| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Late July was VOS Selections Incorporated v United States and was brought by importers and several states challenging President Trump's Liberation Day tariffs. | |
| That ruling left the tariffs in place temporarily to allow the Trump administration to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. | ||
| We'll replay the oral arguments in the original case later today, starting at 5:45 p.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN. | ||
| You can also hear them anytime online at our website, c-span.org, and with a free C-SPAN Now video app. | ||
| On Monday, Labor Day, watch C-SPAN for an all-day Congressional Town Hall Marathon. | ||
| Hear from lawmakers directly as they discuss their legislative priorities, comment on recent actions by the Trump administration, and address questions and concerns raised by constituents. | ||
| The Congressional Town Hall Marathon begins at 10 a.m. Eastern and features Oklahoma Republican Congressman Josh Ferkine, Texas Democratic Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, Nebraska Republican Congressman Mike Flood, Maryland Democrats Senator Angela Also Brooks, along with Congresswoman April McLean Delaney, sharing the same stage, and many more. | ||
| Watch the Congressional Town Hall all-day marathon on Monday, Labor Day at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| Tuesday, a wreath laying ceremony commemorating the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, the Allied victory in the Pacific marking the end of World War II. | ||
| Watch live from Washington, D.C. at 11 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at cspan.org. | ||
| This fall, C-SPAN invites you on a powerful journey through the stories that define a nation. | ||
| From the halls of our nation's most iconic libraries comes America's Book Club, a bold, original series where ideas, history, and democracy meet. | ||
| Hosted by renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein, each week features in-depth conversations with the thinkers shaping our national story. | ||
| Among this season's remarkable guests, John Grisham, master storyteller of the American justice system, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, exploring the Constitution, the court, and the role of law in American life. | ||
| Famed chef and global relief entrepreneur Jose Andres, reimagining food. | ||
| Henry Louis Gates, chronicler of race, identity, and the American experience. | ||
| The books, the voices, the places that preserve our past, and spark the ideas that will shape our future. | ||
| America's Book Club, premiering this fall only on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
| The flag replacement program got started by a good friend of mine, a Navy vet, who saw the flag at the office that needed to be replaced and said, wouldn't this be great if this was going to be something that we did for anyone? | ||
| Comcast has always been a community-driven company. | ||
| This is one of those great examples of the way we're getting out there. | ||
| Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Sunday, August 31st, 2025. | ||
| Labor Day weekend marks the unofficial end of summer and the wind down of summer recess for Congress. | ||
| While members were back in their districts, many hosted town halls, offering a window into voters' top concerns. | ||
| Today, we'll do a bit of a national town hall. | ||
| What's your message to your member of Congress? | ||
| Our phone lines for Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| For Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you happen to have attended a town hall this summer, call us at 202-748-8003. | ||
| That's also the number where you can text us: 202-748-8003. | ||
| And please be sure to include your name and where you're writing in from. | ||
| You can also find us on social media at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Now, Congress has a quite low approval rating at the moment, as it has had recently, but we are going to get a chance to hear some of those town halls that I mentioned tomorrow on Labor Day, when C-SPAN will air a legislator town hall marathon starting at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| That low approval rating that I mentioned before, Congress is showing up in Gallup polling. | ||
| Gallup polls on this pretty regularly and finds that only 24% of Americans approve of Congress's job performance right now, with 70% disapproving of how Congress does its work. | ||
| 6% have no opinion. | ||
| That's according to Gallup polling that ran earlier this month. | ||
| And if you look at that change over time, you can see that the Congress's approval rating has been quite low over recent years. | ||
| Now, then, in terms of those individual town halls that you'll be able to see tomorrow if you tune in to C-SPAN starting at 10 a.m. Eastern, one of them includes a Nebraska town hall with Representative Mike Flood, where he was met with a barrage of booze, as reported here in Nebraska's WOWT News, saying that Nebraska Congressman Mike Flood hosted his third Nebraska town hall of the year on Monday. | ||
| This was earlier in August, published on August 4th, in his first in the capital city. | ||
| Flood faced a packed auditorium as constituents raised questions and concerns on a wide range of hot-button issues, including immigration, health care, clean energy, and the national debt. | ||
| The town hall held in Lincoln continued the trend of emotionally charged forums seen at his previous stops across the state. | ||
| Now, during that town hall, there was a constituent who challenged the Nebraska Republican and called President Trump a fascist. | ||
| Here is a portion of that exchange. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pardoning of all those involved, the big lie about the 2020 election with absolutely no evidence. | |
| These are all markers. | ||
| These are markers of fascism. | ||
| I have read a dozen or so books on authoritarianism and fascism. | ||
| You said in Seward that you were not a fascist. | ||
| Your complicity says otherwise. | ||
| Have you ever spoken out against this administration and its Project 2025, which is a fascist machine? | ||
| Have you ever spoken out? | ||
| There are a number of people. | ||
| It's been reported many times in the news that there are a number of your R colleagues, Republican colleagues, who do not like this man and they speak against him behind closed doors in private. | ||
| Maybe you're one of them. | ||
| There is a thing profiles encouraged. | ||
| Why don't any of you, because you know better, what is wrong with you? | ||
| What is wrong with you? | ||
| Sir, I want to be very clear with you. | ||
| Give me a chance to answer his question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd be happy to. | |
| Fascists don't hold town halls with open question and answer series. | ||
| And I will tell you this. | ||
| I support law enforcement. | ||
| And what happened on January 6, 2021 was not right. | ||
| And I'm on the record saying so. | ||
| I'm sure you can Google it. | ||
| But here's, I support law enforcement. | ||
| I have prided myself on supporting law enforcement since I began as a member of the Judiciary Committee in 2005. | ||
| And we started working on child sexual assault. | ||
| We started working on the sex offender registry. | ||
| We started working on all of these different DWI laws to make our streets safer. | ||
| I believe in law enforcement. | ||
| I believe in the rule of law. | ||
| I believe in the rule of law. | ||
| It matters to me. | ||
| We have a lot of people. | ||
| We have a lot of people that need to know when I see something that I don't agree with, I don't run to the TV station as my first stop. | ||
| I try to stop it before it gets worse. | ||
| I try to stand up and go to work to represent the people that I have in this district. | ||
| And sir, I believe in law enforcement. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| At another town hall, this one in Virginia, a constituent challenged the Democrat Suhasub Ramanian to wield power being in the House minority. | ||
| Here is a portion of that exchange. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We've talked before. | |
| You have said you in the Democratic Party at large have no power. | ||
| I don't feel like I have enough power, but I'm still going to commit to whatever power I have, just as others in this room have committed to whatever power that they have. | ||
| I'm waiting for you to wield power because I have no vested interest in any elected official of mine wielding no power. | ||
| I have no vested interest in them. | ||
| So my question for you is, how will you wield power? | ||
| Finally, how will you wield power before you are challenged? | ||
| I will wield power by solving the problems that are facing our community. | ||
| So for instance, when our community is under attack by the administration cutting and firing, cutting jobs, firing jobs, firing people, what I do is I hold a job fair to find those people jobs. | ||
| What I do is I speak up against these cuts. | ||
| I bring awareness to these cuts because a lot of people don't know about them. | ||
| And then I try to make sure that we are prepared for when we have legislative power, we'll do legislation. | ||
| But the power comes from not just me, but the people. | ||
| And so I try to bring that awareness so that you all can join me in helping push back against this administration's policies. | ||
| What I've seen is when this administration sees me and the community push back, they actually backtrack. | ||
| There's been situations where they, many situations where they've backtracked and actually reverse policies, reverse firings. | ||
| But me alone isn't going to be the only thing that saves democracy, right? | ||
| It's not the only thing that's going to be going to fix the problems that are happening in our community. | ||
| I, working with you all, which is what I've done, I think is going to be a big part of it. | ||
| But I'll tell you that just because I'm saying that I can't pass the bill doesn't mean I'm not doing anything on the issue. | ||
| Quite far from it. | ||
| We have quite a bit of power and we can use it when something happens. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You voted to praise ICE. | |
| That's not true. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You voted to praise ICE after Jackson Boulder. | |
| Was a resolution to memorialize the victims of a shooting in Colorado, had one throwaway line about ICE. | ||
| I spoke out against that line. | ||
| I've spoken out against the practices of ICE since. | ||
| To say that that entire thing was about praising ICE is simply not true. | ||
| We had a resolution about a terrible shooting that happened, and that was our only opportunity to memorialize it. | ||
| And so I think that's part, but that's part of the problem: the information that people are getting is a caricature of what's actually happening in D.C. People are getting bad news into their social media feeds and to their TVs and meant to rile them up and click more and more because bad news sells these days. | ||
| And so, what I'm trying to do is talk about good news, talk about the things we can do, and the ways that we can empower people to actually push back. | ||
| And so, I would love to work with you if you want to join me in spreading what's going on and what people can do about it. | ||
| I would love to work with you. | ||
| Once again, we're going to have a marathon of many of those town halls from across the country that occurred over the summer. | ||
| That will be on C-SPAN tomorrow, starting at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| If you'd like to tune in to watch, it'll also be on c-span.org. | ||
| Now, again, our question this morning: what is your message to your member of Congress? | ||
| And again, we do have that special line. | ||
| If you happen to have attended a town hall, that's 202-748-8003, in addition to our normal lines. | ||
| Let's start with Jeffrey in Greensboro, North Carolina, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jeffrey. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking the call. | ||
| I really appreciate it, and I will hope I can get this out. | ||
| I would love to address and have the opportunity of that because they very much have been silenced. | ||
| Congress has not challenged any of the authority and the power that they do hold and is sworn to the people to fairly implement laws in this nation. | ||
| They are allowing Donald Trump to actually just jump over anything that is attached to the Constitution or Congress, the way it is supposed to be in the three branches, rightfully decided because the people decide Congress and the people who are appointing Congress in those positions. | ||
| And just as some of the clippings that you had about the different town halls where they were addressing the Republican congressmen on these stipulations, it was facts that they have definitely been silent, did not, and has not been proving to do any work in Congress. | ||
| At least I'm trying to recollect and watch it and paying attention. | ||
| There's so much going on that they're allowing the presidents to do. | ||
| It's dangerous. | ||
| It definitely has changed the dynamics. | ||
| Donald Trump personally, because they are not standing up and they fear for what's going to happen re-elections coming up. | ||
| That if they go against him, if he says who's against him, that's sad right now that that's what their concerns are. | ||
| Keeping their job and following the script. | ||
| And I hope a lot of your listeners are fair and really that care about America, want America to run in the ordinance that it should be. | ||
| It is so much going on in that administration in a short period of time. | ||
| No one cannot say on your program today that he is not taking retribution towards everyone that stood up on the system that he put himself in legally that he got out of. | ||
| And he is running this country to a hole dangerously. | ||
| He is dividing America. | ||
| And this is not just an understatement. | ||
| He is actually dividing America. | ||
| Robert is in Amarillo, Texas, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I'm like many of your other callers in that the intellectual dishonesty on C-SPAN is getting very difficult to watch. | ||
| And you're supposed to be an independent journalism source. | ||
| And you had the same moderators develop the same content and promote content that exacerbates hate, of which the Flood example is a can't think of one more perfect than that. | ||
| Because if you look at the Nebraska elections, Mr. Floyd got 187,000 votes or 60% of the vote. | ||
| Lincoln and Omaha are the only areas in that state that were blue out of the entire state. | ||
| So for you to publish something that is so egregious and off-point is very, very dishonest because there were perhaps 300 people there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know what the capacity was, but it's very, very dishonest to publish such a I hear your point, Robert, but I'm wondering if you have a message for your member of Congress. | |
| My member, my, yes, my member of Congress, in fact, that's an interesting point because what we're talking about is voting. | ||
| C-SPAN, as an independent journalist, publishes votes, but you never publish the exact amount of people in the district. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the Mendami in New York was a perfect example. | |
| All right, we want to give people an opportunity to talk, give their message to their member of Congress. | ||
| Let's hear from James in Sebring, Florida, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| James, can you move a bit closer to your phone? | ||
| It's a little bit hard to hear you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sorry. | |
| Is that better? | ||
| It's a little bit better. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right, let me turn my volume up. | |
| Is that better? | ||
| Yes, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| My concern is the election, Trump says about the mail-in ballot is corrupt and all that. | ||
| Well, in 2020, he said it was all rigged. | ||
| And millions and millions of expanded illegal aliens had voted and all that. | ||
| Well, after the election, bipartisan Republican and Democrats got together by county by county, by state by state, district by district, and there was no fraud. | ||
| He also said that their dead people have voted. | ||
| Is this what your member of Congress has said, or is this someone else? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| So what's your message to your member of Congress? | ||
| My message to my Congress is that the mail-in ballot, there's the president wants to disband mail-in ballots. | ||
| Well, I'm sorry. | ||
| We have veterans, I'm sorry, members of the military across all over the world, individual of disabled and blind individual that depend on order to do mail-in ballot. | ||
| And President Trump is saying that he don't want that happen anymore. | ||
| I'm sorry, it is in the Constitution that individual, I'm experienced, I am blind myself. | ||
| So I have had my wife, who's noma-sided, help me fill out the application. | ||
| I want Congress to understand that mail-in ballot is secure. | ||
| Lawrence has. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I appreciate the time. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Lauren in Clemington, New Jersey on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Lauren. | ||
| And can you please turn down the volume on your TV and then go ahead? | ||
| Lauren? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Yes, go ahead, please. | ||
| What's your message to your member of Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm tired of history not being taught in school. | |
| I think history is very important. | ||
| And I think without history, we're just going to repeat history. | ||
| And I think we need more Board of Education teachers and teach our kids independence and recognize for a dictatorship. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Some responses we've received to our question from social media. | ||
| The question again is, what's your message to your member of Congress? | ||
| Mary on Facebook says, the availability of medical care. | ||
| I have to wait months to see a doctor or a dentist. | ||
| And then Don Floyd in Don in Floyd, Virginia says, Congress is as useless as a screen door on a submarine. | ||
| I don't think they can get much worse. | ||
| An improvement would be if they all in unison up and quit. | ||
| Lori, it says, my state representative holds town halls. | ||
| I attend those. | ||
| My U.S. representative does not hold town halls. | ||
| Al is in Delaware on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Al. | ||
| What's your message to your member of Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, my message to my Congress is all these Democrats are saying the Republican states or big crime cities, all these different cities they're putting up there as crime cities or Republican states. | |
| But guess what? | ||
| Every one of them are Democratic mayors. | ||
| And you ought to look it up and tell everybody that. | ||
| And I wish they would speak and say that more. | ||
| They never say that. | ||
| I want them to start saying it. | ||
| That's all I got. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Otis in Orange Park, Florida on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Otis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| The first thing I would tell my congressman is to stop gaslighting me and America. | ||
| You know, we get these hot button issues, and they look at that's how they, to me, that's how our Congress tries to divide us as a people. | ||
| You know, not everybody's religious, and not all of us have the same idea on how we like to see a problem resolved. | ||
| However, when you only make it about, I tell my congress that you only make it about abortion, you only make it about crime. | ||
| You're not looking to solve a problem. | ||
| You're looking to talk about one. | ||
| You know, don't talk about it, be about it. | ||
| And let us stop telling me. | ||
| If you want, we can, for example, the congressmen right now, the Republican congressman, I'm out of Harris Park. | ||
| It's a Republican Congress right now. | ||
| They'll tell you that Donald Trump is doing the greatest job in the world. | ||
| And the big, beautiful bill that they agreed to is not going to increase prices. | ||
| But we know it's happening. | ||
| Don't tell me, like the gentleman said, that he said Congress is worse than nothing worse than having a screen dough on a submarine. | ||
| Well, I believe this here. | ||
| We need to be educated. | ||
| And one more thing for the independent voters out there, You allow yourself not to participate in our infrastructure here. | ||
| A Republican in most states, an independent in most states, can't vote for a Democrat or Republican. | ||
| You get the leftovers off the table. | ||
| Choose the side. | ||
| Be what you want to be. | ||
| If you want to be racist, be racist. | ||
| If you want to support all of America, support all of Americans. | ||
| But don't. | ||
| Anita is in Ypsilantine, Michigan on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Anita. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My message to my congressman and especially to my senator, number one, grow a backbone. | ||
| Number two, stop talking about abortion. | ||
| Number three, start talking about young men, whether it's young men being born, young men getting a job, young men stop dropping out of school. | ||
| Number four, have a plan. | ||
| Quit singing around their bad-mouthing Republicans, even though you don't have the plan yourself. | ||
| And the last one is that when you have a foreign policy, your foreign policy should be: we have to protect America, but we can protect from China, from Russia, if we invest in Africa. | ||
| But you have to be respectful of Africa and respectful of the Caribbean because that's how China and Russia are winning, because they're controlling the black population. | ||
| The second most popular population in the world. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Ricardo in Laredo, Texas on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Ricardo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Hawaii. | |
| Thank you for the opportunity to declare. | ||
| I'm not going to request anything from a congressman and just a reminder of the declaration that we made. | ||
| And the reason why this country was so great is because we, in the course of the human events, when things happen, we called on our guardians and we put down on paper and we declared that these things are self-evident, that all men are created equal. | ||
| All of them endowed by their creator with unalienable rights. | ||
| Alienable means transferable because his breath cannot be transferred into a document that then the government, that the institution, these institutions that we put, they were created to serve man and to promote equality amongst men and not to rule over them. | ||
| And through deception, the Bible tells us that, and it's true, if we investigate that, they make us take a different name, like a consumer or whatever, something, a name that defines a lesser person, like not a man, not one that's entitled to. | ||
| And through deception, we have fallen into the cornerstone of the concept, the cornerstone of the Constitution is we have to put man, the God, again, because he's the one to which all things are given. | ||
| And without him, we lose our way. | ||
| All men, well, we all have lost. | ||
| And no congressman, nobody's going to like, no man is going to set things straight. | ||
| We have to put things in. | ||
| Let's hear from Howard in Indianapolis, Indiana. | ||
| Good morning, Howard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, and my area is Republicans. | ||
| Oh, sorry. | ||
| Looks like I accidentally dropped that call. | ||
| Apologies, Ricardo, or apologies for that one. | ||
| Let's hear from Jason in Gallatin, Tennessee on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Jason, go ahead. | ||
| You can turn down the volume on your TV and go ahead. | ||
| Jason, if you can switch down the volume on your TV and then please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, my message to members of Congress to make just abide by the laws that we was built on and to treat everyone equal, man. | |
| We treat minorities that was born in the United States wronger than the people that have been came over here legally. | ||
| I just ask that thank you. | ||
| Howard is in Indianapolis, Indiana, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Howard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'm a Democrat, but I live in the Republican Congress congressional district. | ||
| And so if I were to write them, it would be first to impeach Donald Trump and convince their Senate counterparts to convict him so he is removed and can be accountable for his criminal behavior. | ||
| Secondly, to resign. | ||
| The Republican Party is a lost cause and should not exist in the country with our Constitution, which they are not upholding. | ||
| They're allowing Donald Trump to become a dictator. | ||
| And that's just not American. | ||
| They take an oath to protect us from enemies, foreign and domestic. | ||
| Remember, Trump is an insurrectionist. | ||
| He is a convicted criminal. | ||
| He is also an adjudicated sexual abuser. | ||
| So any party that would vote for such a person to lead our country does not deserve to be in office. | ||
| Now, I know, obviously, I would never write them. | ||
| They would never listen to that kind of thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But I think we need to get real about where we are in this country and that we are not headed in advancing our constitutional democratic republic. | |
| And, Howard, have you attended any town halls? | ||
| And you mentioned that your member of Congress wouldn't listen to you, you think, if you wrote them, but have you been to any of the town halls? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, I have not been to any of the town halls. | |
| I would observe them. | ||
| I don't think my attendance at a town hall for Republican is really a good use of time. | ||
| Nothing happens there. | ||
| It's just a form for a spectacle, really. | ||
| Our political systems are really broken because our representatives are not reflecting the will of the constituents, the voters. | ||
| The voters, we the people are supposed to have the power, but that's not what's happening. | ||
| Gloria is in Lobelville, Tennessee, and actually did attend a town hall. | ||
| Good morning, Gloria. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How was that event? | |
| It was a little, I'll say, a lot of confusion. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| So many people want this and the other people want that. | ||
| But I am independent, and for the first time ever in my life, I called my cousin, who I know is Republican. | ||
| I said, please don't vote for Donald Trump. | ||
| She said, you're too late. | ||
| I already did. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| And I told her, why not? | ||
| I said, because this man is not right. | ||
| You know, I said, look at what he did the last time he was elected and what happened when he lost the next election. | ||
| But anyway. | ||
| So what would be your message? | ||
| What was your message to a member of Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my message to my member of Congress and hopefully every member of Congress, they were sent to represent their people, not to protect their president. | |
| That's the very basis of it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Ricardo is in Van Neuz, California on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Ricardo. | ||
| Hi there, Ricardo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's up? | |
| I just wonder what's going on with this high situation. | ||
| You know, I don't really agree with all of that, and I don't F with Trump either. | ||
| I am going under Democrat, but let's go to Kathy in Iowa on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Kathy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I would like to tell all of the representatives from Iowa that they need to grow a backbone and actually be representing the people rather than kowtowing to President Trump. | ||
| Joni Ernst in particular just announced that she's not going to run for another term. | ||
| I think she did make a big mistake when she was trying to be funny at a town hall and say, you know, everybody dies when people were concerned about Medicaid. | ||
| And I think she tried to lean into that just like Trump does and have it go away, but it hasn't. | ||
| And I think she realizes that she can't win. | ||
| So, Joni, now that you're not going to run again and you don't have that hanging over your head where Trump can say he's going to primary you, grow a backbone and vote your conscience and vote the way of the people instead of the way Trump wants you to. | ||
| Same thing, Grassley and Henson. | ||
| You guys always hold town halls on odd times during the day where people who work can't get there. | ||
| And even though you represent all the people in the state of Iowa, including Democrats, you like to go to Republican strongholds to try to avoid any type of accountability from anybody who has a different view than you. | ||
| So I'd say man up or woman up and get to some places where you can hear all of your constituents, not just the ones that agree with you. | ||
| A few comments that we've received from social media and text. | ||
| Here's one from Audrey in Philly. | ||
| My message to my Democratic representatives, fight as if our country depends on it, because it does. | ||
| As Democrats work to acquire new leadership, Schumer and Jeffries are ineffective. | ||
| As Democrats, change the party's focus from corporate donors to the middle class and workers. | ||
| Get back to your roots. | ||
| Fight Trump and the GOP dismantling our government and threatening the social safety net. | ||
| Fight. | ||
| Another comment from Steve Rogers on Facebook, message to their member of Congress, keep absorbing and seeking out all President Trump knows to continue improving America's stance in the world and produce results for everyday hardworking Americans that keep America running. | ||
| My top concern is the economic health of America and its citizens. | ||
| Never attended a town hall. | ||
| Bob Glenn, also on Facebook, wants their member of Congress to keep supporting Trump's agenda. | ||
| Multi-generational homes are now popular. | ||
| Never attended a town hall. | ||
| Let's hear from Mike in Scottsboro, Alabama on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| What's your message to your member of Congress? | ||
| Well, here in Alabama, of course, most members of Congress are Republicans, so most of them have not had a town hall. | ||
| But my message would be The same thing to the Republican members of Congress as it would be to anybody else. | ||
| Would be, I'd say, a very bleak future. | ||
| I think that Trump is going to declare himself to be Congress, have the power of Congress, the power of the Senate, the power of the Supreme Court, and he's going to negate all these institutions and focus all the power in himself. | ||
| I mean, the man's a total idiot. | ||
| Every move Trump makes, he gets from Vladimir Putin. | ||
| That's who tells him what to do. | ||
| So really, the United States is going to become a satellite nation of Russia with the person at the very top being Vladimir Putin. | ||
| During one of the recent town halls, a teacher in Texas asked Texas Democrat Veronica Escobar about ICE and the fear of ICE agents in her community. | ||
| Here is a portion of that exchange. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Even my students, my students too, and they're U.S. citizens, they're being stalked at the border and being asked. | |
| So I have all that going on plus this additional. | ||
| So I don't know if they're not respecting the law of ICE. | ||
| I don't know what can be done. | ||
| I don't know, tow truck their carts. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know. | |
| Thank you for teaching our kids and for speaking up on this issue. | ||
| Let me tell you why this is happening because it's really important for the American public to understand why this is happening. | ||
| And there are immigrants with legal protections, legal protections. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Immigrants who have followed all the rules. | |
| Immigrants who are reporting for their, voluntarily reporting for their court cases, who are being detained, arrested, and deported, even though they quote unquote are doing it the right way. | ||
| Let me tell you why this is happening. | ||
| Stephen Miller, who is obviously worked for Donald Trump, feel the same way about him. | ||
| He told ICE, I guess he's Christy Noam's boss, he told Christy Noam and he told ICE that they needed to detain and apprehend 3,000 people per day. | ||
| So he created this unbelievable quota for ICE agents to meet. | ||
| And let me tell you, when ICE is doing a criminal enforcement operation, it takes time. | ||
| It takes investigative time. | ||
| You know, it takes time to truly arrest a criminal. | ||
| And when Donald Trump ran for office, he said he was going to go after the, quote, worst of the worst, and he was going to focus on criminals. | ||
| You know, most people will not advocate for criminals. | ||
| I will not. | ||
| But this is not what he's doing. | ||
| Because of these quotas, people with legal protections, people with, I have heard of people with legal permanent residency being detained and apprehended. | ||
| And it's all to meet the quota. | ||
| And I am so, there's a group of El Pasoans who go and bear witness at the courthouse and film the interactions. | ||
| I'm so grateful to them for bearing witness and for sharing with the country what is happening in our own community, which is shameful. | ||
| We should want people to report to court because we should want people to follow the rules. | ||
| And What I have heard for years is we want people to do it the right way. | ||
| This is the right way. | ||
| Back to your calls with your message for your member of Congress. | ||
| Roy is in Las Vegas, Nevada on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Roy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you for taking my call. | |
| I would want Congress to continue the courage to root out the deep state that's been over the decades becoming more and more ingrained in our society. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It used to be at one time. | |
| When you personally would say that there was such a thing as a deep state, you are considered a conspiracy theory. | ||
| But it's going to show, like, it used to be the Democrats would say when they do their poll, they know the college educated are the ones who are really supporting the Democrats. | ||
| Now, they don't say that too much anymore because they realize, and the public has realized, that the college educated are not really educated. | ||
| They're more indoctrinated to the policy. | ||
| And I'm really proud of all of the Trump administration for continuing to purge out this deep state that has done so much harm to our country. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Terrell in Owings Mills, Maryland, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Terrell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I think the Democrats are really, really doing a good job of making Donald Trump look foolish. | ||
| Now, but the public, I mean, but the media, they don't talk about Donald Trump when he does stuff, when he used to call Joe Biden Sleepy Joe, when he was the one that was falling asleep at a press conference. | ||
| I thought he was going to fall on his diagonal faith, you know. | ||
| And we don't have to do it. | ||
| I think that's a good question. | ||
| I'm not sure if you're a member of the member of Congress. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Huh? | |
| What was your message for your member of Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
See, okay, my member of Congress, I just got finished telling you, they're doing a good job. | |
| I heard also Brooke talk about Senator Kennedy the other day, okay, talking about that the black people are biologically stronger or something like that, and that we should get a different vaccine than white people do. | ||
| Now, do you believe that, Kim? | ||
| I had not heard that. | ||
| Where did you get that information? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, this was on TV the other day. | |
| This was at Senator Kennedy's confirmation hearing. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| These are the kind of things that people are not talking about. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And yet, just like with Jack. | ||
| If you'll pause just a moment, I want to give a little bit more context to what you're saying. | ||
| So this is a story from January that Senator calls RFK Jr.'s position on race and vaccines dangerous. | ||
| And it was one of the more tense exchanges in an already heated confirmation hearing as senators put Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s record on vaccines and his shifting stances on their safety and efficacy under the microscope. | ||
| Senator Angela also Brooks, a Democrat from Maryland, pointed to past comments made by Kennedy in which he said, we should not be giving black people the same vaccine schedule that's given to whites because their immune system is better than ours. | ||
| And that was the quote from Kennedy in the past. | ||
| And also Brooks said, so what different vaccine schedules would you say I should have received? | ||
| Asked also Brooks, who's black, with all due respect, that is so dangerous. | ||
| So that's what you're referencing there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, and she is completely right. | |
| You know, just like Benjamin Franklin said that the black man will always be better than the white man because the black man can do his own work. | ||
| This is what Benjamin Franklin said. | ||
| I did not say this, okay? | ||
| And we know that. | ||
| But, Kim, the black people in this country have been treated, you know, inferior. | ||
| And Donald Trump is trying to do the same thing to black people in this country. | ||
| We look at what he's trying to do to black cities. | ||
| Just like you heard the guy say, you heard the guy say that these are Democratic cities down in the south that have high crime. | ||
| But what he really wants to say is that these are black Democratic senators. | ||
| So, Kim, there's a racial overtone into all this stuff that we don't want to talk about. | ||
| Mark is in Ishpening, Michigan on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| What's your message to your member of Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
To Gretchen Witch Whitmer, as she locked down the state of Michigan with her policies and mandates and forced the COVID vaccinations on our people. | |
| Gretchen Whitmer is the governor of Michigan, but what's your message to your member of Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
She is the only one, as far as I'm concerned, that's screwing everyone in Michigan up. | |
| So if you quit interrupting me like the Democrats do, I'll finish. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| If you want to share your message to your member of Congress, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now, since Gretchen Whitmer forced our elderly in nursing homes to die alone. | |
| Bill is in Burlington, Michigan, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Bill. | ||
| Bill, go ahead with your message to your member of Congress. | ||
| All right, let's hear from Jean in Detroit, Michigan. | ||
| Good morning, Jean, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| What's your message to your member of Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My message to my member of Congress is to submit a bill to restore the Sabbath day, as it was when I grew up, where we were in obedience to the word of God and honored the Sabbath day. | |
| We went to church and we had family gatherings. | ||
| And now we just do whatever it is that we want to do. | ||
| And it's a commandment. | ||
| It's not a suggestion. | ||
| And I have called representatives both Mike Johnson's office as well as my own congressperson to suggest that. | ||
| And that's what I feel. | ||
| I feel like our country, up until about 1973, so for almost 200 years, we honored that day. | ||
| And I think that we were a better people for it. | ||
| And we're still striving to be a better nation. | ||
| And maybe if we had more love for one another and obedience to the word of God, we wouldn't elect a person who does the exact opposite of everything the word of God says we should do. | ||
| The issue of religion came up in one of the town halls after a constituent, as reported here in Mediite, got upset. | ||
| It says town hall blows up after man confronts Republican congressman over APAC trip to Israel in this town hall with Republican, excuse me, Oklahoma Republican Josh Brecken, Burke, excuse me. | ||
| He was confronted about his ties to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group. | ||
| After a man in the audience asked Burkin about his relationship with APAC, the congressman replied, APAC is an organization that supports Israel. | ||
| Before I ran for Congress, because of my biblical beliefs, I support Israel. | ||
| Here's a bit more of his commentary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now, When you get paid by a country, then you have to pass laws that affect them, don't you? | |
| You just passed $500 million assistant to Israel. | ||
| Isn't that right? | ||
| The last $500 million that Margaret Tyler, for years, she refused. | ||
| That bill that she passed, you passed on it. | ||
| You signed on Israel. | ||
| I just keep talking. | ||
| I'm going to pause and honor you. | ||
| You need to pause and honor me. | ||
| For years, the American government, who benefits from the technology advancements that go on with David Sling, you had 1,200 missiles that were launched into Israel. | ||
| Do you guys know how many American citizens live in Israel? | ||
| 750,000 U.S. citizens live in Israel today. | ||
| What is the size of a congressional district? | ||
| 750,000. | ||
| So when those 1,200 rockets are coming into Israel, designed to take out citizenship, and we provide assistance for the defense mechanisms. | ||
| Imagine a bullet going up and intersecting another bullet to save lives. | ||
| The American system of helping pay for David Sling, the arrow system, those are also benefiting America because of technology that we have for the future of warfare. | ||
| Are you aware in the last several months there is technology now that was utilized that proven because of Israel and hang on in connection to in connection to the United States? | ||
| Are you aware that there are is technology now because of a connection between Israel and the United States where, instead of a million-dollar intercept of a rocket that 30 times the amount of heat coming from an oven through lenses, they're proven taking down aeros systems coming in to kill people in Israel and that is going to benefit. | ||
| You know what the cost of those, of the beam being shot at these these, these aircraft to knock off a wing or to destroy those. | ||
| You know what it costs, $15 a shot. | ||
| Who is that going to benefit long term? | ||
| Who is that going to benefit long term? | ||
| That will also benefit the United States. | ||
| I'm going to let you finish and we're going to wrap up the town hall back with your message to your member of Congress, Paul is in Massachusetts on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah hi, my name is Paul. | |
| I'm I live in Quincy, but I was born and raised in Boston. | ||
| Quincy, sort of a butts Boston. | ||
| But first of all, today is International Overdose Awareness Day and you know, my member of Congress, I would like to see them more active in the grassroots recovery community. | ||
| You know there's a place called Mass And Cass which is over by Boston Medical Center and it's, you know it's it's. | ||
| You can see the tragedy you know of people. | ||
| You know open use, you know injections and you know they. | ||
| They kind of clean it up when it gets close to election time. | ||
| I've noticed I've seen like the cycle with the election cycles and you know there's actually there's a congressman actually in Massachusetts, Congressman Lynch, who he's very active in in a foundation that you know that that that does a lot. | ||
| You know they do a lot of. | ||
| You know in the field stuff with people, you know where, with detoxing, and you know aftercare, you know after. | ||
| You know, but my, my An issue I've had is sort of Paul, have you contacted your member of Cong Congress about this in the past? | ||
| I've talked to him. | ||
| Yes, I've talked to people who, you know, represent the foundation that he's aligned with. | ||
| And do you feel like your member of Congress listens to you and that feedback actually makes it there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would like to see them do more. | |
| I would like to see them, you know, eventual abstinence would be better than chemical maintenance, you know, with the psychopharmacology and a lot of big pharma that, you know, like Purdue Pharmaceuticals, who caused the Oxycarton crisis and then, you know, profited on that and paid Massachusetts a stipend in a settlement with the Attorney General, who's now the governor, you know, which was all good. | ||
| And then Purdue Pharmaceuticals developed, you know, suboxone, you know, Neurotin. | ||
| So it's, you know, they've caused it and they have they've they sort of, you know, it's easy to throw your widow's mites, if you want, if you want to call it. | ||
| Jay is in Little Silver, New Jersey on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Jay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for the opportunity to call you. | ||
| And what I want to say to my current congressman is it's time to go. | ||
| I recently received him as a congressman through gerrymandering, but I've been watching him for 35 years since I've moved here. | ||
| Who's this member of Congress, Jay? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Excuse me? | |
| Who is it? | ||
| Which member of Congress are you referencing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My current member of Congress is Pallone, which I got through gerrymandering in 2020. | |
| I've been watching him for 35 years. | ||
| He's basically a rubber stamp non-event. | ||
| It's time to go. | ||
| It shouldn't be a career, Congress. | ||
| It should be make a difference and move on. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Carolyn is in Lake St. Louis, Missouri on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Carolyn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| How are you doing today? | ||
| I thank you for allowing me to speak today. | ||
| I am a Democrat from Lake St. Louis, Missouri. | ||
| I want to say to my congressmen here in Missouri that they need to step down. | ||
| If they're not going to step up to make things better for both the Democrats and the Republicans in their state, because I am in a Republican state, I have no rights up here as now. | ||
| I lost my property to a mortgage fraud case that I've been fighting for seven years. | ||
| The lawyers here is not working for us, for the Democrats, and for the people, for the black people that are losing their property. | ||
| We are not even knowledgeable that our property has been stolen until it's gone. | ||
| We need our congressmen to stand up and fight for us as well. | ||
| If you want to run a state and be the congressman of that state, you need to be able to represent everybody. | ||
| Everybody. | ||
| And Carolyn, have you contacted your member of Congress about this issue? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have contacted my congressman. | |
| Three years, nothing said from it. | ||
| I have contacted even the only person that gave me a time of day to hear what I was saying was Kamala Harris. | ||
| She was the only one. | ||
| Our congressmen here are not working for the people here in Missouri, not the ones that they don't feel that can contribute to their cause. | ||
| All of us have a cause. | ||
| We're all working for something and towards something. | ||
| We're not lazy people. | ||
| Okay, we're not lazy people. | ||
| We help build this country. | ||
| Please remember that. | ||
| Kevin is in Windsor, Connecticut on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Kevin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'd like to say good morning to my fellow countrymen over in Europe. | ||
| That the countrymen from America and NATO united together to take down one man, Hitler. | ||
| Now, this country has a short memory. | ||
| You know, when Japan came across our senior member of Congress, Kevin. | ||
| Oh, oh, that's to the Congress, right? | ||
| To them, saying, hey, protect our NATO allies because, okay, like I said, America has short memory. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They forgot about 9-11. | |
| They came across the oceans and attacked us in planes. | ||
| You know, use our own planes to attack us multiple times that day, you know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And after 9-11, for 20 years, our NATO allies stuck with us, helping us. | |
| But now, when it comes time for our NATO allies to help them, America is nowhere to be found to help our fellow countrymen that are bonded by blood. | ||
| And, you know, it's sad that this country is this way now. | ||
| That's what I have to say. | ||
| Nancy is in Leicester, Massachusetts, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Nancy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello. | |
| I'm from Massachusetts, and I just want to say that I cannot contact my congressmen because there's no Republican congressman to contact. | ||
| It's all Democrat. | ||
| They gerrymandered the state so much that the Republicans do not have a representative, even though 37% of Republicans voted Republican. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's all I want to do. | ||
| Well, Nancy, have you contacted your Democratic member of Congress with the issues that you care about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, because you really can't get anywhere with them because it's just, look at Massachusetts, they're the bluest state there is. | |
| And it's just worthless. | ||
| But they're complaining about gerrymandering. | ||
| And Massachusetts did it so much as well. | ||
| And it's just crazy. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Jason is in Gallatin, Tennessee, on our line for independence. | ||
| And I think, Jason, I may have lost you earlier. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm here. | |
| Go ahead. | ||
| What's your message for your member of Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm a member for Congress. | |
| I'm just returning back to society from our current prison stand for selling drugs. | ||
| Serve my sentence. | ||
| And when I just did 13 years, eight months in prison, federal prison. | ||
| And I'm out on supervised release. | ||
| And my probation officer has violated my probation, got me going to court. | ||
| So, what would be your message to your member of Congress about this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, my message to the member of Congress is like they violated my probation for smoking CBD. | |
| Okay, let's hear from Mike in Peoria, Illinois on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I would like to talk to my congressman. | |
| Being from Illinois, though, the governor and my congressman, nobody ever were outvoted because of gerrymandering. | ||
| But I used to have Darren LaHood as my representative, except for, I don't know if you know Illinois, but if you look at the gerrymandering they did in his district, I got bumped to a guy named Swanson. | ||
| Either way, none of them ever want to, you know, protect the Republicans. | ||
| And if you look at all of the congressmen in the state, they basically spend half a billion dollars helping illegal aliens. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And now they want to raise our taxes again to make up for that half billion dollars. | |
| They don't care about us. | ||
| They want to buy votes from the special interest groups. | ||
| And I've called them, and they just don't want to talk to you because they can't get anything done or they don't want to get anything done. | ||
| And Darren LaHood needs to go. | ||
| That guy got his job because his daddy helped him get it, and he has done nothing for the state of Illinois or his representatives since then. | ||
| So he needs to go back. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's look at some comments we've received from social media. | ||
| On Facebook, Jim says: In my tea party days, I attended many town halls and learned a valuable lesson. | ||
| If you're not making large campaign donations or making their family wealthy, they only pretend to care about their constituents. | ||
| This is Republicans or Democrats. | ||
| Steve says to keep absorbing, I think we already read that one actually. | ||
| So let's see. | ||
| Kathy on Facebook says, I don't attend town halls. | ||
| It's a screeching mess and unproductive with protesters impeding progress. | ||
| Kim says, my state senator is awesome and has intervened on my behalf to make sure that I got my full retirement benefits from my employer. | ||
| I thank Senator Van Hollen for being one of the good ones. | ||
| Catherine says, I would love to attend a town hall with my member of Congress, but he's too afraid to hold a town meeting and instead holds town meetings by phone calls. | ||
| And the questions are chosen by his lackeys. | ||
| My top concern is: why aren't the Epstein files released? | ||
| Do we have a child sexual predator sitting in the White House? | ||
| And those are comments that we received from Facebook. | ||
| Let's hear from Barney in Zephyr Hills, Florida on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Barney. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Protester. | |
| Yes. | ||
| And Barney, make sure to turn down the volume on your TV and then go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Make sure that... | |
| Okay. | ||
| The last call said it perfectly. | ||
| The Epstein spots need to be released. | ||
| We need to have Congress release the Epstein files. | ||
| Then we need to have hearings on all the DEI hire that's in the White House today. | ||
| And we need to file a racial discrimination suit against the White House for Donald Trump firing all these black women. | ||
| And he says he's not a racist. | ||
| He's one of the biggest races in this country. | ||
| But like you say, y'all got what y'all voted for. | ||
| You voted for a felon. | ||
| You get criminal activities. | ||
| The man is taking down businesses. | ||
| They made a billion dollars in six months. | ||
| This is a financial crime. | ||
| And the only reason why the Republicans in the Senate won't do nothing. | ||
| The first year Trump was in office, he took all the Republicans. | ||
| We're just about out of time. | ||
| I'm going to get one more person in. | ||
| Let's hear from Carlos in Texas on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Carlos. | ||
| What's your message to your member of Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My message is all them old people in Congress, when they turn 65 years old, they need to start paying a minimum wage or retire. | |
| Get all them old people out of there. | ||
| I'm 81 years old. | ||
| Don't get me wrong. | ||
| I don't have nothing against old people. | ||
| Them people in Congress that are old, they're like them dogs on the leek. | ||
| Just like Biden, Biden was just like a damn dog on the leech. | ||
| That's all I got to say. | ||
| All right, well then that's all the time that we have for that segment. | ||
| But later on Washington Journal, Alberto Medina, communications manager at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, will join us to discuss the state of political engagement among young adults in the United States. | ||
| But up next, Democratic strategist Michael LaRosa and Republican Chet Love will join us to discuss the Trump administration, Democratic messaging, and the political news of the day. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Tonight, on C-SPAN's Q&A, Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley, author of The Affirmative Action Myth, argues that the racial preference policies of the 1960s and 70s have had an overall negative impact on the success of black Americans. | |
| There are racial differences in America, in our society, cultural differences, ethnic differences. | ||
| But when it comes to public policy and how the government treats us, treats the population, no, it should not be picking winners and losers based on race or treating people differently based on race. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's been a disaster. | |
| Whether the effort was under Jim Crow to elevate whites or the effort was under racial preferences to elevate non-whites, it's been a disaster. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, people like to say that diversity is our strength in America, but I disagree. | |
| Our real strength in this country has been to overcome our racial and ethnic differences and focus on what unites us as a country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That has been the strength of America. | |
| Jason Riley with his book, The Affirmative Action Myth. | ||
| Tonight at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q ⁇ A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| And past president, why are you doing this? | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a kangaroo quarrel. | ||
| This fall, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Join Political Playbook Chief Correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns as host of CeaseFire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue to find common ground. | ||
| Ceasefire, this fall, on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back for our roundtable discussion this morning. | ||
| We're joined by Democratic strategist Michael LaRosa. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| And Republican strategist Chet Love. | ||
| Good morning, Charlie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Chet, let's start with you. | ||
| Can you tell us a little bit about your background and your current position? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so currently I'm the CEO of the Cornerstone Group International. | |
| We're a management consulting firm working with clients all over the country on technology issues. | ||
| And as well as I've chaired the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy and do a lot of state-level and federal level policy work. | ||
| And Michael, what about you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's great to be here. | |
| I'm currently a partner at a bipartisan government relations firm called Ballard Partners in Washington, D.C. | ||
| I was a longtime TV producer for Chris Matthews on MSNBC, and then a communications advisor to Senator Maria Cantwell from Washington State, House Democratic leadership. | ||
| And then I joined the Biden primary campaign in 2019 as Jill Biden's traveling spokesperson and remained her primary spokesperson and special assistant to the president for the first two years of the Biden White House. | ||
| Sticking with you for a minute, Michael, let's talk about Trump's job approval rating. | ||
| Gallup has his overall approval rating at about 40%, while just 37% approve of his performance on the economy and 39% approve of how the president is doing when it comes to foreign affairs. | ||
| What do you think is behind those numbers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think there's still a lot of concern about costs and prices that voters, at least voters in last year's election, prioritize, amongst other issues as well, immigration, crime, cultural issues. | |
| And I think because the economy is somewhat out of the president's hands, you know, presidents tend to get the blame when the economy is going south and tend to get the credit when things are going well. | ||
| So we're also in a very tribal and partisan time right now. | ||
| And I think that's always reflected in polling. | ||
| These are similar numbers that President Biden left office with. | ||
| And then, Chet, how concerned do you think Trump as well as congressional Republicans should be about these numbers, especially as we head into the midterms? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The midterms are absolutely the goalpost. | |
| Everyone's focusing on what the midterms are looking like. | ||
| But I think it's really important in terms of what my colleague said is that presidents shouldn't be getting as much credit or flack for the economy. | ||
| They don't run the economy, right? | ||
| Yes, they do pass policies that impact the economy, but they don't get to run the economy. | ||
| And we see that a little bit in terms of what President Trump is trying to fight with the Fed right now around interest rates. | ||
| But I think the really important thing for President Trump is really just being able to get out there and just get his message out to the voters because that's what people really care about. | ||
| And I think passing things like the Big Beautiful Bill emboldened his base and made people really excited about him being able to get that done. | ||
| And I think that's what's really important. | ||
| You know, it's interesting. | ||
| The president has, in some ways, a bit more influence on the economy than maybe previous administrations given his stance on tariffs. | ||
| And I wonder if you think that the president, what the possibility is of the president changing his stance on some of these major policies like tariffs, especially given the pushback he's getting from the courts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, listen, President Trump, first and foremost, is the negotiator in chief. | |
| And so we've seen that with tariffs, is that he doesn't have a policy specifically around tariffs. | ||
| He's simply using it as a tool to negotiate with other countries. | ||
| And I think it's fair. | ||
| And the American people are simply saying it's fair. | ||
| Hey, we're getting tariffs put on us in all these other countries, and we're having to do that work. | ||
| And so we should be able to benefit from that as well. | ||
| And so I think that's what's really important. | ||
| Michael, Democrats are trying to attach the economy to the Republicans, especially, again, related to the midterm elections. | ||
| I mean, there's a story here in CBS that Democrats are spotlighting inflation as they target vulnerable House Republicans in Labor Day weekend ads. | ||
| And I wonder how effective you think that strategy is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I'm not sure because inflation, as Donald Trump reminded people in the last cycle, began under my former boss, Joe Biden. | |
| And I think that it could leave Democrats a little bit exposed and vulnerable to immediately place blame on Republicans when we had the keys for the last four years. | ||
| And we were sort of forced under the Biden administration to spend a little bit out of our way to get our economy back up and running after the pandemic. | ||
| The American Rescue Plan and ultimately what became the Inflation Reduction Act were vital to spurring more jobs and energizing the American economy, bringing it back from where it was when we inherited the office. | ||
| And some of those policies, while they've reinvigorated the economy and got people working again, unfortunately, part of that led to higher consumer prices. | ||
| In terms of the elections, I think Democrats need to get a strong grasp on what people are feeling over what people are reading in terms of charts and statistics and focus more on how ordinary people, your neighbors, your colleagues, your family members are feeling about the state of national affairs overall. | ||
| Crime, the economy, jobs, all of those things, immigration, and have good, smart, and relatable answers to them. | ||
| Two of those three topics you just mentioned, crime and immigration, are very much in the news here in Washington, D.C. because President Trump has put hundreds of federal agents and National Guard troops on the streets here in the nation's capital with the argument that he wants to clean up crime and additionally to increase the ICE detentions as well. | ||
| And last week in his cabinet meeting, President Trump highlighted some of these efforts. | ||
| Let's listen to those comments. | ||
| It's going to be very safe very soon. | ||
| It's very safe right now. | ||
| You're going to go out, have dinner. | ||
| People are going out all over the place. | ||
| They're walking. | ||
| People that I have people that work in government, strong, tough cookies. | ||
| They can take care of themselves. | ||
| But it doesn't help to have big, strong muscles. | ||
| And I work out. | ||
| If a guy's over there with a gun shooting you in your face, you can be the strongest guy in the world. | ||
| A guy has a gun, shoots you in the face. | ||
| It doesn't matter how much you've worked out, how many weights you've lifted, how hard you work. | ||
| And so we have the toughest guys and we have the best guys. | ||
| And I'm willing to go to Chicago, which is a big trouble. | ||
| But we have a governor that refuses to admit his problems, huge problems. | ||
| Baltimore, Westmore, was telling me he wants, I want to walk with the president. | ||
| Well, I said, I want to walk with you too someday. | ||
| But first, you've got to clean up your crime because I'm not walking in Baltimore right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Baltimore is a hellhole. | |
| What do you think of Chet, the president's strategy on this so far and his plan or at least his proposed plan to expand it to other cities? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, listen, I go to the gym a lot, and I agree with him. | |
| I definitely don't want to be facing down someone with a gun. | ||
| But I do think it's important for us to understand is that the President of the United States and the United States military legally cannot go out and enforce state and local laws, right? | ||
| So the reality is that I think it's great that the federal government is taking the steps to engage with local law enforcement. | ||
| And we do see that all the time with the FBI and other federal agencies. | ||
| And I think that's important. | ||
| But clearly, most Americans do not want to see the military on the streets. | ||
| Michael, what about this strategy that the president is proposing to move into other cities, obviously targeting Democratic-led cities? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, I think the solution is probably more cops on the streets, not necessarily more troops on the streets. | |
| I think that was a very popular policy in the 90s pushed through by Bill Clinton and the author of the major crime bill, Joe Biden, putting thousands more cops on American streets. | ||
| I think that's more the answer. | ||
| I think the president does have more federal, more leeway because of the federal arrangement in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And I think that it's going to be a little bit trickier for him constitutionally and legally to go into other cities. | ||
| But I think it's important that we see collaboration like you are seeing in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And frankly, I was really proud of Mayor Bowser for being as cooperative and collaborative as she has been with the federal presence in D.C. | ||
| And again, it goes back to what I was saying a few minutes ago about feeling safer, feeling protected. | ||
| And Democrats need to keep that in mind when we look to the midterms when people start paying attention. | ||
| While we don't want troops in the streets, we do want to feel more protected. | ||
| We do want to feel that our communities are safer. | ||
| Now, last week, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker reacted to some of these comments that the Trump administration has made about potentially taking over law enforcement in Chicago, or I should say, expanding National Guard deployments to Chicago. | ||
| Let's listen to what he said. | ||
| What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is illegal. | |
| It is unconstitutional. | ||
| It is un-American. | ||
| No one from the White House or the executive branch has reached out to me or to the mayor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No one has reached out to our staffs. | |
| No effort has been made to coordinate or to ask for our assistance in identifying any actions that might be helpful to us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Local law enforcement has not been contacted. | |
| We have made no requests for federal intervention. | ||
| None. | ||
| We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did. | ||
| We read a story in the Washington Post. | ||
| If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor, or the police? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let me answer that question. | |
| This is not about fighting crime. | ||
| This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals. | ||
| This is about the President of the United States and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections. | ||
| Michael, do you think that voters are likely to agree that this would be a federal overreach, as the governor was just suggesting? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think it's hard to say. | |
| I think the governor has a point. | ||
| I think he's right. | ||
| I don't think the public wants to feel militarized. | ||
| But again, I think it is important that the federal federal government and our state government and our local governments are collaborating because in the end, voters just want to feel safer. | ||
| And that will be the ultimate test. | ||
| If one is opposing the other and you're not feeling safer, that's going to be a problem for Democrats. | ||
| We can't just oppose the president at every turn, even when some of the things he is doing make people feel better, make people feel safer. | ||
| We have to find that line. | ||
| I don't think the answer is troops. | ||
| And I think the governor is stating that very well, that if the president really wants to help with the problems regarding crime in Chicago, then he should be reaching out to them and working with them, not announcing plans and surprising them with his plans in the press. | ||
| Switching to a different topic, Chet, one of the big issues that really got a lot of attention over the summer was the Epstein files. | ||
| Congress comes back next week. | ||
| In a series of interviews on Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked whether or not Congress is going to vote to release more of the Epstein files. | ||
| Here's how he spoke to CNN about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the discharge petition from Thomas Massey and RoConna, I hope I'm using the right word, will ripen soon. | |
| Well, no, I don't. | ||
| If they get the signature, it's an absolute point. | ||
| It's not even necessary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You don't think it's going to happen? | |
| There may be a floor vote of one measure or another. | ||
| We have our own resolutions to do all this, but it's sort of not necessary at the point because the administration is already doing this. | ||
| They're turning it over. | ||
| So I don't think that Congressman Conna and Massey think that yet, at least from what I've heard. | ||
| And I don't know that the 218 people that they think they have as signatories of that think that either if they do get the signatures, will you allow that to come to a vote on the floor? | ||
| We might not even wait for that. | ||
| We have our own resolutions to affect this same thing. | ||
| But the process is playing out as it should. | ||
| And very soon, the American people will have that information, and they should have had it all along. | ||
| That's my view. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But you can't guarantee there'll be a vote on the discharge petition. | |
| There probably will be a vote of some sense, but we've got to get everybody collected again and build consensus around that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chet, do you think that it seems like you're over this issue? | |
| No, listen, the Epstein files are a huge problem for the Trump administration. | ||
| At the end of the day, a lot of people talk about policy. | ||
| You're like, okay, I don't know. | ||
| But the Epstein files, everybody wants to see the Epstein files. | ||
| And I think with the Trump administration and the goals that it's trying to achieve from a policy perspective, this is a huge distraction for this administration, but it's a real one. | ||
| I mean, Joe Rogan just came out and was criticizing the Trump administration for not releasing the Epstein files. | ||
| This is an issue that's not going to go away. | ||
| So I think the Trump administration needs to get together, figure out what they're going to do, how they're going to release it, and then move past it. | ||
| But you can't ignore it or try to continue to hide it because the conspiracies will literally distract everyone from the real policy issues that need to be done in Washington. | ||
| Do you think Republicans will vote to release them or more of them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll see. | |
| I mean, it's been, again, I don't understand why this has been such a big issue to release the files. | ||
| They've been talking about it. | ||
| The vice president's talked about it. | ||
| The president's talked about it. | ||
| Everyone's talked about it. | ||
| Just release the files and let's move on. | ||
| We will be taking your questions for our roundtable guests. | ||
| Republicans can call in at 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats at 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents at 202-748-8002. | ||
| While we're waiting for folks to call in, I want to talk about the redistricting fight that's been happening all over the country, starting in Texas with Governor Greg Abbott signed a new law that will allow that redistricting to happen there. | ||
| Civil rights groups are challenging that map, charging racial bias, and California is obviously pushing back. | ||
| What do you think is happening next in terms of this fight? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I got to say this: as a lawyer, looking at this particular issue, people need to understand that this redistricting fight started because there was a lawsuit that was filed in that state, in Texas and some other states, saying that you couldn't create these supergroups of saying that African Americans and Latinos are basically the same people. | |
| And I agree with that ruling. | ||
| Is that it doesn't make any sense to simply say African Americans and Latinos are basically the same, and so they should all get the same protections under the Voting Rights Act as a supergroup. | ||
| Each group should be able to individually get their protections. | ||
| And so, once that law, that the court came down and changed that law, then what happened was the state simply said, Okay, well, now we can redo the maps. | ||
| So, everything that is happening has been completely legal and has been right. | ||
| The issue that people are having now is around gerrymandering. | ||
| And with gerrymandering, we've seen this around the country: some states have decided to do independent boards like California, and other states like Texas leave it up to the legislature. | ||
| And so, it's up to the people in terms of how they want those redistricting processes to go. | ||
| Michael, what do you see as the next steps in this fight? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm kind of proud Democrats are actually fighting fire with fire here. | |
| You saw the new map in Texas. | ||
| You saw Governor Newsom respond in kind in California. | ||
| They are getting ready to redraw their map and put it to a state referendum, I believe. | ||
| You're seeing in Missouri the governor call a special election there and a special session. | ||
| I'm sorry? | ||
| A special session. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm sorry, a special session. | |
| But what I do think is that you're going to see other state legislatures, maybe in Maryland, obviously in Illinois, also try to yield another redraw their maps to yield a congressional seat as well. | ||
| So, I think it's look, this is politics. | ||
| This has been going on for as long as gerrymandering has been going on. | ||
| It's unseemly, but if neither side is going to unilaterally disarm, this is what we're going to see, just more politics. | ||
| But, can I say something really quickly about this? | ||
| Again, I think gerrymandering is terrible. | ||
| And I think that the fact that California, and you also bipartisan, you also had someone like Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who came out and said gerrymandering was banned. | ||
| So, California went to an independent commission. | ||
| They have Democrats, Republicans, and Independents that draw the maps. | ||
| It's not the politicians. | ||
| And that's what more states should be going toward. | ||
| The idea that Gavin Newsom is now trying to overturn that law so that he can specifically gerrymander in California, I think that's just simply atrocious. | ||
| Well, if I could just respond, what he's doing actually is a little bit more small D Democratic than I would say in Texas, where the legislature is deciding. | ||
| Gavin Newsom is just bypassing the independent commission the same as what Texas has done, only they're just leaving the decision to the voters. | ||
| I don't see what's wrong with that, and I don't see why anybody should be afraid of that. | ||
| There was a reporting out earlier last week with a major Democratic-leaning think tank, Center for American Progress, basically arguing that those independent commissions you were talking about, Chet, tend to be fixated in Democratic states, and therefore it's harming Democrats to keep these independent commissions when political-based redistricting is happening elsewhere, and that the Democrats should back away from that. | ||
| Michael, what do you think of that strategy? | ||
| That they should just abandon, the Democrats should abandon independent commissions if everyone else is doing political-based gerrymandering. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would have to look at it state by state, but based on what you read, based on what the CAP has put out, I would probably tend to agree. | |
| I knew some of the former members of the California delegation who put a lot of time and resources into making California move towards that independent system. | ||
| But when you have executives, strong executives like President Trump, who are strong leaders, use their executive authority and their popular influence to sort of hint to Texas we would like more seats. | ||
| Again, you're going to see a strong executive like Gavin Newsom respond in kind and go around the norms that they've set, just as Texas is doing. | ||
| Very, very unusual to redistrict mid-decade unless forced to buy a court by the courts for some reason, of which there are examples, but very unconventional, very norm-shattering. | ||
| And Gavin Newsom is just responding in kind. | ||
| I think that's terrible. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Let's get to some of the things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I agree. | |
| I would love it if Texas were to you. | ||
| Well, let's actually hear from someone in Texas. | ||
| Greg is a Democrat in Texas and in the firestorm of all of this. | ||
| Good morning, Greg. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I want to say something. | ||
| And when the Democratic Party, they write out a ticket and they say, well, the laws and the regulations and we go by these laws that's on the book. | ||
| And then you sit there and you don't want to argue with a person and speak out because this person's sitting here telling you something that you know is not true. | ||
| But then if you don't defend yourself, you're not defending. | ||
| You're not speaking up for your Democratic Party. | ||
| The Democratic ran their election perfect. | ||
| I didn't see nothing they did wrong. | ||
| And what upsets me that the Democrats sit out and speak against their own Democratic Party, like what we should have did, that y'all didn't do nothing wrong. | ||
| It's just the Republican Party ever since Rush Limbaugh, ever since Rush Limbaugh started talking against people of color. | ||
| He finna get sued. | ||
| And then he went hired Walter William and Armstrong William to hire them to come in to speak so he didn't get sued. | ||
| So he said what the black folks said, so I don't get sued. | ||
| Did you have a question for Michael LaRosa or Chet Love? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the Democratic ma'am, I don't too much speak to the Republican people like him because he's just in there for a paycheck. | |
| And if you go against your people. | ||
| Do you have a question for, you said you had a question from Michael LaRosa? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Democratic, sir. | |
| Sir, please stop saying what y'all got to do better. | ||
| Y'all did right. | ||
| You went by the laws and the rules and regulations put on the book. | ||
| These people in here is for money, and if they talk against people of color, everybody jumps on the bandwagon. | ||
| But you keep doing that. | ||
| All right, I think we've got the idea. | ||
| Let's hear from Anthony in New York on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Anthony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hi. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Is it okay to speak about crime or is it a different topic? | ||
| It's an open topic about what's going on in Washington and national politics. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, so I just want to say this. | |
| I understand everybody has a different view. | ||
| And I watch a lot of the news where people are being interviewed about crimes in different cities. | ||
| I'm from the Bronx, New York. | ||
| I still live in the Bronx, New York. | ||
| I'm near Webster Avenue, a high bridge area near Yankee Stadium. | ||
| That's the best way I could say it. | ||
| I'm a male Hispanic. | ||
| The people that they're interviewing, I don't know where they live. | ||
| I don't know if they're engaged communities. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| But I could tell you the people where I live would be so happy to have the National Guard there when they come home at 10 o'clock at night and they're walking the streets. | ||
| And then they hear a bunch of white people that live, and black people, and Hispanic people that don't live in these communities, except for a lot. | ||
| There are some, and I'm not saying, but they hate this man so much that they'd rather not have it, the security. | ||
| And I just find, I believe it's a big lie to the people that live in these communities that come home at night and are scared. | ||
| Just go on the trains in New York City. | ||
| Every day it's violence every single day. | ||
| So my view on it, and I thank you for taking the time to listen. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Have a great day. | ||
| So, Chet, what Anthony just said there is very similar to what the president has been saying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| I mean, I think the reality on the ground. | ||
| I helped one of my friends, Jano Caldwell, found the Caldwell Institute because his brother was an innocent victim of a violent shooting about two years ago in the streets of Chicago. | ||
| It's a dangerous place. | ||
| We were there actually for his funeral, and someone else was shot while we were in the city of Chicago. | ||
| So, absolutely, we need more protection in these cities. | ||
| And one thing to the prior caller talking about Democrats and saying that the Democrats, fairness, look, the Democrats have not had a fair election for their president, presidential candidate, since Obama. | ||
| I mean, Bernie Sanders, we know what the DNC did to Bernie Sanders. | ||
| We know what the DNC did to Budich and forced Biden on everyone. | ||
| So, if we want to talk about fair and free elections, I mean, let's have an honest conversation about that. | ||
| Michael, what did you think of those comments about that many people in these cities that Trump is targeting would love to see the National Guard? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I mean, I completely understand. | ||
| I welcome the National Guard. | ||
| I've been a resident of D.C. up until last year for 18 years, and I have no problem with the National Guard coming in. | ||
| And my advice to Democrats is to listen to people, to folks like the caller, because he's coming from a politically very blue part of the country, but they don't feel safe. | ||
| And while they might disagree with President Trump on style and other things, they do appreciate him trying to keep their community safer. | ||
| And again, it goes back to feeling safe versus being overwhelmed with stats that really don't balance or reconcile with how voters are feeling in their own communities. | ||
| And Democrats need to be mindful of that. | ||
| In terms of free elections, I worked on the Biden presidential campaign, and I have to tell you that we did win fair and square. | ||
| And all of our voters in the Democratic primary, it was a 24-person field. | ||
| And there was no DNC influence, trust me. | ||
| We lost overwhelmingly in those first three contests and came back and won that fair and square. | ||
| The voters in 2016 had a big choice between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. | ||
| We vote in our primaries. | ||
| That said, parties are political parties. | ||
| They're not democratic institutions of themselves. | ||
| They are designed to win elections. | ||
| And what you saw in 2024 was the leader of the party decided to step down. | ||
| And the delegates had decided, the delegates in our party, where all the power is at the convention, the delegates decided that they wanted Kamala Harris. | ||
| So speaking of the Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee had its summer meeting in Minneapolis. | ||
| And at that meeting, DNC Chair Ken Martin spoke about the future of the party. | ||
| Let's listen to some of those comments. | ||
| Now look, folks, I'm sick and tired of this Democratic Party bringing a pencil to a knife fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We cannot be the only party that plays by the rules anymore. | |
| We've got to stand up and fight. | ||
| We're not going to have a hand tied behind our back anymore. | ||
| Let's grow a damn spine and get in this fight, Democrats. | ||
| LFG, that's right. | ||
| Americans are hungry for leaders. | ||
| They're hungry for candidates who are on the side of working people. | ||
| They're hungry for leaders who give a damn about their circumstances, and they're hungry for a government that gives people freedom, not fascism. | ||
| To every American who is hungry for that kind of government, I invite you to join us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Democrats, Republicans, Independents, I invite you to join us. | |
| Together, we will fight with every fiber of our being against Trump and his power-hungry circus. | ||
| Chet, what do you think of this idea of the Democrats trying to shift to fight fire with fire? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What happened to when they go low, we go high? | |
| It's basically like if they go low, we're going to hell. | ||
| It's absolute, the Democratic Party is in disarray. | ||
| And you see that in the numbers. | ||
| Republicans, right? | ||
| 84 million in the bank, where the DNC is around like 14, and they're scrambling. | ||
| You have Bernie Sanders and AOC who are going on tour around this country talking to people and criticizing Democrats. | ||
| You have the infighting that happened within the DNC because some members were looking to primary some of their older entrenched Democrats. | ||
| So yeah, I mean, the Democratic Party is rudderless. | ||
| They don't know what's going on, and it's a complete mess. | ||
| And we'll see what happens in the midterms. | ||
| Michael, in addition to some of those fights that Chet was just laying out, there's also been quite a bit of division within the party on Israel and the war in Gaza. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| What's the future here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I don't know. | |
| It's not the DNC's job to get in the middle of policy fights. | ||
| Their job is to win elections and to build state parties, strengthen them, and focus on winning. | ||
| But their job is not to further divide Democratic candidates who have different constituencies that might feel one way or the other for trying to win districts. | ||
| And look, we have a stronger than likely chance of taking back the House by just because of the math alone. | ||
| People forget, for as we like to, as my colleague likes to talk about the disarray that Democrats are in, we picked up two seats in the House in the last election, making this Congress as probably one of the thinnest margins in history. | ||
| We don't have a very difficult path to the majority where there's going to be a lot of oversight in the next few years. | ||
| So we're on our way. | ||
| We're not as disorganized or as dysfunctional as what people would like you to think. | ||
| Also keep in mind that when President Trump won all seven swing states, in five of those swing states, the voters on the next ballot chose Democrats in Nevada, in North Carolina, in Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Arizona. | ||
| Those are where elections are decided. | ||
| And at the Senate and gubernatorial level, they chose Democrats. | ||
| They chose President Trump at the top. | ||
| But that is by no means a reflection of a weak Democratic Party. | ||
| Let's hear from Ken in Carlsbad, New Mexico on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Ken. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Say, good morning. | |
| I'm a retired union electrician, and I'm an independent now because the Democratic Party has kind of lost its mind. | ||
| If you sum up all their policies, they don't make any sense. | ||
| Here's what I mean by that. | ||
| We have a severe housing shortage for average workers. | ||
| We have families that can't afford to live in America anymore because they can't earn enough money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And Democrats like to say they're concerned about the workers in America, but they need to say they're for the American workers. | |
| They need to come up with a sensible, reasonable immigration policy that makes sense for American workers, not for the globalist leftists or the people in D.C. that want to swell their voting ranks. | ||
| And all I hear is silence on this issue. | ||
| This is a huge issue. | ||
| Immigration must be controlled. | ||
| It must have a sane policy behind it. | ||
| It must be limited. | ||
| Laws must be enforced. | ||
| But see, the Democrats, they don't want to talk about any of that. | ||
| Well, let's see if Michael wants to talk about that. | ||
| Michael, what are your responses to some of those points that Ken is making? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I respectfully disagree. | |
| Democrats have been leading the charge in Congress and at the executive level for decades when it comes to immigration reform. | ||
| I agree with the caller that the Democrats need to be strong on enforcing the laws as they exist and strong on protecting our border and deporting illegal immigrants who commit crimes here in this country. | ||
| But we've got to keep in mind, immigration reform can't be solved at the executive level. | ||
| We are operating under a law from 1986, signed by Ronald Reagan, passed by a Republican Senate and a Democratic House. | ||
| There is only a congressional solution to changing the law. | ||
| And we've seen over the last decades, we saw Ted Kennedy and Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio. | ||
| We saw members of Congress, George W. Bush tried, Barack Obama tried to bring coalitions in Congress together to help pass new immigration laws. | ||
| That's where the energy has to be because the president can pass executive orders and sign executive actions all he wants. | ||
| And that's fine. | ||
| Those are temporary solutions. | ||
| Those are usually undone by the next White House. | ||
| So if we want to really change the laws, then we have to do it at the congressional level. | ||
| And there's one party who has control of all branches of government right now. | ||
| Let's hear from Larry in Alton, Illinois on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Larry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fire with fire. | |
| Maui and Pacific Palisades Republican areas to the demasculinated male that you got. | ||
| Again, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Ron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| I'd like to ask Chudd a question. | ||
| How do you swear Trump saying slavery is okay, firing black generals from our military and women and saying that Reversing the history of our country with taking out black exhibits that portray the Buffalo soldiers, | ||
| Tuskegee airmen, and you, you wear a Confederate uniform, that gray coat with your colors. | ||
| How do you square it? | ||
| Is slavery okay with you? | ||
| Tell me that. | ||
| How many people do you want to own? | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you want to? | |
| I would like to respond. | ||
| And again, this is sort of indicative of what we've seen from the left, right? | ||
| We've seen these attacks against minorities who support the president a lot. | ||
| And I think it's important to understand that it's not about race in this country. | ||
| It's about coming together as Americans. | ||
| My family's been in this country since the early 1700s. | ||
| So I'm very much American. | ||
| And I think that's important to understand the fact that Americans can disagree on policy. | ||
| And I think that's really important. | ||
| Also, as we think about things like Trump never said slavery was okay. | ||
| Trump never did any of that. | ||
| I think the issue is with what we see in the monuments, with what we see going on with the NPR and some of the other news stations, what we've seen in the museums, is Donald Trump is trying to talk about national unity and how do we have a national unified message of being great as Americans and bringing America together. | ||
| That's really the key. | ||
| And that's really what he's ultimately focusing on. | ||
| It's not about getting rid or denying what happened in America or what happened in this country. | ||
| Absolutely slavery was abhorrent. | ||
| Absolutely discrimination to anyone is abhorrent. | ||
| But we really do need to be focusing on how do we bring America together because we're in a very trying time. | ||
| We're facing issues with China. | ||
| We're facing issues in the Middle East. | ||
| And we need to have a unified America. | ||
| It's not about Democrats. | ||
| It's not about Republicans. | ||
| It's really about being Americans. | ||
| There have been a lot of people challenging, though, the president. | ||
| And I'm looking here at an article from ABC News where Trump, this is what the caller was referencing, I'm guessing, says that the Smithsonian should focus on America's brightness, not how bad slavery was, and sort of move away from that part of America's history. | ||
| And there has been a lot of criticism of this administration for attempting to dial back that part of our American story. | ||
| What do you think of those efforts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think, again, I think that you can do both, right? | |
| I think you can recognize that slavery was bad. | ||
| You can recognize that discrimination existed in this country. | ||
| But we can also focus on what's ahead and looking at how do we make America an America that works for everyone. | ||
| I mean, and that's the work that I'm doing around the country, working with lawmakers, is focusing on how do you make the country work for everybody. | ||
| Let's hear from Jim in Ana Cordeus, Washington on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, everyone. | |
| I have a question that I think both of you gentlemen can answer, and maybe it might point to something that you both have in common. | ||
| And it's about individual rights. | ||
| The question I would ask is: what is the role, for each of you to answer, what is the role of the individual in society? | ||
| Are there any rights that are above the rights of the individual? | ||
| And if so, what are they? | ||
| I'll take my answer off the air. | ||
| All right, Michael, why don't you go first? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Rights of the individual. | |
| I mean, sort of, I don't know if I have a response. | ||
| I think there's the individual responsibility when it comes to quality of life and when it comes to finding equal opportunity. | ||
| I think Democrats have gone a little bit too far in trying to level the playing field with equality of outcome over equality of opportunity. | ||
| We need to get back to that. | ||
| We need to talk about equality of opportunity, but not necessarily equality of outcomes. | ||
| And I think that's where individual rights, individual responsibility comes into play. | ||
| I'm not a lawyer, so I wasn't sure if his question was more theoretical or more legal. | ||
| So I'll pass it to Chet. | ||
| Yeah, give it to the lawyer. | ||
| Listen, I think at the end of the day, America is founded on the principles of individual liberty, and that needs to be something that we always consider. | ||
| Yes, there are encroachments on that liberty in certain situations in terms of harming other people, et cetera. | ||
| But we always need to make sure that our principles are focused on protecting individual liberty and right to privacy. | ||
| Michelle is in Montgomery, Alabama, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Michelle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Kimberly. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I've been listening to the program. | ||
| I wanted to change the station because the issue that I'm having is when it comes to Democrat strategies, we always talk above the issue instead of actually laying the groundwork. | ||
| The gentleman spoke of the economy when President Biden came in, our inflation, but didn't explain because of the pandemic, people were hoarding their money and not necessarily spending it into the economy, and there was the uncertainty. | ||
| We didn't get an explanation about COVID from Trump's administration then. | ||
| And so the misinformation and the disinformation had already happened. | ||
| But we never stayed on the issue of why the economy is the way it is. | ||
| And there has been anything to happen for our economy since this president has taken office. | ||
| However, he redeemed himself on the last call I was listening. | ||
| Yes, I think with the Democrats and our strategy has been too much of equal principles on maybe, let's say, LGBTQ, I'm an ally, but not enough in equal opportunity when it comes to labor and wages, the union. | ||
| Why is the reason our minimum wage the way that it is? | ||
| And one more point, Kimberly, and I'm going to let it go. | ||
| Our country became very divided, not under the presidency, but what Mitch McConnell did when he did not allow President Obama to get those Supreme Court judges. | ||
| And that has changed the landscape of our country. | ||
| My final, final point. | ||
| U.S. government needs to start in elementary school and not just indoctrination of a pledge of allegiance to a flag. | ||
| Children need to understand how our government works so that they will understand their responsibility to voting and their civil rights and their liberties and their freedoms because we have too many different. | ||
| So, Michelle, I do want to let our guests respond to those points that you raised. | ||
| So, Chet, why don't you go first? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the first thing I want to address is: I love what she said about education, because education is fundamental to all kids and all students. | |
| And what we've seen is President Trump's got a lot of flack for going after the Department of Education, but the United States right now, in terms of our math, reading, test scores, we're abysmal. | ||
| We're not great. | ||
| We're not at the top in these top countries. | ||
| And so something has to change. | ||
| And so the federal government taking the steps to say, hey, let's do away with this Department of Education and let's really focus on giving more control back to the states to actually educate kids in the states. | ||
| I think that's an important thing. | ||
| Michael, she also raised some points about the Democratic Party as well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and she had a lot of, she made a lot of great, great arguments. | |
| And the first one about the economy, I did say previously earlier in the hour that a lot of the spending that President Biden that we did in terms of the American Rescue Plan within the first month of being in office and then following with the Inflation Reduction Act the following year, A lot of that was a result. | ||
| I mean, it was a result, a direct result of where the economy was when we took office in January of 2021. | ||
| I think people tend to forget that presidents have four terms, or I'm sorry, four-year terms. | ||
| President Trump owned the last year of 2020, and that is why the reaction to his last year in office that Joe Biden was elected, not just elected, but elected with the most votes in American history, 7 million more votes than Donald Trump, but the most votes in American history, because at the time, people were really desperate for leadership. | ||
| Now, President Biden came in and we did push through policies that may have triggered some, that may have triggered high costs for consumers. | ||
| Yes, I think that's probably fair, a fair assessment. | ||
| And we're still working to bring those costs down. | ||
| I know President Biden was, and I know President Trump is trying to do that as well. | ||
| I want to read two questions that came in from social media, one that sort of are along similar lines. | ||
| So one is from Mark, and it says, the DNC widely trails the Republican National Committee by nearly every fundraising metric. | ||
| By the end of June, the RNC had $80 million on hand compared to $15 million for the DNC. | ||
| Could you explain why major donors are not giving to Democrats? | ||
| And along a similar vein, Steve in Tampa, Florida says, please ask Mr. La Rosa, how can the Democrat Party possibly win elections without focusing and proposing policies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So about the money differential as well as the policy strategy for the Democrats. | |
| Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Well, when it comes to fundraising, you have to look at the whole picture. | ||
| The DNC and the RNC are two places that raise money. | ||
| Yes, we were significantly outraised at the DNC. | ||
| I think it is much more competitive. | ||
| And I don't have the numbers on me, but we also have to measure success here when it comes to looking at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, where we are landing some really talented recruits in order to help take back the Senate. | ||
| Roy Cooper in North Carolina, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, potentially, we now have an open seat in Iowa, potentially Governor Janet Mills in Maine. | ||
| We have some really great opportunity. | ||
| Our DNC fundraising is just one small measure, and we are doing well in others. | ||
| And we can't forget that there is a dark money race as well when it comes to super PACs. | ||
| And Democrats tend to raise a lot of money when it comes to super PACs. | ||
| And we certainly outspent and outraised Republicans in the last cycle. | ||
| So there's a lot. | ||
| You have to look at the whole picture. | ||
| And what I meant about the DNC when it comes to policy, they're not a policy arm. | ||
| They are there to win elections. | ||
| They are there to grow and strengthen the Democratic Party. | ||
| And most importantly, they are there to help build, cultivate, and strengthen all of the state-level parties to make this a much stronger Democratic Party, not just at the national level, but at each state level as well. | ||
| So we can start winning elections in places like Idaho, like Iowa, like Montana. | ||
| That's the job of the DNC. | ||
| But when they get involved in policy fights, when they start trying to, when the political parties in Washington try to start making policy, that's when we have an issue because we have candidates who are Democrats who might be on a different side of an issue than a candidate in New York versus a candidate in Kansas. | ||
| Not every message, not every policy is going to work for every candidate. | ||
| So we need to focus on winning elections, not potentially dividing Democratic candidates across the board by forcing certain people. | ||
| I want to hear from Chet particularly on that fundraising gap. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, the fundraising gap is because Democrats are still out of touch. | |
| When you look at Joe Biden when he came out for this last election, what was his campaign promises? | ||
| What was he really focused on? | ||
| We're going to beat Donald Trump. | ||
| We're going to stop Trump. | ||
| That's all you heard. | ||
| It's like everybody's just so focused on Trump instead of on the American people. | ||
| And that's why Trump won. | ||
| And that's why Republicans are winning right now. | ||
| Donors don't want to give money to a party that doesn't have a vision and have a focus. | ||
| They want to give money to people who are actually going to win. | ||
| I mean, my colleague was talking about winning races. | ||
| You win races on policies and pocketbook issues. | ||
| I mean, Donald Trump came out and said he wanted to lower everyone's electricity bill by 50%. | ||
| And so you could do that with supporting things like wind and solar and other types of technologies, right? | ||
| But instead of Democrats trying to push those technologies and support the president in the agenda of lowering, they simply want to fight the president. | ||
| It just doesn't make any sense. | ||
| Chet, he just took, the big beautiful bill just took away all of the Inflation Reduction Act incentives for exactly what you're talking about. | ||
| The president just took all of that opportunity to lower costs away in that bill. | ||
| But again, I think what you have consistently are industries and people who've been fighting the president instead of supporting the president. | ||
| I think there are ways and opportunities to bring back opportunities in those industries and in those sectors by working with the president instead of working against the president. | ||
| So I think that under Joe Biden coming more. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The private sector is not too happy about a lot of those incentives being taken away by this president. | |
| So I do want to get back to our callers, but very quickly, because you raised it, Michael, about Joni Ernst not running again in Iowa. | ||
| Chet, I wanted to get your thoughts on her choosing to step away from that race and what that means, because Michael mentioned it as a possible pickup for Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, look, I think at the end of the day, I think it's great to have new blood in the party and having new people come in because the challenge that we've had in this country is that you have too many incumbents who've stayed in these offices for far too long and they're really out of touch with the American people. | |
| And I think we've seen a massive shift. | ||
| I mean, as my colleagues talked about, people really voted for Trump. | ||
| And the reason they voted for Trump, because he was in touch with the American people. | ||
| And a lot of these career politicians have not been in touch with the American people. | ||
| Robert is in Greenville, North Carolina on our line for independence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Robert. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| We should be talking about coup number one and a half. | ||
| The first coup didn't work. | ||
| And now we're doing the same thing that we're letting The government take over exactly what Putin did with his moving all his equipment and all his soldiers into Ukraine and said things were just training for training. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Robert, did you have a question? | ||
| We're letting for Michael LaRosa or Chet Love? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Love, shame on you, brother. | |
| Bob is in Roselle, New Jersey on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Bob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And now we're all in the middle of the day. | |
| And please turn down the volume on your TV and then go ahead, Bob. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just want to comment about the things that Trump is doing. | |
| He's attacking the CDC or health. | ||
| He's attacking education. | ||
| He has no interest on making this country better. | ||
| He's a buddy with Putin. | ||
| And, you know, I believe Trump's a communist. | ||
| And that's where it all winds up. | ||
| This country's better wake up and realize what he's doing to us here. | ||
| He's not for us. | ||
| He's for Trump. | ||
| He wants to be a dictator. | ||
| And people got to wake up and realize what's going on. | ||
| But there is a solution. | ||
| That would be somebody out there that's a better shot. | ||
| No, we do not call for violence on this show. | ||
| Chet, I do want to get your response, though, on the issue of the CDC. | ||
| That was big news this past week that Trump fired some leadership there. | ||
| There were some other resignations and a lot of controversy around that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's right. | |
| But I think what's unique, traditionally, what most people don't realize is that the president's given a lot of latitude to secretaries and leaders in these various departments. | ||
| What's been different under this Trump 2.0 is they've consolidated a lot of that out of the White House. | ||
| So while people may have concerns or issues with certain individuals leading those agencies, the focus really from President Trump has been simply he wants to have a stronger control over those agencies to be able to make the changes that are necessary at the speed that it needs to happen. | ||
| And so in order to do that, they've consolidated. | ||
| So most of the direction is coming directly out of the White House. | ||
| And again, I think a lot of people have made a lot of political fodder out of these issues. | ||
| But I think that's really the key there. | ||
| Eddie is in New York on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Eddie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I just want to tell Mike that he should become a Republican. | ||
| Because listen to that last guy, that's your typical Democrat now. | ||
| But I want to get back to what the Republicans and Democrats stand for. | ||
| Democrats are for illegal aliens, criminals, anything to hurt this country. | ||
| Trump is doing a great job. | ||
| And Mike, come to the Republican side. | ||
| We're happy over here. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Michael, you want to respond? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would just say that Democrats just need to be mindful of the fact that callers like the last caller do feel like the president is doing a lot. | |
| There is a person, we are really losing the perception game. | ||
| And the president is very skilled at crafting the perception, moving fast, that he is doing a lot of things. | ||
| And you have to give him credit. | ||
| He is moving at a pace. | ||
| Now, did they pass a lot of laws that will be sustainable? | ||
| No. | ||
| What's in these trade deals that he has made? | ||
| Well, we really don't know because we know verbally there are deals, but we really don't know what's in many of the deals. | ||
| So, but the point is there's the perception that the president is doing a lot and that he's moving fast and that he's making changes. | ||
| And that's okay. | ||
| That's why he was elected. | ||
| He was empowered to do that. | ||
| Voters overwhelmingly gave him that power. | ||
| But it's important for my party to remember that we can't reflexively oppose just everything he does because we oppose him politically. | ||
| And we have to keep in mind that we're not, we don't want to be the defenders of a system that he's trying to change that doesn't work simply because he's the one trying to change it. | ||
| Jim is in Wildwood, Florida on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| The other day you had two gentlemen and I believe that talked about education. | ||
| Education's a joke in this country. | ||
| Like the guy, like the other, I could say the more correct guy there on your show. | ||
| I love it when you have competing ideas on you. | ||
| You don't have some lefty up there just espousing whatever they feel. | ||
| But anyway, education. | ||
| 60% of all Baltimore kids in Baltimore, we just moved out of Loudoun County, just south of Baltimore and Virginia, they can't read at the fifth or sixth grade level. | ||
| So there's education and about the government, again, back to education. | ||
| The states are supposed to have the power. | ||
| It's not in the Constitution. | ||
| And Jesus, the American people, it's the 21st century. | ||
| And you want the federal government to run your life down to when your kids sat down to lunch. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| That should be in education. | ||
| It's worry. | ||
| The states to have the power. | ||
| And on immigration, same thing with the last guy said. | ||
| When you let 20 million people in, just throw the door open, that's not for the American people. | ||
| And all these Mother Teresas that wouldn't say, oh, these people are coming here. | ||
| It's their country's problem, not ours. | ||
| We can't be the dumping ground for the whole world. | ||
| And the last thing is, again, back to the states and the states having power. | ||
| That's where it's supposed to lay. | ||
| Not billions of dollars worth of time. | ||
| We're just about out of time, and I want to get our guests a chance to respond to you, Jim. | ||
| And Chet, I saw you nodding along with what Jim was saying. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean, he gets it. | |
| The American people get it. | ||
| It's just logic. | ||
| People aren't Republicans and Democrats. | ||
| They're just logical people who just want, at the end of the day, the government to work for them and they want life to be a little bit easier. | ||
| They don't want to have to be worrying about where their next paycheck is going to come from or worrying about trading off between feeding their kids and buying their kids new shoes for school. | ||
| Michael, any closing thoughts or response to Jim? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, my old boss, Jill Biden, when we were campaigning in 2020, she would say, most people, you know, don't want to wake up and think about government at all. | |
| They just want it to work. | ||
| And I think Chet agrees with that. | ||
| I think that's what the caller is trying to say. | ||
| It is important to remind this president, though, to keep power at some of the state levels. | ||
| Let's try not to get the federal government involved in some of the corporate entities like NVIDIA, like an Intel. | ||
| Let's let the free markets do their thing and let businesses do their thing and regulate at a moderated level. | ||
| Well, thank you very much to Democratic strategist Michael LaVroza and Republican strategist Chet Love. | ||
| I appreciate both of your times this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Later on on Washington Journal, we're going to take more of your calls in open forum. | ||
| But up next, we'll be joined by Alberto Medina, who's communications manager at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE, who will discuss the state of political engagement among young adults in the U.S. We'll be right back. | ||
| Historian Jay Winning first appeared on the Book Notes television program 24 years ago to discuss his book, April 1865. | ||
| It became a number one New York Times bestseller, reportedly read by Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and many others. | ||
| It's the narrative story of the Civil War. | ||
| Or his latest book, Winnick Stepped Back Four Years in History to look at how the Civil War began. | ||
| This time, the book is titled 1861, The Lost Peace. | ||
| Northerners had little regard for the strength or determination of the South, writes Winnick. | ||
| Lincoln friend John Hay said the Southern Army was nothing more than a vast mob. | ||
| The New York Tribune said it differently. | ||
| Jeff Davis and company will be swinging from the battlements at Washington by the 4th of July. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Jay Winnick with his book 1861, The Lost Peace, on this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb. | |
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| Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're joined now by Alberto Medina, who is the communications manager for the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or Circle. | ||
| Welcome to Washington Journal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much, Kimberly. | |
| Great to be here. | ||
| So tell us about Circle's mission and funding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Yeah, Circle, as you said, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. | ||
| It is part of Tufts University's Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life. | ||
| And we're a nonpartisan research center that's really focused on young people's civic learning and civic participation. | ||
| That means youth voting. | ||
| That means we look at young people in the media. | ||
| We look at civic education, both K-12 civic learning and also kind of civic learning out of schools. | ||
| And what we're really concerned with is the barriers, the inequities that prevent many young people from fully participating in civic life. | ||
| So we're trying to find out what those barriers are and really work with partners and get that information out into the field so that organizations and stakeholders working directly with youth will be empowered with that information and can help improve civic engagement for all young people. | ||
| Civic engagement can cover quite a few different things. | ||
| What do you mean by that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and we define it broadly on purpose, right? | |
| Voting is certainly part of it, and it's one of the main things we study in part because of its importance and because it's something that's available to all young people, right? | ||
| Also, because it's something that's fairly straightforward to measure. | ||
| But, you know, civic engagement also means participation in communities. | ||
| It means serving in leadership positions. | ||
| It means even helping neighbors, right? | ||
| It means protesting and engaging in boycotts or signing petitions, taking all forms of civic action. | ||
| And young people really do take a wide view of what they consider their own civic engagement as well. | ||
| So we try to reflect that in our own research and consider how young people themselves are defining and engaging and how they want to participate in the life of our communities and our democracy. | ||
| When you talk about young voters, who specifically are you referring to? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We usually define youth or young voters as ages 18 to 29. | |
| That's the age range used by a lot of other important data sources like the census, for example, and many others that we also rely on. | ||
| So usually ages 18 to 29 sometimes will go up to 18 to 34 or look a little bit younger, but that's generally the age range we're looking at. | ||
| Earlier this month, an AP NORC poll found that young adults are less likely to follow politics or say that voting is important compared to older adults. | ||
| And it's one of several headlines that suggests a lot of disillusionment among young voters. | ||
| How would you describe young people and their politics? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a very interesting thing because there are sort of two somewhat seemingly distinct or contradictory realities happening at the same time. | |
| On the one hand, yes, young people are very disillusioned and in some ways detached from our democracy. | ||
| And that's been the case for a long time, right? | ||
| I mean, that polling reflects something that is one of the main concerns of our work. | ||
| Young people still do vote at lower rates than older adults for all kinds of reasons, right? | ||
| Many of them structural reasons, logistical barriers, the fact of being young people itself, then needing to register to vote and needing to learn about the process for the first time, all of these things that are very different for a 19-year-old than they might be for a 59-year-old. | ||
| But on top of that, we do see a lot of polling, including our own, reflect that young people don't love what they're seeing out of our politics. | ||
| It's not necessarily that they don't believe in democracy, as you hear sometimes. | ||
| They just don't feel that it's working, especially working for them as a generation. | ||
| At the same time, we've been living in one of the eras of highest youth voting since the voting age was lowered to 18. | ||
| In 2018 and 2020, especially, we saw historic highs for youth voting in midterm and presidential elections. | ||
| It dropped a little bit in 2022 and 2024, but still among the highest we've seen in recent decades. | ||
| So there's this parallel dynamic happening in which young people don't love what they're seeing in our politics, and they'll express that. | ||
| And I think it's shaping their voting and their participation, but it's not necessarily leading them to disengage, right? | ||
| In many cases, it's actually leading them to engage and to want to do something about it. | ||
| And I think that's why we've seen higher voting rates in recent election cycles. | ||
| Is it at the same rate as older adults? | ||
| Not quite, but that's something that's been true for a very long time and for every generation. | ||
| I want to follow up with what you mentioned about the youth vote trending upwards but then declining a bit in 2024. | ||
| I know that Circle has done some research on this and you have a study that you did, a poll, that found that young people in the 2024 election struggling, disconnected, and dissatisfied. | ||
| What was behind that 2024 decline? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so in 2020, we estimated that 50% of young people turned out to vote, which is, I think, the highest that we've seen it in the past 50 years in 2024. | |
| According to our estimated declined just a bit to 47%. | ||
| That's still among the five highest turnout rates that we've seen, again, since the voting age was lowered to 18. | ||
| And we did find in our polling that young people were not necessarily feeling great about the election or what was happening in our democracy. | ||
| So I think some of that can be attributed to that. | ||
| A series of combination of what we call motivational and structural or logistical barriers. | ||
| So, many young people didn't vote because they didn't believe it would make a difference or because they didn't like the candidates on the ballot. | ||
| That wasn't the majority of youth. | ||
| The majority of youth actually faced other barriers to voting. | ||
| But certainly, a combination of those factors was in play. | ||
| And then, you know, we talk about young people struggling because that's the other big piece that we saw and that we've seen affecting youth not just now in the you know for the last election in 2024, but really in recent years. | ||
| You know, we see a generation that is really struggling in many ways. | ||
| You know, much has been said about the youth mental health crisis. | ||
| That's something that we see. | ||
| And then, far and away, young people's top concern in 2024 was economic, and not just in the sense of young people telling us that that was their top issue, even though that's also true, but also young people struggling financially, in many cases, heavily. | ||
| So, we asked young people in our post-election poll about their own financial situation, and about 40% of youth said that they sometimes or often have trouble making ends meet. | ||
| And then, when we compare that or look at that question in concert with things like voter turnout, like other forms of civic participation, the young people who are struggling financially the most were the least likely to vote, the least likely to engage in other ways. | ||
| So, that's one of the biggest pieces of our research right now, and it's something that we're really concerned about because we do see this group of young people that is struggling again in many ways, not just economically, but economically, certainly being one of those ways that is kind of getting left behind in our democracy a little bit. | ||
| And that I think is going to require some extra attention and support to make sure that they can participate fully. | ||
| Circle also has some research on how youth voters shifted from Democrat to Republican a bit in the last election. | ||
| Because in 2020, Joe Biden won voters 18 to 29 by 25 points. | ||
| But in 2024, Kamala Harris only won them by four points. | ||
| What is behind that shift? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think two things. | |
| One, as I mentioned, you know, young people are disillusioned with democracy right now. | ||
| And when you don't like the way things are happening or taking place, you want some change, right? | ||
| So, I think the fact that President Trump, even though he had been president before for many young people, you know, especially those youngest in the cohort, may not remember or have been, you know, adults during Donald Trump's first presidency. | ||
| There's a possibility that he kind of represented change to them from what they were seeing and not liking in the lead up to the 2024 election. | ||
| But the biggest piece, I think, is really that young people are really issue-based and issue-focused voters. | ||
| This is something that we've found in our research really consistently over the past couple of cycles. | ||
| Young people are not necessarily party loyalists. | ||
| They don't vote because of an attachment or an allegiance to a certain candidate or party most of the time. | ||
| When we ask young people why they vote, the biggest reason is to have an impact on the issues that they care about. | ||
| And in 2024, as I mentioned, the biggest issue far and away was the cost of living and inflation. | ||
| I think it was for all Americans, but it was definitely for young people. | ||
| And I think that flies in the face sometimes of some of the perceptions that are out there about youth that they're incredibly concerned with social issues like abortion or incredibly concerned with things like foreign policy. | ||
| And many of them certainly do care about those things as well. | ||
| But the economy and especially the cost of living was such a deep, deep concern for young people in the 2024 election. | ||
| And polling show that young people and I think all Americans tended to trust the Republican Party or President Trump a little bit more on that issue. | ||
| So that's really one of the main things that we saw in the lead up and in our polling right after the 2024 election. | ||
| And I think it's one of the main things that we can attribute that vote shift to. | ||
| We're going to be taking calls for Alberto Medina of Circle. | ||
| If you want to reach him and us with a question, our numbers for Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| For Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| And if you're under 30 in particular, we'd love to hear from you. | ||
| That's 202-748-8003. | ||
| Before we get to callers, Alberto, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about what I'm sure both of the political parties are very interested in, which is the best way to reach these voters. | ||
| We saw a lot of attention paid to TikTok and podcasts in the 2024 election. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What actually works? | |
| It's going to be a little bit different based on who you're talking about. | ||
| One of the most important things to understand about young people is their incredible diversity, not just racially, although that's certainly part of it. | ||
| Nearly half of youth in that under 30 cohort are young people of color. | ||
| But in terms of their life experiences, we have a big problem with the educational gaps in youth voter turnout, for example, and young people without college experience voting at rates sometimes 20, 30 points lower than youth in college or with a college degree. | ||
| And I think it's often a product in part of the fact that you say young people and many people think college students, right? | ||
| And you think about youth outreach and many people think about what's happening in college campuses. | ||
| So who's getting left behind when we do that? | ||
| So how to reach young people is really going to depend on who they are, where they are in their lives. | ||
| Digital platforms and social media are certainly a big part of it. | ||
| In our polling, we found that about four in five young people count at least one social media network or digital platform among their primary sources of information about elections and politics. | ||
| That said, it's not the be-all end-all. | ||
| It's still, you know, news websites and apps are still the number one source of news for young people. | ||
| And many young people are still looking at the local TV news and not quite as reliant on things like TikTok and YouTube as some would believe. | ||
| So it takes a little bit of everything. | ||
| The digital piece is certainly important. | ||
| The ground game is also important, right? | ||
| And things like relational organizing, for example, relying on young people's peers and personal networks. | ||
| Young people trust their peers a lot, as I think we all do. | ||
| And it's really one of the best ways to reach them and to reach them in a way that young people are going to actually trust and take action on. | ||
| Because one of the really interesting things that we found in our research is that even though young people are quite reliant on social media for their news, they don't always necessarily trust it. | ||
| They understand some of the pitfalls that come with that. | ||
| So when we asked young people about their trusted institutions, the big social media and tech companies were actually last on the list in terms of the institutions that young people trust. | ||
| So I think it's got to be a little bit of everything. | ||
| The digital piece is important. | ||
| The gram game is important. | ||
| Really relying on young people's own communities, peers, networks is an incredibly important part of it as well. | ||
| We have a question from Sally Sue on X who asks, surveys show that a majority of young people in the U.S. feel pressured to conform politically or to self-censor, especially in peer-heavy environments like social media and college campuses. | ||
| Do you help young people feel more comfortable sharing opposing views with their peers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, you know, young people talk politics a lot. | |
| It's actually one of the main ways that young people, you know, feel that they contribute to the political conversation and participate in our democracy. | ||
| And I think if you talk politics a lot, right, there may be some of those moments in which you're not quite sure what you can say, what you should say, or you're paying attention to what your peers are or aren't saying. | ||
| And I know there's been a lot of research of what that looks like on college campuses. | ||
| It's not something that we specifically focus on. | ||
| But I think the important thing is to continue providing young people with the tools and the spaces to do that and to do that in a way that they can feel comfortable and that they not just, you know, not just expressing dissenting opinions or something like that, but just feel comfortable learning to use their voices. | ||
| You know, young people are still developing civically and socially in a lot of these ways. | ||
| So something we focus on a lot is what we call political homes or civic homes. | ||
| What are those spaces in which young people can have frank conversations, can learn with and from each other, can process the information they're seeing on social media, for example, that they may not be sure what to make of or what to do with, and can then maybe use as an avenue to take action. | ||
| For many young people, if they are on a college campus, that does turn into their political home, right? | ||
| Or at least a club or organization in their college may be their political home. | ||
| For others, it may be a local nonprofit or youth group that they're involved in. | ||
| But for many, many young people, they don't really have a political home at all. | ||
| And then I think that's where some of that insecurity comes in about what you can say, what you should say, because you're not really kind of getting the practice of doing that in a safe space with peers and with folks who can help you figure some of this stuff out as you still need to when you're a young person. | ||
| So thinking about the young people in my community, where do they go to do that? | ||
| Do they have a political home? | ||
| What can we do to build stronger, better, more equitable political homes for young people? | ||
| That's certainly something that we think about a lot at Circle, and that is a big, growing part of our work. | ||
| Let's hear from Anthony in Arizona on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Anthony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks, teammate. | |
| I'd like to say that we probably need to recategorize young people and understand that we need to talk about them in terms of all voters because eventually they'll reach that voting age. | ||
| And voting age has been debated when it was 21, then it was dropped to 18. | ||
| But I'd like to really reframe it in terms of thinking about when our nation first started and there were 13 colonies. | ||
| If you knew that those 13 colonies were going to become 13 states and then at a certain point in time would become 50 states and territories, etc. | ||
| Would you not want to have a say when there were 13 colonies that became 13 states that decided how we got to where we are today with the number of states and colonies? | ||
| So all voters, we're not young voters. | ||
| If you're going to let old voters decide what's going to happen to you and you're 18 to 28 and you don't want to have any say in it because you're a young voter, well, guess what? | ||
| When you get to 65, it's too late. | ||
| Anthony, there's a similar comment that we received from Mark in Leharbora, California, who was also talking about voting ages. | ||
| Mark says, raise the voting age to at least 25. | ||
| We made the mistake of lowering it to 18 after the tragedy of the Vietnam War, where we drafted 18-year-old men who couldn't vote to die for a lost cause. | ||
| Alberto, you know, our previous caller was also talking about voting age. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do you think of these ideas? | |
| We actually favor lowering the voting age to 16 in local elections and expanding the ways in which young people can participate in democracy. | ||
| And there are places in the country that have already done this, or at least do it for school board elections. | ||
| So we believe in young people being able to participate in more ways in our democracy. | ||
| I think there's a pretty basic principle that if you are affected by government, affected by policies, you should get to have a say in it. | ||
| And many of the perceptions out there that young people are not knowledgeable or are not ready to vote at ages 18 or 19 or even 17 are just not backed up by research. | ||
| So as I said, we've been in an era of very high youth voting, at least compared to previous decade and compared to previous generations, right? | ||
| So young people are showing us that they care, that they want to participate. | ||
| In many cases, when they don't vote, it is not because of apathy. | ||
| It is because of lack of information, lack of access, lack of opportunity. | ||
| As I said, I think the fact that there's such a strong association or connection between young people's personal struggles or financial situations and their voter turnout shows us that we're really looking at some structural issues here, not necessarily issues of whether young people do or don't care. | ||
| So we believe that all young people should have a say in our democracy, and that when they don't, there's often barriers in the way that prevent them from doing that. | ||
| I think we're interested in removing those barriers, not introducing new ones, such as raising the voting age. | ||
| Frank is in Staten Island, New York, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Frank. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Dean. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| So I'm calling from Staten Island, New York. | ||
| So I'm going to say something, I guess, a little different. | ||
| I don't have a good feeling about young people voting, especially where I live. | ||
| So we're in New York City, and we're going to have a mayor election. | ||
| And this is Zoran Mandani, leading, and he's the Democratic candidate from the primary. | ||
| And who voted for him? | ||
| A lot of the young people. | ||
| And this is what bothers me, that a socialist anti-Semite like Mandami could become the mayor because of the young people vote. | ||
| These young people are very clueless about these things and about these issues. | ||
| They don't know. | ||
| I think they're too influenced by the social media themselves. | ||
| They see this smiling bearded man who talks to them about affordability. | ||
| But it's just not going to work. | ||
| If he wins the election, he could really ruin New York, and it will be because of these young voters. | ||
| So I'd rather have them stay home. | ||
| Please, young people, stay home. | ||
| Don't vote, or vote for someone else. | ||
| Let our guest respond to these points that you're raising, Frank. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, we certainly don't want young people to stay home. | |
| You know, as I said, we believe all young people should be participating in our democracy and in the decisions that affect them. | ||
| And, you know, I think often we talk about young people not participating. | ||
| And, you know, we blame young people a little bit for that. | ||
| But I think we have to take a look at ourselves too and how we think about and talk about young people and whether we're not just giving them the support, but taking their voices seriously in our democracy. | ||
| That doesn't mean we have to agree with them or have to agree with every choice that they make, right? | ||
| And as I said, there is no they really in the sense that there's 50 million young people and we have incredible diversity, you know, racially, ideologically, in terms of life experiences. | ||
| So, you know, you can find tens of millions of young people saying and doing and thinking one thing and find tens of millions of young people thinking the opposite. | ||
| So I think we, you know, we need to take young people seriously and respect them as civic actors in our democracy. | ||
| You know, the research does not show that young people are less meaningfully informed than older adults about politics. | ||
| They often have different views about many political issues than older adults. | ||
| But that's part of democracy too, right? | ||
| So whether it's in New York or across the country, we want young people to participate. | ||
| We want to support them more in being even more engaged and more confident in the political decisions they make. | ||
| And there is still work to do there, right? | ||
| I'm not suggesting there's not, but we believe that we should take young people seriously and listen to them and value their views. | ||
| And if their views we disagree with, then I think we should try to persuade them and get in conversation with young people and share our ideas and our information with them, not suggest that they stay home and don't participate. | ||
| Dave is in Michigan on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Dave. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I just tuned in and I just see that you're talking about early voters. | |
| And I do understand the connection in our current politics with respect to this huge $40 trillion deficit that's been just basically rolled over for the next generation to pay. | ||
| And this thing all started back in when I first started voting. | ||
| I'm 73 years old today. | ||
| Happy birthday. | ||
| Not necessarily today, but as in time. | ||
| But no, and I think that history plays a big part in what we're faced with. | ||
| I see this XYZ generation picking up the bill for a bunch of billionaire freelancers. | ||
| And it's terrible. | ||
| It's uncalled for. | ||
| We have an executive officer in the Oval who has no concept what it takes to start out at 20 something In a world where an apartment can be $1,500 to over $2,000 a month. | ||
| Dave, we're winding down on time and I want to hear Alberto's thoughts on this. | ||
| That was a good point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you, Dave. | |
| I think there's certainly the financial piece and the economic reality of the country. | ||
| As I said, it's something that's weighing heavily on young people, both as a political electoral issue, but also in their own lives. | ||
| When we asked young people after the 2024 election what had been their biggest issues going into that election and the biggest issues shaping their vote, more than 60% of young people said that the cost of living or inflation was one of their top three issues. | ||
| The next issue down the list on that ranking was in the 20s. | ||
| So just an overwhelming significant number of young people saying that this is something that's weighing on them and shaping their political participation. | ||
| And as I mentioned previously, 40% of youth saying that they sometimes or often have trouble making ends meet. | ||
| So you can't really get away from the conversation about the economy and the financial situation of the country and of young people themselves when we talk about young people's civic engagement. | ||
| And so, you know, at the same time that we are working hopefully on the economic situation of the country and trying to improve the economy for youth, we also need to be asking ourselves, what can we do for young people in the meantime who are struggling to support their participation, perhaps despite whatever their financial situation may be. | ||
| Very quickly before I also on economic issues, Agaca on X says, Biden promised student loan forgiveness. | ||
| That helped him get the younger voters. | ||
| How do you not mention this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and you know, there are certainly some young people who care about this issue a lot. | |
| It's actually less of a priority than you might think. | ||
| You know, in our polling after 2024, only single-digit percentage of young people called student loan debt one of their top three issues. | ||
| I think for a couple of reasons. | ||
| What, you know, maybe part of this is getting rolled up in just broader economic issues. | ||
| And, you know, maybe you're paying your student loan debt and it leaves you a little less money for something else. | ||
| And so the cost of living is this year, is one of your top issues. | ||
| So that could certainly be happening. | ||
| But again, this point that not all young people are college students, not all college students have loan debt. | ||
| You know, there's about 40% of youth who don't have college experience at all. | ||
| So I think we really need to start talking about that diversity of young people and especially that educational gap. | ||
| And it's not always going to be the issues that are really, really important to college students that shape youth participation more broadly. | ||
| Well, thank you so much, Alberto Medina, who is the communications manager for the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. | ||
| Thank you very much for your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Great to be with you. | ||
| And coming up, we're going to be taking more of your calls and comments in open forum. | ||
| Our numbers, again, for Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| For Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And for Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This fall, C-SPAN invites you on a powerful journey through the stories that define a nation. | |
| From the halls of our nation's most iconic libraries comes America's Book Club, a bold, original series where ideas, history, and democracy meet. | ||
| Hosted by renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein, each week features in-depth conversations with the thinkers shaping our national story. | ||
| Among this season's remarkable guests, John Grisham, master storyteller of the American justice system. | ||
| Justice Amy Coney Barrett, exploring the Constitution, the court, and the role of law in American life. | ||
| Famed chef and global relief entrepreneur Jose Andres, reimagining food. | ||
| Henry Louis Gates, chronicler of race, identity, and the American experience. | ||
| The books, the voices, the places that preserve our past, and spark the ideas that will shape our future. | ||
| America's Book Club, premiering this fall only on C-SPAN. | ||
| On Monday, Labor Day, watch C-SPAN for an all-day congressional town hall marathon. | ||
| Hear from lawmakers directly as they discuss their legislative priorities, comment on recent actions by the Trump administration, and address questions and concerns raised by constituents. | ||
| The Congressional Town Hall Marathon begins at 10 a.m. Eastern and features Oklahoma Republican Congressman Josh Burkeen, Texas Democratic Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, Nebraska Republican Congressman Mike Flood, Maryland Democrat Senator Angela Alser Brooks, along with Congresswoman April McLean Delaney, sharing the same stage, and many more. | ||
| Watch the Congressional Town Hall all-day marathon on Monday, Labor Day at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We're in an open forum ready for your comments. | ||
| But first, a quick reminder that tomorrow, starting at 10 a.m. Eastern, C-SPAN will be airing a marathon of town halls from across the country that occurred over the summer recess. | ||
| And again, that's going to start at 10 a.m. and it will be on C-SPAN as well as on C-SPAN.org. | ||
| One of those town halls was in Missouri for Mark Alford, who is written about here in the Missouri Independent. | ||
| Mark Alford faces questions about Trump Medicaid cuts, GOP priorities in Missouri Town Hall. | ||
| This was from just a couple of days ago this story. | ||
| U.S. Representative Mark Alford defended actions taken by President Donald Trump at a contentious town hall in Harrisburg on Wednesday night. | ||
| More than 100 constituents packed the Lions Club event hall. | ||
| The small venue, full of shouting and passionate pleas, drew people from all over the county who voiced their questions and complaints. | ||
| Hot topics during the session included Medicaid cuts, Trump's deployment of the National Guard to Washington, D.C., and complaints about the priorities of the Republican Party. | ||
| During that town hall, a small farmer asked Alford about big agriculture and how legislation could, quote, make America healthy again. | ||
| Here's a portion of that exchange. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And what I'd like to see you do would redirect a lot of these, the funds that are just kind of getting essentially funneled to big ag and really see that it gets redistributed or to changing our agricultural system so that we're actually growing nutrient-dense food so that we can increase the number of farmers and the productivity of our farmland. | |
| And we're not destroying our soil. | ||
| We're building our soil. | ||
| We're making America healthy again. | ||
| And we're really helping build the rural economy in Missouri where neighbors, farmers are feeding their neighbors. | ||
| We're not just exporting our soil health to other countries. | ||
| I think you make some great points, but I think there's room for all type of agriculture in Missouri. | ||
| The corn that we grow, a lot of it's used to make ethanol, and I think you're going to see more of that. | ||
| Some of you may not like ethanol. | ||
| That's okay, but I think consumers want choices at the pump, and I think that is a choice. | ||
| It provides jobs. | ||
| And we are having a bumper crop of corn this year, a record crop of corn. | ||
| The input costs are very low again, and a lot of farmers are not going to be able to make it. | ||
| And so this gives an avenue to use some of that corn, not taking away any feedstock from our cattle producers or other producers, but it's another avenue to supply that. | ||
| The same way with the soybeans. | ||
| And I get what you're saying about nutrient-rich, and we do need to concentrate on that. | ||
| I have been supporting in the appropriations ag appropriations bill, I fought for, along with a Democrat, to fund urban farming programs in America. | ||
| Our Republican chair, Andy Harris of Maryland, of the Agriculture Subcommittee, wanted to do away with that program. | ||
| And I said, look, I have lived in Kansas City. | ||
| My son lives in the urban core. | ||
| We have been helping families there ever since I have been on television there, working with the community in these community farms. | ||
| And when children and families actually grow food, they have a better appreciation for healthier food choices, nutrient-rich food sources, and weaning us off of junk food in a lot of programs and helping our overall health. | ||
| Once again, you can watch those marathon town halls tomorrow here on C-SPAN starting at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Let's get to your calls in open forum. | ||
| Ryan is in Orange, Massachusetts, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Ryan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Earlier in your program, you guys were talking about individualistic rights. | ||
| But it seems to me both the Democrat and the Republican parties failed to mention individual rights at work. | ||
| They are being trampled on by both businesses and corporations. | ||
| With our free speech, our due process in hiring, firing, and investigations, and being able to basically have our constitutional rights away from work and at work, which never gets talked about by any party as far as I'm concerned. | ||
| This country, the way it functions in the workplaces, is a corporate aristocracy. | ||
| And I think that needs to be addressed by both political parties. | ||
| Now, I've experienced it before trying to get discriminated against for hiring when companies like to hire their friends and family over qualified people. | ||
| And I think the workers' rights law has ought to address this. | ||
| And I think both political parties are completely lazy on that point. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Next up is Susan in San Diego, California, on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Susan. | ||
| And can you turn down the volume on your TV, please, Susan, and then you can go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm busy that want to pursue pain requirements. | |
| All right, let's hear from Chip in Trinidad, Colorado, on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Chip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi there. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I wanted to address something that earlier one of your guests before, the most recent guest, Mr. Love, was on with another fellow. | ||
| And he was addressing the issue of America not doing well in terms of education statistics compared to other countries. | ||
| And he was trying to make the point that he thought that we should have more states leading the way in terms of education and not a top-down national education system. | ||
| And I just wanted to make the point, and really people on the right who listen to people like Sean Hannity need to learn this fact that they are misstating. | ||
| Other countries who do graded education compared to us have much heavier national education systems. | ||
| They're much more top-down. | ||
| They have much more national standards that everybody has to complete. | ||
| And then they also make it a lot easier to go to college if you make good grades. | ||
| They make it cheaper, even free. | ||
| And at the same time, for people who don't make great grades, they have better technical opportunities to learn skills and trades and things like that. | ||
| But really, this is the main thing that I have to make this point about: it's just the big lie to say that we should have less of a national education system and put it more in states' hands. | ||
| If you look at countries like Scandinavian countries, Great Britain, France, Germany, they all have much stronger top-down national education systems and national standards, and that's how they do so much better than we do. | ||
| I just wanted to make that point. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next up is Carl in Arlington, Virginia, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Carl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, hi. | |
| It's my understanding that black soldiers served in the military to help free the Jews from the Holocaust. | ||
| So why are the Jews in Israel today paying homage to those black soldiers who helped free them from Hitler's Germany? | ||
| And why also are those same Jews not paying reparations because some of them were involved in slave trade to black Americans? | ||
| You think why you're talking about Jewish people as opposed to any of the other white Americans who were slaveholders? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Susan is in San Diego, California on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Susan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, I'm Carlo from San Diego, California. | ||
| I work with the U.S. Spanish and American Chamber of Commerce, which is 40 years old, and I got up early in the morning to listen to your program. | ||
| I just wanted to react to Mr. Newsom's comment about the business, the bill that the current administration has signed that helps small businesses. | ||
| And I'd like to be more encouraging about that because this bill is going to help small businesses in the reduction of taxes as well as regulations. | ||
| The biggest problem small businesses encounter is a small business is regulations and a tax code. | ||
| And Mr. Newsom talked about that, but he said that small businesses are too dumb or too lazy or too busy to seek help. | ||
| And that's what his job to do. | ||
| He's a consulting firm. | ||
| He represents 20,000 small businesses and modern power operations from across America of 33 million businesses. | ||
| He only reached out a drop of the bucket. | ||
| And he talked about this bill doesn't help. | ||
| That's wrong information. | ||
| What he should be doing is what we do is go hold small group meetings, focus groups, and get the small business in together and say, take advantage of the current legislation's offering. | ||
| Learn about how you can do things without this heavy regulation. | ||
| Do things so that you could take care of the reduction in taxes and grow your business. | ||
| As a consultant, that's Mr. Newsom's job. | ||
| And not throw doubt into the open opportunities this bill is going to give to small businesses. | ||
| No tax on tips and no tax on Social Security. | ||
| This is going to help a lot of the small businesses who are opened by retirees who got out of their job and start their own business from home, particularly those who started their businesses since COVID happened. | ||
| I just want to add to this and encourage all small businesses in America, whether you're pop mind pop, operating from your basement, your kitchen table, and working for somebody else as a consultant, as a professional service service in finance, in whatever. | ||
| That's what I wanted to make sure that Mr. Newsom does not discourage you. | ||
| Okay, I think we have the idea. | ||
| So let's hear from Donna in Beaumont, Texas on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Donna. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| You're an open forum. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I'd just like to comment on the two gentlemen you had speaking earlier: Michael and Chad. | ||
| Yes, Michael LaRosa and Chet Love. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| Michael needs to stay in the Democratic Party, and Mr. Love, I don't know why he, how, where he's getting his information from, why he keeps telling stories and following Trump. | ||
| It just don't make no sense. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Maria is in Westville, New Jersey on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Maria. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Kimberly. | |
| I hope you can understand me. | ||
| My allergies are acting up. | ||
| I wanted to comment the New York Post oddly enough. | ||
| On page 15 yesterday, they had an article about the U.S. not letting Palestinian diplomats in for the UN meeting. | ||
| And it goes through the fact that they think, oh, it's not secure or whatever in Palestine. | ||
| Down at the bottom, it says here that the denials marks the first time that the U.S. has stopped the admission of any diplomatic entity to the session. | ||
| And it said it also comes after foreign leaders had indicated that they would recommend a Palestinian state at the annual meeting. | ||
| I feel that there is something very odd and sick about our support of Israel. | ||
| These are war crimes. | ||
| These people are being hunted like sheep. | ||
| The children are starving to death. | ||
| And our President Trump says he pretty much indicated everything should be over with quickly. | ||
| He says we give them money. | ||
| It can't get to them. | ||
| The Israelis are refusing them food and are attacking them. | ||
| I'd like to know at what point Netanyahu is declared a war criminal and the UN or some, or actually our government, goes in and arrests him and stop the slaughter. | ||
| So I hope people look into this more and we change our attitude toward Israel. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Felicia is in Arlington, Tennessee, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Felicia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Bear with me. | ||
| Four points. | ||
| One, if we don't put civics back in our schools where people can learn what's expected of the government and what the government expects of us, we're lost. | ||
| Two, for Texas and for the President to have called like he did in Georgia to say, get me some votes. | ||
| And now, because he feels like 26 is off record in Congress, it's going to be lost to him, to request for them to get him five more seats. | ||
| Gerrymandering is ruining us as a nation and as a democracy. | ||
| We need to get rid of that. | ||
| The military in the U.S. cities as a police force is Unconscionable for people to accept it. | ||
| That's what the police are for. | ||
| That's what the financing that has been taken away is for. | ||
| You can't solve crime with a military. | ||
| We can do better than that because we are better than that. | ||
| And lastly, our president, God bless him. | ||
| I feel, I got to the third chapter of his niece's book, and I understand why he's the way he is. | ||
| And I feel so sorry for him because he has no humanity, but he was created that way. | ||
| And it shows in everything he does. | ||
| People, we got to pay attention because we are becoming an authoritarian state. | ||
| We're already there. | ||
| Look at what's going on. | ||
| Pay attention. | ||
| Don't listen to all the talking points from every talking head. | ||
| Look at history. | ||
| Read real books and look at what's going on so we can save ourselves. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next up is Scott in Los Angeles, California on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Scott. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, hello to everybody out there. | |
| And once again, I start with a big thank you to C-SPAN for some tremendous programming lately. | ||
| Just stuff you won't see on any other station. | ||
| Also, a big compliment for you, Kim, because you're just doing tremendous work. | ||
| And if any C-SPAN execs happen to be up, please sign her to a long-term contract now. | ||
| She's just tremendous at this. | ||
| I called a couple months ago regarding Epstein, and not a word was being said at the time. | ||
| Not a word. | ||
| And I was employing the reporters. | ||
| I like put out an open casting call over your airwaves. | ||
| Please get involved. | ||
| There's a lot of stuff here with this story. | ||
| Now, you start with Acosta. | ||
| He gets appointed into Trump's administration on the basis of what nobody really knows. | ||
| This sentence was unbelievable. | ||
| I've seen some commentary he made years after the fact, and it was just a lot of gibberish, kind of like what we're hearing from President Trump these days. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And if you just go along the timeline of this story. | |
| So just very quickly to give some context to what you're saying for other folks, you're referring to the former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who, according to this reporting from NBC News, the House Oversight Committee announced Monday, and that was this past Monday, that former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta will appear voluntarily before the panel next month as part of its investigation into the Jeffrey Epstein case. | ||
| Attorneys for Epstein's victims had raised concerns about why the Republican-led committee did not include Acosta, who served in the first Trump administration when it sent subpoenas to a number of high-profile former government officials as part of the probe, because Acosta was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida in 2008 when the office reached a secret non-prosecution agreement with Epstein, who wound up pleading guilty to state charges involving a single underage victim, | ||
| protecting him from federal prosecution. | ||
| You can go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you a lot for that, Kim. | |
| And again, advancing the timeline on this thing, we get to the White House where all of a sudden one of the reporters gratefully heard me, apparently, and asked Trump there in the White House about Epstein. | ||
| And that was the first time where he kind of lost his mind and went off on the reporter. | ||
| And obviously all of his subsequent commentary landing on a Democratic hoax. | ||
| You know, I have a reward out. | ||
| I'll give you good money if you can find one Democrat in the last four years who brought up Epstein. | ||
| This has been nothing but a Republican production, as we all understand. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Now we get to this point in time where we have the charade of Miss Maxwell being interviewed by his personal attorney when this gives a stacked deck a bad name, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| The only outcome of that could have possibly been to extricate Mr. Trump from the situation and make him look good. | ||
| Now she gets rewarded in an upgrade in her facility. | ||
| And just as I'm going to, I'm going to go, Kim, and thank you so much. | ||
| Just as I put out a call to all the reporters that day, I'd like to put out a call to Mr. Trump right now because he listens to C-SPAN. | ||
| We hear you play the spot. | ||
| He's listening to his friends at C-SPAN. | ||
| Mr. Trump, please, in the name of these people who have been victimized, get a hold of yourself and understand what you're doing here is wrong as the day is long. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| God bless. | ||
| Richard is in Missouri on our line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Richard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm a member of the Missouri National Guard. | ||
| You know, I did my time in the military as a guard, as a guardsman. | ||
| And these people don't have, you join the guard, you take a swear to the Constitution. | ||
| These people, all the time I was in the guard, there's never talk whether he's a Republican or Democrat. | ||
| She was American, you know. | ||
| And they got these guardsmen out there trying to take people off the street to get them off the streets, you know. | ||
| They send them to jail, I guess, is what they're going to do. | ||
| But if they put them in that same jail, that lady you got down in Texas there, well, that'd be like a vacation for them. | ||
| So I'm disappointed. | ||
| You take obligation where you're in the guard. | ||
| You got to follow orders. | ||
| But after you get your time's up, you can get the hell out of there if you want to. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Jim is in Dubuque, Iowa, on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| I'd like to have you interview an author named David Rogers Webb, spelled W-E-B-B. | ||
| He wrote a book after his experience as a hedge fund director in the crash of 2008 entitled The Great Taking. | ||
| And what most people don't realize is that our uniform commercial code has been changed in all states and recently in Europe, lastly in Sweden. | ||
| And what most people think they own, they do not. | ||
| In fact, their brokerage accounts, their pension funds, the assets held by insurance companies have been used as collateral against somewhere between $2,000 and $4,000 trillion in derivative bets. | ||
| And this can be changed on a state level, but efforts have been blocked by the banking lobbyists. | ||
| And these laws would not have been changed surreptitiously if they were not intended to be used. | ||
| It's a very serious issue, and we are on the brink of international global monetary collapse. | ||
| And people are in great jeopardy. | ||
| Next up is Max in Washington, D.C. on our line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Max. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Sorry, one second. | ||
| Hi, I'm a college student, University of Maryland. | ||
| And I just wanted to share perspective from a younger person. | ||
| I see we're divided right now. | ||
| I think that goes back to we believe in ourselves too much, Americans. | ||
| We're 90% of the time you're believing the same party that you were raised in. | ||
| I was raised in a liberal family, so I tend to be more liberal. | ||
| But I think we need to try to break out of the bubble that we were raised in. | ||
| Listen to our fellow Americans. | ||
| My generation is really bad at that, but I want to be better at that, and I think that's the key to saving our nation right now. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, thanks for calling in, Max. | ||
| Kevin is in Illinois on our line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Kevin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| You're doing a fantastic job. | ||
| Like always, I love your open forum. | ||
| My topic is God, God, and our country. | ||
| I'd like to say the Lord's Prayer, our Father who art in heaven. | ||
| You got to turn down the volume on your TV, Kevin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you hear me? | |
| Yes, I can hear you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Am I on? | |
| You are on, but we only have about a minute left in the show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I'd like to just say the pray for the country and finish the prayer. | ||
| Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. | ||
| Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Give us our debts as we forgive our debtors. | ||
| Lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil. | ||
| Pray is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. | ||
| God bless our president. | ||
| God bless the problem with Russia. | ||
| God bless Ukraine. | ||
| God bless the homeless, the hungry, everyone who needs to be. | ||
| So we're losing you there, Kevin, but I think we have your idea, and we're going to end the show there. | ||
| I want to appreciate everybody who called in today for Open Forum and all of our other segments. | ||
| Just as a reminder, at 10 a.m. tomorrow, you can watch the open forums that members of Congress held with their constituents over the summer recess. | ||
| We're going to be back with another edition of Washington Journal, though, starting at 7 a.m. tomorrow. | ||
| We hope you'll join us and have a great day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A federal court of appeals has struck down most of President Trump's tariffs, saying they're unconstitutional. | |
| That case heard in late July was VOS Selections Incorporated, the United States, and was brought by importers and several states challenging President Trump's Liberation Day tariffs. | ||
| That ruling left the tariffs in place temporarily to allow the Trump administration to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. | ||
| We'll replay the oral arguments in the original case later today, starting at 5.45 p.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN. | ||
| You can also hear them anytime online at our website, c-span.org, and with a free C-SPAN Now video app. | ||
| Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A. | ||
| Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley, author of The Affirmative Action Myth, argues that the racial preference policies of the 1960s and 70s have had an overall negative impact on the success of black Americans. | ||
| There are racial differences in America, in our society, cultural differences, ethnic differences. | ||
| But when it comes to public policy and how the government treats us, treats the population. | ||
| No, it should not be picking winners and losers based on race or treating people differently based on race. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's been a disaster. | |
| Whether the effort was under Jim Crow to elevate whites or the effort was under racial preferences to elevate non-whites, it's been a disaster. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, people like to say that diversity is our strength in America, but I disagree. | |
| Our real strength in this country has been to overcome our racial and ethnic differences and focus on what unites us as a country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That has been the strength of America. | |
| Jason Riley with his book, The Affirmative Action Myth, Sunday night at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | ||
| You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| This fall, C-SPAN invites you on a powerful journey through the stories that define a nation. | ||
| From the halls of our nation's most iconic libraries comes America's Book Club, a bold, original series where ideas, history, and democracy meet. | ||
| Hosted by renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein, each week features in-depth conversations with the thinkers shaping our national story. | ||
| Among this season's remarkable guests, John Grisham, master storyteller of the American justice system. | ||
| Justice Amy Coney Barrett, exploring the Constitution, the court, and the role of law in American life. | ||
| Famed chef and global relief entrepreneur Jose Andres, reimagining food. | ||
| Henry Louis Gates, chronicler of race, identity, and the American experience. | ||
| The books, the voices, the places that preserve our past and spark the ideas that will shape our future. | ||
| America's Book Club, premiering this fall only on C-SPAN. | ||
| On Monday, Labor Day, watch C-SPAN for an all-day congressional town hall marathon. | ||
| Hear from lawmakers directly as they discuss their legislative priorities, comment on recent actions by the Trump administration, and address questions and concerns raised by constituents. |