-Scott bill, I think, does what's right, which is it pulls together like 25 different small board proposals because there's many little federal touch points in the housing market and trying to address each of those and creating a few new touch points in ways that try to tilt things towards encouraging localities to do more to expand the right to build housing, trying to make it easier to access housing.
		And that's, so I think that's the right approach from the federal level to say, this is a big problem, but we can't trust ourselves, the federal government yet, to come wading into this as an outsider and fix everything.
		Instead, we need to listen to the locals, listen to the states, and give them the tools they need and the encouragement to do the real work.
		Because I think the real work is happening in places like Olympia, Washington, and Augusta, Maine.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Saleem Firth is our guest here this morning.
		He's with George Mason University here to talk about the increase in housing supply.
		Richard in Minneapolis, your homeowner up first.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
unidentified		I don't know if that means homeowner or apartment owner.
jimmy in texas ▲ ● ▼		I own a couple duplexes.
unidentified		And, you know, the biggest problem I see here in Minneapolis is the far, far left city council.
		They want to provide money for everything.
		Money seems they ask them how much is this going to cost?
		And they look at you like they lost their way in the woods or something, but they're piling on property taxes at 8% a year, or 9% a year, 6% a year, 7% a year.
		It's a great big cost to rent increase.
		And I belong to the Minnesota Multi-Housing Association.
		And the experts there say the biggest or biggest way to lower the price of rental is to build more houses.
		And with this far left city councils around here and the whole state of Minnesota, they're putting on so many regulations that it's possible to build houses and do it in a way that's economic.
		Thank you.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		All right, Richard.
		Mr. Firth.
unidentified		Yeah, one of the great things about the Twin Cities area is that you have the ability to learn from each other.
		And St. Paul, actually, across the way, made a huge mistake of enacting rent control two or three years ago.
		And that completely shut down their multifamily market.
		Basically, no investor would go anywhere near St. Paul.
		And Minneapolis's council had, the voters had given it permission to enact rent control, but they said, hey, let's just wait a few months and see how this thing plays out in St. Paul.
		And when they saw how badly things went in St. Paul, the Minneapolis Council, as far left as they are, decided, you know, we do want to keep building apartment buildings and we don't want to completely shut out the market like St. Paul did.
		So, you know, there's been housing policy has been tricky in Minnesota.
		I've actually been very close to it, written papers about the housing market there.
		But at least Minneapolis kind of saw what was going on.
		And St. Paul, to its credit, has tried to kind of worm its way backwards and create more and more exceptions to create some daylight where people can make money building and renting out housing.
		Because ultimately, rents will fall in a relative to incomes.
		Rents will fall over time in an unrestricted market.
		On average, the rent in any given building tends to go down or to rise less than inflation while people's wages and taxes on average rise with the rate of inflation.
		Once you put in place rent control, you say, well, it's going to rise at the rate of inflation.
		Well, that's higher than it was rising before.
		And, you know, we're seeing this now actually in my home county in Montgomery County, Maryland, enacted rent control, and it has now for 18 months shut down multifamily construction, which had been going along at a brisk clip and continues to move along at a brisk clip in neighboring jurisdictions.
		And this is another place where same unit rents tend to fall or to at least rise less than inflation.
		And now with the new rent control, they can rise at the rate of inflation.
		And so rent control is actually probably going to raise people's rents in Montgomery County relative to what it was doing before.
		And that's a tragedy.
		You can go much too far in the, well, we're going to try to micromanage this market instead of removing the strict regulations.
		Our collar city owns two duplexes.
		One of the great things that Minneapolis did was to allow duplexes again in most of the city, which is something they had built in the past and then basically criminalized.
		And they said, you know, actually, duplexes aren't so bad.
		And they're really great for small investors like our caller.
		And they're really great for having a place that you can rent or sometimes buy that's not as expensive as a single-family home, but has a lot more of that kind of connection to the neighborhood and freedom to move around than simply having an apartment in a large building.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		If rents rise with rent control policies, then why would investors leave if they're going to make more, you said?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		You argued that they will make more without the rent control.
unidentified		The people who own existing buildings will make more.
		People who build new buildings say, well, we don't even want to move in there.
		And so they don't make anything.
		They just walk away.
		And so then it's the existing folks who already own a building.
		So the key, right, on housing supply, the key is to say, we need competition, right?
		If you have only one grocery store in your town, they can raise the prices really high.
		Once you've got three grocery stores, they have to compete with each other because if one is too expensive, you'll just go to the other one.
		And it works the same with housing.
		In a place like you mentioned, Florida, but it's also true in Denver.
		They built a lot of apartment buildings when rents were high.
		And now rents are coming down because tenants can shop around.
		I was walking around the Orange Line corridor two days ago in Arlington, Virginia, and every big building has a sign out signed with a QR code you can scan saying, please rent here.
		It's great for renters when there's new housing supply, high-quality apartments that compete with each other and compete with the existing stock.
		If you're stuck with a static stock of buildings, then time takes its toll.
		Housing gets worse as it gets older.
		And if there's no competition, there isn't that downward pressure on prices as a new unit comes on and says, hey, we'll charge you the same for a better unit.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Let's go to Wisconsin.
		Mike, who rents there?
		Good morning to you.
unidentified		Well, I'm 68.
		I live 38 miles north of Madison.
		They just built a 16-unit apartment right next to me, 50 yards away.
jack in texas ▲ ● ▼		They're in the process of renting it right now, and they're asking $1,500 to $1,800 a month for a two-bedroom.
unidentified		I'm trying to relocate to a more quieter area.
		I live north of Madison, 40 miles north, and I can't find a place to rent, to move to because everything is taken up.
		I'm on a list everywhere I go.
		And pretty much in Columbia County, north of Madison, about 40 miles, everything is going for anywhere from $1,300 to $1,800 a month plus utilities for a two-bedroom.
		When I was in 2000, I rented a beautiful apartment.
		Back in the 70s, you could get a two-bedroom for $250 a month.
		Back in the 90s, it was $275, $300.
		Back in the 2000s, it was $500 a month.
		Now it's just tripled.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Let's take your point, Mike.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Firth.
unidentified		Yeah, inflation is real, right?
		Everything is more expensive.
		The good thing is that our wages rise with inflation too.
		So there's some balance there.
		Rural places, and I've actually talked with professionals who work in rural Wisconsin.
		One of the biggest problems that they have is the lack of people entering the trades.
		So if you're in a smaller town or a rural county, you know, there might be just one or two plumbers or electricians who consider that their territory.
		If you want to get somebody to come out from Madison or Milwaukee, you might have to pay them extra for the drive time.
		And a lot of those folks are actually the same age as our caller, and they're retiring.
		And there's no one coming up behind them.
		There's a dry pipeline of apprenticeships.
		And, you know, that's going to be a challenge in rural areas to say, we want to continue to have high quality, different types of housing.
		It's great that there's 15 or 16 new apartments right where the caller lives.
		And that will create options.
		And at least he's got that option.
		And maybe it's not exactly what he wants.
		But it's a lot better than having no options and just having housing get older.
		But we need to really affirm.
		I hear this actually from educators, young people who could go into the trades and earn good money, six-figure salaries, doing skilled, interesting work, problem-solving and creative work, building things.
		They're kind of told that that's lower class work, that they should wear a white collar like mine and sit at a desk.
		And that's, you know, it's fine.
		I like my job, but like, that's not for everyone.
		And you can make a good living and help your neighbors.
		And we should really affirm when a young person says, hey, I'm joining the electricians union as an apprentice and I'm going to be able to make six figures in five years and have my own business in 10 years.
		And that's a fantastic path that young Americans could take.
		And we who are older, we should affirm that and not kind of look down on them if they don't have a college degree.
		All right.
		We'll go to Cliff, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
		I'm a 50-year builder, construction plumber.
		We used to build apartments for $25,000 a unit back in the 70s.
		Now I think they're probably $200,000 a unit.
		The thing I've seen in the market is the short-term rental market really exploded during the pandemic.
		Investors went all over the United States and bought up everything they could to get into the Airbnb verbo.
		And Tulsa, we're having a problem with investors buying all the houses around all the hospitals for furnished finders, nurse, traveling nurses.
		The problem is, is we do some, you know, we do a lot of weekly rentals, but we can do short-term rentals and make the same amount of money in the house they use maybe a third or 50% of the time.
		And this is being repeated all over the country right now is why there's so much of a shortage and so much, you know, when someone can get $135 a day versus $1,500 a month and they don't have the maintenance.
		And like you said, you can't get the technicians to come and work on the heating and air and you can't get them to come work on the plumbing because there's not a lot of people out there to do the maintenance on them.
		So that drives the cost up on the investors.
		But the problem is there's just too much big money to buying up all the properties.
		And I think that's not going to stop for a while.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, let's talk about that, Cliff.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for bringing up the investor part of this.
unidentified		Yeah, so in a lot of states, politicians introduced bills that would have limited investments in housing this year and last year.
		And I think, thankfully, luckily, none of those bills passed.
		And that's big, you know, I say thankfully because generally we see investors as mostly a positive influence on the market.
		They provide rental housing.
		If you don't have no investors, no rentals, right?
		If we only have owner-occupied housing, there's nowhere to rent.
		And they also put a floor on the market.
		They tend to come into the cheapest places where homeowners don't want to buy and smaller investors are intimidated by the amount of upkeep.
		So they the sort of like single-family investor market was really created in the crash in 2009, 2008 as mortgages dried up and people couldn't buy houses.
		And rather than having these houses sitting vacant, it's really good that some money came in and said, hey, we're going to buy these.
		We're going to rent them out.
		That's a lot better than the alternatives.
		I understand it can be frustrating, especially if you're a young homebuyer bidding against a company that can pay cash.
		That's really hard.
		But the solution is not to try to eliminate the competition and push renters and investors out.
		The solution is to allow more housing.
		So maybe Oklahoma should look at some of the things that Texas did in this legislative session, like legalizing starter homes in all their major cities or legalizing multifamily housing up to at least 45 feet, which is three or four stories, in commercial areas.
		And so there's a number of things that Texas did to say, hey, we see this enormous influx of money, all these people moving here from around the country, around the world, and investors.
		And we could yell at them, or we could say, we're going to have enough money that a visiting nurse can find an Airbnb and a young homebuyer can find a new home.
		And those things can coexist.
		We don't need to say, well, we have to choose between the visiting nurses and the homebuyers, or we have to choose between the vacationers who bring tourist dollars to our community and the locals, right?
		Both of those things can coexist.
		We just need to remove the restrictions that prevent our builders from building housing.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Gina's in Alabama.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Gina.
unidentified		Hi, Greta.
unidentified		How are you?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Morning.
		Go ahead.
		Question or comment?
unidentified		Both.
		I bought my first home at 30 years old.
		I'm Generation X, by the way.
		And I paid like $38,000.
		I think for it, it was a 1,200 square foot.
		And then we moved up to a 2,200 square foot.
		That's what we're in now.
		I'll have it paid off by 2026 because I just refinanced what I owed for 2.25%.
		Number one, our problem is interest rates.
		And number two, my home value has went up from $138,000 to $400,000.
		And I'm in North Alabama.
		I'm 20 minutes from Huntsville.
		And the main thing I notice is taxes go up, homeowners' insurance goes up, and the cost of having a home is like a house payment.
		Now, utilities went up like 30% with TVA.
		And the main thing I see them building here, you know, between here and Madison and Huntsville, is luxury, you know, two, three-bedroom, townhome type little communities.
		And out here, they're still building, you know, single-family homes, three, four, five-bedroom homes.
		I've noticed a lot of them, and they have no problem selling them at the prices they're asking.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Gina, I'm going to jump in.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Firth.
unidentified		Yeah, so I talked about how it's states all over the country, not just the sort of traditionally expensive areas that have been enacting laws to make it easier to build housing.
		And Alabama was one of those.
		Legislators passed a pretty small bill there, but it was one of 10 states that made it harder to use the judicial system to block housing, right?
		So there's lots of ways that different states have set up environmental laws or just kind of blanket permissions to go to court and say, well, I don't like that this builder is building something next to me.
		And I don't have a really good complaint, but I'm going to throw a kind of vacuous lawsuit into the system.
		And it's going to just grind things down.
		And if I get a good lawyer, I can delay their project for two years.
		And instead of waiting the two years to get my case dismissed after all the motions and counter motions, the developer is just going to come and give me 30K on the side.
		And that's a thing that happens.
		And you'll see this done in California and Massachusetts and evidently in Alabama.
		And so I'm very cheered to see that legislators are taking that seriously.
		Yeah, I mean, all the costs that she talked about, those are real.
		Inflation has made taxes, the property taxes go up.
		Local governments have to pay their workers.
		They've got to fund all the things that they deliver.
		And all those prices rose with inflation.
		And so that inflation is getting passed through in property taxes to homeowners.
		And insurance is another area where a large number of disasters in the last several years led to absolutely unprecedented increases in homeowners' insurance.
		And homeowners really should shop around.
		A lot of times the different prices for home insurance are now extremely different among providers because some providers have jumped ahead and raised their prices and others are trying to like make it work at still lower insurance premiums.
		So take a look for that.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Fritz though, when you combine all of those elements together, what is going to be the impact on housing?
		Property taxes going up, as you're talking about, insurance going up, maintenance costs going up because of tariffs, the costs of goods.
		And on top of that, utilities.
		You've seen utility companies across the country say the demand for power by artificial intelligence requires us to raise prices.
		And it's the consumer that's seeing a double digit increase in their electric bills.
unidentified		Yeah, that's right.
		So there's a lot of things.
		There's so much policy to unpack there, right?
		Every one of those markets has its own distortions, well-intended regulations.
		So on power interconnection, for instance, well, AI wants a lot of new electricity, but the United States makes it extremely difficult to connect new electricity to the grid, right?
		When the Tennessee Valley Authority started creating electricity by damming rivers in the northern Alabama region 100 years ago or 90 years ago, it was really easy.
		You generate the power, lock into the grid, people could buy it.
		Now, if you wanted to create new clean electricity any particular way, you have to go through a multi-year process to somehow prove that you're never going to be unreliable.
		Instead of saying, well, we have the original grid and we're just going to add to that, which is clearly a positive.
		Only Texas, which has its own grid, allows easy interconnect and liability on the new power supply.
		So I say there's lots of reforms available on the power side.
		And every other market that you just mentioned, my expertise is in the housing market.
		And so we have to deal with like, yes, inflation's gone up.
		Every price has gone up.
		The good news is that for most people, their wages also rose by something comparable.
		And if you have investment money or if you own property, well, the value of your property also rose with inflation.
		Your investments also rose with inflation.
		So there's some sense of like, we're just changing the units of account here.
		What we can do, the thing that's within our control in a difficult time is we can legalize the building of more housing.
		And the cities that are building housing, the cities that are welcoming it, like Austin, Texas, they're seeing their rents.
		They go up in the boom and then they come back down in the bust.
		And they say, okay, well, it doesn't have to stay high forever.
		And the cities that don't build new housing, like Boston, you know, like Los Angeles, they see their home prices and their rents, you know, go spike during the boom.
		And then during the bust, they don't come down.
		They just flatten out.
		And so we want to have that, we want to have the first one.
		We want to have they can come back down because new supply comes online.
		We need to get our laws and regulations right so that builders can do their job.
		And there's a lot of other things in the economy.
		The thing that's easiest, you know, people ask me like, oh, why do you think zoning's going to, you know, fixing zoning is going to solve everything?
		I don't.
		Nobody thinks fixing zoning is going to solve everything.
		We face a lot of hard problems in the United States.
		The easiest one, the easiest big problem to solve is just getting rid of the paper wall that prevents builders from building housing.
		If we do that, we can solve, or at least make easier to solve a bunch of major problems.
		And then we can get onto the hard work.
		There's a lot of things that are much, much harder than getting housing regulations right.
		It's pretty easy to say, hey, look, there's a playbook in Texas, there's a playbook in Washington, there's a playbook in Maine.
		If Massachusetts wants lower housing costs, they can just copy what Maine did last year and they can get significantly lower housing prices over the next 20 years.
		Or they can keep debating it, which is what they're doing now and doing next to nothing.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to Lester in D.C. Lester, you rent in Washington, D.C.
unidentified		Yeah, I rent.
		And my name is Lester Cuffey.
		I'm the executive director of DC Coalition for Housing Justice.
		I've been listening to the discussion, and I believe the gentleman and I will have a, we will definitely have some differences.
		But I want to say this.
		Number one, rent control, somebody called about rent control.
		Number one, rent control is not a far-left solution.
		It came from the Nix administration.
		Okay, that's the first thing.
		Number two, the issue in America is affordability.
		Okay, I think more and more we're beginning to realize that the American dream of home ownership is becoming a nightmare because it's a financial burden.
		Not everybody wants to become a homeowner.
		There are alternatives to homeownership, like investments in co-ops or land trusts or single-family developments.
		Okay.
		I'd like to know, is there effort to invest in those types of projects, co-ops, land trust development, single-family development?
		Because many of the people who are now homeless, most of these people have lost their homes and connects because they cannot afford the cost of home ownership.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Lester, we'll get a response.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Firth.
unidentified		Thank you.
		So rent control, wherever it came from, originated during World War I.
		So I think that was prior to Nixon.
		I said that like the, should we consider these other things?
		Yes, all of the above.
		And, you know, with respect to homeless individuals, I don't think most of them are at the cusp of home ownership, but they could certainly rent a room.
		In a lot of cities, they do.
		If you look at what cities have high levels of homelessness and what cities don't, it's not about which cities have a lot of drug abuse or which cities have higher mental illness rates.
		It's about housing costs.
		So actually the richest cities, the cities with the lowest poverty rates, like San Francisco, they have the highest rates of homelessness because it's so expensive to rent a room.
		And having solutions where somebody can build a structure that's not too expensive, doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, and then they can rent out rooms for cheap.
		We actually, at my institution within George Mason, we just published an interesting paper by some California researchers, one of whom was formerly homeless, about this sort of regulatory hack in LA where they're building something called double duplexes.
		And nobody, none of the regulators intended this.
		This is not at all what the government wanted.
		But some investors said, got to, you know, read the code, said, hey, we found a loophole in this new code where we can build these big boxy buildings called double duplexes and rent them out by the room.
		And I bet the neighbors don't really like these, but the reality is you can now get a essentially a bed in a dormitory in LA for $500 or $600 a month sometimes, maybe $800 or $900 if it's a little bit nicer.
		And that's so much cheaper than the alternatives.
		And in a city where young professionals, students are sometimes living in their cars, that is a huge improvement.
		And yeah, maybe the neighbors don't like it, but I would way rather have a struggling person working minimum wage have a room in a dorm on my street than have to live in a tent on my street.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to Baltimore.
unidentified		Gary, welcome.
		Could you please tell the viewers about this thing called Real Pages and how it allows corporate landlords to control inventories and set rental prices?
		It's also important that you distinguish more clearly the differences between the ownership market and the rental market.
		Thank you.
		I'll take your answer off there.
		Thank you.
		I love Baltimore.
		Yeah, so RealPage is a website that allows property owners, big multifamily property owners or small multifamily property owners, to use their software to sort of price properties according to sort of the optimum for the market.
		Sometimes that leads to lower rents than otherwise, right?
		So multifamily owners, the worst thing for them is a vacancy because they get $0 out of a vacancy.
		And so sometimes they say, you know, hey, RealPage says we should charge less because this market's pretty soft and we should lower our rents.
		Obviously, sometimes they say, hey, you're undercharging.
		You could make more.
		And then they raise prices.
		So here's the key.
		What RealPage is doing is sharing information.
		And I agree that there's, you know, maybe on average, this is going to raise prices because there are actually a lot of landlords who are pretty inattentive and they've set prices.
		They've got a good tenant.
		They're just ignoring their property and they could actually make significantly more by raising the price.
		So I suspect RealPage affects those rents primarily.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Rob.
unidentified		But what it can't do, what RealPage can't do is create a shortage.
		What creates a shortage in multifamily housing, I think I've been distinguishing between ownership and rental throughout this conversation.
		What creates a shortage is when there aren't enough homes.
		And whether you use an algorithm or you just kind of, you know, muddle your way through and see what rents you can get, you're going to be able to raise prices when there's not enough housing and you'll have to cut rents as they're doing in Austin, as they're doing in Denver, and now I guess Miami.
		You're going to have to cut rents when you have too much competition.
		So let's create competition in the real market.
		And then however investors get their information, they're going to have to charge lower rents.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Saleem Firth is a senior research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center.
		Thank you very much for the conversation this morning.
		We appreciate it.
unidentified		Greta, thank you.
unidentified		It's been a pleasure.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		We're going to take a break when we come back.
		We will be in open forum.
		Any public policy or political issue that's on your mind, we'll have you start calling in now.
		We'll get to that conversation in just a minute.
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		Washington Journal continues.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back.
		We'll finish up today's Washington Journal in open forum.
		Any public policy or political issue that's on your mind, we'll begin with the front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning and the headline that's in several of the national papers, Israel plans to take over all of the Gaza Strip.
		This according to the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who spoke about the takeover plans on Fox News yesterday ahead of the Security Cabinet meeting that approved those plans.
		Here's what he had to say.
bill hemmer ▲ ● ▼		Will Israel take control of all of Gaza?
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		We intend to in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza and to pass it to civilian governance.
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		That is not Hamas and not anyone advocating the destruction of Israel.
bill hemmer ▲ ● ▼		That's what we want to do.
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		We want to liberate ourselves and liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas.
bill hemmer ▲ ● ▼		And you were in the Gaza Strip today.
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		You met Palestinians who are fighting Hamas because finally they see that they have a future.
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		They can rid themselves of this awful tyranny that not only holds our hostages, but holds 2 million Palestinians in Gaza hostage.
bill hemmer ▲ ● ▼		That's got to end.
		Are you saying today that you will take control of the entire 26-mile Gaza Strip as it was 20 years ago to this month in 2005?
		Well, we don't want to keep it.
unidentified		We want to have a security perimeter.
		We don't want to govern it.
		We don't want to be there as a governing body.
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us and giving Gazans a good life.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Prime Minister of Israel in a Fox News interview yesterday, President Trump in the Oval Office yesterday announcing some news on the economy also was asked about his deadline today for Russia, asked if it would hold.
		And the president also touched on the killing that continues on both sides in the Ukraine-Russia war.
		Here's what he had to say.
unidentified		Is your deadline still standing for Vladimir Putin to agree with ceasefire tomorrow, or is that fluid now?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		It's going to be up to him.
		We're going to see what he has to say.
		It's going to be up to him.
		Very disappointed.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Oh, do you have to meet with, does Putin have to meet with Zelensky in order and before you and Putin have to meet?
		No.
		So you're willing to.
kaitlan collins ▲ ● ▼		That's actually important because President Putin said this morning he was pretty dismissive of his idea of meeting with President.
unidentified		President Putin was.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
unidentified		I didn't hear him.
		He doesn't have to agree to meet with Zelensky.
		Is that what you're saying?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		No, he doesn't.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		No.
unidentified		No.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		So wouldn't you think that means they would like to meet with me, and I'll do whatever I can to stop the killing.
		So last month, they lost 14,000 people killed last month.
		Every week is 4,000 or 5,000 people.
unidentified		So I don't like long waits.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		I think it's a shame.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		President in the Oval Office yesterday, by the way, the Russian president said that it could be the UAE that hosts a meeting between him and President Trump, but the Russian president is also dismissing a meeting with the Ukrainian president.
		We'll hear more from President Trump today.
		He's got several meetings with other foreign leaders.
		At 4:15 p.m. Eastern Time on C-SPAN 1, we'll have live coverage of the president participating in a trilateral signing with the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia and the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
		So that will happen in the state dining room around 4 o'clock p.m. Eastern Time.
		Live coverage here on C-SPAN.
		We're in an open forum, and you can talk about the Israeli-Gaza situation, the Ukraine-Russia war, as well as any other public policy debate.
		Judy in Michigan, Republican, you're up first.
unidentified		Hi, I was just nobody has talked about why they have to do a census in between because of all the illegals that have come through.
		And like, California is going to let them all vote in New York.
		And it's like, that's just not right.
		That's not fair.
		And why can't they just check for IDs, make sure the people are American citizens, and go from there?
		And also, the fact that all the people that left California went to Texas or went to Florida, there's a population increase with real Americans.
		And that should count more than anything as far as I'm concerned.
		Just, you know, why are they counting the illegals?
		That's just ridiculous.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Judy in Michigan, there, Republican caller, touching on some news on this redistricting battle that's happening in Texas.
		Earlier this morning, we talked about the situation in Texas sparking a larger redistricting war across the country ahead of the midterm elections.
		President Trump wants to pick up five seats in Texas before the 2026 elections.
		Republicans in the Lone Star State have set a deadline of today for their state Democratic legislators to return.
		Many of them fled Texas on Sunday and have gone to Illinois, New York, other states.
		And on Monday, then, the GOP-led Texas House voted to issue civil arrests, not criminal, civil arrests for these Democrats that left the states.
		The civil arrests can only be enforced within Texas.
		The FBI has agreed to help Texas locate these state legislators who have gone to Illinois, New York, et cetera, and bring them back, but they cannot participate in arresting, according to news reports.
		Governor Abbott and the Texas AG, Ken Paxton, want state courts to declare these seats held by these state Democrats as vacant.
		They're also looking at lawsuits against these state legislatures.
		Each one would require an individual lawsuit to remove them from their seats.
		So that's the latest from the Washington Times reporting this morning on Texas.
		And again, there's a deadline today for these Texas Democratic legislators to show up.
		The House legislature in Texas will convene at 2 p.m. Eastern Time.
		And we're going to have live coverage of that on C-SPAN 1 today.
		We've been following along as this new congressional map has been debated in House hearings in Texas legislature, in Senate hearings, and as Republicans have tried to get it to the state house floor.
		They will try again today, 2 p.m. Eastern Time, live coverage on C-SPAN 1.
		That's also part of the conversation here in Open Forum this morning.
		Donald in Brushton, New York, a Republican.
		Donald, good morning.
unidentified		Yes, ma'am.
		I was in a bought grant issue, and this is for the housing.
		Okay.
		And ended up, they ended up, they got a contractor to come in here.
		It was a mobile home replacement.
		And they came in and they tore down my house.
		And they didn't like the way things they were supposed to put in a home and instead of a mobile home.
		And I'm having, they tore down my home and I have no place to live.
		And it's been since 2022 and I've not been able to get a hold of anybody to get anything done with this.
		I don't know what to do with it.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Donald, with his situation in New York.
		Floyd's a Republican in Iowa.
		Floyd, what's on your mind this morning?
unidentified		Well, Greta, this business about this Middle East, it's still dragging on this Gaza business and this business about the settlements and such in the West Bank.
		Now, we had an incident there in 8 June 1967.
		The IDF attacked our ship, the USS Liberty, claiming they didn't know it was American.
		I'll tell you, Greta, that's an impossible claim to believe because, you know, our flag, there's no way you can mistake that for any of the flag in the world.
		Now, again, they're supposed to be our ally, or as Ambassador Huckabee said, partner.
		But I say this, if you attack our guys, we come over to help with this starvation business that's going on in Gaza now, you're going to get hit back hard.
		And it doesn't matter if you're an ally or not.
		If you're an ally in the first place, you shouldn't be attacking our guys.
		But one thing that we had at the president at that time in 67 was LBJ.
		When the Navy personnel launched to repel the attackers, LBJ diverted them, called them back to the ship because he did not want to embarrass our ally, Israel.
		Well, I'll tell you what, you can avoid a lot of embarrassment.
		Just don't attack our guys in the first place.
		Stay off our guys, and they come over to help you get through this mess.
		Stay off of them.
		Don't attack.
		And you won't have any trouble.
		And something else, Greta, right quick, it seemed like these things just keep going on and on.
		There's always more and more trouble going on over there.
		If they could get something settled and keep it at least reasonably settled for a while, instead of going back and back and back.
		Greta, your show's fine.
		I'm grateful that you let us get on the air.
		Thank you, C-SPAN.
		Out.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		I appreciate it, Floyd.
		Front page of the Washington Times, a picture and caption to share with you this morning.
		In the power vacuum in Gaza, former tribal leader named Yassir Abu Shabaab is rising up.
		His militia patrols former Hamas strongholds and distributes aid.
		The militia leader has acknowledged that his group receives support from the Israeli military.
		So that in the front page of the Washington Times this morning.
		Nell, California Republican.
		Nell, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'm just, you know, we can talk all day, but nothing happens.
		Nothing changes, it seems like.
		And I just think that, as I've said before, this country is built on the keyword, you know, quote, genocide, unquote, of the Native Americans.
		And it sounds so trite, but the, you know, unpaid labor of black people for many, many, many years.
		And so I don't think anything's going to change.
		You guys had a question one time.
		Can the American dream still be realized?
		Well, the American dream is a nightmare, I think.
		What do you think, Greta?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, Nell's thoughts there in California.
		You can also talk about trade this morning.
		It dominates the front pages of national newspapers, New York Times this morning, worries around the world as steep Trump tariffs begin for 90 countries.
		He claims victory, but foreign leaders and U.S. businesses fear a fallout.
		Front page of the New York Times.
		There's also front page of the Washington Post this morning, their headline, tariffs force new era of trade.
		President Trump celebrated the start of his long-awaited tariffs Thursday, declaring that money was flowing to the U.S. at levels not thought even possible, though economists say the cost of the import taxes will probably get passed on to U.S. consumers and businesses.
		You can talk about trade this morning as well.
		John in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Independent.
		John, good morning.
unidentified		Thank you, Greta, for having me on.
		It's funny how our taxes go to fund predators in Hollywood and around the world.
		And they're all connected.
		They run the corporations.
		They run the banks.
		You Rothschilds, your Rockefellers.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right, John, how do you have any, do you have any evidence of this?
unidentified		We're implementing what they've put on paper for the past.
unidentified		All right, let me move on.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Tony in Flower Town, Pennsylvania, independent.
unidentified		Yes, good morning, Greta.
		Enjoyed the shows this morning.
		The one on the college affordability, which was strange.
		It was a guy who didn't really talk about the cost of college and really how to control that cost.
		Then we had a housing expert.
		Again, we didn't really talk about how to control cost.
		It was just deregulate and that's going to solve everything.
		So these think tanks, I call them think tanks because I think they come on and spout nonsense and you guys support that.
		I don't care for it.
		And then I hear callers that call and actually question these think tank narratives and you ask them if they have any evidence.
		I want to know from these think tanks, again, what are their credentials?
		Who's funding them?
		We never get those answers.
		And then again, the callers that call maybe have something questioning Israel or the U.S. narratives.
		Again, you're really quick to cut them off and say, where's the evidence?
		And even the last caller who had just called that you guys cut off, you know, he's saying that we're funding child predators.
		And if you look at Bill Clinton, if you look at Donald Trump, it's clear what he was asking about.
		And yes.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Tony, you need to listen carefully, a little more carefully to the show because you've conflated a bunch of things.
		What our viewers have said, what we've talked about here, you've conflated them.
		And so it's too complicated and lengthy to unpack everything that you just said.
		But that caller was making an anti-Semitic reference.
		And so I asked him what his evidence was of that.
		That's different than what you're talking about.
		The segment on higher education was about efforts by the Trump administration to influence higher education, the lawsuits that we've seen, the conversations between the universities and the administration.
		We'll go on to Tom in Elverson, Pennsylvania, Republican.
		Tom.
unidentified		Hello, Ed.
		Good morning.
		I have a question concerning the cost of the addition to the White House.
		They poured over the Rose Garden.
		They're going to put a ballroom up.
		There's a new building that's in my neighborhood that was put up, and it's going to be a museum for antique automobiles.
		And it's 80 feet wide and 500 feet long.
		And I kind of inquired about the cost of that building, and I had to give a guess, but I was told it was pretty accurate.
		And the guess was $3 million.
		Now, that addition to the White House is going to cost $200 million.
		Now, I know the president was a New York developer, but still, I think the price is a little high.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Tom's thoughts there in Pennsylvania, Republican of the addition at the White House.
		We'll go on to Roberto in Houston, Independent.
		Roberto, we're an open forum.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello, Greta.
		You're my favorite.
		I have a message for Mr. Wu, who's leading the Democrats out of the state of Texas and they're in Chicago.
		I want them to fight the fight.
		I want him to hear this.
		I want him and his fellow Democrats to go back to Austin, announce today on Friday that Monday they will be there to fight the fight.
		They're not fighting the fight by running away.
		And here's the other thing: if they lose, which we all know they're going to lose, the Democrats, take it to the Supreme Court.
		And then take, in other words, get involved in the Democratic process.
		Don't avoid it by running away.
		That's a very important thing to do at this time: to practice democracy, not to run away from democracy.
		Yeah, they may lose the fight.
		But you see, I'm from San Antonio originally.
		Yeah.
		The Yalamo, remember the Yalamo?
		Take your stand.
		Yes, they lost.
		They were a minority.
		But look what happened at the end.
		They eventually won, and Texas became independent.
		That's another story.
		All right.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Roberto, I'm going to jump in.
		Washington Times with the reporting that Mr. Paxton, your AG, your attorney general, said he'll ask a court to declare vacant the seats of every House Democrat who fled the state.
		The unprecedented move would likely require individual lawsuits to remove each lawmaker in what would be a lengthy and complicated process.
		If successful, Mr. Abbott will call a special election to fill the vacancies.
		Now, you mentioned Gene Wu, who is the Democratic leader in the House state legislature for Democrats, and he's quoted in the papers this morning saying, You want to remove me from my seat, he asked.
		That will immediately provoke a special election, and I will immediately be reelected.
		That is what Mr. Wu had to say in an interview recently about the actions threatened by the Governor Greg Abbott and the Attorney General, Republican, Ken Paxton.
		Gary, Merrittsville, Maryland, Republican.
		Hi, Gary.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		Can you hear me?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we can.
unidentified		Okay.
		I think you need to get somebody on there that'll host the show that'll allow free speech because you just cut off the last guy and you said conflate.
		He never said once any reference to anti-Semitic.
		He talked about banks and Rothschilds and the such and the groups that he's talking about.
		You cut him off and tried.
		And I'm going to hang up before you cut me off.
		But we see you, Greta.
		Goodbye.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Melinda in Arizona, Democratic caller.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Melinda.
unidentified		Hi there.
		I want to make two points.
		One about this redistricting in Texas.
		We all know that it's been on TV.
		President Trump said he deserves five seats because he won the election.
		That does not give him the right to demand that the people of Texas surrender anymore.
		They should redistrict and they should listen to the people.
		These people have gone to these people.
		It seems like the Republicans and Governor Abbott have no integrity.
		They jump on President Trump's bandwagon and support him.
		So come in November, we as Americans, you, me, America, get to watch Donald Trump rig an election because he feels he deserves five seats.
		Well, I'm glad.
		The other point I want to make is about Netanyahu.
		This man is out for I don't know what, but he is backed by Donald Trump and the food organization there is ridiculous.
		And I hope both of them go to the international court for inhumane for the genocide that they're causing.
		Thank you so much.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Melinda's thoughts there in Arizona on the redistricting battle in Texas.
		More reporting from the Wall Street Journal this morning.
		Abbott and the Attorney General have also said that the Democrats could be removed from office.
		So the governor filed a petition to the Texas Supreme Court first seeking the removal of state rep Gene Wu, the Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair, arguing that his leaving the state constitutes abandonment of office.
		It says here the Texas attorneys said the removal attempt is an untested use of state statute that has been previously applied in rare cases to remove people from office who lack minimal requirements, such as a particular license.
		They said the abandonment of office provisions are untested but require that a lawmaker intended to forfeit their office.
		That's the Wall Street Journal reporting.
		And then also in the New York Times this morning, they go through all of the states where there could be redistricting wars next.
		And potential Democratic gerrymanders include, if you go down this article, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland.
		Those are all states where Democratic governors are talking about redrawing the maps.
		When you look at Republicans, you're talking about Republican states.
		The White House is looking at the state of Ohio, Missouri, Indiana, South Carolina, and Nebraska.
		Where the redistricting wars might go after Texas, you can read more in the New York Times.
		Mick and Bloomfield, Connecticut, Independent.
		Hi, Mick.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		You know, if you keep repeating this word democracy, democracy on C-SPAN, you might eventually convince people that we live in one.
		If I said that absent owners tax us, would you accuse me of being an anti-Semite?
		And I would like an answer from you, Greta, personally.
		Thank you very much for your time.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Mick, I'm not sure what you're referring to.
		Okay, we lost Mick.
		Larry, Manning, South Carolina, Republican.
unidentified		Yes, I was just wondering if they were going to do the same thing in South Carolina because I heard rumors that they're going to do the same district that Clyburn's in, and that would change it and would kind of force him out.
		I was just wondering, is this going to be something that's going to happen in all the states?
		I mean, you look at Connecticut, there's not even one Republican to represent that state.
		And then they're crying about Texas.
		They've been doing it for decades.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Larry there in South Carolina, Republican, with his question.
		Pamela's in Brooklyn, Democratic caller.
		Hi, Pamela.
unidentified		Hello.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What's on your mind?
unidentified		I'm just wondering why one person who is the president, I'll give him that, which was elected, can do things that take other branches to agree on.
		Let's just start there.
		No other president, and I'm 62 years old, has ever done a lot of the stuff that he's doing.
		And we don't understand.
		I understood, but it's going to hurt every single person in America, whether you're red, blue, Republican, Democrat, Independent.
		No one person should have this power.
		And why the Congress is allowing it to happen?
		It will be something that history will mark it down.
		And we will be looked at this time period right here as the period where democracy, the rule of law, the humanity has been destroyed.
		And I don't understand why people, regardless of your political affiliation, don't see it.
		It's happening in front of our eyes.
		And it's not fake news.
		It's the most realist news I've seen in my entire life.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Pamela.
		Pamela there in Brooklyn.
		David, Randallstown, Maryland, Independent.
unidentified		David.
		Hey.
		Hey, how are you doing?
		We will be looking.
		Hey, David.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Yep, we're listening to you.
		You just got to mute your television, all right?
		Listen and talk through your phone.
unidentified		Basically, they should get rid of that cartoon president.
		He should have never been able to run.
		He had felony charges against him.
		He should be removed.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay, David, I'm going to jump in.
		You've got to remember to mute your television to all of you that call in so that we don't get that feedback.
		Bob in Franklin, Indiana, Republican.
unidentified		Yes, I think the most important question today, now that the tariffs are all official and enacted, is that do the president in the White House, is he going to be the Grinch that stole Christmas?
		You know, these tariffs are hitting just in time for all those products that are coming in for Christmas.
		So after all, he did say we don't need, you know, your grandchildren don't need all them toys and dolls and stuff, you know.
		What do you think is going to be the impact of that?
		I'm sorry?
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		What do you think is going to be the impact, the political impact of your prediction?
unidentified		I think it's going to be horrible for the Republican Party.
		Okay.
		You know, hey, we have history.
		We have McKinley's history.
		McKinley was for tariffs before he.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I think we lost Bob there in Bob there in Franklin, Indiana.
		I'll share a headline with you.
		This is from Rolling Stone.
		Treasury Secretary admits Trump's tariffs are paid by Americans.
		Scott Besson acknowledges that the billions in tariffs the president says are flowing into the U.S. are footed by importers who can pass the cost on to consumers.
		Darrell in Greenville, North Carolina, an independent.
		Hi, Daryl.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi, how you doing?
		All these states, Democratic states, California, New York, Illinois, the ones that are threatening to redistrict to make their states more Democratic, they have gerrymandered their states so much already.
		I don't know how they could possibly gerrymander them anymore to make them any more majority Democrat.
		That's all I have to say.
		Thank you.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Joe in New York, Republican.
unidentified		Yeah, how are you doing here?
		With this Democrats running over to another state and all this other kind of stuff, I don't understand the politics today.
		When I voted the very first time, I voted for McGovern.
		And I tell you, I didn't know what I was doing then.
		I was a young man.
		And I see what's going on now.
		And to me, it's a totally different party, the Democratic Party, from then up until now.
		But the part that really I'm trying to get across is that you got these people, both sides are doing it.
		Nobody's above the law.
		Look what they're doing to this country, both sides.
		Think about it.
		We got one side that when Joey Biden was president, you had everybody backing him up.
		I thought he was the best state.
		He was this, he was that.
		You had a few little stations that were like, you know, telling the truth about what was going on, but nobody was listening.
		But the way this country is going now, don't they realize that they see the whole world is looking at what is going on between our Republican and Democratic Party, how simple it's making America look to the world?
		We got to get on board.
		We got to finally get together.
		And no matter how much one side hates the other, they got to come through, they got a compromise because they're dealing with America, our lives.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Joe, I heard your point.
		I'm going to get in De Dee, who's in Winder, Georgia, Independent.
		Dee Dee, our last call here this morning.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, you cut me off last time I was able to get through.
		I hope you'll allow me to finish my thought this time.
		Okay.
		Yes.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Can you do it in about a minute?
unidentified		Go ahead.
		A couple of things.
		The geographical significance of Ukraine.
		And then the insidious takeover of the AI.
		Well, this is your program that I learned some of these things.
		And I learned that the AI is nothing new.
		It was developed during the Second World War by the Germans.
		It was called the Colossus.
		So Elon Musk is not as smart as he thinks he is.
		He's just riding on the backs of somebody else's idea.
		But the danger is it has mesmerized this world so much that it's taking over their minds and doing their own doing their thinking for them, which is the total goal of all these greedy politicians and military people.
		Now, to get back to Ukraine, did you know that Ukraine, according to the Bible, is the former garden of Eden?
		You can check it out on your Google.
		And it has a significance because the beginning of mankind's existence was in that area.
		And now it's made full circle, come right back.
		And Trump has sold.
greta brawner ▲ ● ▼		Dee Dee, I didn't touch the button and we lost you.
		Apologies to Dee Dee in Winder, Georgia, Independent.
		We will leave it there.
		That does it for today's Washington Journal.
		We'll be back tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. Eastern Time, for more conversations.

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