| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, your calls and comments live. | |
| And then we'll talk about changes to state and federal nutrition assistance programs with Urban Institute senior fellow Elaine Waxman and Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy Senior Research Fellow Angela Watson on the findings of a new survey focused on homeschooling in the United States. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| This is Washington Journal for Saturday, August 23rd. | ||
| Elaine Maxwell says she never witnessed President Trump in any inappropriate setting and there was no client list. | ||
| That's according to the transcript and audio recordings the Justice Department released yesterday from last month's two-day interview session with the convicted Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator. | ||
| Also yesterday, federal agents raided the home and office of former National Security Advisor John Bolton with sources saying potential classified documents were the focus of the searches. | ||
| And stocks surged yesterday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suggested a possible cut in interest rates could be coming soon. | ||
| Those are a few of the stories C-SPAN has been following and for the first hour of today's program we're asking you what's your top news story of the week? | ||
| Here are the lines. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text your comments to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Be sure to include your name and city. | ||
| You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Good morning, and thank you for being with us. | ||
| We will get to your calls and comments in just a few moments, but wanted to start with one of those stories just mention, and that is the Department of Justice releasing the interview transcripts and audio recordings from last month's interview with Ghelane Maxwell. | ||
| This is from the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| It says the Trump administration released the transcript and audio recordings of a top Justice Department official's interview with Ghelane Maxwell, the former associate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| During the interview, Maxwell seems cooperative and willing to discuss her personal history over years spent with Epstein and his friends and acquaintances, but said she was unable to recall some of the details from events and conversations that took place years earlier. | ||
| When asked about President Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, she said, quote, she said she, quote, never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. | ||
| Those interviews taking place last month with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, here is a clip. | ||
| You mentioned that early, in the very beginning of the conversation, you mentioned President Trump in the early 90s. | ||
| What did you observe as far as President Trump and his relationship with you or Mr. Epstein? | ||
| Well, I just want to say for my relationship with President Trump, relationship's a big word, but I just want to say that I met him, well, I believe I may have, because of my father in the 90s. | ||
| So my father liked him very much, and he really liked his wife as well because they were both checkers back in. | ||
| And as far as I'm concerned, President Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me. | ||
| I just want to say that I find I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now. | ||
| And I like him, and I've always liked him. | ||
| So that is the substance of my entire relationship with him. | ||
| What about Mr. Epstein's relationship with him? | ||
| I don't know how they met, and I don't know how they became friends. | ||
| I certainly saw them together, and I remember the few times I observed them together, that they were friendly. | ||
| I mean, was that in social settings, or was that in private settings? | ||
| I believe I only ever saw them in the social settings. | ||
| I don't recall any private settings. | ||
| Did you ever observe President Trump receive a massage? | ||
| Never. | ||
| Did you ever observe? | ||
| You said that you were, I mean, have you seen the photographs, public photographs, of Mr. Epstein and President Trump together? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And there's photographs of, I think you're in some of the photographs as well. | ||
| Those all appear to be social settings. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's my memory if there were social settings. | ||
| I don't know Epstein's, if he had, whatever the nature of the president's friendship, if you will, or however you want to define that with Epstein, I was never witnessed. | ||
| I think they were friendly, like people are in social settings. | ||
| I don't think they were close friends, or I certainly never witnessed the president in any of ever seeing him in his house, for instance. | ||
| I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. | ||
| I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. | ||
| The president was never inappropriate with anybody. | ||
| In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects. | ||
| More from the Wall Street Journal saying that Blanche and Attorney General Pam Bondi informed Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in the files related to Epstein. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal reported many other high figures were also named. | ||
| High-profile figures were also named. | ||
| Being mentioned in the files isn't an indication of wrongdoing. | ||
| The White House called the story, quote, fake news. | ||
| It goes on to say the Trump administration faced weeks of criticism over its initial refusal to release documents from its investigation into the disgraced financier, which some believed would show links between Epstein and other powerful individuals. | ||
| Amid the backlash, Blanche last month traveled to Florida, where he interviewed Maxwell for more than nine hours over two days. | ||
| Maxwell received conditional immunity to discuss the case. | ||
| Blanche, Trump's former criminal defense attorney, said the goal was to see if Maxwell had information on anyone who committed crimes against Epstein's victim. | ||
| Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking and other offenses for other offenses for facilitating Epstein's sexual abuse of underage teens. | ||
| She is appealing her sentence to the Supreme Court. | ||
| During the interview, Ghelaine Maxwell was also asked about the existence of a client list. | ||
| Here is that clip. | ||
| So, there's been a lot of conversations about whether Mr. Epstein maintained a list of people, like a book of famous people that he knew. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like it's called a black book or a client list or a list. | |
| Did you know of the existence of any such list? | ||
| There is no nest. | ||
| We'll start with that. | ||
| The genesis of that story, I can actually trace for you from its absolute inception, if that is what you're interested in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first, first, you know, to be short, there is no list, there's no client list, nothing like that. | |
| No, there's nothing like that. | ||
| But you know, C-SPAN will re-air the entire nine-hour interview today at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| You'll be able to find it online as well at c-span.org. | ||
| We are talking about your top story of top news story of the week for this first hour. | ||
| If you would like to contribute, you can give us a call. | ||
| The lines there on your screen. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We will start with Paul in Idaho on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| There's always so many things to choose from in the course of a week. | ||
| And the news cycles happen so fast that you're never really sure if the one you take today is the one you're going to want to take tomorrow. | ||
| But having said that, I think the Bolton story was overshadowing the interest rates with the talk that the Fed gave us on Friday. | ||
| I think it's encouraging. | ||
| He didn't make any reductions, but what he did do was he said that there was some positive things in there for us. | ||
| And I think that's more important than one man being hauled in than having maybe countless thousands of people be able to afford a home and be able to move into. | ||
| I think that's a little bit more important, but that's just me. | ||
| I find it a little salacious, but we all have our own opinions about things, and I'm no different than anybody else. | ||
| But, you know, I think if Jeffrey Epstein was a true friend or confidant or whatever of Donald Trump's, he would have been playing golf with him. | ||
| Then he would have had a story. | ||
| But as far as I'm concerned, he didn't play golf with the guy that I know of. | ||
| Therefore, there's no story there. | ||
| And I think it's manufactured to some extent. | ||
| And it can sell the tabloids. | ||
| And so that was Paul in Idaho. | ||
| Let's hear from Barbara in Rossville, Georgia, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Barbara. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| What I would like to say is that he made sure that he got that lady's name, I forgot her name, he made sure he got her out of jail and put her in a jail that was more suitable for her before they started all these interviews and everything like that. | ||
| So I think that it don't mean anything. | ||
| Her testimony don't mean anything because he's already bought her out, so to speak. | ||
| I just think that it's terrible the way the country's being run now. | ||
| I can think about Biden, and it seems like the Republicans fussed about the deficit the whole time that they were running against Biden. | ||
| And now they never mentioned the deficit at all. | ||
| I wanted to ask you sometimes, would you please put it on there and explain about the deficit? | ||
| Sometime have a program like that. | ||
| I did. | ||
| That was Barbara in Georgia. | ||
| Mark is in Los Angeles, California, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Mark. | ||
| What's your top story of the week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thanks for having me on. | |
| I think the top story of the week is the Epstein blackmail story. | ||
| And Ghislaine completely lying in her little interview to get preferential treatment. | ||
| Our government is compromised, and we have members of Congress. | ||
| APAC is way, way, way in control of our government, Israel. | ||
| This whole thing, Netanyahu comes to town a day after the Epstein stuff hits the fan. | ||
| Pam Bondi saying she's got thousands of files of children and all this stuff, and now they're covering it up. | ||
| I think the American people can see through all this BS. | ||
| They understand that our government is full of it. | ||
| They now see the mega people see that Trump is full of it. | ||
| He's pulling a cover-up right now because he's got a cover for people like Clinton. | ||
| He's got a cover for all these criminals, the Clinton Foundation. | ||
| These people are just disgusting. | ||
| And Ghislaine Maxwell, the way she talks and tries to act like she's such a nice lady. | ||
| Now she calls him Mr. Epstein. | ||
| Come on, lady. | ||
| You're sleeping with the guy. | ||
| He was your boyfriend. | ||
| That was Mark in California. | ||
| Robert is in Clearwater, Florida, on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thanks for taking my call. | |
| I just think that Max Hill was right about Epstein. | ||
| I don't think he killed him. | ||
| I don't think he skilled until I think so many kill him. | ||
| That was Robert in Florida. | ||
| Randall is in Los Angeles, California, on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Randall. | ||
| What's your top story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Well, the Epstein thing is taking a lot of information here, but I do believe it's also affiliated with what's going on in the Middle East. | ||
| No one is talking about what's happening, the starvation in the Gaza Strip, which is being done by the Israeli lobby in the state of Israel. | ||
| There's people starving in the Gaza Strip. | ||
| The Palestinians, they're no longer going to be a people. | ||
| They're gone. | ||
| And I'm just crying about it every day when I go to YouTube and I go to the index. | ||
| I go to the bogs, just press it, go there, and just read what you want to see. | ||
| You can just see the facts right there. | ||
| And the Palestinians are being genocided to death. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Randall in California, also California. | ||
| Andrew and Millbray on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Andrew. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I think the top story, I think the top story was what Newsom is trying to do with the redistricting. | ||
| That's really, that's really. | ||
| Nobody's talking about that, but it's extremely corrupt what he's doing, and it's massively out of step with basically what anyone is doing. | ||
| And the Greg Abbotts thing is sort of too, but Trump really just kick-started a huge thing, a huge thing where now everyone is basically breaking even the meager rules about redistricting they have, and nobody's talking about it. | ||
| It sounds like it's going to be on the ballot this fall, Andrew. | ||
| How are you going to vote? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, of course. | |
| I'm voting no, and I'll be campaigning for no, of course. | ||
| That was Andrew in California. | ||
| Dorothy is in Burlington, North Carolina, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Dorothy. | ||
| What's your top news story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I want to talk about the Epstein files. | ||
| Now, they put this woman in a regular jail. | ||
| Well, she wasn't supposed to be. | ||
| She's supposed to be with the heart criminal. | ||
| Now, Trump sent his friend, lawyer to talk to her. | ||
| And knowing she lying through her teeth. | ||
| She knows Trump loves young girls. | ||
| Trump is a pedophile. | ||
| That was Dorothy in North Carolina. | ||
| And a reminder, if you are calling in, make sure that television is down in the background. | ||
| Once you talk with the person and you are waiting on hold, it can interfere with us being able to hear you and can also be a bit confusing. | ||
| Another story from this week, this is a headline from the Washington Post. | ||
| FBI searches home and office of former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton. | ||
| It says that FBI agents on Friday searched the Washington area home and office of former Trump administration national security advisor John Bolton as part of an investigation into whether he illegally possessed or shared classified information, according to multiple law enforcement officials familiar with the matter. | ||
| It says those officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the probe said the investigation focused on the allegations the Justice Department previously pursued during President Donald Trump's first term that Bolton divulged classified government material in his 2020 book. | ||
| Another person familiar with the current inquiry said its scope extended beyond the long dormant probe to include other more long-running accusations that Bolton had leaked sensitive materials. | ||
| During an interview with NBC News's Kristen Welker yesterday, Vice President J.D. Bance responded to questions about that raid. | ||
| Here's a clip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's at the root of this? | |
| Is this about classified documents? | ||
| Well, again, I'll let the FBI speak to that. | ||
| Classified documents are certainly part of it, but I think that there's a broad concern about Ambassador Bolton. | ||
| They're going to look into it. | ||
| And like I said, if there's no crime here, we're not going to prosecute it. | ||
| If there is a crime here, of course, Ambassador Bolton will get his day in court. | ||
| That's how it should be. | ||
| But again, our focus here is on did he break the law? | ||
| Did he commit crimes against the American people? | ||
| If so, then he deserves to be prosecuted. | ||
| As we have this conversation, has Ambassador Bolton been detained, taken into custody, arrested in any form? | ||
| So this news just broke this morning and the FBI, I haven't talked to the FBI this morning. | ||
| I don't know the answer to that question. | ||
| I assume that he hasn't been detained and won't be detained until there's actual prosecution if that actually happens. | ||
| As you know, Ambassador Bolton is a frequent critic of President Trump's. | ||
| He's also on Kash Patel's enemies list. | ||
| The administration has already revoked a security clearance, Secret Service protection. | ||
| Is Ambassador Bolton being targeted because he's a critic of President Trump? | ||
| No, not at all. | ||
| And in fact, if we were trying to do that, we would just throw out prosecutions willy-nilly like the Biden administration, DOJ, did prosecutions that later got thrown out in court. | ||
| If we bring a case, and of course, we haven't done that yet. | ||
| The Department of Justice has not done that yet. | ||
| We are investigating Ambassador Bolton, but if they ultimately bring a case, it will be because they determine that he has broken the law. | ||
| We're going to be careful about that. | ||
| We're going to be deliberate about that because we don't think that we should throw people, even if they disagree with us politically, maybe especially if they disagree with us politically. | ||
| You shouldn't throw people willy-nilly in prison. | ||
| You should let the law drive these determinations, and that's what we're doing. | ||
| But you know, a lot of people have already looked at this and said this looks a lot like retribution. | ||
| Is this retribution? | ||
| Well, who has said it looks a lot like retribution, Kristen? | ||
| Lot of people who tried to throw Donald Trump in prison for completely fake charges that were later thrown out by multiple different courts. | ||
| I suspect that if the media and the American people let this case actually unfold, if they let the investigation unfold as it's currently doing, they're going to find out that what we're doing is being very deliberate and being very driven by the national interest and by the law here, and that's as it should be. | ||
| For this first hour, we're asking you, what's your top news story of the week? | ||
| Let's hear from Patrick in Michigan, Line for Independence. | ||
| Hi, Patrick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I don't know where to start. | ||
| Gaza is a top story. | ||
| The whole world is watching tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of Palestinians being starved to death right now, this very second. | ||
| Little kids did nothing except being born on land that Israel wants to take. | ||
| You know, little kids with no arms, no parents. | ||
| How do they take care of themselves the rest of their lives? | ||
| Israeli soldiers laughing. | ||
| How many they can shoot? | ||
| World helpless, helpless. | ||
| We're on the wrong side in the Israeli-Palestine war. | ||
| It's genocide. | ||
| That was Patrick in Michigan. | ||
| Matt is in Grosbeck, Texas. | ||
| Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Matt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, there were several things. | ||
| But as far as Israel saying is Nagaza thing, if people would read their Bible and read 12-3 Genesis and, you know, Israel was attacked. | ||
| There was a peace treaty. | ||
| There wasn't any trouble. | ||
| The Palestinian Hamas butcher killers attacked Israel on October the 7th. | ||
| And Israel is having to fight for their lives. | ||
| They're surrounded by enemies. | ||
| And if people would read their Bible and know what it says, but you got a lot of people, Democrats, I don't even know if they even know what the Bible is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All they want to talk about is men and women's sports. | |
| They want to run down the National Guard. | ||
| I've seen the National Guard help an elderly lady change her flat tire. | ||
| They do all great good things. | ||
| Now, they will put down people that are violent. | ||
| I've seen them carry groaches for an elderly lady and help her get in her car. | ||
| I've seen them jump another lady's car off. | ||
| That was Matt in Texas. | ||
| Let's hear from Betty in Wisconsin, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Betty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good Betty. | |
| I guess over the weekend, I had listened to Stacey Abrams' CNN piece promoting her new book. | ||
| But also during that talk, she had said that there were 10 steps to auto-see. | ||
| And she went through them piece by piece. | ||
| And I guess what really caused me concern more so ever I've ever felt is number 10 was weaponizing our guards to go in and take control of the cities. | ||
| And the other part was redistricting that Trump will do anything to secure The next election. | ||
| Nobody talks about Project 25. | ||
| I know it was like 900 pages, but I think people should just take a step back and realize the manipulation that's happening in our government. | ||
| And every time there comes up a case, even like Epstein, diversion and divert to something else and get their mind off of it and go into these little pieces of whatever is at the top story for the day. | ||
| So please, people, I would look carefully even to Kim Scheffel, her speech at Princeton University. | ||
| She's in sociology, and Casey had said that part of those things weren't hers, but she did go step by step through what needed to be done to be taken over by autocracy. | ||
| That was Betty in Wisconsin. | ||
| Charles is in Cleveland, Ohio, on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Charles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm very happy to hear that all Americans do not fall for the complicity by the media when it comes to Gaza. | |
| All Americans do not vote for things that we see on commercial TV, which is nothing in compared to what's really happening in Gaza. | ||
| And all Americans see what's going on and who controls the foreign policy in this country. | ||
| President Trump and his cabal continues to try and throw diversion after diversion to keep from dealing with some of the issues that he does not want to deal with, Jeffrey Epstein being one of them. | ||
| And he said you come up with something obscene, that's a way to divert away from some of the things that are happening in this country. | ||
| And from what I hear on this program, a lot of American people are not falling for that. | ||
| They see through that. | ||
| I think the last thing I'd like to say is that the media, I think the history will be very harsh and very harsh on Western media and how they have been complicit with this government. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Charles in Ohio. | ||
| Charles, one of several callers who have brought up the situation in Gaza. | ||
| This is a headline from the New York Times from just earlier this morning. | ||
| It says, after Gaza famine report, U.S. is mostly silent and Israel defiant. | ||
| It says that a report by a panel of food security experts that found there was a famine in parts of Gaza prompted outrage from many European countries, but not from the United States, Israel's main backer and the Trump administration. | ||
| Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, echoed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel's argument against the report and posts on social media, saying that Hamas was to blame for any hunger in Gaza. | ||
| Quote, tons of food have gone into Gaza, but Hamas savages stole it, ate lots of it to become copulant. | ||
| It says Mr. Huckabee wrote on X, without pressure from the United States, states Mr. Netanyahu is unlikely to shift his conduct in the nearly two-year war in Gaza. | ||
| Analysts say President Trump has yet to comment on the report, which was released Friday, although he suggested last month that there was starvation in Gaza. | ||
| Back to your calls asking for your top news story of the week. | ||
| Let's hear from John, who's in Ventura, California, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I'd like to talk about California. | ||
| And the Democrats always say that we're losing our democracy. | ||
| Well, under Gavin Newsom, we are losing our democracy in California with this redistricting. | ||
| And it is blatantly anti-constitutional. | ||
| But really, what I wanted to talk about in California is the immigration problem that Gavin Newson has caused. | ||
| And we have 10% of our population is illegal immigrants. | ||
| And they have no voting power. | ||
| They don't speak English. | ||
| They work in the worst jobs. | ||
| They get the worst pay. | ||
| And they have the worst working conditions. | ||
| And so in essence, they are economic slaves. | ||
| And California, I say, is a slave state right now because we have the same ratios of slaves that America had in 1860. | ||
| There were 3.5 million slaves in 1860 and 35 million total population. | ||
| California has about 4 to 5 million slaves and a population of 40 million. | ||
| So we are a slave state under Gavin Newsome with this resistance to ICE and everything. | ||
| Republicans are anti-slavery. | ||
| That was John in California. | ||
| Gary is in Winterhaven, Florida, on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Gary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I think the story is that, and it's not being covered, is that we have a president overdosing on power. | ||
| Power is like a drug, and when you overdose, it makes you crazy. | ||
| You can go through history from Hitler to the kings of England, kings of France, the pharaohs of Egypt thought they were divine beings and gods. | ||
| And I think we have a president who is clearly on power and overdosing with that, and it's driving him crazy. | ||
| And you can see it clearly. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Gary in Florida. | ||
| Bob is in hometown, Illinois. | ||
| Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Bob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Tammy. | |
| Love C-SPAN. | ||
| My top story has been for quite a while is I wish the Democratic governors and mayors in these blue states would get behind Trump and help. | ||
| He's doing such a wonderful thing in D.C., no murders for over a week. | ||
| That's unheard of. | ||
| If they let them come into the county jails and state penitentiaries and take the people they have warrants for, they wouldn't be finding so many other people on the fringes, taking in people that are good, honest, hardworking people. | ||
| And if they would cooperate a little bit, they'd save on their tax base. | ||
| They'd stop the businesses from fleeing their cities and states. | ||
| They cooperate a little bit throughout the country. | ||
| We'd save a whole ton of money, get closer to cooperating with one another. | ||
| And before you know it, all these cities will be back to flourishing again, and people will be safe to walk the streets at night, go to the restaurants on the weekend. | ||
| I haven't been downtown Chicago since COVID. | ||
| I live in the outskirts, and I can't wait for Trump to come through Chicago and help all these people on the south side of Chicago get control of their neighborhoods because the mayor certainly doesn't want to help them. | ||
| The mayor wants to help the immigrants. | ||
| Thanks, Tammy. | ||
| That was Bob in Illinois, and this is a headline from Politico. | ||
| Trump says he may send National Guard to Chicago and New York. | ||
| The article from just yesterday says that President Donald Trump said he is looking to send the National Guard to Chicago or New York, seeking to extend the deployment of guardsmen elsewhere after amassing troops in Washington. | ||
| Says Trump told reporters Friday he is considering deploying guardsmen to Chicago after ordering troops into the nation's capital in Los Angeles earlier this year, a move the Trump administration is now being forced to defend in court. | ||
| Quote, we are going to make our cities very, very safe. | ||
| Chicago is a mess, Trump said. | ||
| We'll straighten out one, straighten one out probably next. | ||
| That will be our next one after this, and it won't even be tough. | ||
| Says Trump later mentioned New York along with Chicago as cities he'd like the National Guard cities he'd like the National Guard to quote help. | ||
| The president praised the hundreds of guardsmen currently deployed in Washington and noted he's willing to quote bring in the regular military to help support his campaign to reduce crime in the city. | ||
| Back to your calls asking your top news story of the week. | ||
| Let's hear from Beverly in Connecticut on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Beverly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| I have a, I could write a book, but the thing is that Trump in the past has called the American people stupid. | ||
| Well, you know what? | ||
| This man never ever does anything that does not benefit him. | ||
| And the more people think about that and watch, and as far as the media, if you watch television, you see everything on television that's going on. | ||
| You can't say the media doesn't broadcast it. | ||
| They do. | ||
| But Trump has been a jerk his whole life. | ||
| He is condemning people left and right, calling people all kinds of names. | ||
| But when he's called a name, he sues and people give in to him. | ||
| This man has a problem. | ||
| He always has had a problem. | ||
| And it's just disgusting. | ||
| The only reason he's going into the cities he's going into is because he can't get the votes from those cities. | ||
| He's doing that to suit himself, not to help the people. | ||
| That was Beverly in Connecticut. | ||
| Scott is in Roseville, California. | ||
| Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Scott. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, guys. | |
| I hate it when people share their personal stuff. | ||
| So forgive me. | ||
| I'm nobody, and I'm not looking for sympathy at all. | ||
| But I'm going to go a bit off topic. | ||
| I know that C-SPAN has an ebb and flow, and the news stories that we've all been fed for like the last month are hot topics. | ||
| But let's go back to how nicely the 2025 project is playing out and the retribution stuff with, you know, the security advisor being canned and being raided. | ||
| Yay. | ||
| In 2009, I had the best insurance working for Budweiser for all of Central California. | ||
| The best insurance, the best coverage you could possibly imagine. | ||
| And I survived. | ||
| Senator Roseville saved my life. | ||
| Thank you guys. | ||
| Now, I was 39 at the time. | ||
| Now, my greatest news story this week is that I took the very first steps after a fall due to latent disability. | ||
| Right side brain, left leg. | ||
| My toe touched a chair. | ||
| I fell and I broke the femur in the hip. | ||
| But I'm on disability and I'm on Medicare and Medicaid and 2025 wants to cut that program. | ||
| Now, the aneurysm I was 39. | ||
| I'm 55 now. | ||
| I had my birthday in the hospital. | ||
| I was the token child of I've fallen and I can't get up. | ||
| Like I said, no sympathy. | ||
| I'm nobody. | ||
| But if, oh my God, a shout out to everybody older than me that's ever broken a hip. | ||
| Yeah, it just happened to me. | ||
| And more than a month later, I'm walking. | ||
| I'm walking. | ||
| I took my first steps and carried my walker. | ||
| Lots of titanium, but I'm back. | ||
| And if I did not have Medicare and if I did not have Medicaid, I would not have gone to the hospital. | ||
| I would be dead. | ||
| And I'm just 55 years old. | ||
| So for everybody out there who has a family member that might stumble, might be broken, and might not be covered because the dumb baby is in charge. | ||
| Fear for them. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Scott in California. | ||
| Another story from yesterday, this headline from the Wall Street Journal, Powell highlights job market worries, opening path to rate cut. | ||
| It says that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell opened the floor for rate cuts next month when he said the labor market might be softening enough to rein in inflation that is being pushed up by tariffs. | ||
| Throughout the year, Powell and his colleagues have held rates steady, pointing to a solid labor market and uncertainty over inflation outlook given large tariff hikes. | ||
| But Powell suggested the outlook was changing in a direction that could justify a resumption of rate cuts in a widely watched address at a conference in Wyoming yesterday. | ||
| From yesterday, here is a clip of Jerome Powell's comments. | ||
| This year, the economy has new challenges. | ||
| Significantly higher tariffs across our trading partners are remaking the global trading system. | ||
| Tighter immigration policy has led to an abrupt slowdown in labor force growth. | ||
| Over the longer run, changes in tax, spending, and regulatory policies may also have important implications for economic growth and productivity. | ||
| There is significant uncertainty about where all of these policies will eventually settle and what their lasting effects on the economy will be. | ||
| Changes in trade and immigration policies are affecting both demand and supply. | ||
| In this environment, distinguishing cyclical developments from trend or structural developments is difficult. | ||
| This distinction is critical because monetary policy can work to stabilize cyclical fluctuations, but can do little to alter structural changes. | ||
| The labor market is a case in point. | ||
| The July employment report released earlier this month showed that payroll job growth slowed to an average pace of only 35,000 per month over the past three months, down from $168,000 per month during 2024. | ||
| This slowdown is much larger than assessed just a month ago, as the earlier figures for May and June were revised down substantially. | ||
| But it does not appear that the slowdown in job growth has opened up a large margin of slack in the labor market, an outcome we want to avoid. | ||
| CNBC noting that the Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied to an all-time high Friday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled that potential rate cut. | ||
| The headline saying that it surged more than 800 points to a post-record close after that speech. | ||
| Just about 20 minutes left in this first hour asking for your top news story of the week. | ||
| Let's hear from Ted, who's in Boston, Massachusetts, on the line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Ted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My ongoing top news story here is that we have one of the most vile, disgusting bullies that this nation has ever seen. | ||
| And we've put him at the top of charge here, you know. | ||
| And for me, it's so clear that this guy doesn't care about human life. | ||
| He doesn't care about anyone. | ||
| He doesn't care about integrity standards. | ||
| He doesn't care about the well-being of the people or the country. | ||
| He doesn't. | ||
| And his track record proves it. | ||
| We know that as a human being, that's who he is. | ||
| And my big problem is that this really amplifies down through the populace. | ||
| And you can see how people have changed, you know, their behavior towards each other. | ||
| And I really don't like that. | ||
| And the other ongoing news story for me is that, you know, you just have this denigration of quality of life for all of us. | ||
| And I think what the GOP has always been good at is taking advantage of people who are mean or they are ignorant or they're both. | ||
| And, you know, when you get those things and put them all together, I can tell that these people, they don't care about integrity or working together or, you know, any of the sentiment that we saw in the 1950s with the space race or really anything where we tried to band together as a country and it's just so vile, you know, what the average GOP person enables. | ||
| And what that was Ted in Massachusetts. | ||
| Lydia is in Ventura, California, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Lydia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I like to say that it's like Jeffy James had out the lag likes the lag type. | |
| And they think it's a big joke. | ||
| Everything's supposed to be a big joke. | ||
| Something to laugh about. | ||
| And it's not funny. | ||
| And I just wish people would love and respect each other and appreciate their living America because it's not so bad as other countries. | ||
| And that's all I got to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Lydia in California. | ||
| Bradley is in Georgia on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Bradley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's your top story of the week? | |
| First, I just want to say something about the guy who has the Medicaid. | ||
| I too. | ||
| Like, I was like, you know, the gutter, basically, torn like knees. | ||
| And if it wasn't for Medicaid, like, I wouldn't be alive today. | ||
| It's very important. | ||
| All right, on to the news stories. | ||
| I guess it's probably going to be the fact that a convicted multiple child sex trafficker is in a minimum security prison and they're not even allowed to be there. | ||
| And people really haven't got to an eye about it. | ||
| And like, I've never really, the F-seen thing was always kind of interesting, but I always knew Trump was a Russian asset. | ||
| As soon as Jill Stein and Mike Flynn were photographed in Moscow, by the way, where is Jill Starr? | ||
| He only pops up a couple times every four years, but there is something extremely odd that everyone knows Trump's a scumbag. | ||
| So what could be in those files? | ||
| It's so devastating. | ||
| Like nothing affects him. | ||
| But the way he's acting is like he's acting insane. | ||
| And his whole administration, they're acting like they're never going to leave office again. | ||
| They're building ballrooms, getting jets given to them. | ||
| There's something brewing. | ||
| And if you think Donald Trump's stupid, he's not. | ||
| This dude thinks 50 steps ahead of almost everybody. | ||
| He could barely read, but this guy is freaking. | ||
| He is very, very, very, very that was Michael. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Let's go on to Tristan in Wisconsin, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Tristan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hello, can you guys hear me? | ||
| Yes, go ahead, Tristan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, so I think this is one of those things where just a lot of stuff happened this week that, in my opinion, was just shocking. | |
| Number one, the raid on John Bolton's house that really bothered me because it does appear as if there's some type of Trump administration kind of has a revenge concept going on in the background. | ||
| So the John Bolton thing bothered me greatly. | ||
| I think the other thing that bothered me this week is he comes out and says that Missouri is going to do the exact same thing that the state of Texas did, with redistricting and redrawing the congressional map. | ||
| That bothered me as well. | ||
| And I think the president also on his social media site talked about how the mayor of D.C. was lying about crime statistics and how the crime statistics were being fudged. | ||
| I think there's just a lot of disturbing stuff that happened this week. | ||
| I don't want to be on C-SPAN too long. | ||
| There's a lot of people, I guess, waiting to come behind me. | ||
| But I've just been thinking about the novel 1984, where in 1984, the main character hears these contradictory things going. | ||
| And for those who have read 1984, at some point, the political party in power kind of wages a war on truth. | ||
| So you can't tell people why statistics are fake because it displeases the political party in power. | ||
| Because when you do that, you get people to doubt statistics themselves. | ||
| And the thing that bothers me about the Trump administration more than anything is the doubting that the president puts in the minds of people. | ||
| And that's very concerning to me. | ||
| So John Bolton, Missouri apparently is going to do the same thing. | ||
| Texas did. | ||
| And then the president coming out saying that the individuals that are saying crime in D.C. is on a 20-year low, that's just fake news. | ||
| That was Tristan in Wisconsin. | ||
| Let's hear from Holly, who's in Washington, D.C., on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Holly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you for taking my call. | |
| My top story is an incident that happened right in front of your building there at 400 North Capitol. | ||
| The arrest of the billboard truck driver. | ||
| As you know, there's been a demonstration going on for several weeks there about Gaza and the starvation that's going on there. | ||
| And there was a billboard truck driver who had been hired to have billboards about this. | ||
| And I think Thursday he was arrested by a combination of different federal forces, ICE, the Washington Police. | ||
| It has turned out that he was not in the illegal. | ||
| He's been released. | ||
| I don't know the details of why they arrested him or what the charges were, but this is an infringement on several things people have mentioned. | ||
| The suppressing of news about Gaza and the attack on free speech in this country. | ||
| This is and also the use of the federal forces in the D.C. | ||
| So this is a nexus of several things that are going wrong. | ||
| That was Holly in Washington, D.C. | ||
| This headline in the Associated Press: California Governor Newsome signs legislation calling special election on redrawing congressional map. | ||
| It says that California voters will decide in November whether to approve a redrawn congressional map designed to help Democrats win five more U.S. House seats next year after Texas Republicans advance their own redrawn map to pad their House majority by the same number of seats at President Donald Trump's urging. | ||
| California lawmakers voted mostly along party lines Thursday to approve legislation calling for the special election. | ||
| Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who has led the campaign in favor of the map, then quickly signed it, the latest step in the tit-for-tat gerrymandering battle. | ||
| It was Governor Newsom who spoke just before signing that legislation on Thursday. | ||
| Here's a clip from that event. | ||
| We got here because the President of the United States is struggling. | ||
| We got here because the President of the United States is one of the most unpopular presidents in U.S. history. | ||
| We got here because he recognizes that he will lose the election. | ||
| Congress will go back into the hands of the Democratic Party next November. | ||
| We got here because of his failed policies. | ||
| Those are being exposed hour by hour, reinforced today by Walmart announcing they'll be raising prices because of the tax increases, because of the tariffs. | ||
| Reminded every day by a slowing economy, growing mistrust, distrust all across this nation, across the board, he is failing. | ||
| He recognized that, and that's why he made a phone call to Greg Abbott asking for five seats. | ||
| Can't win by playing by traditional sets of rules. | ||
| He plays by no rules. | ||
| I remind you all the time, it's not the rule of law, it's the rule of God. | ||
| And we're standing up to that. | ||
| We're responding to that. | ||
| They fired the first shot, Texas. | ||
| We wouldn't be here had Texas not done what they just did. | ||
| Donald Trump didn't do what he just did. | ||
| He went so far as to follow up and say that he didn't just want those five seats. | ||
| He said he's quote-unquote entitled to those five seats. | ||
| Just pause and reflect on that. | ||
| Everything should have just stopped there. | ||
| President of the United States claiming he's entitled to five seats. | ||
| That should put chills up your spine. | ||
| Every Republican, not just Democrat and Independent, every American. | ||
| Also from the Associated Press, just earlier this morning, the headline, Texas lawmakers gave final approval to redrawn congressional map favoring GOP. | ||
| Send to Governor this article. | ||
| It was last just updated at 2.50 a.m. Eastern Time this morning. | ||
| It says the Texas Senate gave final approval to a new Republican-leaning congressional voting map early Saturday, sending it to Governor Greg Abbott for his signature. | ||
| It says Abbott, a Republican, is expected to quickly sign it into law, though Democrats have vowed to challenge it in court. | ||
| Just about 10 minutes left in this first hour asking for your top news story of the week. | ||
| Let's hear from Al, who's in Washington, D.C., on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Al. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I thought Jelaine Maxwell's excerpts I've been hearing on the news have been interesting since Trump and her former loved one were such close buddies. | ||
| And as a disabled senior, I find that the health care system after two falls has been pretty tough on me. | ||
| United Healthcare has not been reaching out to help me. | ||
| Instead, they're playing a joke. | ||
| I've been housebound since February. | ||
| And, you know, fortunately, my legs are getting stronger with the walker, but the treatment of seniors in America has been difficult with or without Medicaid, Medicare, and all of the above. | ||
| Thanks for letting me share. | ||
| That was Al in Washington, D.C. Carol is in St. Louis, Missouri, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Carol. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| One of the top news stories was the American company that was bombed in the Ukraine by the Russians, and the Chamber of Commerce was really upset, and not one word was said about it. | ||
| I mean, not even, you know, the president never said anything about it. | ||
| And the second one is those starving children. | ||
| That's terrible over in Palestine. | ||
| What are we going to do about that? | ||
| Somebody has to do something about that. | ||
| Okay, that's my story. | ||
| That was Carol in Missouri. | ||
| Darrell is in North Dakota on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Darrell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good to see your show and everything. | ||
| You know, I'm an independent because I'm neither Democrat nor I'm Republican. | ||
| But I look at both sides of the coin and see what's going on. | ||
| You know, the thing about Washington, D.C. and Trump's, you know, he's just fighting back, you know, to get back what our local leaders, our mayors and everything, have failed to do and everything. | ||
| He's attacking the government like a Democrat. | ||
| And then he's taken and he's trying to fix it and bring back law and order. | ||
| You know, it's hit all over the country. | ||
| And so he's basically fighting back to get law and order and get some sort of law back in the United States. | ||
| It's gone all the way through. | ||
| He's talking about Chicago, but see, Chicago, that's just one of the tendrils. | ||
| You know, people moved from Chicago to Minneapolis. | ||
| Minneapolis, you know, we're getting Minneapolis to Fargo. | ||
| In 2017, we had maybe one or two murders or shootings in 2017. | ||
| Every two to three years, we were like less than 1% on killings and everything. | ||
| Today, we're at 100 or 200% more because up in Grand Forks and Fargo and other places in North Dakota, we've gotten more murders and everything from people that move from there. | ||
| I'm originally from California. | ||
| I moved out of California, and I'm glad I did because it's the local governments that are not, it's not Trump, it's not doing all this stuff. | ||
| But the murder rate's bad. | ||
| And the Latin one caller you said about Social Security and Medicaid, those are not a right like everybody thinks it is. | ||
| It's a privilege, just like my driver's license. | ||
| If I go driving and everything, that's not a right. | ||
| It's a privilege to have. | ||
| That was Daryl in North Dakota. | ||
| Clara is in Massachusetts, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Clara. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Okay, my big question. | ||
| I mean, my big story for this week is: HagSeth authorizes National Guard to carry weapons in D.C. deployment. | ||
| And the reason I think this is significant is that I have a good friend who was leaving D.C. yesterday, and they told me that every entrance and every exit into D.C. has guard members all over the place. | ||
| And my question is: who is the enemy here? | ||
| Who are we going after? | ||
| And what is the cost to the American taxpayer day in and day out? | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| Are we going after impoverished homeless people? | ||
| Are we going after teenage delinquents, immigrants? | ||
| Those, you know, if we're going after homeless people, build houses. | ||
| Teenage delinquents have after-school programs. | ||
| Immigrants have a reasonable immigration policy. | ||
| I don't think, I don't know why we're doing this to our cities or why Trump wants to do this, but those guns and those armed officers, they're not there to clean up the city. | ||
| They're going after us. | ||
| We're going to be the enemy. | ||
| I don't understand who else we're going after. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Clara in Massachusetts. | ||
| And this is the headline on the front of the metro section of the Washington Post this morning: guard troops to carry weapons. | ||
| It's what Clara was talking about. | ||
| It says National Guard members participating in the military deployment that President Donald Trump has ordered in Washington, D.C. will, quote, soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons. | ||
| The Pentagon said Friday following Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's formal authorization for troops to carry firearms in the nation's capital. | ||
| The authorization applies to the Joint Task Force, D.C., the military mission that includes Guard members from D.C. in six states that are involved in the deployment, the Pentagon said in a statement. | ||
| Officials with the Task Force D.C. said in a statement Friday morning that they were aware of media reports about the authorization to carry firearms, but insist that, quote, no change to our arming posture has been made. | ||
| And it was not clear when or if that posture may change. | ||
| The story notes that the number of guard members in Washington, D.C. is 2,282 as of Friday. | ||
| Just a couple minutes left. | ||
| Let's hear from Avery in Atlanta, Georgia, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Avery. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The topic I wanted to talk about is that as Republicans are celebrating the spending bill, Democrats have still not pointed out that our definition of able-body is wrong. | ||
| Someone can watch TV or play video games with a low level of comprehension or performance, which means the establishment's test for determining who is able-body is not accurate. | ||
| Someone who can only work a part-time job that pays less than the average wage is by definition not able-body. | ||
| And the fact that our test of ability is not calibrated to the average wage means people who cannot work 20 hours are not being identified. | ||
| And Democrats are not addressing this. | ||
| We can have people who stay in the House using all of their energy to learn about medicine or engineering at a low level. | ||
| And if that is all they can do, they are doing more than people who work a job that solves no problem and spend a lot of their money on status symbols. | ||
| As long as the Washington Journal does not point out this discrepancy in our policies, they will keep getting the same responses from viewers every time they raise the spending issue. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Avery in Georgia. | ||
| Millie is in Fort Mill, South Carolina, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Millie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Hi, Millie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| I have lived in Washington, D.C. most of my life. | ||
| I'm now in South Carolina, and I'm enjoying the freedom down here because of the uprising that is happening in Washington, D.C. | ||
| I back up the president from what he's doing. | ||
| I was there in Washington when Dr. King was killed, and a young lady in my office came back looking very pale, and she was a black girl. | ||
| She said there are people with weird things on their faces. | ||
| And then, of course, we had the why. | ||
| We had the Millie, I think we lost you. | ||
| We'll leave it there. | ||
| We are out of time for this first hour later this morning on Washington Journal, Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy, Senior Research Fellow Angela Watson, will join us to discuss the findings of a new survey focused on homeschooling in the U.S. | ||
| But next, we'll talk with Urban Institute Senior Fellow Elaine Waxman about changes to federal nutrition assistance programs. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
| 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. | |
| Don't worry, you were in prime time too, but they happened to have a little re-run. | ||
| Do you really think that we don't remember what just happened last week? | ||
| 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. | |
| I'm about to read to you something that was published by C-SPAN. | ||
| 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 aboard to everybody watching at home. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We know C-SPAN covers this a lot 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. | ||
| Mike said before, I happened to listen to him. | ||
| He was on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Honor the person who first showed you democracy in action and ignite America 250, C-SPAN's 18-month ad-free celebration of our nation's story. | |
| Give $25 or more by August 31st at c-span.org slash donate and add your democracy hero to our online wall to keep these vital stories alive for viewers and learners everywhere. | ||
| As our thanks, you'll receive an exclusive democracy unfiltered decal. | ||
| Your gift helps make C-SPAN possible. | ||
| Visit c-span.org slash donate today and join us in keeping America's story alive. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss changes to the federal nutrition assistance program is Elaine Waxman. | ||
| She's a tax and income support division senior fellow at the Urban Institute. | ||
| Elaine, thank you so much for being with us this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| We'll start with by having you tell our audience about the Urban Institute. | ||
| What is the organization's mission? | ||
| Who do you work with and how are you funded? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So the Urban Institute was founded in the mid-60s and is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization based in DC, but we're scattered all over the country. | ||
| I happen to work from Chicago. | ||
| We have a variety of funding sources, including federal and state government grants, philanthropy, private contributions. | ||
| And your focus, one of the things you focus on in your role there is food insecurity, food access, federal nutrition programs. | ||
| That's what we're going to be talking about today. | ||
| I want to share with our audience where SNAP benefits stand right now. | ||
| This is according to the USDA. | ||
| There are more than 42.5 million participating persons. | ||
| There are more than 22 million participating households. | ||
| The average monthly benefit per person is $190.81. | ||
| The average monthly benefit per household is $356.68. | ||
| Elaine, we're going to be talking about some of the changes coming to the program soon. | ||
| How would you define the current state of the SNAP program? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the SNAP program is really essential for promoting food security and public health. | |
| And I think it's important to start our conversation with that. | ||
| Going into this period of rapid policy change, we actually have almost as many food insecure Americans as we did at the height of the Great Recession. | ||
| So when people talk about how many people are on SNAP and what is the size of the program, we need to put it in that context. | ||
| So I think a lot of folks are very aware of the pressure of food prices, the sense of financial procurity that a lot of people are experiencing. | ||
| We are kind of on the cusp of a major program change, probably the biggest shift we've had in the program since its founding. | ||
| There are a couple of major things that people will see happen in the next couple of years. | ||
| One of them is a change in the way we pay for SNAP benefits. | ||
| So historically, SNAP has been a federal funded benefit. | ||
| States share in the administrative costs, but it's a federally paid benefit. | ||
| Starting in 2028, or maybe a little bit later for some states, states will have to pay anywhere from 5% to 15% of those benefits. | ||
| And that's a huge shift. | ||
| And, you know, states don't have the luxury of depth spending. | ||
| Most of them require a balanced budget. | ||
| They have limited options for increasing revenue. | ||
| And so that's likely to put significant pressure on states, particularly if we were to have another recession, the need would grow. | ||
| The other thing that will be changing is that states have historically split the administrative costs 50-50. | ||
| It'll be 75% on states now. | ||
| And again, that's another financial pressure. | ||
| And I think the idea that Congress had in making that shift was to try to encourage states to improve their error rates to decrease overall program costs. | ||
| Unfortunately, you know, estimates both from urban and from the Congressional Budget Office suggest that quite a few people will actually lose their benefits or lose some of the amount of the benefits. | ||
| And so I think we can expect some pretty dramatic pressures in the next few years. | ||
| A second thing that has changed for some households is increased work requirements. | ||
| I should point out that SNAP has always had work requirements, but when we say it in this context, what we mean is really a time limit. | ||
| And that is if folks can't meet an 80-hour a month benchmark consistently, they are eligible for only three months of benefits in a three-year period. | ||
| So that's pretty dramatic. | ||
| This expands now to people up to age up through age 64, as well as households with children who are 14 and up. | ||
| And so that brings a lot more people into that mix. | ||
| Lots of people work on SNAP. | ||
| The thing that I think a lot of people don't understand is that, frankly, two-thirds of people on SNAP are either children, seniors, or people with disabilities. | ||
| So it leaves a relatively smaller portion of people who would be employed, and most of those who can work do. | ||
| But the nature of low-wage work in this country is very unstable, and people may struggle to meet that consistently, particularly if they do seasonal work, if they do gig work. | ||
| I talked recently with a substitute teacher who pointed out that sometimes her work is very stable and sometimes it's not. | ||
| And there's a lot of documentation that goes with that. | ||
| And so sometimes people fall off the program, not because they weren't working, but because either they struggle to provide the documentation and to understand it, or states struggle because they're going to have a much bigger workload with fewer resources. | ||
| Our guest is Elaine Waxman with the Urban Institute. | ||
| She is joining us for a discussion on changes to the federal nutrition assistance program. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for Elaine, you can start calling in now the lines. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We also have a line for SNAP recipients. | ||
| You can call in at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Elaine, I wanted to go back to one of the things that you talked about, and that is the cost-sharing aspect. | ||
| How much are states expected to pay? | ||
| How does the number range and why will it vary depending on state? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's a great question. | |
| So the way it's structured, it's going to be tied to the SNAP payment error rate. | ||
| It sounds like a very bureaucratic term, and it is. | ||
| But basically, an error in SNAP can mean that you overpaid someone or you underpaid someone. | ||
| Either one of those would count as an error. | ||
| And during COVID, there were a lot of shifts in the program. | ||
| There was a lot less staffing resources available, and we really saw those error rates go up. | ||
| And I think they've started to move for a number of states, but they've remained relatively high in some places. | ||
| So the way the program is structured now is that states will pay anywhere from 5% to 15% of the benefits, which could be millions of dollars. | ||
| And that's a significant unplanned budget expense that states will have to anticipate. | ||
| As a result, of course, they'll be focusing a lot on driving down those error rates, which on the face of it is a good thing. | ||
| But in order to do that, they're going to have fewer administrative resources to do that, a lot more responsibility, and we can expect people to fall through the cracks. | ||
| Elaine, what are the most common causes behind those error rates? | ||
| And what is the challenge to actually reducing the number that they're seeing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I'm not sure that we fully understand the contributions to the error rates, but they can come from a number of different ways. | |
| As I mentioned, when people work, actually, that's a population that ends up with some error rates because people's work returns vary. | ||
| They may struggle to provide the documentation. | ||
| You know, in all fairness, SNAP offices sometimes lose documentation or lose track of things. | ||
| So there's a lot of complexity for working families in particular. | ||
| And those can be folks for whom we see errors. | ||
| People who have relatively stable income, so someone who's retired or has a disability, you tend to have lower error rates for those families. | ||
| And we also know that families with children are more likely to have earnings. | ||
| And so unfortunately, that may affect those families as well. | ||
| You also mentioned that this is an expense that states are going to be contributing to for the first time. | ||
| What options do states have when it comes to contributing, paying for this program, paying a share of the program? | ||
| And what are the potential long-term impacts to the states and the programs that they are administering? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, this is a really important discussion and one that I think didn't get enough attention during the bill passage. | |
| States, as I said, are going to have constrained resources, particularly if we would shift to a recession. | ||
| And the federal government has made clear that they don't plan to pick up any shortfall that states would experience. | ||
| So states, you know, we don't know exactly how states will respond and they will probably respond differently. | ||
| But we would expect that there will be fewer people receiving SNAP. | ||
| They'll need to constrain eligibility. | ||
| They may need to cut benefits. | ||
| Right now, you cannot establish a state-specific benefit. | ||
| In fact, the benefit is the same for the lower 48 states. | ||
| But we could imagine, as was the case in the first Trump administration, some discussion of waivers that would allow states to do that. | ||
| That's really concerning because SNAP is already inadequate to meet the cost of a moderately priced meal in 99% of U.S. counties. | ||
| And so we have an insufficient benefit. | ||
| We have a public health problem known as food insecurity or hunger more typically. | ||
| And it has very significant health consequences. | ||
| One of the things we know about SNAP is that people on SNAP are more likely to have lower health care expenditures. | ||
| So we're talking about trying to control Medicaid costs, but at the same time, we're potentially rolling back a lever that could help us do that. | ||
| We also know that SNAP is a really important economic stimulus in local economies. | ||
| So if you think about it, when somebody gets a SNAP benefit for the month, they spend it pretty quickly in local stores. | ||
| That pays for stock folks. | ||
| It pays for the wages of cashiers. | ||
| It pays for the transportation companies that move the food. | ||
| It pays farmers and processors. | ||
| And so, particularly during a downturn, we have seen by USDA's own data that for every additional dollar spent, SNAP generates more than $1.50 in economic activity. | ||
| And I think that's something that's not well understood. | ||
| We talk about SNAP expenses as if they're a drain, but they're actually an investment in many ways, an investment in local economies, an investment in people's health. | ||
| And that's kind of what potentially at risk going forward. | ||
| Our guest for the next 30 minutes or so is Elaine Waxman with the Urban Institute for a discussion on changes to the federal nutrition assistance programs. | ||
| If you have a question or comment, you can give us a call. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| And if you are a SNAP recipient, you can give us a call at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Let's hear from Greg, who's in Glen Allen, Virginia, on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Greg. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| So I don't want this to sound harsh, but I don't want, I don't mind my tax money going to pay for people who really need it. | ||
| I don't want to pay for people who are able to and are not willing to get up and go to work. | ||
| And I don't want to pay for people who have children out of wedlock and are irresponsible in that area. | ||
| So I wonder if you could address the fact that this has the potential for many years of being abused and made into a lifestyle when actually it was, if I remember correctly, it was meant to be something just to help people in the short term. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So, you know, I think most people can relate to the first thing the caller said, which is that, you know, we would all want people who can work to do so. | ||
| And unlike the stigma or narrative that surrounds the program, that is in fact the case. | ||
| Partly what we're seeing is the reality of low-wage work and the unevenness of the availability of work that could sustain families. | ||
| All kinds of households participate in SNAP, all kinds of households with children. | ||
| You know, children are the future of this country. | ||
| And so I think we all have an interest in their health and well-being. | ||
| And we know that SNAP reduces food insecurity. | ||
| And food insecurity among children can result in developmental delays. | ||
| It can result in greater rates of hospitalization, higher rates of asthma. | ||
| In teenagers, it can result in depression, suicidal ideation. | ||
| So we've talked for a long time about food insecurity as if it's a social welfare problem. | ||
| And I'd like to invite us to talk about it as a very serious public health problem. | ||
| It also increases the rates of chronic disease like diabetes and hypertension, which is something we're grappling with as a country overall. | ||
| So I do think work requirements make sense to people in the sense that it encourages the kinds of behavior that we would all want to see. | ||
| The problem is, what we've learned over the years is that work requirements don't really work. | ||
| So most people who are working can, or they're at least working intermittently, and there are some reasons why people don't have steady work. | ||
| If they leave the program involuntarily without more work, they're not getting more earnings by having a work department. | ||
| And work requirements cost a lot for states to administer. | ||
| And so I think we have to weigh the idea of a tool that sounds good and a tool that actually is not that effective. | ||
| I think we might need to have a bigger conversation about what we could do about the standard of wages, the instability of hours, and ways in which we can help people get connected to work that's life-sustaining. | ||
| Elaine, remind our audience what those changes to the work requirement look like and when will they be going into effect? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's a good question. | |
| Congress was silent on when they would go into effect, so it will be left to guidance from the Secretary of Agriculture. | ||
| You know, it could be as soon as I think this winter. | ||
| We just don't know. | ||
| We're waiting for that guidance. | ||
| So unlike some of the other changes that we talked about, the work requirements are likely to come sooner. | ||
| Again, we've had what we called an able-bodied adult without dependent time limit for some time. | ||
| And that's now being expanded to people with dependents who are adolescents 14 and up. | ||
| And also, the work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents had stopped at age 55, and now that's extending to 64. | ||
| So, what are some things that we want to think about there? | ||
| People in that older age range are not necessarily as competitive in the workplace, particularly if the niche that's available to them is manual labor. | ||
| So, that's a little bit concerning. | ||
| The other thing that has happened is that Congress had previously provided states with a tool called exemptions, which allowed them to exempt certain people for whom they were pretty certain would struggle to meet the work requirement, partly because of environmental conditions. | ||
| So, now work requirements cannot be waived unless people live in a county or area with unemployment rates of 10% or higher. | ||
| So, 10% or higher is great recession-level unemployment rates, which are pretty extreme. | ||
| And the other thing that we forget is that an average unemployment rate in a county masks pretty dramatic experiences within a county. | ||
| So, I live in a large county, I live in Cook County in Chicago. | ||
| The unemployment rate in some neighborhoods is 20 or 30 percent. | ||
| And so, we don't have that tool to be able to respond to changes in local conditions anymore. | ||
| And so, that's kind of the upshot of what will be shifting. | ||
| And again, this kind of comes at a time when states will really be on the hook to avoid payment errors. | ||
| One can imagine that, you know, one of the ways to avoid payment errors is to make it very, very difficult for people to stay on the program. | ||
| Let's hear from Tori in Washington, D.C., Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Tori. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Elaine, thank you so much for the work that you're doing with the Urban Institute in Chicago. | ||
| I have a quick question, and this is regarding the segment of or the demographic of population that we normally don't think about with who receives SNAP benefits, and that is the college student, specifically the graduate college student. | ||
| Will that demographic be affected with these SNAP changes and how will they be affected? | ||
| Yeah, that's an important question. | ||
| You know, college students have typically been subject to a number of the requirements that parallel what I just talked about with able-bodied adults without dependence, that they need to be working half-time or more. | ||
| So it's unclear exactly what will happen going forward, but that's also a population that tends to have fluctuating income, you know, for all the reasons that we understand. | ||
| And so for those older students or graduate students, as you point out, who have, you know, used SNAP benefits as a supplement while they're both working and attending school, it becomes challenging for them to, you know, consistently meet the requirements and provide the documentation. | ||
| I think it's really important what you raise because college students, often people think of that as a group that's well off, that's pursuing a privilege of higher education, etc. | ||
| The truth of the matter is a lot of college students in this country are community college students. | ||
| Many of them are also raising children or often working full-time. | ||
| Even college students at more elite or larger institutions struggle to meet basic needs, particularly since in the last decade or so, families are less able to help support the cost of tuition. | ||
| So we learned a lot in the pandemic about the importance of SNAP for helping to sustain people who are investing in growing their own human capital. | ||
| But unclear exactly how this will play out for them. | ||
| Elaine Waxman is taking your calls, your questions on changes to the federal nutrition programs. | ||
| You can also send a text message. | ||
| And Elaine, this question is coming from John in Ohio. | ||
| He says, are there any illegal aliens that receive SNAP benefits? | ||
| This is another change. | ||
| Where does it currently stand? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So I appreciate the question because I think there's been a consistent misunderstanding about the availability of SNAP to people who are, you know, do not have legal status. | ||
| So SNAP has not been available to people who are undocumented. | ||
| It is available to legal permanent residents after a five-year wait period, and it is obviously available to citizens. | ||
| It has been available to some categories of people who are present legally, such as refugees, people who have been admitted through a humanitarian status. | ||
| Some of those categories are going away. | ||
| Refugees will no longer be eligible for SNAP, neither some humanitarian admissions. | ||
| But it was never widely available to people who are in immigrant households for those reasons. | ||
| And I think that that's a narrative we need to correct. | ||
| I will say that I think we should be concerned about households where someone in the family may not have legal status, but other household members do. | ||
| For example, this is often the case of children who are U.S. citizens. | ||
| And they may be eligible for benefits, but their families may not seek them for fear of implications for their status going forward. | ||
| And so, what we call them sometimes mixed status families, but basically, these are U.S. citizens who would be eligible, but families are afraid to come forward to get benefits for those people who would be eligible. | ||
| And that can be concerning, particularly when it involves kids. | ||
| But on the whole, undocumented folks have never been available for SAP, and there's no evidence that that's ever been any sort of widespread issue as far as fraud. | ||
| Nelson is calling from Hollywood, Florida, on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Nelson. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm 76 years old, and I spent 51 years working, served in the military, etc. | ||
| And I was involved in social work many years ago. | ||
| I remember in the 1970s and 80s that approximately 80% of all eligible workers actually had jobs. | ||
| Today, it's more like 62 to 63 percent of eligible workers actually work. | ||
| That is a significant difference in not so long a period of time. | ||
| Part of the problem, and I see it here in South Florida, is massive fraud for government entitlements. | ||
| And I'm afraid that SNAP is a big part of that. | ||
| Yes, there are people who need it, but there are many who simply use the system so they don't have to work, so they don't have to actually get up at five o'clock in the morning and go do those things. | ||
| And unfortunately, programs like SNAP and Welfare and the others have become part of the problem, leading to a subculture of government dependency. | ||
| And I don't know exactly what the answer is, but I think part of it might be to take it away from the federal government and start allowing the states to handle some of these entitlement programs so a little more scrutiny can be given. | ||
| Anyway, that's what I wanted to say. | ||
| Thank you for listening. | ||
| So, I think this is an important conversation to have right now as well, which is that I think there is a widespread assumption that SNAP is subject to widespread fraud. | ||
| And, you know, research and USDA's own documentation doesn't bear that out. | ||
| So, certainly, there are examples of that, just as our examples of fraud in any number of economic enterprises. | ||
| But that's just not borne out by the evidence. | ||
| In terms of dependence, actually, in any given time, most people who are on SNAP are not long-term participants. | ||
| People do tend to come in and out of the program based on sort of their economic circumstances. | ||
| So, I can appreciate the general question about labor force participation. | ||
| And I think that is a bigger conversation for folks to have about what our economy is like. | ||
| I do think we are looking at a period where there may be fewer jobs in the future. | ||
| You know, the rise of AI and technology is likely to eliminate a lot of jobs that people with less skill may have filled in the past. | ||
| And I even hesitate to use the word less skill because honestly, lots of low-wage work requires a lot of skill and complexity. | ||
| But in terms of education and certifications. | ||
| So there's a bigger question here about what our labor market looks like in the future and how do we design a social safety net that interacts with that. | ||
| And I do think that is a very important Elaine. | ||
| Another change that is happening in several states, not necessarily at the federal level, is states are being given waivers that will allow states to ban SNAP benefits from being used on certain processed foods and drinks. | ||
| I want to play a clip of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rowlands talking about this from earlier this month, and then we'll get your reaction on the other side. | ||
| Since my confirmation, our department has encouraged states to think differently and creatively about how to solve the many health issues facing Americans. | ||
| One way is by not allowing taxpayer-funded benefits to be used to purchase unhealthy items like soda, candy, and other junk food. | ||
| The number one purchase by SNAP recipients is sugary drinks. | ||
| SNAP is a supplemental nutrition program meant to provide health food benefits to low-income families to supplement their grocery budget so they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being. | ||
| That is the stated purpose of the SNAP program. | ||
| The law states it, and President Trump's USDA plans to deliver on it alongside our partners at HHS. | ||
| So today I'm proud to sign six more waivers for Florida, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and Colorado. | ||
| This is in addition to the waivers we've already signed for Iowa, Indiana, and others across the country. | ||
| I continue to encourage states to be laboratories of innovation, think through how you can promote healthy families and healthy communities. | ||
| Elaine, your thoughts and reaction to the Department of Agriculture issuing these waivers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We need to have a serious conversation in this country about the health of our food system. | |
| I think that is very true. | ||
| It's true for all of us. | ||
| And when we zero in on just people receiving SNAP, we're ignoring the fact that two-thirds of people in the United States are obese or overweight, that we have an epidemic of diabetes, which can be exacerbated by diet. | ||
| And this is very much about the food environment that we've created. | ||
| I have not seen the data that the Secretary mentions about sugary drinks being the number one thing purchased from SNAP and talking with retailers in the past. | ||
| That's not my understanding. | ||
| What it typically is are things like milk, very cheap proteins, bread. | ||
| But irrespective of that, we can all appreciate that as a country, we need to, you know, rethink that. | ||
| But I would argue that the biggest issue is how do we make healthier food more affordable and more available to people. | ||
| You know, I once we did some interviews with teenagers about food insecurity, and this team said, you know, when I walk into a grocery store and I see, this is a few years ago, she said, I see a $4 box of strawberries. | ||
| And then I see a 10-pack of ramen at the same price, and you've already told me what you want me to buy. | ||
| So, healthy food is typically more expensive, particularly if we think about expensive in the sense that there's a risk to purchasing perishable foods, right? | ||
| If I buy that strawberry, you know, that box is going to last me a very short period of time. | ||
| It doesn't meet my protein needs, it's not calorie dense. | ||
| People turn to cheap food when they're food insecure. | ||
| They cheap the things that they turn to things that fill them up. | ||
| So, we could all make better choices, but our food environment is telling us what choices are more important. | ||
| I would rather see SNAP lean into an evidence-based program that they created several years ago, which are incentives to increase the purchase of fruits and vegetables. | ||
| And that was subject to a very rigorous experiment in a number of states, and it shows that people infected purchase healthier foods. | ||
| Sometimes people refer to this as like double-up bucks. | ||
| So, if you spend a dollar on fruits and vegetables, you would get another dollar added to your benefits up to a certain that's you know, when we think about how to spend government dollars, I think we want to spend them on things we know work. | ||
| And I think that helps people make the choices that we would like for all of us to be leaning into. | ||
| Can a ban on sugary drinks or candy be helpful? | ||
| I think the jury is out. | ||
| What I'm concerned is that's where we started. | ||
| At the same time, that another change that we haven't talked about is will make it more difficult for SNAP benefits to keep current with the changing nature of costs in our food system. | ||
| So, every five years, the SNAP program is supposed to reevaluate the market basket on which benefits are created. | ||
| And Congress, in this last bill, made that so any change has to be cost-neutral. | ||
| In other words, except for a general inflation update, we can't change the nature of the SNAP benefit. | ||
| And as I mentioned, it's already inadequate in, you know, to the tune of maybe $50 a month in 99% of U.S. counties. | ||
| And that's not just big cities. | ||
| Yes, New York and, you know, the San Francisco area have higher food costs, Washington, D.C., but one of the top counties in terms of food prices in this country is actually Leelanao County, Michigan, in northern Michigan. | ||
| Also, the Teton County in Idaho and in Wyoming. | ||
| Rural areas, particularly those that are near tourist areas, and because of transportation logistics, often have higher food cost pressures as well. | ||
| So, when we pick at these little things that, you know, kind of sound good, but we're not grappling with the overall food system, we're not going to make the progress that we desperately need to make. | ||
| Let's hear from Clifford in Birmingham, Alabama, on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Clifford. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, I was just, this is more of a statement more than anything about these benefits that people are talking about. | ||
| I mean, this is heaven to poor, and you're going to cut those benefits so that you could give tax breaks to people who are millionaires and billionaires who made it. | ||
| They've got it. | ||
| And I want you to actually think about stop. | ||
| I hear people, a lot of Republicans call me talking about God and call this a Christian nation. | ||
| Why do we stop calling this with a Christian nation? | ||
| Let's just call this because Christian means to be Christ-like. | ||
| And what was Christ for the rich or for the poor? | ||
| So we just stopped calling this a Christian nation. | ||
| Let's call it what it is. | ||
| It's a conservative, greedy nation. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Elaine, do you have any response to Clifford? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, you know, I think we're at a point where we're struggling with our priorities as a country. | |
| And we've made some pretty drastic choices here that do, in fact, redistribute money from people with less means to more means. | ||
| That is not an ideological statement. | ||
| That's proven in the analysis provided by the Congressional Budget Office. | ||
| Again, we often talk about social safety net programs as costs, right? | ||
| We don't talk about them as investments in our people. | ||
| And that worries me because, again, food insecurity is associated with a host of core outcomes. | ||
| And we know that SNAP works. | ||
| SNAP improves food security. | ||
| So we have a government program that works. | ||
| We have, you know, people are paying now about 24% more in food prices than they were in 2020. | ||
| Everybody feels that. | ||
| That was a very big issue in this last election. | ||
| And so there's some disconnect there between understanding that lots of people are struggling with basic needs and then making dramatic cuts in programs that could help support those basic needs. | ||
| So I think people can come at this from lots of different political perspectives. | ||
| But I do think the caller is asking us to have a conversation about what does it look like to have the kind of society that we want for everybody. | ||
| And I, you know, I don't think we've done a good job of having a thoughtful conversation about that in 2025. | ||
| Mike is in Illinois City, Illinois on the line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Yeah, I just wanted to say that last caller that said that was talking about greed and how conservatives are greedy. | ||
| A person that can't work or a person that can work that doesn't work and receives food stamps and public assistance, in my opinion, is the greediest person on this planet. | ||
| To say that people don't actually gain the system, where I live, I know probably a dozen people that are taking advantage of the welfare system. | ||
| Pretty much every person I know that is on welfare is capable of working. | ||
| In my small area and here in Illinois, about half the people I know are gaming the system in one way or another. | ||
| It's become like a plague. | ||
| And to say that it doesn't happen, you said that people that do work, that can work do. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
| It's not even close to being true. | ||
| In our area, tons of people that can work don't. | ||
| Well, any response for Mike, Elaine? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, I think we all have a tendency to draw our thoughts about policy from what we see around us. | |
| So I can understand, you know, the way that he keeps coming to this issue. | ||
| But I think we have to remember that There's a lot more complexity than maybe what we see in the person standing next to us at the grocery fire. | ||
| And I'll give a couple of examples. | ||
| So, yes, maybe they can work, but is there a job that will cover the cost of child care if they do work? | ||
| This is a big issue. | ||
| Is there even child care available? | ||
| A lot of low-wage jobs are non-traditional hours, right? | ||
| You work the overnight shift or you work evenings or variable shifts. | ||
| Childcare is generally not guaranteed at all in those situations. | ||
| So, people also sometimes have disabilities and health issues that are not visible to the rest of us. | ||
| Theoretically, they should be eligible for an exemption, but the burden is on them to prove that. | ||
| I don't know the particular area that the caller is speaking about, but some places have had an exemption from those work requirements, and that is often because there are not sufficient jobs in a particular area. | ||
| So, I have no question that there are people who have relied on benefits when there might have been other options. | ||
| I think, you know, we can point to certain cases, but I don't think we make public policy off of those cases when we know the vast majority of people, from our own data, right, are not taking advantage of the system. | ||
| Again, two-thirds of them being children, seniors, people with disabilities among those who are more working age, many of them working at least part of the year. | ||
| I think the bigger question is: how do we help people connect to regular sustaining work? | ||
| And, you know, in a lot of counties in Illinois, that's not very available. | ||
| Yvonne is in Florida on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Yvonne. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The first thing I want to say is: I grew up in San Diego, California. | ||
| I lived there 50 years of my life. | ||
| I've only been in Florida two years. | ||
| The reason I left San Diego was because it was unbearable, because they are giving everything to the illegals. | ||
| You people will not ever tell me what I know to be a fact. | ||
| The illegals vote in California, the illegals get benefits in California. | ||
| I know for a fact my best friend lived in a duplex in Imperial Beach. | ||
| She was paying $1,900 a month. | ||
| The people who live below her in the exact same three-bedroom duplex pay $13 because the government paid the rent. | ||
| I am so sick and tired of Democrats trying to tell us to believe what you say and don't believe what we know. | ||
| It's a lie. | ||
| The truth of the matter is: California and all Democratic states put the illegals way ahead of everybody else. | ||
| I know you've already addressed the illegal immigrant aspect of this. | ||
| Is there anything else you'd like to add to that, Elaine? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I think that we have to be careful as a country engaging in assumptions about people because of their ethnicity, the color of their skin, their language origin. | |
| There are lots of folks in this country who meet those criteria who are, in fact, citizens or legal permanent residents. | ||
| So when we paint a broad brush, when we choose not to look at the information that the government has, and by government, I mean Republican administrations, Democratic administrations that don't support the assertion that large amounts of money have gone to people who are undocumented, I think we do ourselves a disservice in terms of a thoughtful policy conversation. | ||
| So I want to make sure that we understand that the path for SNAP participation for people without documentation is foreclosed, and it is now foreclosed for a lot of people with legal status. | ||
| That's not the problem that we're having in this country with respect to the size of people who need benefits, the cost of food. | ||
| And so I hope that we can turn back to those bigger issues and grapple with that as a whole. | ||
| Elaine Waxman is a tax and income supports division senior fellow at the Urban Institute. | ||
| You can find her work online at urban.org. | ||
| Elaine, thank you so much for your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for inviting me to the conversation. | |
| Next on Washington Journal, Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy Senior Research Fellow Angela Watson joins us to discuss the findings of a new survey focusing on homeschooling in the U.S. We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
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| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now is Angela Watsons. | ||
| She is a senior research fellow at Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. | ||
| She's joining us for a discussion to talk about her findings of a new survey looking at homeschooling in the U.S. Angela. | ||
| Thank you so much for being with us. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello, thank you for having me. | |
| How are you close to? | ||
| We'll start with your background in the area of education and your focus there at the Institute. | ||
| With Epstein. | ||
|
unidentified
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Great, thank you. | |
| So I'm a research professor at Johns Hopkins School of Education in the Institute for Education Policy. | ||
| And my research focuses right now on homeschooling. | ||
| I'm the director of the Johns Hopkins Homeschool Research Lab. | ||
| And I also created the Homeschool Hub, which is a catalog of all of the data and information on homeschooling for all 50 states in one place where folks can look and see what homeschooling looks like in their state and also download longitudinal data on homeschool participation in those states as well. | ||
| You recently co-authored a paper looking at the issue of homeschooling. | ||
| How many people did you talk to? | ||
| Who did you talk to for this? | ||
| And why? | ||
| What did you want to find out? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, so this was a paper with my wonderful co-author Matthew Lee at Kennesaw State. | |
| It's a nationally representative survey of American parents with students from grades K to 12 and we had a sample of about 3,000 parents which is quite high for this group and 5,000 students and then you know across all sectors of education. | ||
| So we asked them all kinds of questions about their families and how they educated their children and within that of course some were homeschooling and so we were able to dig out a lot of really interesting information. | ||
| Importantly too this is one of the first nationally representative surveys post pandemic so we had a little bit more information about homeschooling families prior to the pandemic but this is a really interesting view of what homeschooling looks like now several years past the pandemic. | ||
| I wanted to ask you you just mentioned it but why isn't more known about homeschooling why has data been so hard to come by? | ||
|
unidentified
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So people often misunderstand and think that maybe the federal government collects data on homeschooling and actually they don't. | |
| Homeschooling is controlled at the state level as is all education and each state sets its own policies. | ||
| So some states collect data on homeschoolers, some do not. | ||
| We currently have data on about 30 states that report some type of data on homeschool participation in their state. | ||
| But they can only ask certain questions, and sometimes the information is just merely a total count of the number of families who said they were homeschooling a child that year. | ||
| In other states, you know, we have better information about maybe student age, grade, gender, the county that they live in, so we can kind of see how homeschooling is dispersed across the particular state. | ||
| But we have to really piece that information together from state to state. | ||
| And so that was really the work of the hub was bringing that information together and putting it all in one place to remove barriers to access so that people could much more easily access information for Alabama, Arkansas, and Arizona at one time instead of having to go state to state and dig up that information on their own. | ||
| Did you have a guest is Angela Watson. | ||
| She is a senior research fellow at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. | ||
| Her focus is, she focuses on education policy, culture capital, and homeschooling-related educational options. | ||
| She will be with us for the next 35 minutes or so for this discussion on her new research on homeschooling in the U.S. If you have a question or comment that you'd like to ask her, you can go ahead and give us a call. | ||
| The phone lines for this segment are broken down a little bit differently. | ||
| If you are a parent, the line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you're an educator or an administrator, it is 202-748-8001. | ||
| And all others can give us a call at 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also send us a text at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Angela, wanted to ask you: what does this new information use? | ||
| Who are you hoping will use it? | ||
| Why is it important to have? | ||
|
unidentified
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So, in the United States, when we think about homeschoolers, there are these really, really persistent stereotypes about who homeschoolers are, what they look like, what their characteristics are. | |
| This paper really disproves or mediates a lot of those stereotypes. | ||
| For example, you know, stereotypes about homeschoolers by race or ethnicity. | ||
| In this paper, when we look at this sample of nationally representative sample of parents, we see that homeschoolers are actually much more diverse than these stereotypes would have us believe. | ||
| We see increasing numbers of black and Hispanic families coming into homeschooling. | ||
| We have a very politically diverse group. | ||
| Almost 30% of the families who homeschool in our sample self-identify as liberal Democrats. | ||
| Also, by religiosity, 30% of our sample don't attend religious services at all. | ||
| And so, these things all go against the prevailing stereotypes. | ||
| The reason this is important is because a lot of the policies in the United States around homeschooling are based on these really persistent stereotypes. | ||
| And so, we have a real mismatch between the stereotype and the policies based on those stereotypes and actual practices of homeschoolers, homeschooling families in the United States. | ||
| Let's talk about the stereotype. | ||
| The title of your report of the report is Who Homeschools Parentheses: It's Not Who You Think. | ||
| So, tell us who is being homeschooled. | ||
| What does the demographic actually look like? | ||
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unidentified
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So, the demographic of homeschoolers broadly reflects the population at large. | |
| One of the common stereotypes is that homeschooling is predominantly white and is a white pursuit. | ||
| So, indeed, there are majority of homeschoolers in our sample are white, but that's because the majority of the U.S. population identifies as white. | ||
| So, when you look at the total population and the population of homeschoolers, they look largely similar, right? | ||
| So, the national population of black families in homeschooling is 10%. | ||
| The national population, black families represent about 14%, right? | ||
| And so, there is a little bit of underrepresentation in homeschooling, but not by much. | ||
| Similar statistics with other races and ethnicities. | ||
| And so, you know, when we look at everyone, we can see that really they look very much like the broader population and are indeed the broader population homeschooling. | ||
| Your survey also looked at how many students are homeschooled. | ||
| Tell us about that and how the number has changed in recent years. | ||
|
unidentified
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So, homeschooling had been growing for many decades. | |
| It started, it was illegal up until about the 70s. | ||
| In the 80s, states started legalizing or permitting homeschooling, and by about mid-2000, 2010, homeschooling was permitted in some form across the United States. | ||
| During that time, then, homeschooling was growing by 2% to 3% every year. | ||
| And then, about 2012, 2016, 2019, homeschooling growth really stalled in the United States. | ||
| Of course, then COVID happened and everyone was at home schooling during the pandemic. | ||
| And so, with lots of families, turned to homeschooling. | ||
| And then, these homeschool-adjacent models, like pandemic pods, micro schools, hybrid schools where families will join together, or oftentimes kids will attend a brick-and-mortar school that looks very much like a traditional school. | ||
| So, these things were all happening during the pandemic, of course, and we saw this huge rise in homeschooling during that time. | ||
| We thought that some of that increase would abate as the pandemic abated, but that isn't what we saw. | ||
| We saw a slight decline after the pandemic, and then a couple of years ago, homeschooling rebounded and started growing again. | ||
| And so, across the country, red states, blue states, coast to coast, the vast majority of states for which we have participation data show an increase in last year, and then we're currently gathering data for this year. | ||
| Angela Watson is a senior research fellow at Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. | ||
| Our discussion is looking at the findings of her new survey focused on homeschooling in the U.S. If you have a question or comment for her, you can give us a call. | ||
| The lines for this segment, parents, you can give us a call at 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you're an educator or administrator in the education world, you can give us a call at 202-748-8001. | ||
| All others, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll start with Sabrina in Arnold, Missouri on the line for educators. | ||
| Good morning, Sabrina. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Go ahead, Sabrina. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Yes, go on. | ||
|
unidentified
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Let me put my television on mute. | |
| Yes, I'm here. | ||
| Go ahead, Sabrina. | ||
| You're on with Angela. | ||
|
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Angela, I am a retired teacher and administrator of 36 years, and I saw a big proliferation of homeschooling during the pandemic, just like we did across the United States. | |
| We had it before then, of course. | ||
| But what I saw was public school districts would step up, and many did across many states. | ||
| And I know that from personal experience, knowing educators in other states, and provide an online program. | ||
| Hopefully, in most cases, I think it was a quality online program. | ||
| And I think homeschooling for some children is the correct choice. | ||
| They do not do well in public school. | ||
| They do not do well with large groups for whatever reason. | ||
| But at the same time, I do think we need more state oversight on homeschooling. | ||
| That's where we're falling short. | ||
| Not all states require testing for those children that are staying home. | ||
| And that is a big fear of many educators is that some of our children who are being homeschooled are not getting a quality education. | ||
| And perhaps they may be even growing up illiterate. | ||
| And I know that's hard to believe in the 21st century, but it is, you know, the family. | ||
| Do they have the background? | ||
| Do they have the resources? | ||
| Do they have the scheduling skills to make sure that their children are working on schooling at least four hours a day? | ||
| You know, you don't have to work every second of a six or eight hour day because that doesn't happen in public school either. | ||
| But you can have a good quality, about four-hour program daily. | ||
| And then, of course, when the students, when the children get up into the higher math and the more complicating, complex writing and reading and getting into literature and health and science and social studies and history, are they getting all of those subjects and are they getting a full education? | ||
| In some cases, yes. | ||
| In some cases, a better education than they would get in public school. | ||
| Sabrina, we'll get a response from Angela. | ||
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unidentified
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So Sabrina brings up some really great points, and what she says is true. | |
| So oftentimes, homeschooling is one of the stereotypes, right, is that it's framed as this rejection of public schooling. | ||
| In the data, that is not what we see. | ||
| So the vast majority of adults today who were homeschooled when they were going through school were only homeschooled for one to three years. | ||
| And some 90% of people who were ever homeschooled have also been educated in other education sectors. | ||
| And primarily, they are moving in and out of homeschooling to public schools, right? | ||
| We also see, so we call that switching in and out of sectors and primarily homeschooling to public schooling, public schooling to homeschooling. | ||
| We also see evidence in this paper that we were talking about today of inner household sector mixing. | ||
| And so that means that I could have one child at home who I'm homeschooling for whatever reason, but I also have another child who is in a different type of education sector. | ||
| And predominantly those children are also in public schooling. | ||
| So, you know, framing it as some sort of rejection of public schooling is not factual. | ||
| Certainly those cases exist, but by and large, that's not what we see in the data. | ||
| And public schools are figuring out how to tap into this group of students. | ||
| Across the country, there is an increasing trend towards giving access to public schools for homeschooled students for things like sports. | ||
| The Tem Tebow laws are very famous, but also for things like debate or even chemistry, right? | ||
| And so there is more and more increase of that, getting these kids in public schools, offering them supports at their local public schools where they can then build relationships. | ||
| And I see this as a really powerful lever that schools and districts could pull to help supplement their own declining enrollment because we do see declining enrollment in public schools across the United States. | ||
| There are some examples of this where schools serve, public schools serve predominantly all homeschooled students on a part-time basis. | ||
| Those schools then get part-time funding. | ||
| So it's a win-win for the public school, for the district, and for the homeschool family. | ||
| And a lot of these schools that I've been talking to that serve these homeschooled students say that the influx of new students from this homeschooling community is helping to sustain their enrollment levels in their district, whereas without these students, they could be facing declining enrollment. | ||
| So I think those are some really good points. | ||
| The other thing, she brought up several great points. | ||
| The other one was about testing. | ||
| She's correct. | ||
| Some states do not require homeschooled students to take a particular test. | ||
| Some states require it only in certain years. | ||
| You know, I often talk about these policy things in terms of sticks and carrots. | ||
| So we could increase regulation on these families. | ||
| That is a high hill to climb. | ||
| It's very difficult to get these laws passed that require more regulation of homeschooling. | ||
| However, we also have carrots that we could use. | ||
| And in the case of testing, it would be very simple, and some states do this, offer your state test for free to homeschool families with no strings attached, meaning that if my homeschooled student were to come into your school district and take your state test, you do not then receive those state test results. | ||
| They would go directly to the parent. | ||
| But at least then the parent would have free, easily accessible information on what their student is learning, where things might be falling short. | ||
| Other states also offer vouchers for free testing where a student could choose the test of their choice. | ||
| Now, the state that I'm thinking of uses it for AP or SAT testings for students who want to go to college. | ||
| But you could also offer that for other nationally normed tests that students could take if they felt that your state test didn't adequately test their whatever they were learning in their school. | ||
| So there are a lot of options there, but I think that reframing this as public schools working with these families who are homeschooling a particular child in a particular year for some particular reason is a really great way to think about this. | ||
| Benjamin is on the line from Springfield, Illinois, calling on the parent line. | ||
| Good morning, Benjamin. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Good morning, Professor Watson. | ||
| I was wondering about a two, I have kind of two-pronged approach. | ||
| One is the level of, as you say, sophistication and testing reliability for student preparation, and the other avenue of enculturation, which you just were speaking to as it related to the participation in events, team building concepts. | ||
| Is there a model that's out there which states can adopt? | ||
| I've come from this as a person who also works, has worked in education and state government in the past. | ||
| So what is the, is there a model that addresses those two aspects? | ||
| One, you know, testing and verification of learning. | ||
| On the other hand, An enculturation, a socialization principle that schooling has historically provided? | ||
| Are there models that you can think of that other states maybe have low barriers to participation to adopt? | ||
| Yeah, I think that's a good question. | ||
| So as far as acculturation, so this is one of the stereotypes about homeschooling that oftentimes when we think of homeschooling, we think of a mother at home, often with her five children, because people think homeschooling families are giant, but that is also not true. | ||
| They have only slightly more kids than everyone else. | ||
| But, you know, we think of this family at home at the kitchen table, and that's where they're learning every day. | ||
| And that is certainly that occurs in some families, but by and large, that is not what we see in the data. | ||
| Families who homeschool, the majority of them, are using some other type of support. | ||
| And often these look like hybrid schools where a parent is still directing the education of their child. | ||
| The child is learning from home some days of the week, but two or three days a week they attend a brick and mortar school with instructors, teachers, tutors who work with them on specific subjects. | ||
| So it looks very much like a part-time public or private traditional school. | ||
| And then they also attend micro schools are increasingly popular. | ||
| Micro schools can look like a great many things, but oftentimes they are a traditional five-day a week brick and mortar school where the child will go there and attend school. | ||
| And so it looks very much like a traditional setup. | ||
| However, that legally, the way that the policies are written in many states, they can't account for this. | ||
| And so the students are required to legally register as a homeschooled student, even though what they're doing in practice looks very much like a traditional education. | ||
| So the idea that students are somehow predominantly isolated and not in a broader society is false. | ||
| And so that's one of the things that this paper looks at. | ||
| And it's something that we hope to kind of broaden this conversation and inform it with actual evidence instead of relying on these stereotypes. | ||
| The other thing about quality of education or quality of testing. | ||
| So I think that what he's getting at is, is there one state maybe that has this right? | ||
| And that's difficult to say. | ||
| The policies vary state to state. | ||
| People vary state to state. | ||
| The practice of homeschooling vary state to state. | ||
| And so I wouldn't necessarily advocate for anything that's kind of one size fits all when it comes to this. | ||
| But again, I think there are lots of carrots that people could very easily pull. | ||
| If you are concerned about children being isolated, allow them into your local public libraries are very good about this. | ||
| They have a great relationship over the United States with homeschooling families who trust them and feel like it's a safe space. | ||
| So, you know, make your local public school a safe space for these families to come in, use your public library, perhaps accessing your college counselor, accessing pre-SAT, SAT, ACT testing, you know, building relationships with these families in other ways. | ||
| And that then we have also districts that give the curriculum that they use to homeschooling families. | ||
| And so if families want to use that or part of that curriculum, they're able to do that. | ||
| And so, you know, offering these types of supports would help ensure that quality materials, quality instruction, quality testing is available. | ||
| And so these are some really simple things and also low cost that districts and schools could do to help support these homeschooling families. | ||
| Steve is calling from Maine on the line for all others. | ||
| Good morning, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| My question is short. | ||
| Where can I get the Angela's study? | ||
| Is it published on the web? | ||
| And maybe a web address would be good. | ||
| But before I go, there is a book about homeschool history, American history, and it's by Milton Gaither, G-A-I-T-H-E-R. | ||
| So that's all I have. | ||
| Angela, do you want to let people know where they can find it? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, and so we have two reports available at EdChoice. | |
| One of them, and I have to look at my notes here, one of them is called Who Homeschools. | ||
| It's not who you think. | ||
| And then the other, the actual report is Who Homeschools Really. | ||
| The actual academic paper is also a working paper on Harvard's website. | ||
| We presented it at a conference earlier this year. | ||
| So they're available there in multiple places. | ||
| Let's hear from David in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on the line for parents. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, good morning. | |
| I just want to say, first of all, appreciate y'all having this conversation. | ||
| We've kind of been, we live in Montgomery County, Maryland, so we've kind of been, my wife and I talking about whether this should be an option because we're watching our district kind of very publicly struggle with some questions about when students should be allowed to opt out of things. | ||
| And it also is a district that was just very high performing and then kind of had a culture of wanting to maintain that. | ||
| So all that to say, thank you for having this conversation. | ||
| I have a question. | ||
| I'm a tenant organizer for my day job. | ||
| When we're trying to get jurisdictions to get tenant protections like regulating rents or good cause eviction, one of the high costs that we, of societal costs, that we see in housing instability is like students being moved from one school to another. | ||
| We see my son's friends are having to leave our apartment complex that moves into a different school and because of the high rents and all this. | ||
| I was curious if any of the research suggested that housing instability was actually moving any parents toward homeschooling just because of this having to shuffle from one school to another. | ||
| Well, if I'm not stable in my housing, am I bringing the education home because of that ever? | ||
| I was curious. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question. | ||
| So I don't know anything that addresses that particularly. | ||
| Now, in the research in general, we call that churn. | ||
| So students moving over and over because of housing instability or other reasons. | ||
| It is not great for students learning. | ||
| You know, there is always a little bit of a loss every time they move like that. | ||
| And so whatever the move is, has to have enough benefit to it that when you make that switch, you're going to see more benefit, you know, that compensate for that small amount of loss that you have when you're moving. | ||
| The accessibility, though, to good schooling and, you know, the idea behind wanting to switch, we do see that in rural communities. | ||
| So we see concentrations, and this is one of the stereotypes about homeschooling, is that it's primarily in rural areas. | ||
| And so we do see some concentration of homeschooling in rural areas. | ||
| It's unclear if that is because of some sort of cultural thing or some sort of preference within that community of people that they prefer homeschooling, or if it's because they don't have a lot of other options. | ||
| And so I live, I work remotely. | ||
| I live in Arkansas. | ||
| I was looking at the Arkansas data yesterday. | ||
| And Arkansas has high homeschool participation. | ||
| We are a very rural state. | ||
| So the national average is about 6%. | ||
| Arkansas has about 8% for the state average homeschool participation. | ||
| But we have some very small and very rural counties where homeschool participation is up to 24%. | ||
| So that's a quarter of all kids in those communities are being homeschooled. | ||
| In those communities, though, there might only be the local public school. | ||
| And so, if you don't have access to anything else, it could drive up homeschooling. | ||
| And so, you know, I think that could apply then to more urban settings where people are having these housing issues and that that could push them, you know, to want to stabilize. | ||
| Another place that we see that is in military homeschooling. | ||
| So, in the military families, many of them who are deployed in active duty and et cetera, homeschooling is double that of the national average. | ||
| So, 6% national average, 12% for active duty military. | ||
| So, again, seeking to spend time together as a family and really stabilize that education for their families when the one parent is gone or maybe they're moving. | ||
| So, yeah, we do see some impact of that. | ||
| And, you know, homeschooling is an exit ramp for people for a variety of reasons. | ||
| Angela, the caller also saying that it's something that he and his wife were looking at. | ||
| What are some of the considerations parents should look at, parents or guardians should consider if they're looking at homeschooling as an as an option? | ||
|
unidentified
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So, we have a lot of information about homeschooling policies, regulations, et cetera, for state to state on our homeschool hub website. | |
| So, folks could look there. | ||
| We also link to each state has resources for families. | ||
| So, on the hub, that would be a good place to go to then look at the state. | ||
| Many states offer some really good little websites and QA, you know, web pages where families can find out what is required for them in their particular state, oftentimes resources for families. | ||
| Also, most states have homeschooling groups and advocacy groups that will help inform families on their rights, their regulations, what they have to do, how the best way is for keeping track of education. | ||
| And, two, I think, you know, one of the callers, Sabrina brought up the quality of the education and are parents really equipped to do this thing. | ||
| And I think, you know, now more than ever, we have so many resources available, many for free, also some for cost on the internet that help support families. | ||
| So, it's very unusual for a family not to use any sort of prepared curriculum or prepared materials. | ||
| You know, they may pick and choose from a variety of materials, but there's tons of stuff available on the internet. | ||
| Virtual classes they can sign up for, you know, all kinds of resources that really help support parents who feel that maybe they aren't equipped to teach chemistry or algebra or some of these more difficult subjects. | ||
| Richard is on the line from your state of Texas, or your state of Arkansas. | ||
| He's calling on the other line. | ||
| Good morning, Richard. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Yes, I have great difficulty with just the concept of home schooling. | ||
| I mean, we don't do home medicine, hopefully. | ||
| We don't do home legal work. | ||
| We don't do home engineering and even get into the trades. | ||
| You're not going to be a home mechanic or a home plumber or a home electrician. | ||
| Of course, there are some people that have some skills that would allow them to do those sorts of things. | ||
| But on the whole, we're just throwing water on four years of professional, hard work education to get a degree to be a teacher and saying, in effect, anybody can do that. | ||
| And that's just not true. | ||
| And the second thing, Arkansas pays $7,000 per head. | ||
| And you can't tell me, folks, you know, money doesn't enter into the equation. | ||
| You got three kids, you got a $21,000 income coming in. | ||
| How much of that are you going to truly direct toward educating those children? | ||
| Your first caller, whatever, early caller said the fear is that we're going to have an illiterate United States. | ||
| And I'm inclined to think that, especially given the current conditions, it appears to me we're heading, we were more literate in the past than we are now. | ||
| Angela. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, great, Richard. | |
| Yeah, I appreciate those comments. | ||
| And I think that a lot of people echo those sentiments. | ||
| And so a few responses to that. | ||
| When he was talking about the $7,000 per head, so for people that don't know, Arkansas has just passed in the last few years a universal education savings account. | ||
| The benefit, according to Richard, is $7,000. | ||
| I don't know the exact amount. | ||
| This year, this academic school year that just started, is the first year that homeschooled students, all students will be eligible for this universal ESA. | ||
| They rolled it out in stages. | ||
| So certain groups of kids got it first and then they broadened the eligibility and now it's universally available. | ||
| So this year is the first year that all students, including homeschool students, will be eligible for that money and they can use that for educational expenses. | ||
| However, they don't get a check for $7,000. | ||
| So no one's going to get a check for $21,000 if they have three kids. | ||
| That's not how it works. | ||
| They're able to use that money for educational expenses and then people keep track and make sure that they're actually using that for educational expenses and not to buy Corvettes. | ||
| And so a little bit of a misunderstanding there and how it works. | ||
| But I understand the general sentiment. | ||
| I will say that oftentimes when we talk about these education sectors, we're comparing homeschooling or private schooling or whatever it is that you are opposed to to some sort of utopia. | ||
| But public schooling is not utopia. | ||
| And I'm sure that Richard knows that in Arkansas, public schooling particularly is not utopia. | ||
| But across the United States, we see really low literacy rates. | ||
| Kids are not learning math in public schools. | ||
| And so, you know, we have to compare outcomes in other education sectors against actual outcomes in public schools and understand that for kids that public schooling is not working and it works for a great many kids, but for those that it's not working for, they need the opportunity to find something else that does, or they will end up illiterate and not math literate as well. | ||
| And, you know, on that topic, I also think it's important to acknowledge that in homeschooling, we see very large concentrations of students with special needs. | ||
| So upwards of 30 to 40 percent by some estimates. | ||
| We also see concentrations of advanced learners, so gifted and talented students who are exiting the traditional public school system that is not meeting their needs or that their families feel are not meeting their needs for whatever reason, and they are ending up in homeschooling. | ||
| So, you know, some really interesting things going on here about who is leaving, who is staying, and comparing, you know, comparing homeschooling to actual outcomes in public schools and not, you know, our hopes and dreams for what public schooling is producing in our country. | ||
| Let's hear from Leo, who's calling from Maywood, Illinois on the line for parents. | ||
| Good morning, Leo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, how you doing? | |
| We're doing well, I'm from Maywood, and I have six children. | ||
| And I decided when I got married that we were not going to put any of our children in public education. | ||
| And the reason being, you can look it up. | ||
| Maywood, this area, has some of the lowest education standards in the state. | ||
| So I was not going to do that. | ||
| I grew up in Maywood and I was not going to put my kids through that. | ||
| But anyway, to get to the point, I have six children. | ||
| All of them were homeschooled. | ||
| And every last one of them now has a college degree. | ||
| Five of them have BAs. | ||
| The only one that don't have a BA is because he didn't want to get it. | ||
| But one answer, one actually went to the Navy. | ||
| He took the Navy test and only got two questions wrong. | ||
| And he was in the nuclear program. | ||
| He's in finance right now. | ||
| And I have one that's in the medical field, one that's in construction management, another one that's in cybersecurity, and another one that's a CPA. | ||
| And so, and as far as they talk about socialization, three of my children played baseball and football. | ||
| And she talked about the T-Bow rule. | ||
| I tried to get them to be able to play baseball and football at the local high school. | ||
| And they wouldn't let them in because they said they wanted them to enroll in the school. | ||
| And the reason being is so that their scores could elevate the high school. | ||
| And I thought that that was crazy. | ||
| But anyway. | ||
| Angela, your response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So Leo brings up a really good point about homeschooling parents and college going for their students. | |
| And so this is another stereotype. | ||
| There have been some reports that showed that adults who were homeschooled were less likely to attend college. | ||
| And that study had a few issues because it only looked at attaining a four-year degree. | ||
| It didn't look at going to college or attending a community college or something of that nature and getting a two-year degree or other types of post-secondary certifications. | ||
| And so Leo brings up some really great points there. | ||
| The study that this paper is based on that we're discussing today did look at parents' college-going preferences. | ||
| And homeschooling parents today look very much like all of their other sector parent peers when it comes to wanting their children to go to college. | ||
| A similar number of homeschooling parents want their kids to go to college, have preference that their kids go to college as their peers in public and private schooling. | ||
| The only place that we saw a significant difference is that homeschooled parents place less value on attending a prestigious university, like an elite university. | ||
| But they have very similar ideals as far as wanting their kid to go to college and get a college degree. | ||
| And so this, again, it kind of goes against the stereotypes. | ||
| And Leo's a great example of how many families want that. | ||
| Now, this is an important policy point because, again, schools, communities, society, then, if they are interested in supporting homeschool families, could start making AP courses, the college prep exams, the college counseling. | ||
| It's very difficult in some places for schools, for students who graduate from homeschooling to attend college because they don't have a high school degree, a high school diploma. | ||
| They also can't get a letter from their high school counselor for their college application. | ||
| These types of really small issues that I feel like could be solved pretty simply if we are as a society really interested in making sure that these kids go the distance and do with their lives what they want to do, whether that looks like attending college, attending the military, going into some trade, whatever their preference is. | ||
| Angela, a lot of information coming out of this survey that you did. | ||
| As somebody who works in the area of homeschooling, this is a focus for you. | ||
| What was most surprising? | ||
| Did anything surprise you about your findings? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| So a couple of things. | ||
| The biggest finding for me was our mixing finding about how many families are homeschooling under the same roof or homeschooling one child and publicly educating another child. | ||
| I didn't expect such large numbers. | ||
| That's like 30% of the families do this. | ||
| 40% of homeschooled students have a sibling at home who is in another form of education. | ||
| So that was really surprising to me. | ||
| The other finding that is still kind of emerging from this paper is that choosers will be choosers. | ||
| And so I call it dynamic choice. | ||
| But people who have chosen a different type of school, so that could even look like a charter school. | ||
| They've moved from a public school to a private school or of course homeschooling, micro schools, et cetera, are likely to choose again. | ||
| They're more likely to be choosers. | ||
| And so I think that that is really interesting, especially in the face of expanding ESAs or education savings accounts across the United States. | ||
| As more families have these barriers to choice relaxed, I think we're liable to start seeing more and more families making these dynamic choices from year to year or from child to child to best meet the needs of their families. | ||
| Angela Watson is a senior research fellow at Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. | ||
| You can find her there at education.jhu.edu. | ||
| And you can find the results of her survey looking at homeschooling on edchoice.org. | ||
| Angela, thank you so much for joining us for this discussion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Tammy. | |
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| We are wrapping up today's program with more of your calls in open form. | ||
| You can go ahead and start calling in now the lines there in your screens. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
| Sir Richard J. Evans has been writing about Germany and Adolf Hitler for his entire professional life. | ||
| He was knighted in Britain in 2012 for his service to scholarship. | ||
| From 2003 to 2008, Professor Evans published a trilogy of the Third Reich with a total of over 2,500 pages. | ||
| His latest book titled Hitler's People, The Faces of the Third Reich, will be published in paperback in September. | ||
| In his preface, Sir Richard, a former professor at Cambridge University, writes, quote, the individuals who stand at the center of this book range from the top to the bottom, from Hitler all the way down to the lowest of the Nazi Party. | ||
| There are 22 chapters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Richard J. Evans with his book, Hitler's People, The Faces of the Third Reich, on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
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| In the Washington, D.C. area, listen on 90.1 FM. | ||
| Use our free C-SPAN Now app or go online to C-SPAN.org slash radio on SiriusXM Radio on channel 455, the TuneIn app, and on your smart speaker by simply saying play C-SPAN Radio. | ||
| Hear our live call-in program, Washington Journal, daily at 7 a.m. Eastern. | ||
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| Listen to C-SPAN programs on C-SPAN Radio anytime, anywhere. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We are in open form for the duration of today's program. | ||
| If there is a public policy issue you'd like to comment in, you can go ahead and give us a call. | ||
| The lines, Republicans, 202-748-8001, Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll start with Ross in Florida, line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Ross. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| It's inspiring that they had education as of the importance of the moment right now, being that that's the solution. | ||
| It's why we need to get to those who are the experts in solving problems. | ||
| And one was Einstein, Albert Einstein. | ||
| And one of his quotes, he said, a problem can't be solved with the same consciousness that created it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we got to raise the consciousness. | |
| So what does that mean? | ||
| And that means about being able to be more aware of who we are, that we are spiritual beings, first and foremost. | ||
| And that's why he was referring to our consciousness, as well as that he was actually given a book on meditation. | ||
| And by him being able to learn about meditation, he was able to tap into the alpha waves and the theta waves of the mind. | ||
| That was Ross in Florida. | ||
| Faye is in Ithaca, New York, the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Faye. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| I want to thread this topic to a number of issues. | ||
| I'm trying to be brief because I know I can't be too long. | ||
| So the issue of media, the issue of okay, so I'm a little nervous. | ||
| I'm sorry, because I have so many issues and I'm trying to thread them. | ||
| So the issue of taking away funding for public PBS, for example, for public broadcasting, which I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I watch it every day. | ||
| I watch C-SPAN. | ||
| Getting the truth out is so important. | ||
| Supporting journalists is so important. | ||
| Supporting good journalism. | ||
| So what this administration, which is a horror to our country, has taken that away. | ||
| I mean, the funding, not only for PBS, also for what's happening with the voice of America, you know, with U.S. aid, what's happening in Gaza, with no journalists being able to report what's going on there other than the local journalists, Palestinian journalists, which are being killed. | ||
| When you see what Trump has done with the Elaine Maxwell situation, okay, any counter to what he's saying, he attacks people, whether it's his supporters, where it's other people. | ||
| The truth is being suffocated. | ||
| There's a woman who wrote the book, Standing Up to a Dictator. | ||
| I hope that C-SPAN could have her on the show. | ||
| Her name, I think, is Maria Risa. | ||
| It shows the pattern of when you start cutting out the media, you start attacking the media. | ||
| That's a big warning. | ||
| That was Faye in New York. | ||
| We'll go on to Marshall in Nashville, Tennessee, on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Marshall. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| To your previous caller, I know she was saying she was trying to thread different thoughts. | ||
| I have 30 days to, and this may help you, it may not, but I have 30 days to try to get my thoughts together, and I actually do practice it so that when I do call in, I kind of do have everything in line. | ||
| On another note, I get C-STAN, but I now work where I have to walk around, and I get C-SPAN now. | ||
| But if I don't leave my phone on, I cannot listen to Washington Journal. | ||
| I have YouTube, and I can actually turn my phone off and keep listening to music. | ||
| And I would like to ask your crew there at C-STAN that they can't work to do that because it really is frustrating to not be able to hear Washington Journal in the morning unless I keep my phone on for three hours. | ||
| Now, to the point of today, I have been calling up since 2022 to talk to Democrat voters concerning their politicians. | ||
| I honestly believe as a conservative, I'm an American first, and I believe most Democrats are Americans first. | ||
| And what the politicians in the Democrat Party did in 2016, when the voters wanted Bernie Sanders, and the Democrat National Committee, along with the delegates, went against the will, causing great friction and divorce in the Democrat Party. | ||
| Their politicians have gone so far that in the last election, you have staunch Democrats across the board, females, blacks, Hispanics, gays, lesbians, who held their nose, closed their eyes, and pushed the button for Trump. | ||
| And it's not the voters. | ||
| It's your politicians. | ||
| It is time for Democrat voters. | ||
| They are right now busting protesters into Washington, D.C. | ||
| This is not what the voters want. | ||
| I honestly believe that. | ||
| The vast majority of them don't want this. | ||
| They don't condone it. | ||
| It is time for Democrat voters. | ||
| I can't do it. | ||
| I'll be called a racist, a bigot, and everything else under the sun. | ||
| Democrat voters have to stand up, and they need to hold their politicians accountable to the point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It has gotten to the point where I believe the Democrat Party, not the party, but the college, the political party of it, needs to be abolished. | |
| And that Democrat voters need to come up with a party that is more in line with your values and with America. | ||
| That was Marshall in Tennessee. | ||
| John is calling from Virginia on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have a suggestion and a question. | ||
| First, a question. | ||
| I'm watching you on DirecTV and I'm thinking of switching to Roku. | ||
| Are you on any channels that are streamed, such as, I don't know, is it FluBar, Netflix, YouTube? | ||
| There's a million of them. | ||
| John, we are not. | ||
| And our previous caller mentioned that he'd like to see us on YouTube as well. | ||
| We are making every effort on our end to make that happen. | ||
| It is something we would like to see in the future, so stay tuned. | ||
| But right now, I believe the DirecTV is the only over-the-top streaming platform you can find C-SPAN on. | ||
| But you can also find us online at c-span.org. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's not the same. | |
| Oh, I know it's not, John. | ||
| Just want to give you the option. | ||
| Let's hear from Rita in Brookhaven, Pennsylvania, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Rita. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just wanted to say, like, before Putin came to Alaska, Donald Trump said if there was no ceasefire, that there would be severe consequences. | ||
| But as soon as they had their private meeting behind closed doors, Trump comes out like a dog with his tail between his legs and says there doesn't need to be a ceasefire. | ||
| So, in other words, Putin can go on killing civilians as long as he wants, while Donald Trump pretends to want to end the war. | ||
| Trump wants Putin to win the war so that he can get whatever rewards he's promised behind closed doors and all that handshaking and touching Putin. | ||
| I don't know why he doesn't just go ahead and kiss him on the cheek. | ||
| And besides that, the other guy, Netanyahu, who just keeps flaunting civilians in Gaza, and why he's letting him go so far because he wants to take over the land and put up some luxury hotels. | ||
| This man that you all praise is the best president we ever had. | ||
| He's nothing more than the Kremlin himself, and he should be in prison right now. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Rita in Pennsylvania. | ||
| This in Politico, the headline, Epstein files land on Capitol Hill. | ||
| The article says that Congress has officially received the first batch of Jeffrey Epstein files. | ||
| The Justice Department turned over a tranche of materials related to the case against the late convicted sex offender Friday afternoon. | ||
| These documents transmitted in compliance with a subpoena issued earlier this month by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee represent only a portion of what DOJ has in its possession. | ||
| And it's not immediately clear what sort of information lawmakers currently have available to them. | ||
| The documents are expected to have heavy redaction. | ||
| It goes on to say the Oversight Committee now plans to review the materials with both Democrats and Republicans having access. | ||
| While under a typical arrangement, the majority, in this case, Republicans, would control its disclosure. | ||
| Either party could release the materials unilaterally. | ||
| One more note: it says committee Republicans have pledged to coordinate with the Justice Department to protect the identities of the victims and ensure certain details do not complicate ongoing criminal matters. | ||
| President Trump was asked about the report being given or the information being given to Congress yesterday. | ||
| Here's his response. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This department is also sending some of the Epstein files over to the House Oversight Committee today. | |
| Are you in support of them? | ||
| I'm in support of keeping it open. | ||
| If they want to open it up, some people shouldn't be hurt, but I'm in support of keeping it totally open. | ||
| I couldn't care less. | ||
| You got a lot of people that could be mentioned under those files that don't deserve to be people because he knew everybody in Palm Beach. | ||
| I don't know anything about that, but I have said to Pam and everybody else, give them everything you can give them because it's a Democrat hoax. | ||
| It's just a hoax. | ||
| The whole Epstein thing is a Democrat hoax. | ||
| So we had the greatest six months, seven months in the history of the presidency, and the Democrats don't know what to do, so they keep bringing up that stuff. | ||
| But it affected them. | ||
| Bill Clinton was on his plane and went to the island supposedly 28 times. | ||
| I don't want to bring that up, frankly. | ||
| You have Larry, whatever his name is, Summers, the head of Harvard, who was Jeffrey Epstein's best friend. | ||
| Nobody ever talks about that. | ||
| I mean, but I don't want to hurt Larry Summers, but he was best friends with Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| No, this is a Democratic hoax to try and get the significance of what we've done over the past seven months. | ||
| Nobody's ever seen anything like it. | ||
| They say it's number one in history. | ||
| What we've done, including stopping seven wars. | ||
| I mean, just include that. | ||
| And now you look, and now you look at the stock market today, it's way up to start off with from where I took it. | ||
| And this market was going to crash. | ||
| If Joe Biden or Kamala were president, this market would have had a crash like in 1929. | ||
| You're not going to have that. | ||
| The Department of Justice sending that information to Congress yesterday, the same day that it released transcripts and audio recordings from its interview with Ghelane Maxwell from earlier this month. | ||
| C-SPAN will re-air the entire interview between her and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche today. | ||
| You can watch it at 1 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| You'll also be able to find it online at c-span.org. | ||
| Paul is calling from Victorville, California on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, thanks, Hugh, for taking my call. | |
| Can you hear me now? | ||
| Yes, go ahead, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, just a quick point, and I'll get right. | |
| I mean, a comment, I'll get right to my point succinctly. | ||
| I've called a couple of times over the years. | ||
| I'm getting old. | ||
| I'm a veteran. | ||
| I was a combat officer in the Air Force. | ||
| I actually commanded nuclear weapons. | ||
| I actually did that, which at the older I get, it's hard to believe. | ||
| But the one thing I wanted to say, and I'm not saying this, you can verify these from government statistics. | ||
| Just a preposition. | ||
| If someone told you about a country and they only told you one thing, and that's all you knew about the country, so that's the premise. | ||
| In this country, the highest two rates of suicide, number one, 18 to 29-year-olds. | ||
| And of a subset of that, it's four to one males. | ||
| So 80% are young men, basically blowing their brains out, or whatever you want to call it. | ||
| It's not good. | ||
| The number one, which shouldn't, by the way, real quick, that surprised me, that that was number one. | ||
| Number two, which didn't surprise me at all, are the veterans, us veterans. | ||
| And it is absolutely sad what these people, because I'm on TV and I want to keep my decorum, these politicians have done to this country. | ||
| And you host do a really good job. | ||
| Let me just add real quick before I go. | ||
| People get upset. | ||
| They should be upset. | ||
| And the last thing I told, I have two sons. | ||
| They have a pretty big age gap because I was married twice. | ||
| I told them about those that fact with the first ones, the young people. | ||
| You know what that is? | ||
| That's tragic. | ||
| You know what it is for the veterans like me? | ||
| That's understandable. | ||
| And thank you for ceaseline. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Paul in California. | ||
| Willie is calling from Chester, Pennsylvania, on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Willie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes. | ||
| My issue is there's a lot of countries that make the whole world, but the United States of America, as he's showing, America, or America or America, he still has obligations, which I mean, Donald Trump, he still has obligations to the obligations to the money stores in America. | ||
| He's a money store himself. | ||
| America is a money store. | ||
| We're all about in God we trust. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| What I'm saying is we Americans want to trust America to take America and make something of America. | ||
| Okay, so my issue is: why am I a part of America being an operation and the president hasn't gotten me my brief, my credentials? | ||
| I've been down for so long in America as an agent. | ||
| That was Willie in Pennsylvania. | ||
| And just a reminder: if you're calling in, make sure that that television is down in the background once you talk with our wonderful call screener and are on hold. | ||
| Let's hear from Marie in Euclid, Ohio, online for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Marie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| I'm doing well, Marie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have a few issues. | |
| One, I agree with a caller from before about how vile and unethical and unmoral him sending in the military troops against the American people when there's no emergency crime going on. | ||
| That's pure dictator power grab. | ||
| Plus the fact that him saying he wanted to take the five seats from Texas, that's another corrupt action going in place. | ||
| People have veterans have died now in vain for us to have freedom here in the United States that they fought people like Trump. | ||
| And we would say that that would have never happened here in America for us to have this happen here at this time, that all those vets have died in vain and him using our military with guns against the American people when we just want to live with liberty in the pursuit of happiness. | ||
| That's all anybody ever wanted to do here. | ||
| Okay, now, as for the subsidies of the food programs that he took away for the most vulnerable people in society, that is the most vile, disgraceful, despicable thing to do. | ||
| We wouldn't have that situation if he would make corporations pay them a living wage so we didn't have to subsidize our food. | ||
| That was Marie in Ohio. | ||
| Joseph calling from Queens, New York, on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Joseph. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| A couple things. | ||
| The last few callers mentioned that the Trump, the way he negotiates and said that he's going to do heavy sanctions and he didn't do them. | ||
| You know, this is all about negotiating. | ||
| He lured Trump. | ||
| I mean, he lured Putin to come to the table by making those kind of threats. | ||
| Doesn't mean he's not going to do it. | ||
| This is the beginning of a negotiation. | ||
| These are people you have on that don't know how to negotiate. | ||
| You don't get magic in the first meeting. | ||
| He lured them in. | ||
| Biden had four years to do these heavy sanctions. | ||
| Zero from him regarding this. | ||
| These sanctions could have been done under the Biden administration and things could have stopped. | ||
| He didn't do it. | ||
| So Trump is luring him. | ||
| And it's a start. | ||
| If Putin doesn't continue and doesn't cooperate, then yeah, he won't put those sanctions on. | ||
| But this is the way negotiations work. | ||
| And you got some callers about the Army or the militaries in Washington and maybe going to the big cities. | ||
| Crime is the worst in the whole world. | ||
| United States leads in crime. | ||
| United States. | ||
| Can you believe it? | ||
| There are no significant measures to handle crime until Donald Trump came in. | ||
| Washington was a disaster, D.C. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| That was Joseph in New York. | ||
| This story from the Associated Press from early this morning, Texas lawmakers give final approval to redraw congressional maps favoring GOP. | ||
| Send to governor. | ||
| The article says the Texas Senate gave final approval to a new Republican-leaning congressional voting map early Saturday, sending it to Governor Greg Abbott for his signature. | ||
| It says Abbott, a Republican, is expected to quickly sign it into law, though Democrats have vowed to challenge it in court. | ||
| It was Governor Abbott posting on X earlier this morning, just a little after 8 a.m., saying the one big, beautiful map has passed the Senate and it's on its way to my desk where it will be swiftly signed into law. | ||
| Said Governor Abbott, I promise we would get this done and delivered on that promise. | ||
| I thank Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick for leading the passage in the Senate of a bill that ensures our maps reflect Texans' voting preferences. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Let's hear from Bonnie. | ||
| He's calling from Alexandria, Minnesota, on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Bonnie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I wasn't planning on talking about Epstein, but the last news clip on Trump saying it's a Democratic hose, you know, hoax. | ||
| It's just, it's, you know, I mean, look at look at all them pictures where Trump and the first lady were just about snuggled up to the old pedophiles. | ||
| And it wasn't a Democrat that got had an employee from Mar-a-Lago get sex trafficked by that Maxwell. | ||
| And I mean, Epstein was asked if Trump ever had relationships with minors. | ||
| It's on Cape. | ||
| He pleaded the fifth, the sixth, the 14th. | ||
| So I just, I just get, and then that woman that got, she's sitting in a, in a college dorm prison now for after, I mean, she was out molesting them kids too, along with Epstein. | ||
| It's just hideous. | ||
| And that's about all I'm going to say right now because I just get so worked up over it. | ||
| That was Bonnie in Minnesota. | ||
| Joel is calling from Belleville, Illinois on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Joel. | ||
| Yeah, hi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Look, I've been listening now for about an hour. | ||
| So it seems as though some people are still bitter about the election. | ||
| Look, I'm an independent, and President Trump won the election. | ||
| And this time around, he won it rather convincingly by, you know, he drew from many demographics. | ||
| It was pretty obvious that the United States didn't want a Democratic president. | ||
| I mean, the Dems were in disarray. | ||
| I think they're still in disarray, but I don't want to discuss the election. | ||
| I would change the stance with Israel. | ||
| I see what's going on in Gaza, and we're allowing that to happen as a country. | ||
| Our tax dollars are funding Israel's rockets that are bombing Gazans. | ||
| Now, those kids are not combatants. | ||
| You see, I don't think that those pictures are really fabricated. | ||
| I think that they're real. | ||
| You take a look at Gaza and what's happened. | ||
| I really would like to see us take a stronger stance with Israel. | ||
| I understand Israel is our friend. | ||
| But is it time to reevaluate our friendship with Israel? | ||
| If they're going to conduct themselves that way, I'm not quite sure I want to be associated with someone who does that. | ||
| I know at a personal level, I certainly wouldn't. | ||
| You know, as far as cutting out programs for money, I think they're targeting waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| I don't want to see money taken from seniors or wherever, but whomever. | ||
| But, you know, there's a ton of waste fraud and abuse. | ||
| When Doge kicked off in my little office, where I'm a government contractor, I'm not a government employee. | ||
| Does hit our office, and our little office, it was discovered that we were paying, that the government was paying support for an application that they didn't use for the last 10 years. | ||
| And that's a true story, people. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So before you cuss out President Trump by, you know, kicking off Doge and finding out what the heck is going on, and also, well, yeah, well, I'll stick with Doge. | ||
| You know, it was needed now, and it's still needed. | ||
| That was Joel in Illinois. | ||
| Ted is our last call for today, an independent calling from Las Vegas. | ||
| Good morning, Ted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I was, you know, I just wanted to make a comment in regards to the letter that Melania put in sent to let to put in. | |
| And I would like for all First Ladies of GOP, governors, mayors, as well as Melania to send the same letter to the gun lobby and all the gun conventions, owners, and et cetera, you know, gun store owners. | ||
| They truly care about all the kids that are being slaughtered all across this country, whether it's schools, shopping centers, or your gang bangers, et cetera. | ||
| Yeah, that's what they truly care about children. | ||
| They should be paying attention more to that. | ||
| And my other topic was in regards to Trump claiming that he saved all these or solved all these wars when he was the one that was conducting two wars at the same time with Nedan Yahoo and Russian President Putin prior to becoming president and losing the presidency as his own retribution and sourness. | ||
| Why isn't MAGA jumping all over that and not getting the phone transcripts when he was a regular citizen losing the election, yet having thousands of phone call conversations with both Putin and Yahoo? | ||
| And nothing has been ever done because the GOP has refused to release those phone transcripts or they were blocking them. | ||
| So I would like MAGA to get on that case as well, not only the Epstein. | ||
| Ted, we have to leave it there. | ||
| We are out of time, but we will be back tomorrow morning with another Washington Journal. | ||
| You can find us at 7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific. | ||
| Until then, enjoy your Saturday. |