| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Weekends bring you book TV, featuring leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. | |
| Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend. | ||
| At 1 p.m. Eastern, journalist Chris Sweeney recounts the career of ornithologist Roxy Layborne, who became the first forensic ornithologist, helping the FBI, Air Force, and NASA in investigations involving birds. | ||
| Then at 2:45 p.m. Eastern, linguist Emily Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna argue that artificial intelligence can't deliver on the promises made by tech companies. | ||
| At 7 p.m. Eastern, Fox News political analyst Giano Caldwell explores crime and justice in American cities as he recounts his 18-year-old brother's murder and its aftermath. | ||
| And at 8 p.m. Eastern, chemist Catherine Harkup describes the science behind the poisons used in Agatha Christie's murder mystery novels. | ||
| The Secret Science Club is the host of this virtual event. | ||
| Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org. | ||
| Let's go ahead and take your calls now. | ||
| So we'll start with Wade, Nevada, Iowa, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, good morning. | |
| Yeah, getting back on that cash bail system you guys were talking about earlier. | ||
| I really just feel like there's more of an endemic problem with this. | ||
| I mean, in society today, you know, just it seems today that all you see is violence in movies and sex on TV. | ||
| I mean, where are those good old-fashioned values which we used to rely? | ||
| The fog is coming. | ||
| And this is the front page of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Here is Exxon. | ||
| It says Exxon Russia in Secret Talks. | ||
| And this is what the article says. | ||
| After huddling with President Trump in Alaska, President Vladimir Putin told reporters that Russia and the U.S. could do more business together, for example, between their Pacific coastlines. | ||
| Quote, we look forward to dealing, Trump replied. | ||
| What the two leaders didn't say, behind closed doors, their country's biggest energy companies had already sketched out a map to going back into business, pumping oil and gas off Russia's Far East coast. | ||
| In secret talks with Russia's biggest state energy company this year, a senior ExxonMobil executive discussed returning to the massive Sakhalin project if the two governments gave the green light as part of a Ukraine peace process. | ||
| People familiar with the discussion say such is the sensitivity that only a handful of people at Exxon knew of the talks. | ||
| That's in the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| That's on the front page. | ||
| Also information here from the New York Times about what's happening at the Fed. | ||
| And this article says Trump's bid to control the Fed may royal global economy. | ||
| Experts warn of inflation and bond chaos if effort to fire a governor succeeds. | ||
| That's about Lisa Cook. | ||
| And he was, the president was citing a cause for trying to fight to fire her. | ||
| She is fighting that in court and that's on the New York Times. | ||
| On the front page of the Washington Post, Doge put Americans' data at risk, officials say. | ||
| It says that a U.S. Doge service uploaded a copy of American social security data to the digital cloud, risking the security of critical personal information for more than 300 million people, according to a whistleblower. | ||
| Chief Data Officer Charles Borges raised concerns that Doge staffers bypassed safeguards, circumvented a court order, and created a copy of the Social Security Administration's entire collection of data on the U.S. public on the cloud. | ||
| He said that the SSA had no oversight of who had access to the file. | ||
| That's at the Washington Post. | ||
| And President Trump was at the cabinet meeting yesterday, and he was asked about foreign policy. | ||
| Here he is. | ||
| I want to see that deal end. | ||
| It's very, very serious what I have in mind if I have to do it. | ||
| But I want to see it end. | ||
| I think that in many ways he's there. | ||
| Sometimes he'll be there and Zelensky won't be there. | ||
| You know, it's like, who do we have today? | ||
| I got to get them both at the same time. | ||
| But I want to have it end. | ||
| We have economic sanctions. | ||
| I'm talking about economic because we're not going to get into a world war. | ||
| I'll tell you what, in my opinion, if I didn't win this race, Ukraine could have ended up in a world war. | ||
| We're not going to end up in a world war anymore, but it would have ended up possibly in a world war. | ||
| That would have been a, they were ready to trot. | ||
| But just like India and Pakistan, we're going to end up in a nuclear war if I didn't stop them. | ||
| You know, it's sort of strange. | ||
| I saw they were fighting. | ||
| Then I saw seven jets were shot down. | ||
| I said, that's not good. | ||
| That's a lot of jets. | ||
| You know, $150 million planes were shot down. | ||
| A lot of them, seven, maybe more than that. | ||
| They didn't even report the real number. | ||
| I'm talking to a very terrific man, Modi of India. | ||
| And I said, what's going on with you in Pakistan? | ||
| Then I'm talking to Pakistan on trade. | ||
| I said, what's going on with you in India? | ||
| And the hatred was tremendous. | ||
| Now, this has been going on for a hell of a long time, like with sometimes with different names for hundreds of years. | ||
| But I said, what's going on? | ||
| I said, I don't want to make a trade deal. | ||
| No, no, no, we want to make a trade deal. | ||
| I said, no, no, I don't want to make a trade deal with you. | ||
| You're going to have a nuclear war. | ||
| You guys are going to end up in a nuclear war. | ||
| And that was very important to them. | ||
| I said, call me back tomorrow, but we're not going to do any deals with you, or we're going to put tariffs on you that are so high. | ||
| You were there, Howard, right? | ||
| You're going to put tariffs on you that was so high, I don't give a damn. | ||
| Your head's going to spin. | ||
| You're not going to end up in a war. | ||
| Within about five hours, it was done. | ||
| It was done. | ||
| Maybe it starts again. | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't know. | |
| I don't think so, but I'll stop it if it does. | ||
| We can't let these things happen. | ||
| That was yesterday, and we are in open forum right now. | ||
| If you'd like to give us a call, you can do so. | ||
| Whatever's on your mind. | ||
| Republicans are on 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats on 202748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| A couple of news items for you. | ||
| This is from WTMJ.com. | ||
| Vice President JD Vance to visit Wisconsin, touting the spending bill. | ||
| Also, this from NBC News with this headline: states must axe transgender references from sex ed or risk losing funds. | ||
| Trump administration says the mandate comes just days after the Trump administration terminated funding for a sex education program in California. | ||
| Also, this from the AP, this has just come out, and that is that Trump extends control over Washington by taking management of Union Station away from Amtrak. | ||
| Union Station is Washington, D.C.'s train station. | ||
| There's a picture there. | ||
| And that is also the building that you see sometimes behind our guests because it's right in front of the studio here in C-SPAN. | ||
| There it is on your screen. | ||
| That's Union Station. | ||
| Let's talk to callers now. | ||
| Elsie in Alabama, Republican line. | ||
| Good morning, Elsie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I'm calling about the tariffs and how everything else is going up. | ||
| I voted for President Trump all three times he ran, but I'm very disappointed that the price of things are going up. | ||
| I heard this morning the price of gas is going to go back up. | ||
| And I'm very disappointed. | ||
| I'm afraid we'll lose the midterm elections because people are unhappy with having to choose between groceries and other things they need. | ||
| And when you say things are going up, what has been going up for you, Elsie? | ||
| Is it groceries? | ||
|
unidentified
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Groceries? | |
| Okay. | ||
| I was in Dollar Tree the other day. | ||
| They're usually $1.25 for things. | ||
| They were raising their prices to $1.50, which doesn't hurt much. | ||
| But stuff at Walmart keeps going up, and it's getting hard for people. | ||
| I'm 81 years old. | ||
| I draw $1,400 a month for Social Security, but there's many, many people that draw less than I do that are having a hard time. | ||
| All right, Elsie, let's talk to Lewis in North Carolina. | ||
| Democrat, good morning, Lewis. | ||
|
unidentified
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All right, good morning. | |
| Look, you know, it's very ironic that this president seems to me trying to put a wedge between India and America, which diplomacy with them is very important because of the way they used to be. | ||
| They were dealing with Russia and China. | ||
| And so we've been working with them and sending business over there to them and doing what we can to keep them as part of our ally. | ||
| But Trump and Putin had talked, and Putin wants India back. | ||
| So Trump is putting double tariffs all on India for because he states that India is purchasing oil from them, Russia. | ||
| But as you just read and stated, that Trump and Putin already came with some type of agreement of doing more business together. | ||
| Isn't that ironic how he would do that to run India back to China and Putin when they were allies with America? | ||
| This is just totally ridiculous. | ||
| And we know what this is all about: to forget about the F-steem that Trump is a child molester. | ||
| Thank you, C-SAN. | ||
| Brian in Barstow, California, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Brian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| All I would like to state is I live in Southern California, and I went to a Home Depot, okay? | ||
| And I was walking into the Home Depot, and I looked to the right, and there were Hispanic, hardworking males hiding behind bushes. | ||
| Okay, they're hiding behind bushes because they don't want to get taken and thrown back to their country and separated from their families. | ||
| These are hardworking people. | ||
| I lived in Ontario, California when I was a kid, and there would be guys lined up on the corners to go to work. | ||
| So I think we need to start looking at the people who are hiring, and they're the ones who should be getting in trouble, like Donald Trump. | ||
| Thank you for hearing me out and have a blessed day. | ||
| And as we mentioned earlier, the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, announced that his department is taking control of DC's Union Station from Amtrak. | ||
| He made these remarks just a few moments ago. | ||
| I also want to talk about Union Station. | ||
| If you've heard the president and you've followed DC News, the president has been very concerned about crime in our nation's capital. | ||
| He wants a capital that is worthy of the greatest country that's ever existed on the face of the earth, which means a capital that's clean, a capital that's safe, and a capital that doesn't have its parks overtaken by homelessness. | ||
| And so we look at our equities. | ||
| We are going to partner and invest in the streets of this city. | ||
| But today, we are going to look at Union Station. | ||
| And Union Station is frankly owned by DOT. | ||
| We are going to take DOT from our partners back under DOT control, and we are going to make the investments to make sure that this station isn't dirty, that we don't have homelessness in Union Station. | ||
| We want a place where businesses want to obtain leases and set up shop and serve the community of DC, but also the people that travel into DC via train. | ||
| But also, we want just, if you're out, you want to go for a great meal, you want to go shopping, you want to come to Union Station because it's gorgeous, it's beautiful, it's safe, it's a great experience. | ||
| That's what we want to do for Union Station. | ||
| So today we're announcing that we're going to take Union Station back under DOT control. | ||
| Not a power plate, we've always had it, but we think that we can manage the property better, bring in more tenants, bring in more revenue, and that revenue is going to allow us to make investments in this beautiful building. | ||
| It needs investments. | ||
| It's been, I think, neglected for decades, and it's shown its age. | ||
| And again, we want to make this place beautiful and the premier train station, not just in America, but the premier train station in the world. | ||
| And that takes money. | ||
| And again, it's this reform that's going to help us make that happen. | ||
| And that was just a few minutes ago. | ||
| That was the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, talking about DC's Union Station. | ||
| Back to the calls. | ||
| Dave, Las Vegas, Independent Line. | ||
| Hi, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| First of all, Trump is out of his mind. | ||
| There's a book out called The Dangers of Donald Trump by Dr. Bandy Lee. | ||
| Maybe you can look it up. | ||
| It says 37 psychiatrists, and Dr. Bandy Lee is the head psychiatrist, says he's got dementia and he's going to get worse. | ||
| And all he's doing is making war on his own people. | ||
| He's hurting the middle class. | ||
| He's taking away everything. | ||
| Trump's going to take away everything. | ||
| There's no law anymore. | ||
| Because when he tries to overthrow the government, that is a communist. | ||
| When he rounds up people without due process, that is a communist. | ||
| We're in big trouble, people. | ||
| He gets in. | ||
| We're not going to have anything. | ||
| We had the best economy in the world. | ||
| You might hate Biden, but we had the best economy in the world. | ||
| And those tariffs, that's on every working class America. | ||
| So when he says he's going to raise tariffs during the 30s, they did that. | ||
| And we had a depression. | ||
| We're in big trouble. | ||
| This guy is out of his mind, and the media doesn't talk about it. | ||
| And number two, when this F-Scene thing, he knew what was going on. | ||
| He's probably, we can't say he is a molester, but it sure seems like it. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| You voted for this guy. | ||
| He's a criminal. | ||
| He was convicted of a sexual assault. | ||
| Does he even have to register as a sex offender? | ||
| I mean, he did it. | ||
| So it's like, the worst thing about Trump, though, is he cut off the aid from sedan. | ||
| You talk about somebody that scrolled live, took the food, and 200,000. | ||
| You never hear it on the news. | ||
| Maybe you can look it up. | ||
| 200,000 kids are dying in sedans of starvation because him and Johnson cut off the food that was already allocated. | ||
| If you think that's a good person, he cares about us. | ||
| He only cares about the rich. | ||
| And that's my comment. | ||
| Here's James in Akron, Ohio, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, James. | ||
| James, are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm here. | |
| Okay, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm very, very, very disappointed in Donald Trump for several reasons. | |
| First of all, he's allowing Benjamin Netanyahu to starve people to death and to blanket kill everybody there. | ||
| He has no, he's made no effort to try to solve this situation in Israel that Trump said he would do in a couple of days. | ||
| We have the same thing in Ukraine. | ||
| He was going to end that in a day. | ||
| And we have people killing innocent people every day. | ||
| And both of those situations, Grievan, it hurts me so bad because it feels like the way things was done during slavery to the black people in America. | ||
| And right now, Trump is promising everything and giving nothing but to the rich. | ||
| We are here starving to death. | ||
| I'm 77 years old. | ||
| Everything that I have has went up. | ||
| He said gas is coming down. | ||
| Gas don't mean a whole hell of a lot to me, excuse the language, but don't mean a lot to me because I'm not traveling that much. | ||
| It means something maybe to the food that's been here. | ||
| Everything, I just went to the grocery store yesterday, and I paid double what I paid last month just for the basic same food. | ||
| I don't keep a list of what I'm buying, but I'm just looking at everybody. | ||
| And everybody that voted for Trump, they should be ashamed of themselves. | ||
| Everyone, especially the black people. | ||
| These black men, 20% that voted for Trump because they didn't want a woman to rule over them, your mother raised you. | ||
| We didn't have, our father brought food home. | ||
| Our father cooked. | ||
| Our father brought things in for us to survive on. | ||
| But the mothers raised us. | ||
| And for a black man to say that he couldn't vote for Kamala Harris because black woman couldn't lead him, something's wrong. | ||
| The whole damn place is crazy. | ||
| All right, James. | ||
| Here's Kay on the Republican line in Ohio. | ||
| Good morning, Kay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I just want to make a comment. | |
| Sure, go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| First of all, Trump is the worst president this country has ever had. | ||
| And his brain and mouth are full of feces. | ||
| And here's Bernard, Independent Line, Durham, North Carolina. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'd like to just make a couple of comments about Trump. | |
| I'm 83 years old. | ||
| I've been in the Army. | ||
| My son was in the Army, and my dad was in the Army. | ||
| So we have connections. | ||
| You know, I want to put that out there. | ||
| Number one. | ||
| Number two, I'm formerly of New York City. | ||
| I was born and raised in New York. | ||
| And Trump was active there in New York when I was there in the 70s. | ||
| And he's a guy. | ||
| He's a bad man. | ||
| He's really a bad man. | ||
| If you look at his history, how his father and himself segregated their housing, they wouldn't let blacks in their housing. | ||
| He's manipulative. | ||
| He takes, he's like a bottom and belly that he puts things out there and the people go for it, and it's not real. | ||
| Here's a man that, you know, he's been married three times. | ||
| And what I'm saying is, it blows my mind. | ||
| I call him Potty Mouth. | ||
| And see all these people that's following him, supposedly religious people, you got to question that. | ||
| What's going on here? | ||
| Is it really about being a good man, or is it about like a Robert E. Lee type person, individual? | ||
| It's a sad state of affairs where we're at. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And here's Bill in Wake Cross, Georgia, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Bill. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I am fluent in English, Spanish, and Hebrew. | ||
| I have friends in Israel that I've been talking to for 30 years. | ||
| My thoughts come along with, you know, with regard to President Trump, you know, what you do is so loud, I can't hear what you say. | ||
| And what happens right in front of the American people sit there and see it. | ||
| And obviously, you know, I want to ask American people, whose side do you think he's on? | ||
| Is he on the side of Ukraine, a country that was invaded, or is he on the side of Russia where he can do business with Putin? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's going to wait. | |
| Meanwhile, Putin bombs Ukraine and so on and so forth. | ||
| Another quote: you know, what am I to believe? | ||
| What you're telling me or what I see with my own eyes? | ||
| Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Here's Kenny, a Republican in Barberton, Ohio. | ||
| Good morning, Kenny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning to you. | |
| Just to follow up on the people that's bashing President Donald Trump right now, you know, there's so many things going on, and he's trying to take care of so many things. | ||
| And they say, well, he's not doing this, and he's not doing that for certain areas and certain things. | ||
| The man is only one. | ||
| He's been in office for seven months. | ||
| And I'll tell you what, he's trying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's done better. | |
| The crime in Washington. | ||
| And I understand they don't want him in the other cities. | ||
| But when they come and they say the one man, he's not for the black man. | ||
| Bologna, he's for everybody. | ||
| Give him a chance. | ||
| I know groceries are high. | ||
| I'm going to let you go because we only got two minutes here. | ||
| I know groceries are high, but when you're paying people to start their job at a higher rate instead of earning a raise, I don't mean to start them at $7.50 an hour or $9 an hour. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Give them a little bit. | |
| But when you start somebody and they think they deserve $15 an hour, show me that you work for my company to make me money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I work part-time for a local company. | |
| He has 100 stores in Ohio. | ||
| No names, please. | ||
| And I still, I worked through the pandemic. | ||
| And when I go to a store, I don't care who it is, the grocery store, the drugstore, the dollar store, it don't matter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I see something on the floor, I pick it up because I know it's going to get smashed or damaged. | |
| And I worked retail for three years only, part-time, after I retired from my regular job. | ||
| All right, Kenny. | ||
| This is Margaret in California, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just wanted to say that migrants are serving our country by working on jobs Americans won't do. | ||
| They're paying into Social Security and not reaping the benefits. | ||
| Our Social Security is going to quit soon enough, and now it's getting less money into it. | ||
| Plus, less of our farm workers, we have less farm workers, less carpenters building our homes, less meat packers, less menial jobs. | ||
| That's what I've been thinking about. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, Margaret. | ||
| And we are going to be taking you over the next program right after this is the UN Security Council briefing that is set to start at 10 o'clock. | ||
| We'll see how that goes. | ||
| Meanwhile, we'll talk to Kevin in Maryland, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'd like to thank you for allowing everybody to speak their minds. | ||
| I GUESS IT'S MY TURN. | ||
| KEVIN? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yes, go right ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sorry, I got confused. | |
| I'm watching the TV. | ||
| Don't watch the TV. | ||
| There's a delay. | ||
| Keep going. | ||
| Just talk into your phone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My apologies. | |
| Just a couple things I'd like to say. | ||
| You know, I don't like to hear the fact that Donald Trump thinks he has a mandate. | ||
| There were 74 million people who voted against him. | ||
| And we're basically discarded. | ||
| There is an election, we hope, coming up, but I'm fearful about Trump's use of the military. | ||
| The big, beautiful bill has a lot of money going to ICE and to Homeland Security. | ||
| And this is going to be Donald Trump's army. | ||
| And he's stoking the fires right now. | ||
| And it's just a matter of time before true Americans stand up against it. | ||
| And that's going to be his excuse to put the military on the streets and call martial law and affect the midterms. | ||
| And it's sad. | ||
| And I wish he would give back the American flag to the true patriots of this country. | ||
| When he let those felons out of jail on the first day of office, the flag was desecrated. | ||
| I have the image of a flag being used as a weapon against the Capitol police. | ||
| And that's just too much. | ||
| And I don't know. | ||
| We've got a crackpot in the office. | ||
| And if it's $1,200 of tax savings to give up your freedom in this country, you have cheapened the value of a true American. | ||
| All right, Kevin. | ||
| Here's Horace, a Democrat in Sherwood, Arkansas. | ||
| You're on the air, Horace. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning, Mimi. | |
| Good morning, Ceaseman. | ||
| Yes, I was just listening in. | ||
| I haven't heard too many Republicans call in today praising Trump for much of anything. | ||
| I guess they finally started to see who the man is. | ||
| I look at his record, and as I said, your records speak for who you are. | ||
| His record doesn't show that he has accomplished much of anything except dividing people. | ||
| He said he could stop the war between Ukraine and Russia in a week. | ||
| It's been seven or eight months. | ||
| He ain't been able to do anything that he said he could do. | ||
| Since he couldn't do any of these things that he said he could do, now he wants to go mess with the people that don't have much of anything that's already depressed. | ||
| Let's go take California from Gavin Newsom. | ||
| Let's go take DC from the mayor of DC because these are the things that I can do and depress people. | ||
| But the things that he needed to do, he ain't been able to accomplish any of it, Mamie. | ||
| And the man is sick. | ||
| I'm 78 years old. | ||
| I saw him at a young age when he messed up the USFL, caused the USFL to fail. | ||
| All them teams that was in the USFL was making money. | ||
| He wanted his team, the New Jersey Generals, to be in the NFL. | ||
| They went to court, lost, didn't get but one dollar, but he caused the USFL to fail. | ||
| He ain't nothing but a failure, and the people need to recognize that man is a failure. | ||
| All right, Horace, here's Mary in Ohio, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Yes, I want to put this out first. | ||
| May 8th, 2024, there was a hearing on immigration, the illegal aliens coming into our country. | ||
| Everybody hear this. | ||
| They were costing our country, they still are, $182 billion a year since Joe Biden became president. | ||
| They were only paying $31 billion a year in taxes. | ||
| This is still going on, though I keep saying past. | ||
| They only pay 17% of the costs that they occur to this country. | ||
| Mainly, the cost is policing. | ||
| People talk about illegal aliens not committing crime. | ||
| Well, if an illegal alien takes $1 away from the police to police our own people, they are hurting our country. | ||
| All right, Mary. | ||
| And we are going to end at this point. | ||
| Joining us now to talk about U.S. bail systems and reforms is Liesl Pettis. | ||
| She is Criminal Justice and Civil Liberties Policy Director for R-Street Institute. | ||
| Liesel, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| So, first, tell us about your background in criminal justice and how you came to this topic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So, I actually am a former prosecutor. | ||
| After being a prosecutor for several years, went on to run a nonprofit agency for victims of domestic and sexual violence. | ||
| Also, did five years on my local city council, and so took those different perspectives into how policy comes together in our criminal justice system and came to R-Street. | ||
| Well, let's talk about what President Trump did on Monday in the Oval Office. | ||
| He did sign orders aimed at ending cashless bail. | ||
| Let's listen to what he said, and then we'll talk about it. | ||
| We run things like we run this. | ||
| We like clean, we like beautiful, and we like safe, and that's what we're getting. | ||
| So, I'll start signing the executive orders. | ||
| To me, there's a very, very big deal. | ||
| One of the executive orders has to do with cashless bail. | ||
| That was when the big crime in this country started. | ||
| And I can tell you who did it, when, but I don't want to do that because others followed pretty quickly. | ||
| But that was when it happened. | ||
| Somebody kills somebody, they go in, don't worry about it, no cash, come back in a couple of months, we'll give you a trial. | ||
| You never see the person again. | ||
| And I mean, they kill people and they get out. | ||
| Cashless bail. | ||
| They thought it was discriminatory to make people put up money because they just killed three people lying on a street. | ||
| Any street all over the country, cashless bail. | ||
| We're ending it. | ||
| But we're starting by ending it in DC. | ||
| And that we have the right to do through federalization. | ||
| So let's talk about that, Lethal. | ||
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unidentified
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First of all, what is cashless bail? | |
| Which is a great question because the term gets thrown around a lot. | ||
| And not many people are familiar with what cash bail is, what the bail system even is, what cashless bail is. | ||
| But really, it's a system that pivots towards risk-based assessments to determine if somebody should get out. | ||
| So are they going to be a public safety risk? | ||
| Are they going to not show up for court? | ||
| That being the main consideration, rather than just giving a money amount for somebody to pay based upon their offense to get out. | ||
| So cash bail is that money amount that's assigned to an offense and people can pay to get out. | ||
| And a cashless bail system generally uses preventative detention, meaning somebody cannot pay at all to get out. | ||
| They are stuck in jail until their trial, or they're let out with conditions that are non-cash-based. | ||
| Now, the president said essentially you can kill people and then say, okay, come back later and they never come back again. | ||
| Is that what happens? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, I do want to just point out first that President Trump has hit on something that people are not immediately understanding is a big problem right now, which is there are many people in our communities that are feeling that more needs to be done around crime and homelessness. | |
| That is true. | ||
| A lot of people are seeing that they want more to be done. | ||
| The kind of part that goes astray is whether or not the bail system is responsible for people feeling unsafe. | ||
| You will hear from prosecutors and police officers that they get very frustrated with what they call kind of a revolving door into the system or a catch and release where people get picked up, get out again, commit another crime. | ||
| These are real issues to talk about and see about good solutions. | ||
| But when we're talking about murderers, almost across the board, but I will say there are some states that don't have an ability to hold murderers in, but a lot of those individuals are not getting out at all, even for a cash amount. | ||
| They are being held because they are a public safety risk. | ||
| It doesn't mean that in some places they may get out, but in the vast majority of circumstances, murderers are not being released from jail pretrial. | ||
| Now, you wrote an analysis at rstreet.org about two weeks ago. | ||
| You said why federal repeal of no cash bail laws would be unconstitutional and bad policy. | ||
| Explain both of those things. | ||
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unidentified
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Sure. | |
| So the 10th Amendment is our clearest kind of law talking about state rights, that it's really up to the states to be doing these, what we call kind of traditional policing powers, which would include how the criminal justice system deals with state crimes. | ||
| And it really would be hard to do anything as a mandate to states or municipalities requiring them to do something specific because of the 10th Amendment. | ||
| And that is such an important part for federalism, for the sovereignty of states. | ||
| And it seems clear that the president actually understands that that is a step too far that he cannot take. | ||
| because in the executive orders, really what's being done is pulling on those kind of purse strings to determine whether or not they can use grant funds and funding power to get the outcomes that they're hoping for. | ||
| So the first one is more of the legal question. | ||
| Can the federal government tell states what to do? | ||
| And generally the answer is no. | ||
| Even their power to pull the purse strings is very limited by SCOTIS saying that things have to to not be done in a punitive nature. | ||
| They need to have some sort of correlation with what you're actually trying to impose. | ||
| On the other side, the question is, is this even really the right solution? | ||
| So if we do think that people are feeling unsafe, if we do think that crime is not where it should be, that it needs to really come down and public safety is a priority, should we be messing with the bail system? | ||
| And the answer might be yes, but I will say that saying universally that cashless bail is the problem really is going to put us into a bad spot. | ||
| And specifically, I'd like to kind of point out places like Texas and Tennessee. | ||
| Both states just recently have expanded their preventative detention. | ||
| So again, that is where you cannot pay to get out. | ||
| You will be stuck in because the courts have found that you are a public safety risk. | ||
| They have found that cash bail is not the appropriate tool to be using those cases. | ||
| They don't want people to get the chance to pay their way out at all. | ||
| They want them to be detained. | ||
| So when we're talking about removing these cash bail or cashless bail systems who have really started pivoting to preventative detention versus conditions with release, we're actually allowing more people to get out because they can now pay versus saying no, they're going to be withheld regardless. | ||
| If you'd like to discuss with our guest, Liesl Pettis, the bail system and criminal justice reform, you can go ahead and start calling now. | ||
| Our lines are regional this time. | ||
| So if you're in the eastern or central time zones, it's 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you're in Mountain or Pacific, it's 202-748-8001. | ||
| Now, if you have any experience with the bail system, whether for yourself or a close family member or a friend, give us a call on a line, which is 202-748-8002. | ||
| Of course, you can use our line for texting, which is 202-748-8003, or you can post to social media. | ||
| So Liesl, what are the systems in place that determine bail? |