CSPAN - Washington Journal 09/15/2025

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Sept. 15, 2025 07:00-10:00 - CSPAN

02:59:53

Washington Journal 09/15/2025

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Main

heather long

25:30

pedro echevarria

cspan 36:40

Appearances

benjamin netanyahu

isr 00:35

chris coons

sen/d 00:59

james lankford

00:47

karoline leavitt

admin 01:20

marco rubio

admin 00:33

mike johnson

rep/r 02:20

robert f kennedy-jr

admin 02:13

spencer cox

01:45

Clips

dana bash

cnn 00:14

marty schachter

00:07

Callers

dennis in kentucky

callers 00:08

russell in wyoming

callers 00:05

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Your calls and comments live.
		And then we'll talk with Bloomberg News Capitol Hill reporter Eric Wasson about the week ahead in Congress, including efforts to avert a government shutdown at the end of the month.
		And Spectrum News National Political Reporter Taylor Popolars on White House News of the Day.
		Also, Navy Federal Credit Union chief economist Heather Long talks about economic news of the day.
		Washington Journal is next.
		Join the conversation.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is The Washington Journal for September 15th.
		A recent piece in Politico looks at the topic of how Americans respond to news of politically motivated violence by examining data such as Google searches and newspaper headlines.
		The writers noted that Americans are showing a trend of quickly moving on from stories of deaths like in the case of Charlie Kirk, as well as other acts of violence motivated by politics.
		To start to show today, your thoughts on if Americans aren't becoming desensitized to violence motivated by politics.
		Here's how you can let us know your thoughts this morning.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		If you want to give us your thoughts on if you think those in the United States are becoming desensitized to political violence and you want to text us your thoughts, 202-748-8003.
		You can post on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
		The piece came out yesterday, and if you want to read it online, you can still find it at Politico's website.
		The author's writing under the headline, A Desensitized America is Moving On From Political Violence Faster and Faster.
		Again, they take a look at Google searches of politically motivated violence, newspaper headlines, and how long those stories stay in the headlines.
		And here's some of the conclusions from the authors in that piece.
		They write this, saying, when an arsonist set the Pennsylvania governor's mansion on fire in April, the incident did not make most national newspaper front pages.
		When two Democratic lawmakers were shot, with one killed alongside her husband in Minnesota in June, it took only a few days for Google search traffic for the incident to drop to almost zero.
		It shook the nation when President Trump was shot last September, but when another would-be gunman targeted the then candidate on a golf course a few weeks later, it was just a blip in the news cycle.
		The authors also write this, saying, each attack may seem shocking, but the incidents are leaving less of a mark on the national consciousness.
		A political review of Google search data and newspaper front pages found individual attacks are getting less attention than they did in the past, and Americans are moving on even quicker.
		The news cycles for incidents of political violence this year are typically measured in a few weeks, not just days.
		Again, there's more there in the political piece, and if you want to read it, you can find it online.
		But to this idea, if you think those in the United States are becoming desensitized to politically motivated violence, here's how you can let us know your thoughts this morning.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		You can text us your thoughts too at 202-748-8003.
		And as always, you can post on this and other topics throughout the course of the show on our Facebook page at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
		Is the United States becoming desensitized to political violence?
		And starts us off in New York, Democrats line.
		And go ahead.
unidentified		Well, good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		When I look back over the history of this country, America has always been violence from its beginning.
		From the inception of America, from the beginning, how we started, from the Indians, from slavery.
		This is nothing new with America.
		America is a violent country.
		That's my.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		But do you think people are becoming desensitized to that, especially when you hear of deaths like Charlie Kirk?
unidentified		Nothing new.
		The beginning of America is violent.
		Everything about this country is violent.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Kent in Illinois, Republican line, you're next.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		I think the country is starting to look at things a little more clearly today when they learn about this fellow that shot Charlie Kirk.
		And the guy he was romantically interested in was a transgender or a wannabe transgender.
		And these guys pick this stuff in the schools, on the social media, or like the kid that shot the two people, the kids saying mass.
		And he said, I wish I hadn't got brainwashed into this.
		I did it to please my mother.
		These kids are so tormented by this stuff that's going on.
		This is evil.
		If there's Jesus, there's Satan.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, Kent, let me ask you, because you brought up a couple of specific instances there.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		When you hear about it, do you think people move on quickly from these type of stories or does it stay with them?
unidentified		This time it's going to stay with them.
		Charlie Kirk was a beloved man.
		The word hate was never even in his vocabulary.
		And this is what it's like shining light on a cockroach.
		This is why the left, this is why these kids have to kill someone like Charlie Kirk.
		He's speaking the truth.
		And the kid that killed him, he's in some kind of dark, deviant sexual stuff that is very popular today among the young kids.
		Oh, I'm going to transition.
		Hell, the kid that shot up the two Catholic kids, his mother was a socialite.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, you already got those points out there, so we'll go to Patricia in Fort Washington, Missouri, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, good morning.
		It's Patricia in Fort Washington, Maryland.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're on.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		All right.
		I don't feel that we're becoming too desensitized.
		I feel like what's happening at this time is that the media plays a big role into what's occurring in today's current event.
		When the couple in Minnesota, when they were tragically killed, the media, you did not see too many articles.
		I had to really kind of search to find out what had happened to that couple and their dog, and it was very tragic.
		The media did not list it a lot.
		And so, like, whereas now with the Charlie Kirk incident, it's unfortunate that he was killed.
		But that has been all over the media all day, every day.
		So it's what the media chooses to bring forth.
		I find a lot of articles that myself and that my friends would like to have them highlight.
		They don't.
		And so they choose the tone of when they're going to move on or not.
		The media now is owned by a lot of corporate billionaires.
		So they make the determination of what's going to be front page headlines.
		And so things that I find that are really relevant that should take priority in this country for them to broadcast.
		They don't.
		And they trivialize a lot of things that should take front and center stage.
		So no, we're not becoming too desensitized.
		It's just that local media is not a lot that's out here now.
		A lot of the local stations and the local print papers, they all are going away.
		So we only have limited access to what is brought forth to us.
		And if you look at it, corporate media, everybody plays the same story all day, every day.
		We no longer get a lot of what's going on locally.
		So yes, no, we as a nation, I don't feel that we're becoming too desensitized.
		It's just, like I said, not a lot at the media.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
		That's Patricia there in Fort Washington.
		Politico, as part of their analysis, takes a look at the big stories involving political violence and how long they existed on newspaper front pages.
		They have three categories and they show from the incident on for days one to ten after that, days 11 and 20 after that, and 21 days after that.
		They highlight the Gabby Gifford shooting back in 2011, the former U.S. Representative.
		Those trends when it comes to newspaper front pages, over 50 front pages at one point reporting on that, going down after that.
		The shooting of Steve Scalise back in 2017.
		Again, that first day of front page news, specifically, 52 newspapers there.
		The caller highlighted the Minnesota lawmakers shooting in 2025.
		At the time that happened, Politico is showing that just 13 newspapers highlighting that death on their front, those deaths on their front page, it showed a little increase, but then a significant increase after that after the first 10 days.
		Again, there's more, that's one of the points of analysis there, taking a look at front pages.
		The folks at Politico are also doing Google searches as well.
		You can talk about the media's aspect or other aspects of this idea if you think that the U.S. is becoming desensitized when it comes to political violence.
		202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans and Independents, 202748-8002.
		The topic of violence, and especially in light of Charlie Kirk, the main topic on the Sunday news shows yesterday, Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware and Jim Langford, Republican senator from Oklahoma, talked about political rhetoric, the concerns about violence, and their thoughts over it.
		Here's a portion of that from yesterday.
chris coons ▲ ● ▼		The brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk while he was in the middle of a debate on a college campus goes to the very heart of what it means to be American, of the importance of the First Amendment of free speech.
		And someone like Charlie Kirk, who is a nationally known figure who dedicated himself to debate, to engagement with his political adversaries, should not have paid with his life for the opportunity to speak out.
		No matter how much I might deeply disagree with his political views, the idea that he would be killed in such a grotesque and public way has to bring all of us to reflect about how hard it's getting because the internet is an accelerant.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		It is driving extremism in our country.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		It's driving us apart left and right.
chris coons ▲ ● ▼		And leaders like Senator Langford, Governor Cox have an obligation and an opportunity to join with leaders from my party in urging folks to set aside any thought of political violence and to respect each other, even as we keep advancing our political differences through discourse.
unidentified		Senator Langford, do you ever at times feel as if your appeals for better angels, calmer rhetoric, more bipartisanship is shouting into an internet void?
unidentified		It is because the algorithm pushes people to the most extreme.
james lankford ▲ ● ▼		The algorithm is all on social media, is always pushing who's the angriest, who's the loudest, who says the craziest thing.
unidentified		That's what gets repeated over and over and over again.
james lankford ▲ ● ▼		So anytime that there is cogent dialogue or an issue on something where people may disagree, but they're having a civil conversation on it, that gets pushed aside towards someone that's just angry and focused.
james lankford ▲ ● ▼		This is somewhat human nature to be able to say we disagree.
unidentified		We find areas where we disagree and we try to be able to solve those.
unidentified		The best way to be able to solve those through words, talking it out, finding an opportunity to be able to do it.
james lankford ▲ ● ▼		But I would tell you, this kind of anger is as old as Kane and Abel to be able to go back and say, I'm mad at you, so I'm going to try to destroy you, whether it's destroy you online or to try to humiliate you or to cancel you or to, in this case, try to murder you publicly.
james lankford ▲ ● ▼		It is painful to be able to see that part of humanity, and it is better for us to be able to push better angels.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Are those in the United States becoming desensitized to political violence?
		You can call us on the lines.
		You can post online.
		Some of you sending us various messages on our social media sites.
		This is Rich and Jen from Facebook with their thoughts saying, no, we are becoming desensitized to violence in general.
		When school children are shot up and nothing is done, what do you expect?
		And then John McNally saying that I'm afraid so.
		All are tragic.
		What's even more tragic is watching the scheming opportunists among us try to vilify or canonize the murder victims for political advantage.
		Those without the ethics or morals are actively editing the script and choreographing the public reaction right now.
		Let's hear from Tony in Pennsylvania, Independent Line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Good morning.
		I don't know if we are or not, but I believe it's kind of irrelevant.
		What I would like to say is that Charlie Kurt believed in releasing the Epstein files.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's go back to the topic at hand.
		You said it's irrelevant.
		Why is that?
unidentified		Because it just is.
		It starts from the top, sir.
		We need to stop this nonsense with talking about everything except for the main problem, which is Donald Trump.
		We keep going over everything except this idiot running this country.
		Charlie Kurt believed in releasing the Epstein.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, you already said that, so we will go to Kenny, Kenny in Republican line, Staten Island.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hi, good morning.
		How are you?
		I'm going to look at the whole picture of this thing, like the giantism of what it's all stars.
		And it begins with Trump, unfortunately.
		Hard to say, but that's what it is.
		You go back to Sarah Palin.
		Sarah Palin displayed target signs of Kelly's wife, which she got assassinated and people killed.
		And Genesis of that is the beginning of that.
		Sorry.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, as a Republican, how do you relate that specifically to what occurred to Gabby Giffords?
unidentified		Well, if you look and see what happened, the high-profile stuff, they're all bad.
		I'm a Republican, but I'm a training Kensington Republican.
		I'm trying to save our country.
		This thing's gone down to tubes.
		It's been allowable and justified.
		And what happens is it's one-sided.
		We all know the governor was targeted.
		The Michigan Democrats were killed, and the whole list of Democratic targets was available, was discovered.
		And that thing dies off after a day or two.
		Now, here it is, Charlie Kirk.
		As much as I disagree with everything he says, a lot of it's like pokey pokey.
		I admire the fact that at least you go and speak and you speak in a campus, you speak on a sidewalk, you speak anywhere, but you speak peacefully and allow that person to speak because it exposes the person in terms of facts or whatever it may be, but let the person speak.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, let me ask you this.
		You said a couple of other stories died off.
		Charlie Kirk not, or as far as that fading away when it comes to coverage, stories about Charlie Kirk not doing that.
		What do you think?
		What's the difference between the two, do you think?
unidentified		It said he gets more exposure.
		The conservative atrocities get more exposure.
		They're all wrong.
		They're all bad.
		It's political violence.
		It's wrong.
		It's bad.
		But what happens is that a guy like Charlie Kirk, this guy, you know, condolences and a family or anything, but his information is way off and up and down and all over the place.
		Okay.
		They're making this guy into a hero or something like that.
		No, the hero is that he defies violence and wants to communicate and debate.
		That I honor and support.
		That's great.
		That's what we should do.
		Nonviolence, nonviolence communication is the way.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Let's go to Mary.
		Mary, Democrats line in Maryland.
		This idea of becoming desensitized to political violence.
		Mary, hello.
unidentified		Oh, good morning.
		No, I don't think we're becoming desensitized.
		It's the media.
		It's how they produce this desensitization.
		No, I'm not desensitized.
		I think it's disgusting.
		But right now, we are in the middle of just serious racism.
		And I don't think Charlie Kirk should be honored at the Kennedy Center.
		He was one of those polite racists.
		Everything that he said, he was totally against anything for black people.
		He didn't want to have Juneteenth a day holiday, but he didn't say anything about Jewish holidays that we take off for.
		Everything he said was very polite racism.
		Sure, he liked to debate you.
		That's what his gimmick was.
		But as far as the media, they're owned by the corporations, and the media just tells you what they think you ought to know.
		I don't get my news sources from any of the mainstreams.
		I go to WPFW Jazz and Justice Network, and I look for you all to tell us the rest of the truth.
		But sometimes I have to argue with what you all do.
		But right now, we are in Project 2024.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, when you say aspects of the media, Charlie Kirk being one thing, but how does that relate to other politically motivated deaths?
		Do you see that kind of same coverage?
		Or what's the difference, do you think?
unidentified		No, look at the coverage.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		But what's the difference, do you think, of why?
unidentified		The difference to me is corporate ownership and racism.
		That is what we're dealing with now.
		Everything about this country is total racism.
		Project 2025.
		And it's like people, like I said, look at the campaign against the word woke, which is what we need to do.
		Wake up.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Robert in Michigan and Battle Creek, Independent Line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Yes, I just want to say that I think that the violence against Charlie Kirk could have been prevented if they would have had a drone flying over the buildings.
		I just want to state that that director of security was negligent.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Robert there in Michigan.
		The political story has this morning that when it comes to their analysis of Google searches and newspaper headlines and the like, saying the review also found that despite the overall trend towards desensitation, many factors influence the level of attention various incidents receive, including the extent of injuries and how quickly the attacker was apprehended.
		That's why Kirk's death and the gruesome videos of it that quickly circulated across social media may register with Americans in a different way than past incidents, according to the expert that was interviewed saying the graphicness of violence matters, according to the University of Wisconsin professor, saying that Kirk's death was caught live on camera.
		It was bloody and graphic.
		Are people desensitized to exactly what they saw on Wednesday?
		Have we seen that a lot?
		And the spec expert from the University of Wisconsin concludes, I don't think that we have.
		Again, you can find this piece online.
		It was released yesterday.
		There's the headline, a desensitized America is moving on from political violence faster and faster.
		Asking your thoughts if you think that's the case.
		Again, you can call us on the lines, 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents, 202748-8002.
		This is Lizzie.
		Lizzie in Washington, D.C., Democrats line.
		Go ahead.
		Lizzie in Washington.
		Hello.
		We'll try one more time for Lizzie in D.C.
		Okay, let's hear from Anna.
		Anna in North Carolina, Republican line.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hey, Pedro.
		Good morning, everyone.
		I think the news stories are kind of getting, I don't know what to say, kind of downplayed on certain things because of certain information that comes out.
		You know, that was horrific what happened to those lawmakers in Minnesota.
		But when the story started to evolve and what that man had written and who had asked him to do that and who were other, I hate to use the word targets, that story was crushed.
		And I just feel that everything is so against the president and his rhetoric.
		Well, I do remember that when Trump came down the escalator and announced that he was running for the presidency, people were filing lawsuits.
		I mean, they couldn't wait five minutes and they were already at the courthouses just stacking up lawsuits after lawsuits.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, so how does that relate to the question at hand as far as if we're becoming, if these stories are coming commonplace for the American people and if they're paying attention to it?
unidentified		Because, Pedro, I believe that the media does have a lot to do with it and the narratives.
		I've never heard such awful things come out of politicians' mouths than I have from the Democrats, just constantly berating and name-calling and inciting so much hatred towards not just the president, but his voters.
		This is very dangerous times, I believe.
		And we really need to tone down the narrative.
		And it breaks my heart to see what is happening in our country.
		And I just wish everyone would just calm down and just, you know, try to be more reflective and listen and put things into perspective.
		And just, you know, let's stop the name-calling.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		That's all I got to say, Pedro.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We go to Roger.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Rogers in Milwaukee, Independent Line.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I have to say, when I listen to all this, I don't think it's the minority, but we're not less desensitized.
		I actually believe there is a minority of people that still believe that you can intimidate people with violence.
		And it's the minority, so I don't think everybody's involved.
		But I think it's more than that.
		And I'd like to, if you don't mind, let's take politics out of it.
		Donald Trump has said that he is an authoritarian, and we see that he likes that.
		I compare those to bullies on a school.
		What don't people like?
		Who's taking your milk money?
		And how does it come out here?
		Medicaid, Social Security reductions, other defunding, and all this.
		And it makes people upset.
		And how do you deal with the bully?
		Because bullies, it's not a matter of a rationale or logic.
		This is what they want, so they go take it.
		And that pushes people to the end.
		And it's bully politics on both sides of the aisle that got to stop.
		And it's not stopping.
		And when you have a president who calls the other side communists and vermin and all those things, and then they counter saying, well, you're calling us Nazis and these other things.
		I mean, this gets to be such great school garbage that the American public deserve better than this.
		So, you know, that's my this isn't a political thing.
		This is about a bully.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Roger in Milwaukee.
		This is the next call from New Jersey Democrats line.
		This is Leon.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		I'm very embarrassed for the Democrats.
		I am a Democrat, and I've been a Democrat all my life.
		And New Jersey is Democratic through and through.
		And I'm embarrassed for the Democrats.
		They talk about that boy, Charlie Kirk, so terrible things they say about him.
		Everybody that ever said somebody's a Nazi or a Hitler or a fascist has got blood on their hands.
		And that lady said that his gimmick was to debate people.
		Well, he's smarter than you are.
		And that ain't no gimmick.
		He's just smarter than you are.
		And when you resent that, and when you get cornered, because he's so much smarter than you are, then you're going to get upset and call it a gimmick when all he is is just smarter than you are.
		I hope nobody shoots nobody anymore, but it's terrible that they shot that boy.
		All he did was debate.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Do you think the impact, do you think that, do you think that the impact of the shooting as far as people's sensitivity to it is changing in this case or related to other politically motivated acts of violence?
unidentified		Well, I believe with all my heart that we're on a downward spiral.
		And until we turn our hearts back to God, we won't be on that downward spiral until we get to Armageddon apocalypse.
		But that's a religious faith thing that I completely understand why people can't comprehend or understand.
		But I do believe we are in a downward spiral.
		But that doesn't mean we got excuses to go out and shoot somebody.
		There's no excuse for shooting anybody.
		And I've heard a thousand of my party Democrats talk about he deserved it.
		He was A terrible person.
		He was probably one of the best people we got in the nation.
		Was okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And that's Leon there.
		Let's hear from Gloria.
		Gloria's in Kansas, Republican line.
unidentified		Yes, I just wanted to say that when something happens that the Republicans don't like, they light candles and they pray and they have calm get-togethers out in the streets.
		When the Democrats don't agree with something, they burn buildings, they burn cars, they fight in the streets and act like nuts.
		And if I was a Democrat, I would be embarrassed to be a Democrat.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Melanie in Missouri, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hello.
		Good morning.
		I would like to say to the lady that just called, Democrats are not running on violence, but that's another matter.
		Are we desensitized to political violence?
		I think what we are as a nation, all together, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, we are exhausted during Donald Trump's first, when he was campaigning the first time.
		He said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.
		There's been a lot of rhetoric like that for many years.
		We've had school shootings since Columbine.
		And what was that?
		2000, 1999?
		One after another, after another.
		I think we're tired.
		Desensitized.
		Yes, we are overloaded with information.
		But I would say no, we're just exhausted.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		Have a good day, America.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		One more call on this.
		This will be Keith from Maine Republican Line.
		You're next up.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello.
		Good morning.
		I'd like to say in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, God bless you, America.
		I'd like to make a point of proper terms.
		You know, how you address a doctor, say, Joe Schmo becomes a doctor.
		You don't call him Joe Schmo, you call him doctor in proper terms.
		Mr., Mrs. Your Honor.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, Keith, to the point at hand, when it comes to this idea of political violence, are we becoming desensitized?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What do you think?
unidentified		Yes, sir.
unidentified		What I'd like to say is that in proper terms, this year is okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Keith Romain finishing us off.
		Thank you for participating in the first half hour of the second half hour.
		We will switch over to open forum.
		And if you want to comment on the topic on the first half hour, you can do that.
		Or other topics when it comes to politics.
		202-748-8000 for Democrats.
		202-748-8001 for Republicans.
		Independents, 202-748-8002.
		You can make those comments there on open forum.
		A couple of rules if you do call in, pick the line that best represents you.
		And then if you would, if you called within the last 30 days, hold off from doing so today.
		That gives other people an opportunity to call in and make their thoughts.
		One thing other related to Charlie Kirk from the New York Post this morning and other outlets, excuse me, that Vice President JD Vance announcing that he will be hosting the Charlie Kirk show from the White House today to, quote, pay tribute to his slain friend.
		The eponymous show will air at noon less than a week after Kirk was assassinated during a college campus in Utah.
		Vance and Kirk were close friends for many years, long before the now VP was even involved in politics.
		This story shows the photo that the vice president shared on X of the setup at the White House, where the vice president will host that show today when it comes to later on today.
		And then the story adding that in a letter that was penned to Charlie Kirk that was shared after he was shot and killed at Utah Valley University, Vance reflected on their time together, noting that Mr. Kirk was one of the first people he reached out to when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate in 2021, and that Kirk helped him connect with others who could help shape his campaign, including Donald Trump Jr.
		Again, so look out for that today as it takes place with the vice president hosting the Charlie Kirk show later on today.
		You can mention that in open forum if you wish, other topics too.
		Vernon in Mayor Missouri, Democrats line.
		Hi there.
unidentified		Hi.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're on.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, I just wanted to say we've been desensitized to violence.
		When you have other prominent figures that are speaking out against stuff that they don't like in this country, they are killed.
		And this was before Charlie Kirk.
		Charlie Kirk shouldn't have been killed.
		No other person should be killed.
		I think the problem is, is when we don't like what other people say, like, I don't like nothing, he said, I'm a black man, so nothing on the Republican side, this ideology of white people being superior, white men, specifically, I don't understand.
		We all humans.
		We all bleed.
		We all die.
		We all read.
		We all do the same things.
		We're just different colors.
		So there's no superior in the races.
		We all are equal.
		And if we start treating each other like that, we wouldn't have this divisiveness.
		We would stop listening to the rhetoric from other people.
		Like when Charlie Kirk got killed, there were so many people coming out the left, the left, the left.
		And this guy was a transgender.
		He had a boyfriend that was transgender.
		This guy was a white Christian male.
		He was a Republican.
		His family was Republican.
		They donate to the Republican their whole life.
		They have pictures with guns and all of this stuff.
		But the news comes out and they steal that people like the president and the vice president, all of them say that this guy was trans and he was a Democrat.
		It doesn't matter what he is.
		It was wrong.
		It's one person.
		You can't make everybody the same as one person because they did this vile act.
		That doesn't make any sense.
		Just like you can't put all black people because you see a couple of people or even 100 black people with their pants sagging.
		You can't stereotype everybody like that because I'm not like that.
		I've never been like that.
		I never did like the sagging pants, but I can't say nothing to nobody because they're grown.
		They do what they want.
		We need to stay out of each other's businesses or business and maybe we'll understand each other.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Vernon there in Missouri.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Jim in Kentucky, Republican line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hey, I'd just like to say that the Democrat Party needs to see, I believe, we're living close to Christ to return.
		But anything about Jesus Christ, the Democrat Party, is all against it.
		They can't stand anything Jesus Christ stands for.
		And we got no saying down here in Kentucky.
		A smart man will change his mind, but a fool never will.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Charles is next.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Charles in Idaho, Independent Line.
unidentified		Yeah, I just want to say that it's too bad that Charles Kirk was killed.
		It's all about free speech, and we should have free speech.
		And all the politicians are making gobs and gobs of money.
		And maybe that's one of the reasons why the people don't trust the politicians.
		And so the Democrats are fighting over the Republicans.
		The Republicans are fighting against the Democrats.
		And is it also people can make more money, one side or the other?
		What is it about?
		The free speech is very important.
		And nobody should kill anybody for free speech.
		That's really all I have to say.
		That's the bottom line to everything.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Charles there in Idaho as part of this open forum.
		Again, you can participate too by calling the numbers if you wish.
		202748-8,000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents 202-748-8002.
		At the Kennedy Center here in Washington, D.C. last night, a prayer vigil was held for Charlie Kirk.
		And amongst the speakers was the Health and Human Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., talking about the time he met Kirk, appeared on his program, and what he learned from Charlie Kirk.
		Here's a little bit from last night.
robert f kennedy-jr ▲ ● ▼		I met Charlie for the first time in July of 2001.
		I went on his podcast, and I think we approached each other with a lot of trepidation at that time.
		But by the end of the podcast, we were soulmates, we were spiritual brothers, and we were friends.
		And over the next couple of years, our friendship blossomed.
		He ended up being the primary architect of my unification with President Trump, which I did my endorsement at his rally at the Turning Point rally in Scottsdale.
		And he was the one who put the sparklers on the stage when I shook hands.
		He made a big show of it.
		But the overarching mission of Charlie Kirk was Jesus, but also free speech.
		And he saw them as intertwined.
		He thought conversation was the only way we were going to heal our country.
		That we had to learn to talk to each other without vitriol, without poison, without anger.
		We had to be able to listen to ideas.
		We had to be able to say what we mean without being mean and to talk to each other across this divide.
		It's the only way to end the polarization that's driven now by these algorithms and by all these other forces in our society.
		And that first conversation with him that I had, we talked a lot.
		We had a wide-ranging conversation.
		We talked mainly about the First Amendment.
		We talked about the fact that our founders put freedom of speech in the First Amendment because all the other rights are dependent on it.
		A government that can silence its opponents has license for any kind of atrocity.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The secretary was one of several administration members who spoke last night at that prayer vigil.
		And if you want to see the whole program, you can go to our app at C-SPAN now.
		And you can also look at it at our website at c-span.org.
		Elise in New York City, Democrats line.
		Hello.
		Elise in New York City.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, I'm here.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hello.
		Yes, I'm here.
		I would just like to say that I wish that the president would set a different tone, that he has the power to completely alter the way that this division is happening in America.
		He could say, let's be peaceful.
		Let's share ideas.
		We're one America.
		He could unite us.
		And instead of doing that, he's pitting one to get the left against the right.
		And it's really unfortunate that this is happening when it could be so different.
		I also think that our country has to look at these young people and their anger, their rage, the fact that this young man was only 22 years old and he had this type of anger against Charlie Kirk.
		It's so sad that this is happening.
		It's sad that it's happening at the rate that it's happening, the political violence.
		And we have to, as a country, figure this out with gun laws.
		Gun reform must happen.
		And I also think that it's unfair that we are not allowed as a country to analyze the full picture of Mr. Kirk.
		And it's disingenuous to mourn him, but not say what he spoke about.
		He marginalized a lot of people.
		A lot of people were alienated.
		A lot of people were scared when he spoke.
		And he had the force of his organization and the money and the political backing that a lot of black LGBTQ trans immigrants felt under attack with his words and with his thoughts.
		And no one wanted to see him die.
		He should have been alive.
		He should have matured.
		And his ideas may have changed with life experience.
		But unfortunately, he died.
		And it's very sad.
		I think he would have changed.
		I think he would have listened more to other people that were different from him, people that were left out of this system, people that were poor, immigrants, people who fought for his same, what he was especially.
		They wanted freedom.
		They wanted to be a part of this American system.
		They wanted to belong and not be felt as outsiders.
		That's so sad all around.
		I love this country.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Elise in New York.
		This is Pat.
		Pat joins us from Florida Independent Lying.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hi.
		This is the first time I'm calling or gotten through to C-SPAN.
		I did want to make a comment regarding the political violence.
		I do not.
		Yeah, I know.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I can't hear you.
		Don't pay attention to the television.
		Just go ahead and pay attention to me talking to you on the phone and make your comment, please.
unidentified		Okay.
		I wanted to make a comment about desagitation to political violence.
		I don't think we're becoming.
		I can't hear him.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Pat, if you're paying attention to the television, there's a delay there, so you're not going to hear anything from it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Just go ahead and make your comment.
unidentified		Yeah, but okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		People can hear you.
		I guarantee you people will hear you.
		Just go ahead.
unidentified		All right.
		I think we are just not doing anything about it.
		And I think that certain people in the last 10, 12 years have ramped it up and blamed different parties.
		I just think when I saw the video of Charlie Kirk, I didn't see the whole thing being assassinated.
		I'm 73.
		The first thing I remember in sixth grade was JFK being shot.
		And I, I mean, there have been multitudes of people killed over the years for political violence, right, left.
		And I just think we need to get a handle on guns.
		And I think our government needs to do something about that.
		It's just too easy.
		And people need to talk.
		The ones I didn't agree with a thing, Charlie Kirk was saying most of the time.
		But he engaged people in a dialogue.
		And that I admired.
		And that's what we need to get back to.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Pat there in Independent Line giving us a call for the first time.
		Thank you, Pat, for doing so.
		Perhaps you haven't called to this program and you want to get your thoughts in as well.
		Again, all you have to do is call the line that best represents you there on the screen.
		When you call in, if you want, mute your television or turn it down only because there's a delay between when we say things here and when you hear them on your television, and that may produce a little bit of a pause when it comes to conversation.
		But if you do that, then if you have not called us in the last 30 days, feel free to do so today.
		Feel free to also, especially if you haven't never called this program.
		And if you've watched it or maybe and never called in, if you want to call in today on this open forum, feel free to do that.
		Charlie in Pennsylvania, Republican line.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		I just want to say that was funny, man, the first 20 seconds of that call.
		But no, I think people don't realize that, you know, I'm younger.
		I'm 25.
		For the past 10 years, I've been listening to all this stuff from Charlie and all this propaganda.
		I'm not going to lie.
		Whenever I was 15, I fell for all of the indoctrination for like the Gavin McGinnis, the Proud Boys, all that.
		So people are unfamiliar with him, really.
		Turning Point USA only publishes the good things.
		These are clips take it out of context.
		Nothing is ever like, I don't know, real.
		Like he floundered in real debates.
		And I mean, it sucks to see, you know, that this happened.
		This is an incredibly traumatic event.
		And I mean, but the autopsy report isn't even out.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So as a Republican, though, however, what do you think is appealed then amongst fellow Republicans?
		He's gone.
		Let's go to New York.
		Democrats lying.
		Joan on this open forum.
		Hello there.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'm calling to make a statement.
		The gentleman that made the statement about wisdom should also know that the Bible says wisdom is too high for a fool.
		Okay, to move right along.
		We can have free speech, but why can't we have respect along with the free speech?
		That seems to be the problem.
		We need to learn to respect each other when we make statements, especially when we are out in the public.
		And I just want to say too, I'm a 76-year-old African-American woman.
		When I look at the children, the people that are out here doing these terrible things, shooting up schools, shooting whoever they feel like they don't like, they are white children.
		When you teach your children hatred, this can lead to their life being devastated forever.
		So while you're out there teaching hate, your young children are listening.
		And look at who is doing all the murders of politicians and in schools and whatever.
		Let's use respect along with free speech.
		And maybe we all can get along.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Joan there in New York, USA Today, talks about the appearance, several appearances yesterday on the Sunday shows of Utah's Republican governor, Governor Cox.
		Spencer Cox saying, in part, some of the information from the ongoing investigation saying in those television appearances that Robinson and Tyler Robinson held a, quote, leftist ideology starkly different from his family, had spent much of his time online after dropping out of college.
		The governor cautioned people from jumping to conclusions as investigators were still working to piece together exactly what led up to the deadly shooting.
		Quote, the why behind this, again, we're all drawing lots of conclusions on how someone like this could be radicalized, he said on one of those shows.
		He goes on to say, I think that those are important questions for us to ask and important questions for us to answer.
		During one of those shows, it was the governor talking about what he thought the role social media played when it comes to violence, when it comes to desensitization.
		Here's the governor, Spencer Cox from yesterday.
spencer cox ▲ ● ▼		Charlie said some very inflammatory things.
		And in some corners of the web, that's all people have heard.
		But he also said some other things about forgiveness.
		He said some amazing things about when things get dark, putting down our phones, reading scripture, going to church, talking to our neighbors.
		He said that we have to engage.
		And that's what I appreciate most about Charlie Kirk.
		He said if we don't keep talking, that's when the violence starts.
		Look, there are conflict entrepreneurs out there who benefit from radicalizing us.
		And I'm not one of those.
		I don't know that that's particularly helpful.
		But he is right at this.
		We need to find out how this happened, and we need to stop it from happening.
unidentified		You called social media a cancer on our society.
dana bash ▲ ● ▼		I know you have made talking about social media one of your key issues as governor of Utah.
unidentified		What should or even can government do to cure this cancer, as you call it?
spencer cox ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's some things that we're working on for sure.
		We have to get phones out of the classroom.
		We're doing that in Utah.
		Many states are doing that right now.
		We have to hold the largest companies in the history of the world with combined trillion-dollar market caps.
		We have to hold them responsible for the algorithms that are pushing us.
		Again, they're hijacking our agency.
		They're hijacking our free will with these dopamine hits.
		Same chemical reaction as fentanyl, getting us addicted to these platforms.
		And outrage releases a dopamine hit for sure.
		And they are taking no responsibility for this.
		In fact, they're suing the state of Utah to stop the most comprehensive social media reforms in the world's history.
		They're happening right here.
		And we absolutely have to hold them accountable.
dana bash ▲ ● ▼		Just real quick, you have said that we're in a dark chapter and you're not sure if it's the end of a dark chapter or beginning of a darker one.
unidentified		Is your view of America right now shaken?
spencer cox ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, if your view of America is not shaken right now, then there's something wrong with you.
spencer cox ▲ ● ▼		This is a direct assault on America.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Again, one of the many appearances of Utah's governor on the Sunday shows.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Patricia in Texas, Independent Line.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
unidentified		Can you hear me?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I can.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Okay, perfect.
		I just wanted to say I don't understand how I listen to everyone call on the phone.
		I don't understand the difference between black people Christianity and white Christianity.
		What I mean by that is with Charlie Kirk.
		I hate what happened to him.
		I do.
		I don't like anything that he said, but I still pray for his wife and their kids.
		I hear people get on and they, the left, the right, point, point, point.
		If you are a true Christian, then you know to love all.
		I heard Charlie Kirk talk about gays, trans.
		I don't understand the type of hate because God hates the sin, not the person.
		And then another thing I just really have an issue with, it just seemed like white people don't understand hatred when they hear it.
		And to me, that's really heavy on my heart.
		Why can't they understand hate when they hear it?
		I went to a mixed church, a multicultural church, and the white preacher said, if y'all know any more blacks or Hispanics or anyone that want to come in here, let them come in here so we can look like heaven.
		I don't understand the difference between black and white Christianity and why they just can't distinguish when they hear hate.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Patricia there in Texas, Deborah Johnson coming in from the earlier question saying, I don't think that they in the United States are desensitized, but are so filled with hate and anger that they will justify for that type of behavior rather than seeing that as a problem.
		Diane from Facebook saying that unfortunately this country was built on violence.
		It's in the culture's DNA.
		We need to cut that part out and somehow become less selfish, more altruistic, and more practical.
		For instance, take the economy.
		Use up so much energy blaming so-and-so for the economy.
		We could talk about or work towards solutions.
		We need to get smart and quit using politics as an entertainment source.
		She finishes off.
		Again, Facebook is available to you if you want to post your thoughts there.
		Facebook.com slash C-SPANX also at C-SPANWJ is how you do that.
		Text us if you want.
		202-748-8003.
		Rick in Pennsylvania, Independent Line.
		You are next on this open forum.
		Rick, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, everyone.
		I wanted to commend this conversation as I've been listening to it.
		Everybody's have had different and positive views from both sides, all sides.
		This is the kind of conversation that needs to be open on the floor up there on the hill.
		But all that withstanding, if you're going to talk about free speech, it got to be free speech for everybody.
		You can't send somebody, the port, an immigrant, to another country because you don't like what he said on college campus.
		You can't take away the college campuses' research money because you are concerned with what they allow to be said on their campuses.
		Free speech is free speech, and it has to be universal.
		And it has to be accepted by everybody.
		If it ain't for everybody, it ain't for nobody.
		And it's up to us to know how to dissimilate or subtract what is not in our best interest.
		America has a violent history from the door.
		From the moment they set foot in America, it ain't been nothing but violence on everybody.
		It's time for that to change.
		It's time for acceptability, respectability.
		And that's all I got to say.
		Thank you for your time.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Rick in Pennsylvania there, another Pennsylvanian.
		This is Susan from Coatesville Democrats Line.
		Susan, you're next up.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		I agree with the previous caller 100%.
		And I also wanted to mention, I do think, or I see how the mainstream media is presenting very unbalanced coverage.
		And so there's one point, for example, about Mr. Cook that he was involved with the January 6th violence, or at least he supported and sent buses on that date to the Capitol.
		He was interviewed by the January 6th Committee back then and invoked his Fifth Amendment a lot.
		So that's just another point I wanted to add.
		And I feel like having somebody like this being quoted by our vice president, it's just all a little bit, it seems like whitewashing and over the top, and they really want to brand something on this person that he wasn't.
		He was not, I mean, I don't understand honoring somebody who actually committed hate speech.
		I mean, that's what the previous caller, I mean, either you accept everybody's speech, but then to cherry pick that what he said was okay, but if somebody else something against it, it's not okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		John in Washington, D.C., Republican line.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, Pedro.
		It's funny how these people say that Charlie Kirk was engaged in hate speech.
		If you say that a woman that has a penis is actually.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's John there in D.C. again.
		While we're talking here in the United States, the Israeli president is meeting with the Secretary of State in Israel to talk about issues related to the two countries.
		Earlier this morning, it was the Secretary of State meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Yajnahu, talking about issues.
		Again, all this taking place in Jerusalem.
		The Secretary of State there for a few days before he heads on to the United Kingdom to join the president as he travels to the U.K. later on this week.
		We'll play a portion of the events that take place from earlier today, later on in the program.
		If you're interested, you can follow along on our app and our website too about that meeting with Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in Israel.
		Gregory in New Jersey, Independent Line.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
		How are you doing?
		Good morning.
		I want to give the black lady respect that said about on the topic of respect.
		White folks don't respect black people, Indians.
		You have to understand the history of this country, and it's all about hatred and conquering.
		The Europeans did the same thing.
		Europe messed up the world, and the world is in trouble because of it.
		And they said it was all about greed, if you want to know the truth.
		And they're never going to tell the truth in this country because they got to keep people brainwashed with white supremacy, and they think they own the world.
		And it's a shame that people don't understand the hatred that they have in this country.
		And that's why they don't want to teach history about how they conquered the world.
		And they put their foot up people's butt all the time.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		One more call.
		This is David, who's joining us from Grand Prairie, Texas.
		David, go ahead.
unidentified		Thank you for taking my call.
		I just want to add my view.
		First, again, thank you for having this conversation and thank you for having this format.
		The life of Charlie Kirk has opened up the lives of so many different Americans.
		And it's, you can see by the different people that's calling him.
		But I do believe that the life that he lived eventually caught up with him.
		Now, I give a lot of respect and honor to him for having the boldness to speak out.
		That's what our U.S. Constitution gives us.
		It gives us the innate ability to express our feelings.
		That's why America is the greatest country in the world.
		But when you sow a life of negativity, so it's, you know, for some people, even though it may not have been negative in his life and his family's youth, and I do honor and respect his wife and his kids, and I pray that they are made whole and healed.
		But you cannot sow a thing and expect something else to come back.
		When you sow a life of that kind of behavior, it tends to come back to you.
		But anyway.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Caller, may I ask how much you knew about Charlie Kirk before his death last week?
unidentified		I did not know a whole bunch about him.
		That was my point.
		I believe that his death ignited a lot of people to look into him and look into him.
		And when they see and hear things that trigger some of the words that he used, I believe it should be some coaching.
		I believe it should be some kind of restraint for us as Americans not to be able to just say it.
		I mean, of course, once the freedom of speech, but I didn't know a lot about him, to be honest, but I've been researching him since all of this incident.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's David there in Texas finishing up this open forum for today.
		For those of you who participated, thank you for doing so.
		One event to point you to when it comes to events of national security.
		Later on today, former national security advisors meeting on the topic of foreign policy challenges to the United States.
		This will be at the Council of Foreign Relations.
		You can see that at 1230 Eastern on C-SPAN 2.
		You can follow along on our app at C-SPANNOW and C-SPAN.org available if you want to watch the program there.
		Later on the program, we're going to talk about aspects of the U.S. economy with Heather Long, Washington Post columnist and Navy Federal Credit Union Chief Economist.
		But as the House gathers this week, they have to work on a process to keep the government funded on the Senate side, potential changes to speed up nominations of the president.
		And here to tie all those things together, Eric Wasson of Bloomberg News, joining us for the conversation.
		and Washington Journal continues.
unidentified		The House will consider several bills to reform D.C.'s policing and criminal sentencing laws.
		The Senate will vote to confirm the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, Stephen Myron, to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
		Prior to the Fed's open market committee meeting, they'll also continue to work on the 2026 defense programs and policy legislation.
		On Tuesday, FBI Director Kash Patel appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee, conducting oversight on the agency.
		Then on Wednesday, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Susan Menares, who was recently terminated from the position, and Deborah Howry, former CDC Chief Medical Officer, testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, reviewing the recent events at the CDC and the implications for children's health.
		Also on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will hold a press conference following the federal open market committee meeting, possibly announcing an interest rate cut.
		And on Thursday, the Mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the city's crime policies and general oversight.
		Watch live this week on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app.
		Also, head over to c-span.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime.
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pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Eric Wasson reports on Congress for Bloomberg joining us now.
		A lot going on in both the House and Senate side.
		Eric Wasson, welcome to the program.
unidentified		Thanks so much for having me.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		On the House side, let's start there.
		There's a deadline coming up for funding.
		Tell our viewers where that deadline is and what's being done to meet it.
unidentified		Well, Congress needs a bipartisan agreement by October 1st to prevent a government shutdown.
		Right now, it looks more likely than not we will see some kind of government shutdown.
		This is due to a deep disagreement between Republicans and Democrats.
		Republicans are preparing as soon as this morning to unveil a stopgap bill through either November 20th or November 21st, just to keep the government on autopilot for about seven weeks.
		They do not want to attach other big policies to that.
		Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, wants to see major health care legislation attached to this.
		He's asked for a rollback of this big, beautiful bill, Medicaid cuts, cuts to rural hospitals.
		That's unlikely to happen.
		But also on his list of potential demands is extending expiring Obamacare premium subsidies, without which we might see a 75% increase in some people's health care insurance.
		Some Republicans are interested in that, but Senate Majority Leader John Thunen said, no way are we doing this big policy change on a short seven-week bill.
		It's really going to be up to Chuck Schumer whether he sort of backs down.
		In March, he did make a government shutdown threat.
		In the end, he allowed just enough Democrats to vote.
		This is a reminder, you need 60 votes in the Senate to clear.
		Republicans don't have 60 seats.
		They need at least seven Democrats.
		So we could see a shutdown at the end of the month.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's the willingness of Chuck Schumer to go ahead and let that happen?
unidentified		You know, he's talking a lot tougher than he did even in March.
		You know, the argument then was that Trump with that peak popularity with the tariffs and other concerns, Trump's popularity would be eroded and there would be a chance for Democrats to really take on the president in a potential shutdown fight.
		You know, it's just a hard argument for a congressional minority to make.
		You know, if there is a clean funding bill to go up and make that argument, it's a bit convoluted.
		It's a bit hard to make.
		Bernie Sanders was out there this weekend making the argument that Republicans would be the ones shutting down the government if they don't negotiate with Democrats.
		So really, once the shutdown begins, it's all bets are off.
		But in the past, the ones who were viewed as being the ones who caused a shutdown generally tend to have to back down.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How does the narrow majority in the House complicate what majority leader, or sorry, the House Speaker Mike Johnson has to accomplish?
unidentified		Yeah, so normally he's got to deal with the House Freedom Caucus, but the House Freedom Caucus has really changed in this Congress.
		It's become sort of tamed by House Speaker Mike Johnson.
		Even during the big, beautiful bill, the $4 trillion tax cut and spending cut bill, there were threats of voting against it at the last minute the Freedom Caucus backed down.
		So the Freedom Caucus, interestingly, is kind of pushing for a full-year continuing resolution at sort of current levels.
		The reason here is because the White House budget office, the Office of Management and Budget, has taken on a sort of a novel theory of the case where they're doing pocket rescissions, where they're going in and sort of canceling spending unilaterally without congressional support, something that critics call an illegal impoundment.
		The courts will have to decide that.
		But for the Freedom Caucus, the idea is Congress just put everything on autopilot and then OMB can come in and selectively just cut the spending unilaterally.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What that act set off a lot of Republicans in the House and Senate does it come back to bite them, so to speak, in this process.
unidentified		You know, it certainly could.
		You know, once Congress cedes power to the executive on spending, it's already ceded power on war powers and foreign policy.
		You know, it would be hard to call it back.
		So, you know, again, in any, you know, the institutionals will say, no, Congress needs to defend the power of the purse.
		We see Susan Collins, who's the leader of the Appropriations Committee, you know, against impoundment, you know, urging OMB not to take these actions, but she needs at least a few more colleagues to go along with that stance in order to block them.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Just to give viewers a sense of where the House Speaker is yesterday, he was on the Sunday shows and was asked about this idea of passage and what complicates that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I want to play a little of that exchange and we'll talk about it.
unidentified		You were in the middle of answering about Obamacare tax subsidies, possible sanctions against Russia, and a government funding mechanism.
unidentified		Please continue.
mike johnson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, sorry about the interruption there.
mike johnson ▲ ● ▼		Listen, we're very encouraged that we've been able to restore the regular appropriations.
unidentified		Right, but are we going to get this done?
unidentified		Are those two other things going to be added to the process, Mr. Speaker?
mike johnson ▲ ● ▼		We'll have to see.
		I've got to build consensus around all of it, but I think we'll need a short-term funding measure, a clean CR that will allow more time to figure all this out.
		We certainly hope that Democrats will go along on that, because if not, they really have no excuse.
		If they shut the government down, it would be their unilateral decision to do so.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So, Eric Watson, two things, I have to build consensus.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's what he has to say.
unidentified		That's right.
		And one of the elements that might be attached to this, they say clean CR, they might have more lawmaker security.
		In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, there's a lot of nervousness.
		There's some pilot programs out there that have been done, but the speaker was telling us in a gaggle that only 20 lawmakers have opted for this extra $20,000 a year for security.
		They may expand that, extend that.
		But, you know, leaders in Congress have full security details, but rank-and-file members don't.
		And the speaker said that would not be feasible.
		It would be billions of dollars, perhaps having to hire 5,000 more U.S. Capitol police.
		But they want to find some ways to keep lawmakers safe, and there's certainly a lot of nervousness now in the wake of the tragic killing.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		He's also laying it at the feet of Democrats if this does not happen.
unidentified		Oh, right.
		So, yes.
		So, you know, the interesting thing is the House Democratic minority, if Republicans are united, don't have to contribute a single vote to pass the CR.
		And in fact, everyone except for Jared Golden, the moderate Democrat from Maine, voted against the continuing resolution the government's currently running under that passed in March.
		So what really matters is to Senate Democrats.
		Are seven Senate Democrats going to go along?
		Their votes are in fact needed, and that's going to be the big question at the end of the month.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And what's the message currently being delivered then by the House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries?
unidentified		Well, they're really messaging on health care.
		There's a sense that the Big Beautiful bill, this big tax cut and Medicaid cut spending bill is not popular.
		It's very hard for Republicans to explain.
		Over August recess, it didn't get more popular despite events and other messaging from the majority.
		So they feel like they can double down on this, make this fight about health care, about the fact that Medicaid is going to see a trillion dollars in cuts, some of it from work requirements, but some of it also from changes to a different accounting measures that will hit rural hospitals, despite a $50 billion rural hospital emergency fund.
		The cuts to rural hospitals are probably much in excess of that.
		And make it about health care and make it about this Obamacare premiums.
		And there's a real sense that the president, if the president realizes the political peril Republicans would be in, if middle-class members face massive health care increases, that he will actually come along.
		And he has to overcome resistance by the Freedom Caucus.
		Jody Arrington, the House Budget Committee Chairman, is adamant that we will not extend Obamacare premiums.
		He'll just call it bad policy.
		But others are showing a little bit of willingness.
		Jason Smith, the head of the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction, said, look, we need income limits.
		Someone making $600,000 shouldn't get this, but maybe someone closer in the middle class.
		For reference, it would be about $120,000 or so for a family of four is the limit if this goes away and people making a higher salary would not get the tax subsidy.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The end of September is a deadline, but actually, how many working days are left before a deadline hits?
unidentified		Well, that's the thing.
		There's a big recess next week for both the House and Senate, the Rosh Hashanah Jewish High Holy Days, week-long recess.
		There is talk of the Senate especially coming in that weekend, the end of that week, working through the weekend.
		I've canceled my plans.
		I'm planning to be here.
		I think that's the most likely scenario.
		Congress does work up against the deadline, and the Senate has procedural hoops to go through.
		So, you know, the House could pass this Wednesday, get out of town, pass it Thursday, perhaps.
		But then the Senate would have to work through some procedural hurdles, and they probably don't want to take it right to the deadline.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Eric Wasson here at Bloomberg.
		And if you want to ask him questions about the actions of Congress, particularly when it comes to spending or other issues, you can ask him questions on the lines.
		202-748-8000 for Democrats.
		202-748-8001 for Republicans.
		Independents, 2027-8002.
		And text us your questions, too, for Eric Wasson at 202-748-8003.
		Let's focus on the Senate.
		Senator Thune's in the process of making changes to get more of President Trump's nominations through.
		Tell us, first of all, how we got to this point.
unidentified		Well, you know, it's really been one of the few tools that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have is to delay these nominations.
		They force them to go through procedural hurdles that have literally left a backlog of over 100 nominations sitting out of committee.
		So Republicans have basically decided they need to defang the Democrat ability to obstruct these nominations, and they want to do massive on-block, basically allowing one vote up or down for a block of nominees.
		Now, these would be less than the cabinet.
		It wouldn't be for your Secretary of Health and Human Services.
		It wouldn't be Supreme Court nominations.
		It would be lower-level folks that would be able to clear through.
		Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have warned that this will come back to hot Republicans when they're in the minority, but Republicans are uppercase.
		There was a last-minute attempt at a deal to sort of limit the ability, the numbers here on how many nominations could be included, but that has fallen apart.
		So we expect sort of this nuclear option.
		They call it the nuclear option because the Senate is ultimately a constitutional majoritarian body with 50 votes plus the vice president.
		You can change the rules.
		You could get rid of the filibuster, something that Democrats contemplated, but they didn't have the votes to do when they had the majority.
		But now we see Republicans really weakening the filibuster.
		This is the 60-vote requirement in the Senate.
		One major thing that they did was this big, beautiful bill.
		This was reconciliation, which traditionally had been an exception to the filibuster for reducing the deficit.
		Then under George W. Bush, it became an ability to increase the deficit for a short period of time.
		Now they've again changed it by using a different metric, a different way of measuring the deficit to say you can increase the deficit basically in the long term using it.
		We continue to see this being a big hole blown in the filibuster to the point where we're on the cusp of maybe doing regular appropriations through the reconciliation process.
		And all of this leads me to believe that if the Democrats ever do get the majority, again, they will just eliminate the filibuster and try to do the sort of social policy legislation that they've been itching to do, like raise the minimum wage or make DC a state.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The Senator Thune started the process last week.
		What happened last week?
		What are we watching for this week?
unidentified		You know, I think it's just going to go forward.
		We're basically going to see short of some last-minute deal.
		We're expecting a key for economic nomination, Stephen Murin, to be one of the federal board of governors to be approved today in order to get him able to vote on this key matter before the Fed, the interest rate this week.
		So I think we're going to see really an easing of the ability of the president to put these crucial sub-cabinet nominees in to get his policies going forward.
		And this is crucial, and normally administrations take more than a year to really get up and running as far as these Schedule C appointees, and we're going to see a lot more quickly put into place.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I believe one of the people on that list to be approved, include Kimberly Guilfoyle, to be ambassador of Greece.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Is that the kind of nominations we're talking at that point?
unidentified		Yeah, we're talking about ambassador nominations.
		We're talking about to government commissions and panels, assistant secretaries, all the people that do need Senate confirmation.
		Now, there's been some talk in the past that maybe they don't all need to be Senate confirmed, that maybe this is too languorous a process, but I think this is where the solution is going to lie.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Republicans pretty much lockstep on supporting the Senate on this one?
unidentified		It looks that way to me, yeah.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		One of the other things that the Senate's doing is something called the NDAA, defense issues and everything else.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		It's a bit technical, but what is it and what's its importance in the Senate right now?
unidentified		Okay, so the spending process in Congress is a bit convoluted.
		There's authorizations and then there's appropriations.
		Appropriations is where the rubber meets the road.
		So you've got, you know, you've got to pass a government spending bill, the government shuts down.
		Part of that is the defense spending bill.
		But guiding that defense spending bill is a separate authorization bill.
		And every year, for decades, Congress has passed a defense authorization bill.
		They failed to authorize many other programs like the State Department, but they're pretty good about doing the defense bill.
		And this really lays out important things from what weapons are going to be purchased to, you know, what is our security posture on cybersecurity, for example.
		You know, how are we going to handle relations with selling foreign governments our arms like Taiwan, for example.
		So this is an important piece of legislation.
		It typically is done in a bipartisan manner.
		It once again looking to be that way.
		We have a strong alliance among defense hawks on the armed services committees.
		So I'm expecting not too many big bumps here.
		Of course, one of the big tensions between defense hawks in Congress and the administration is Russia.
		And we're really seeing Lindsey Graham being one of the defense hawks, really pushing this idea of expanded Russia sanctions, pushing the president to really take a stronger posture, especially after Russian drones entered Poland's airspace to sort of take it into the sanctions realm.
		But from congressional leaders, especially John Thune and others in the Senate, they want to see the president take leadership.
		They're not going to put it on the floor unless the president requests it because they do differ to the president on foreign policy.
		And so far, he's been saying, well, let's do this in coordination with NATO, which is actually, critics would say, a tough stance because NATO and the EU involve Hungary, which is a Putin ally.
		So you need unanimity, sort of putting in Hungary's ball court.
		So this is an interesting thing that could also potentially get onto the CR.
		I don't think so.
		That's the stopgap bill.
		Graham is calling for that.
		Brian Fitzpatrick, who's a Ukraine hawk, calling for that.
		That would be difficult given that the messaging from Republicans leader is a, quote, clean seal.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The NDAA on the Senate side, does the House have a version and how do the two compare?
unidentified		Yeah, the House has passed its own version.
		You know, there's a myriad differences between the two, but not the sort of thing that would rise to the level of sort of a government shutdown.
		They'll tend to be worked out.
		A lot of times these things end up getting passed at the end of the year.
		They'll go to conference and work out those differences, and those will emerge in the coming weeks.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Andrew.
		Andrew is in New Jersey, Independent Line.
		You're on with our guest, Eric Watson of Bloomberg.
		He covers Congress.
		Andrew in New Jersey.
		Hello, go ahead.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		I watch C-SPAN all the time.
		I also go on opensecrets.org.
dennis in kentucky ▲ ● ▼		But why does Congress do this every year with threatening to shut down the government, scaring people?
unidentified		This doesn't affect them, does it?
		If the government shuts down, they go home.
		They go about their lives sped in lies.
		But why can't they just come to an agreement, the Democrats and the Republicans?
		We need more than a two-party system in this country because they are not representing us anymore.
		I'd like your comment.
		Thank you.
		Sure.
		And I appreciate the Jersey X-Man.
		I'm from Jersey myself.
		It was nice to be here.
		You know, Congress doesn't, in fact, go home.
		You know, they don't shut down.
		In fact, they're supposed to remain in session and work on avoiding a shutdown.
		So I think it's not necessarily pleasant for them.
		And they do hear a lot, especially in this case, the defense bill has not passed so that the troops would be working without pay.
		That's an interesting thing I should mention that essential workers like the troops continue to work.
		They don't get paid until the shutdown is over.
		Other members of the federal government are furloughed.
		So that's a huge, ends up being a huge waste because they are paid eventually, but they don't work during that time.
		But why is it the shutdown is one of the few points of sort of leverage that a minority has, and we see this happening again and again, where, especially in a highly polarized environment, which we have definitely seen over my close to 20 years covering Congress getting more and more polarized, more and more sort of, I wouldn't say vicious, but like really coming to hard terms with each other, it's becoming more and more likely that we'll see these shutdowns.
		We did see the longest shutdown under President Trump, the first administration, 35 days, which was when the president was demanding funding for his border wall, and that led to a shutdown.
		Eventually, the president tried an end run around Congress to sort of basically transfer money to its border wall.
		That was viewed illegal in the end of the day.
		That's not the issue this time because using that reconciliation bill, that partisan tax bill, they were able to fund a border wall and another massive increase in immigration enforcement.
		So that's not going to be the issue this time, but here we are with health care cuts and Democrats certainly tempted to touch that hot stove of a shutdown.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Eric Watson, almost every leader in Congress, I think, has said at one time, we want to return to regular order.
		We want to pass appropriations bills.
		What's the status of those bills this time around?
unidentified		Yeah, that's worth mentioning.
		I mean, the real issue why we have to need a stopgap is you have to pass 12 appropriations bills.
		Often they're packaged into an omnibus, which is one big giant 2,000-bage bill, or mini-buses, which are like three or four combos.
		But they're the ones with the detailed instructions and also the earmarks that tell agencies how they're supposed to use the money.
		Now, with the new posture of the White House budget office, those are being ignored more and more.
		But nonetheless, that's the way it's supposed to work.
		The Senate actually has made some progress.
		Susan Collins and others will be happy to point out.
		It's actually gone ahead and passed three bills.
		That's for Veterans Affairs, for the Department of Agriculture, and also the legislative branch itself.
		And that wasn't done under the Democratic majority that was sort of put by the wayside.
		The House has made some progress as well.
		They've gotten their bills through committee, which is key.
		The House Appropriations Committee holds these full, very public markups with dozens and dozens of amendments.
		And they've taken some of them to the floor.
		Those are difficult, though.
		The Senate has not been able to produce two of the key bills at all, the Homeland Security bill and the State Department bill.
		The State Department bill is held up because if you remember, the administration took a very aggressive posture getting rid of the USAAD, Basically, dissolving the U.S. Agency for Global Media.
		A lot of elements of that State Department bill are very contentious.
		I think members on the Democrats would like to use that bill to reassert or maybe reinvent USAID to find some way to do foreign aid, to find food aid and global health aid.
		And there are some Republicans who feel the same way, but then they want to take a careful posture toward the administration.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We heard the viewer calling in about what happens and why this happens.
		There's another viewer off of X saying there's no excuse for a shutdown after they took early recess period.
		How would you characterize the justification for taking the recess if they knew this deadline was coming up?
unidentified		Yeah, no, it's interesting.
		I mean, Congress took a very long, especially the House recess the end of July in August.
		You know, they were gone for weeks and weeks coming back.
		This happens every year.
		But the thing is, it's not really a time element because they're so, I would say, quite frankly, addicted to working on deadline.
		They're almost almost like those college students.
		They want to write that essay right up against the deadline or even go over it.
		Even if they spent those weeks, they won't come to terms until there's actually this shutdown deadline.
		So in some ways, it's kind of leaders saying, well, we might as well take time off.
		To be fair, it's not all vacation time or CODEL time.
		It is time in the district.
		I went out in August to Iowa and saw the members working hard talking to their constituents.
		They do meet with constituents, which is part of their job to actually listen to the voters and other members in their district.
		But at the end of the day, the leaders are kind of resigned to the fact that they won't come to a deal toward the end, so they might as well take August off as the feeling.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Eric Walsen, to another topic, what's your sense of where the House and the Senate are after the death of Charlie Kirk?
unidentified		Well, you know, there's a lot.
		My view on all this is that people need to get offline and talk to each other.
		One of the great privileges of covering Congress, I talk to Republicans, Democrats all the time, in person people, 99% of the people are really nice.
		I think that people, you know, have gotten really hyped up on social media, throwing bombs at each other rhetorically, and now this horrible killing.
		I hope everyone just takes a step back, tries to meet their neighbor, talk to each other.
		Watching this program is a good place to debate ideas.
		Certainly, you may feel that people of the other party are misled, misinformed, or irrational, but violence is never the answer.
		I think there's a real tragic sense.
		I saw Republican aides in tears this time, and we've seen it from the other side as well.
		And I really respect people like Don Bacon, a good Republican centrist who was out there saying, look, this is the time, not the time to whip up anger.
		Let's try to find a way to unite.
		I will say that the House Speaker has been out there talking about this, trying to be more civil.
		I do note that in his general demeanor, he doesn't do personal attacks.
		But there are members, rank-and-file members, who right away were yelling, screaming, blaming the media, calling for investigations of the other party.
		And we could certainly see us going down that road.
		One of the key things is where they created a select committee to investigate Democrats.
		We'll see if we go down that road.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You alluded to it, I think, but one of the questions I think that members of Congress was asking, and perhaps even the president himself, is money when it comes to security for Congress, judicial members, and the like.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Can you elaborate what the ideas are at this point?
unidentified		Yeah, so the White House has requested $58 million to help boost security for members of the executive branch.
		I think that could be worked into the CR.
		And then there's the stopgap bill.
		And then there's talk of sort of adding money for lawmakers.
		My general sense is that that real discussion will happen in the context of the regular legislative branch bill, which is going to be, there's some hope of attaching this to this stopgap bill, but that's kind of faded.
		There's going to be a conference committee, a very rare sort of meeting in House and Senate appropriators to work that out.
		And that's where they can have a real discussion about what's needed.
		You know, how do we thread that needle?
		We can't provide full security, Secret Service type details to every member of Congress, although you might see that on the Senate side where there's fewer.
		But can we boost people's home security?
		Can we give them money to hire a bodyguard?
		You know, that's going to be part of the conversation for sure.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		But one more question before we let you go.
		It was announced yesterday.
		He said it during his appearance.
		It's the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCall saying he's planning on leaving Congress.
		Another member deciding to leave.
		How is that shaping up the various members who are deciding to retire and how the future of Congress looks like about who holds power come midterms?
unidentified		Mike McCall is one of the wisest people out there.
		I always enjoy talking to him.
		I think he's sort of an old school Republican, you know, very sort of anti-Russia, pro-foreign policy intervention.
		And he's sort of like seeing himself kind of pushed aside here.
		You know, he tried to, he had the gabble of foreign affairs, lost that, tried to get Homeland Security.
		I wouldn't say he was pushed out, but sort of his moment perhaps has passed.
		But certainly I think he'll be missed by many, you know, a wise person, an old hand, and we're seeing a lot of those retiring this year.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Aside from everything we've talked about, what else should our viewers watch for from Congress?
unidentified		You know, I think this Obamacare premium thing is very interesting.
		I would like to see how the president weighs in on this.
		This is going to be the biggest.
		November 1st, a lot of people are going to get a premium letter from their health insurance provider, and they might see their monthly premium almost double.
		And that's going to be a big political earthquake in this country.
		I think we'll quickly come to terms on it, but I'm looking to see some kind of deal.
		And then if their bill passes, what could be added to that?
		You know, there's problems with the existing tax bill.
		There are things that weren't passed there that Republicans would like to see added.
		There are potential other reforms.
		You know, one of the things is Medicare upcoding, the way in which hospitals try to bill more to Medicare.
		Is there a potential for a bipartisan healthcare-centered bill this fall?
		Stay tuned.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Eric Wasson, reports for Bloomberg.
		You can see his work at Bloomberg.com.
		Mr. Wasson, thanks for your time.
unidentified		Thank you.
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pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Why are you doing this?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is outrageous.
unidentified		This is a tangoroo clause.
		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.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is the part of the program we call Open Forum.
		You get to talk about anything related to politics, a segment you've seen on this show today or other matters of politics.
		202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans and Independents, 202-748-8002.
		The Washington Report, a post reporting this morning that Senator Chris Van Holland Saturday endorsed Zoran Mandani, the mayor for mayor of New York, and said that Democratic leaders who have not yet voiced their support for the party nominee are engaging in, quote, spineless politics, prompting a retort from the office of a prominent Democrat speaking at a Democratic fundraiser in Iowa.
		Mr. Van Holland, Senator Van Hollen argued that the Democratic Party, quote, is not going to fix itself and that it's to shape its future.
		Democrats need to start winning key races in Virginia, Iowa, and New Jersey and line up behind Mandani in his contest in the fall, adding, quote, he is focused on ensuring that people can afford to live in a place that they can work.
		That should be our goal in New York, City, Des Moines, and every town and city and places across the United States.
		From that, this follows the governor of New York, Kathy Hokkaul, also making that same endorsement as well.
		So if you want to talk about that and other related political issues, Open Forum is a chance to do so.
		New York is next.
		This is Selena from Rochester, Democrats line.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		And I am making a comment about the earlier topic when we were talking about Tyler and Charlie Kirk.
		I am on the side of the 22-year-old man who is in jail.
		He's being held now.
		And I'm on his side because I feel so badly for him.
		Something, he must have been in a lot of pain to go and take a gun and kill somebody else.
		Now, when I say that I am on his side, that does not mean that I am saying that Charlie should be killed or he should be dead.
		It's just that we need to understand that I guess his parents or Charlie, the Republican Party, put him in a lot of pain because they have a lot to say about transgender people.
		So thank you for allowing me to speak up for Tyler.
		And one more time, I'm not endorsing anybody going and killing anybody.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		In Mississippi, Republican line, you're next.
unidentified		I'm really, really thrilled that God is making an impact on the world right now.
		All these cities all over the world where there's so many people that are beginning to follow Charlie and all the ideas of the Republican thinking and all that is beginning to develop.
		And I wanted to tell all the Democrats that you need to pay attention to what is happening in the world.
		Because you are going to be in trouble on the next election because there's so many people that are beginning to realize what goodness and greatness that God is doing in this country.
		I mean...
		in the world.
		Thank you so much in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		North Carolina next, Democrats line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Roy.
unidentified		Oh, thank you.
		Great.
		You're great at this.
		You know, I haven't heard the name Melissa Hortman mentioned once in all this thing.
		She and her husband were murdered in their beds, Minnesota lawmaker.
		I believe she was Speaker Emerita.
		I haven't heard their name mentioned once in all this.
		And then another two lawmakers were targeted, and I believe they were grievously injured.
		I don't know if Trump ever said anything about that.
		And you have people calling saying, let's turn down the temperature.
		We got to stop this name-calling.
		Our president made his bones by calling all his opponents names, juvenile, stupid names, like crooked, whoever, and sleepy, and little.
		And I mean, things a child would be ashamed to say.
		It just seems obvious to me that the Republicans are, oh, gosh.
		I don't even know what to say.
		Sorry, man.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Mike is next.
		Mike in New York, Republican line.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		I want to comment on both sides of the aisle.
		You know, it's a tragedy what's happened to this country.
		But if we take a look at things, there's enough blame to go around.
		Both sides are doing everything to stay elected.
		They don't focus on the people or the country.
		They just want chaos.
		And it's up to the voters to take some issue with this.
		I think it's a shame.
		But, you know, if you go back to the no bail thing, and if you go to a lot, you can blame the district attorneys, the lawyers.
		If you follow the money, it's all about money.
		There's big money in crime, and there's big money in the media.
		And that's what this is all about.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Bowie, Maryland, Joe, Independent Line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Hi there.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		I follow C-SPAN from time to time, but I just want to say that I'm 71 years old.
		I grew up in the old Jim Crow South and doing segregation, and racism was rampant.
		Actually, I went to high school.
		I only went to one year of integrated school.
		That was 1971 because it took that long for the South to actually integrate the school after the bill was passed.
		And the thing that really strikes me is that we can demonize groups of people by swaths.
		And here it is that me, one person was executed, which is so terrible.
		We watch the bombing of people by thousands every day, but there's never no mention of it.
		And the thing about it is when people start just demonizing people for groups and always us against them, we have a person that has been guilty of 34 counts, but yes, it is law and order.
		And these things just don't match up.
		And everybody, sometimes people get on and talk about the Lord Jesus Christ and thing.
		How could you be one-sided?
		Jesus said that what you do to the least among you, you have done it unto me.
		And then another place, he uses a measurement of how you should treat people.
		Whatever you would have a person do under you, you do it unto them first.
		And that incumbent upon each one of us.
		And I think people need to take a time and look on the inside and see what their aim is.
		Are their aim is to try to bring people together and to bring peace to the world or to disrupt and destroy other groups of people just because they're not like them.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Joe and Maryland, this is Calvin in Pennsylvania, Democrats line.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I just wanted to comment on the real danger that we're facing from this whole Epstein thing.
		And I don't think it should be limited to just focusing on the horrible crime of childhood, you know, sexual exploitation.
		I think the danger is far greater than that.
		For instance, the Epstein organization, not his organization, but the organization that he was a part of is international in scope.
		They had people from powerful clients who were from all over the world, as well as were the women and girls.
		They were from all over the world.
		So if you have a powerful client who can destroy you because of their positions of power, then it would be criminal malpractice not to be able to control that client.
		And the easiest way to do that is to have compromising information on them.
		So the implication is that anybody that was participating in this whole Epstein thing is compromised.
		It has compromising information on them and is being controlled.
		Now, since this organization is international in scope, then it's either a large-scale international criminal organization or it's controlled by a nation state.
		And could that be why it's so difficult to make any progress on this?
		Because all of the people who are powerful people are controlled.
		And could that be why we'll never ever see our president who is likely participated in it do anything to cross Vladimir Putin?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's Calvin there in Pennsylvania.
		A couple of stories internationally.
		This is from the Wall Street Journal that China seeking a visit from the president as talks on trade begin saying central to the negotiations that began on Sunday between the Treasury Secretary Scott Besson and his Chinese counterpart is the fate of TikTok, the popular video sharing app whose U.S. operations hang in the balance.
		TikTok has until Wednesday to secure a deal that satisfies a congressional order for its Chinese parent company, BitDance, to sell its controlling stake.
		Mr. Trump has extended similar deadlines three times in the past.
		This major sticking point is the app's powerful recommendation algorithm, its secret sauce, Beijing, which must approve any sale, has placed this technology on an export control list and has given no indication it will allow the company to part with it, essentially killing any prospect of the deal.
		Watch out for that in the days ahead when it comes to the future of TikTok.
		President expected to travel to the United Kingdom later on this week.
		The New York Times picks up where some security from the UK side will be when it comes to the visit, saying that Mr. Trump will meet Charles and Queen Camilla as well as the Prince and Princess of Wales before riding in an open carriage to the town of Windsor and attending a state banquet.
		On Thursday, he's expected to meet the Prime Minister Kier Starmer at Checkers, the Grand Country Manor granted to sitting prime ministers in Britain before returning to the United States.
		Thames Valley Police, which is the force responsible for Windsor and the surrounding area, said it started to increase local patrols and security measures last week in preparation for the visit.
		Airspace over the town will be restricted for the duration of the visit with a legal order enforce using police drones and helicopters.
		Quote, we have a significant policing operation in place, but that's made up a lot different layers of security.
		The Chief Inspector Matthew Wilkinson, the officer responsible for the air space protection, said, You'll seek officers in uniform of the ground.
		You'll have armed response officers, airspace protection, marine units covering the Thames.
		So look for that to be part of the President's visit later on this week to the United Kingdom.
		Brian in North Carolina, Independent Line, go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, I wanted to talk about what the tragedy that happened last week.
		While I think that what happened was tragic, and his kids are going to grow up without their dad, and his wife is going to be a widow.
		He kind of brought it.
		I'm a big believer in bringing things up on yourself.
		And while he did not deserve to die when you speak that kind of divisive, hateful rhetoric on certain places, that's what I believe happened.
		You invite that to your door.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Terry.
unidentified		Yeah.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead and finish.
		Let's go to Terry.
		Terry in Minnesota, Republican line.
unidentified		Hello.
		I'd like to comment just to the previous caller there, quick, and then my comment.
		If you say that you bring it to your own door, then you're saying it's open free-for-all.
		If you really say, well, you know, I feel sorry for the kids, but, and then go on with an explanation why you defend it, then you're saying, remember, now that means your side, when you voice your side of an opinion, you're now it's justifiable to kill you because you said that.
		Okay.
		I also would like to point out if you could bring up the story.
		A Fox News car in Utah was attempted to be bombed by two Muslim terrorists at the same time and it's getting no coverage.
		That sense the deal.
		I think that we do have a, I mean, it's obvious.
		We have some serious, serious problems in this country.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, let's go to Steve in Ohio, Democrats line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
		I'd make a comment about the economy.
		And since President Trump's approval ratings are around 39% with his handling of the economy, I think it's an important topic.
		Out of 340 million Americans, according to the census, 37 million live at or below the poverty line, which according to HHS is about $32,650 a year for a family of four.
		A single person, about $15,150.
		There's about 771,000 homeless people in this country.
		So the people on the bottom, about 11% of Americans are struggling.
		We need to talk about these people.
		We can't leave people behind.
		I'm not talking about handouts or enabling people for, you know, living a bad lifestyle, but we have to have compassion.
		We have to have some understanding.
		And, you know, as far as the tariffs, I mean, they're really starting to take hold.
		I noticed that our household, you know, we're starting to feel it with car parts and car repairs and stuff like that.
		Just normal everyday stuff for all of us normal Americans.
		We're just trying to work and just trying to get along.
		And all we're asking Congress to do is to be fiscally responsible.
		I disagree with the increase in debt ceiling to $5 trillion.
		I disagree with deficit spending.
		But yeah, the president needs to back off on these tariffs.
		Okay.
		It's not working.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha, Steve.
		One of the stories USA Today focuses on when it comes to economics is something you heard a lot about at the beginning of this year, the cost of eggs.
		This is the headline: yolk finally broken, egg prices down 70%.
		This in USA Today saying it was as of August the 29th that wholesale price for Midwest large shell eggs, the industry standard average across all label types of eggs, was about $2.50 per dozen, according to the Department of Agriculture, saying that's a 70% decrease from March highs, which saw egg prices rise to $6.85 a dozen, according to USDA data.
		It's also a 33% decrease from the Easter season, which is a typical peak for demand for eggs.
		There's a lot of reasoning why those egg prices are down now in the piece.
		You can find it on USA's Today website.
		If you're interested in reading and finding more, let's go to Catherine in Pennsylvania, Independent Line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		Good morning.
		Over the weekend, I was obviously kind of stuck to the TV and on the internet reading what people were saying.
		Because up until the day the man was shot, I didn't know who Charlie Kirk was because I don't follow people who are basically just mouthpieces for the conservative right.
		And the guy from everything I've watched, he wasn't like a really nice person.
		And he used the same old tactics of just that Midway Barker mob rules thing where he would put somebody under pressure, interrupt them, and have a bunch of much younger, ignorant people backing his play.
		And I think that's a big problem we're having in this country right now: there's a lot of willful ignorance, and there's a lot of fear-mongering being perpetuated by the Trump administration because it's good for him to have something else to use as an excuse for why his administration's failing so badly.
		These kids that watched that guy get shot all thought that a bunch of leftists snuck into Orem, Utah, and nobody noticed and turned this kid.
		That's such hogwash.
		We'll just say hogwash.
		I really hope that people understand that those of us who don't vote Republican, those of us are not Trump supporters, are not going out of our way to try to hurt them or conspire against them.
		We just hope they wake up before it's too late and they live in a fascist dictatorship and blatant capitalism that takes their taxes and doesn't represent them.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Eva next in Mississippi Republican line.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hey.
		I want to say back in on August the 20th in your first hour, whoever the lady was that was hosted, she made a mistake in what she said about voting in Mississippi.
		I had a stroke 14 years ago.
		I always went to the poll and voted, but I vote every time anyway, but absentee.
		She said we did not have early voting.
		We do in some cases because we have a lot of people in this area that work offshore.
		They home 20 days and gone 20 or whatever number.
		And also a lot of people that cannot go stand in lines.
		A lot of people who have medical appointments or will be hindered otherwise on election day.
		So they can go to the circuit clerk's office.
		And I don't know about all counties because I live in Columbia, Marin County, Mississippi, but they can go to the local office.
		And I think you can vote there up to maybe a week before.
		I'm not sure how many days before the election, but you can't the day of the election.
		You have to be voted several days before.
		And you can go vote.
		Not everybody can do that because they don't want to stand in line, but some people can.
		Also, I think if you have a right to vote and you just don't vote because you're unconcerned, don't care, in my opinion, you forfeit the right to complain about the way things are going.
		And I would like to encourage people, once a member of your family dies, make sure their name's taken off the voter register.
		And that way that will help update our voter registration records and will make us have a better country.
		Thank you, and God bless America.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Eva in Mississippi, Adrias in Pittsburgh, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		We stand in line, but some people can.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Adrias, you're on.
		Go ahead.
		I think he's gone.
		Let's hear from Phil.
		Phil in Ohio, Independent Line.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, how are you?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Fine, thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good.
		Okay, so I'm an independent, as you know, and I'm trying to put things in the right perspective for everybody.
		So let's say if I become a Democrat, what do I stand for?
		I stand for open borders.
		I stand for illegal criminals coming into the country.
		I stand for everything that is going on right now.
		Not letting the stopping the crime.
		Now, let's say if I decide to be a Republican, what do I stand for?
		Everything the opposite of that.
		So you got to try to weigh it out and say, which one do you want to be?
		Interesting, isn't it?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Phil, they're in Ohio, giving us a call during this open forum.
		You can continue to do the same if you wish.
		2027 88000 for Democrats.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		And Independents 202-748-8002.
		If you are on the line, we'll ask you to hold for a couple of minutes.
		If you're calling in, please keep doing so.
		Here to let us know what to expect from the White House this week is Taylor Populars of Spectrum News.
		He serves as their national political reporter joining us from the White House.
		Mr. Populars, good morning.
unidentified		Hey there, Pedro Gates.
unidentified		Great to be with you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We saw a lot of the president talking about Charlie Kirk last week.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's expected from the White House this week concerning the death of Charlie Kirk?
unidentified		Yeah, so this White House is continuing to react very publicly and very strongly to Kirk's assassination.
		The president has confirmed he's going to fly out to the Phoenix, Arizona area next weekend.
		There's a big celebration of life, essentially a public funeral set to take place in Glendale, Arizona, where Charlie Kirk's organization, Turning Point USA, is based.
		The president says he will be there.
		Today, actually, Vice President JD Vance, who was a close personal friend with Kirk, is actually taking a pretty unprecedented step as a sitting vice president and will be guest hosting Kirk's daily radio show from here in Washington.
		That's set to start at 12 o'clock Eastern Time.
		And we know last night here in D.C. at the Kennedy Center, which of course has kind of been taken over. by the Trump administration in recent months, there was a vigil for Kirk that a lot of high-ranking administration officials, including White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt, not only attended, but spoke at.
		A lot of members of this administration were personally affiliated with Kirk and his group, had a lot of personal relationships with him, so they're both publicly and privately mourning and grieving.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I was going to ask you if that was the driving force besides what we've seen from the administration as far as their outpours of support following his death.
unidentified		Yeah, it definitely plays a factor.
		I was here at the White House all last week when the shooting first took place.
		Obviously, the tragic news came that Kirk did not survive it.
		And a lot of White House officials behind the scenes were genuinely emotional and mourning this because some of them have worked for Turning Point USA.
		Some of them knew Kirk personally.
		He was a big fixture on the campaign trail for President Trump and for Vice President JD Vance.
		So this White House is in mourning and trying to acknowledge both an international and national loss, but also somebody they consider to be a close friend.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Popolar is the president later on heads to the United Kingdom.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's the purpose of the trip?
unidentified		So initially this trip was meant to be more of a celebratory one.
		King Charles did a very, took a very unprecedented step, but also something that totally caters into what President Trump likes and invited the president back for what is a second official state visit.
		President Trump is the first president, at least in recent history, first U.S. president to get two official state visits to the U.K.
		So he's going to head to meet with King Charles.
		He's going to get kind of the full trappings of a state visit, a lot of pomp and circumstance.
		But then we know he's also going to be meeting with the U.K. Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, going to continue everything from trade talks to negotiations about trying to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
		So a bit of glitz and flair for the first part of the trip, and then a bit more business in the second part of the trip.
		But the president is slated to leave tomorrow morning for that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Is it designed to highlight what's been known historically as the special relationship we have with the United Kingdom?
unidentified		100%.
		And I think the folks in the UK, the leadership, they know what President Trump likes.
		He enjoys these big kind of royal visits.
		He loves interacting with monarchs around the country.
		He loves taking part in kind of glitzy ceremonies.
		And that often opens the door and paves the way for more fruitful negotiations on policy topics that can be a bit more tense.
		So both King Charles and Prime Minister Starmer have recognized that they have a good relationship with the president, and they're hoping this will help continue kind of, you know, progressing that moving forward.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Tyler Popola, as we talked earlier on this program about the potential of a government shutdown, is there a sense from what the White House is doing to make sure that doesn't happen?
unidentified		There is to a degree.
		President Trump, he appeared on Fox and Friends in their New York City studio last Friday and he was pretty candid in saying that he expects Republicans who control both the House and Senate to coalesce behind the idea of what's called a continuing resolution or a short-term spending bill that will essentially kick the can down the road for either a few weeks or a few months, prevent a shutdown, allow lawmakers to continue negotiating.
		But what the president didn't mention is that he will need some Democratic votes, especially in the Senate, to pass that.
		So Republicans on Capitol Hill are trying to figure out how much Democrats are willing to negotiate.
		Democrats want to stuff some health care-related provisions because there are some upcoming deadlines.
		Plus, they're frustrated with, for instance, Medicare cuts that were made in the President's big beautiful bill that became law.
		So we're following negotiations with that, but the clock is ticking for these lawmakers.
		They only have a couple of weeks until the end of September and expect President Trump to exert a lot of political pressure if it gets closer to that end date.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We've talked about it over the weeks here and there, but the White House's efforts when it comes to the Epstein's files, where are we at now?
unidentified		So the White House is continuing to try to both push back on the Epstein case.
		They always bring up that President Trump has not been accused of any crimes related to Epstein's very well-documented crimes, but they're also trying to not talk about it at all.
		The president continues to refer to it as a hoax.
		He continues to allege that only Democrats want to talk about it, which is not accurate.
		There are a handful of Republicans who want more of these files to be released.
		And the big thing that the White House is watching is in the House of Representatives, there's a bipartisan movement to get the House to vote on releasing these files, on compelling the Justice Department to do that.
		It's Kentucky Republican Thomas Massey, California Democrat Roe Cona.
		They need 218 people to sign on to what's called a discharge petition to force the House to vote on this.
		They're currently, as of last night, at 217, so they're one away.
		They're hoping either another Democrat or potentially another Republican will join them.
		That's something the White House is watching closely.
		They're not thrilled about it, but they also can't ignore that it does have some momentum behind it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Popolars, if people go to your ex feed, you have a post about the post that the president has made in the last few hours, and you start with this possible idea of declaring a new national emergency in D.C. Can you elaborate?
unidentified		Yeah, the president has been busy both overnight and this morning.
		I think the D.C. post came out just before 1 o'clock Eastern time this morning.
		Essentially, people have been tracking that temporary takeover of Washington, D.C.'s local police department here.
		That ended last week.
		It was only for 30 days.
		The president would either need Congress to extend it or he could declare a new national emergency.
		And what the president claimed is that he's frustrated because he thinks that Mayor Muriel Bowser, who's a Democrat who's largely been cooperating with the Trump administration on this, she has instructed the local police to no longer assist immigrations and customs enforcement, that's ICE, with immigration enforcement measures or deportation raids here in D.C.
		The president wants that to continue.
		I saw one in my own neighborhood just last Friday, and he said that if the mayor is not willing to have the local police continue to work with them on that, he'll just declare a new national emergency and redo that federal takeover.
		That's at least temporary.
		So it's unprecedented because we've not seen that happen before, but the president does have some more legal authorities in D.C. because it's not a state as compared to a state where a governor has more say.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And he also, in some of those, one of those posts criticize New York's governor Kathy Hokul over a nomination.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Can you tell our viewers about that?
unidentified		Yeah, people might be following the New York City mayoral race.
		The Democratic nominee is Zo Ron Momdani, this 33-year-old assemblyman who's a Democratic socialist.
		He beat a lot of bigger political figures like former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in the primary a couple months ago.
		But there's basically a fractured base in New York City leading up to the general election.
		President Trump has indicated he wants Republicans to support former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who's running as an independent, but of course as a Democrat.
		But New York governor, the current governor, Kathy Hochul, who had a very public split with Cuomo, came out and endorsed Momdani.
		But there's been some hesitation from other high-ranking Democrats in New York, like Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.
		They think Momdani is a little bit too far to the left, but they also want to recognize he's built a political movement in New York City.
		The president is, of course, a native-born New Yorker, so he has weighed in on this race almost daily, but he's not succeeded yet in getting the field to coalesce behind Cuomo to take on Momdani.
		So Mamdani is still polling well.
		It looks like he's on a bit of a glide path to win once this election takes place.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Any sense of the president's schedule today?
unidentified		So today is a fairly quieter one from what we've gotten from the White House.
		There's actually a religious leader coming to meet with the president in the Oval Office behind closed doors.
		It's the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians who's making a U.S. pilgrimage.
		And then at 4 o'clock Eastern Time, the president is set to sign a presidential memorandum.
		We don't yet know the details of that, but the press is expected to be led into that.
		And he often takes questions on news of day, just like he did on the tarmac last night in New Jersey when he was returning from his golf club.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Taylor Popolars is with Spectrum News.
		He's their national political reporter covering the White House and here to talk about the White House news of the day.
		Mr. Popolars, thanks for your time.
unidentified		Always a pleasure.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Back to Open Forum.
		We go to William.
		William is in North Carolina Democrats line.
		William, thanks for waiting.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		All right.
		There's a lot being said these days about Charlie Kirk's murder.
		And we need to remind people that in January 6, 2001, there was a big riot in Washington, D.C.
		And it was called for by Donald Trump.
		And he not only got away with it, but he turned all those that had been convicted loose from prison the day that he took office.
		Donald Trump is the most dangerous man that there's ever been in Washington, D.C.
		He lies about everything.
		He claims to be a Christian, but he worships nobody but himself.
		And that's okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We'll go to Ian.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Ian in Virginia, Great Falls, Virginia, Independent Line.
unidentified		Hello, yes.
		So last week on Fox and Friends, President Trump's favorite show, Brian Kilmead called for involuntary lethal injection of homeless people and mentally ill people in this country.
		And I would say that that definitely harkens back to the Nazi-type exterminations.
		And I'd also like to compare some of the turning point USA tactics with the Nazi tactics.
		Enemy within scapegoating, blaming others for social ills, simplified moral narratives of good versus evil, attacks on intellectuals, education, and elite institutions where they ran watch lists to harass professors and school board members, mobilization of youth, conspiracy framing and exaggeration of threat and use of media ecosystems.
		We are not in a good place.
		And if we don't turn around, unify, get our economy going, it's not going to get any better.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let me ask you, because I asked somebody else this, before last week, how much did you know of Charlie Kirk?
unidentified		I was aware of Charlie Kirk, but I wouldn't say that I paid too close attention to exactly what he said.
		I understood that he was a national figure, that he was the head of a large organization.
		I don't think I appreciated the scale and the impact that he had, you know, and maybe even he himself didn't realize, you know, how what a lightning rod he had become.
		Yeah, it's tragic that he was killed.
		I think it's, you know, there's no good in that.
		It's just another indication of what a polarized society we are and how unable we are to reconcile and move forward and have people live safely and securely without the oppression and the radicalization we seem to find ourselves in.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Ian there in Great Falls CNN and others reporting about the statements of Brian Kilmead.
		Putting out a video about an apology for those remarks.
		There's a headline, very similar headlines across the social media if you want to see that for yourself.
		Let's hear from Lynn.
		Lynn in Fort Wayne, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hello, and thank you so much for taking my call.
		I felt so very sorry for Charlie's family and especially his wife.
		But when I heard his wife say that the whole tragedy lights a fire in her and she wants revenge and retribution for those who caused this, people are lumping all Democrats.
		They're blaming all Democrats.
		It was one person and they don't really know the reason why he did this because he's not sane.
		But they're blaming all Democrats and she's going to whip this country up into a frenzy.
		And it's going to be dangerous because there's going to be a terrible uprise, in my opinion.
		And I think things are going to get so much worse.
		She could have said, we need peace.
		We need to calm things down.
		We need to love each other.
		Instead, she wants revenge.
		And I think that's just going to make things so much worse.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's Lynn there in Indiana.
		We told you earlier on it was earlier this morning, even before the show started, that the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, meeting with the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Yetanyahu, that joint press conference, among the topics that were discussed were last week's Israeli strike in Qatar and things that could come next.
		Here's a portion of that from earlier this morning.
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've said repeatedly that Israel's decision to act against the Hamas terrorist leadership in Qatar was a wholly independent decision by Israel.
unidentified		It was a decision taken by me and our top security force of chiefs.
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		It was conducted by us, and we assume full responsibility for it because we believe the terrorists should not be given a haven.
benjamin netanyahu ▲ ● ▼		The people who planned the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust cannot have any.
unidentified		So we did it on our own, period.
unidentified		And all I would add is that we are focused on what happens now.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What happens next?
marco rubio ▲ ● ▼		What role can Qatar play possibly in reaching an outcome here that leads not just to the end of this hostilities, not just to the release of all of the hostages, both living and deceased, not just to disarmament and elimination of Hamas, but also a better future for the people of Gaza, which isn't possible as long as Hamas exists, which isn't possible as long as 48 hostages are being held.
unidentified		And so we're going to continue to encourage Qatar to play a constructive role in that regard.
marco rubio ▲ ● ▼		We're focused because at the end of the day, no matter what has happened, these fundamentals still remain.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		There is still a Hamas.
		There are still 48 hostages.
		And there's still a war going on.
marco rubio ▲ ● ▼		And all of these things standing in the way of a better future for the people of Gaza and a peaceful end to what's happening now.
unidentified		So we're going to remain focused on what we can do next.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Many of the papers this morning has this picture of the Secretary of State, the Israeli Prime Minister, and Mike Huckabee, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, praying at the Western Wall and visiting that on Sunday.
		Brian is next.
		Brian in Ohio, Republican line.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
		Thank you very much for taking my call.
		I guess after everything I've heard this morning, it seems to me that the Democratic Party, and I've registered a Republican, however, I don't always agree with everything, every single issue, lockstop and barrel.
		But at the same time, I hear these Democrats, and a lot of them have a lot of negative attitude in the concept and not really looking at the issues of the tragedies.
		If you look at these last couple of school shootings that we've had, a lot of them were by people who had tried to change their sex, even when under age 18, and their parents were enabling them to do this.
		And then you turn around and look at the individual that just shot Charlie Kirk and has some kind of a sexual relation with the person who is transitioning right now.
		And I think that the Democratic Party is almost in their own way.
		I don't know how they're going to cohes together other than by being anti-Donald Trump and moving forward when they're not really addressing the concepts of mental illness.
		They talk about it.
		But are we really dealing with it?
		And I'm not saying that everybody who wants to change something is mentally ill, but there's a problem when your children who aren't even age 18 yet, they can't drink, they can't vote, they can't do anything yet, and we're enabling them to do that.
		I think that there's something that needs to be looked into because as they get older, they're having more problems cognitively on how to battle that.
		And that's why they're acting out.
		We don't know what the Nashville Manifesto ever said.
		It's never really been released.
		The other person that shot into that church school recently, that manifesto and that perspective was spread all over the internet until they took it down.
		And when you look at this individual that just shot Charlie Kirk, you look at the things that he was relating to in his messages back to his roommate partner, what have you.
		And I just think that they're not trying to see the reality or the smokescreen that they want to put up.
		Most of that Democratic Party, as that lady just said a little bit ago from Fort Wayne, it's not all Democrats.
		And I think that if you're going to get the old Democratic Party back that's going to have a chance against Republicans, I don't see that happening if they're going to stay in the negative realm that they're in.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's Brian there in Ohio.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Stephen, Indiana, Independent Line.
unidentified		Yeah, when I listen to some of your callers, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
unidentified		God help us all.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Sandra is in New York City, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hello.
		Good morning.
		I'm calling about what's going on in the Gaza Strip.
		First of all, I believe that the Prime Minister of Israel needs to be brought up on war crimes.
		I didn't live through the Holocaust.
		Hello.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Sandra, go ahead and finish your thought.
		You're listening to the TV or radio, so that's why the delay is happening.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Thank you.
unidentified		I'm calling about what's going on.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We got that point.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, go ahead.
unidentified		Okay, my thing is the reason why he needs to be brought up on war crimes, I didn't live through the Holocaust with Hitler, but I am living through the Holocaust with the Prime Minister of Israel.
unidentified		And it makes me wonder how in the world can he do what he's doing to the Palestinians when Hitler did what he did to the Jews.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Rick is next.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead and finish your thought, Sandra.
unidentified		Excuse me?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Finish your thought.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		It's absolutely horrible that this is being done.
		I mean, really?
		And the government, he's doing what he's doing.
		He never lets you know what he's doing until after he's done his bombings or whatever.
		And then he brings us into it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Sandra there in New York.
		This is Rick up next.
		He's in Nashville, Republican line.
unidentified		Good morning.
		You know, for the Epstein people, Epstein, Trump, everybody was Democrat.
		Everybody.
		There was no Republicans back then for them to hang out with.
		So they need to think about that.
		They're trying to find a Republican, and they can't.
		It's all Democrats.
		Second.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Rick, go ahead.
		You're still on.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		My second thing is I look at it like a restaurant.
		If you're driving up the street on the left is the chicken little chicken store with stick people coming out.
		Some are yelling up at the sky.
		Some are protesting.
		On the right, you have the mega burger, best, biggest hamburger you can get.
		With stick people coming out of that, talking on their cell phones, laughing, being real happy.
		Anyway, thank you for your time.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Rick there in Nashville, Tennessee, giving us a call on this open forum.
		One of the things that came out of yesterday on the Sunday shows, particularly when it comes to Congress, and you may see it play out more this week.
		We talked about it earlier with our guest, the House Speaker Mike Johnson, about security concerns for members of Congress following the death of Charlie Kirk.
		Here's some of the comments from yesterday.
mike johnson ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I've been talking with a lot of them over the last few days about that and trying to calm the nerves, to assure them that we will make certain that everyone has the level of security that's necessary, that the resources will be there for their residential security and their personal security.
		We're evaluating all the options for that.
		But also to be reminded that it does take a certain measure of courage to step out and to lead.
		I mean, our first responders do it every day.
		Our members of the military do it every day and political figures as well.
		But I think if we all adopt these practices together and we turn down the rhetoric, we cease with this idea that policy disputes are somehow an existential threat to democracy or the republic.
		We stop calling one another names.
		I mean, calling people Nazis and fascists is not helpful.
		Look, there are some deranged people in society.
		And when they see leaders using that kind of language, so often now, increasingly, it spurs them on to action.
		We have to recognize that reality and address it appropriately.
		And I'm heartened to know, Major, and to see that many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle are stepping up and saying that and addressing it.
		I think this could be a turning point, frankly, to use Charlie's term, for the country.
		And I hope that's true.
unidentified		Would that turning point from your vantage point, Mr. Speaker, because I know you had a long conversation with President Trump, extend to the White House itself?
mike johnson ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course, look, the president knew Charlie very well.
		He was like a family member to the Trumps.
		Many of us felt that close association with him.
		And he admired Charlie's approach to public debate.
		And you've heard him say that publicly.
		Charlie was a good man.
		And I think the best way we honor his memory is to continue to do that very thing and not shy away from debate, to keep the free marketplace of ideas going, but to work on the tone of those debates.
		Because I think that serves the best of our principles, our Judeo-Christian heritage as a nation, our civil discourse, and we've got to return to that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And that was from yesterday, and that finishes off this open forum.
		Thanks to those who participated.
		Coming up, a discussion on the state of the U.S. economy with Heather Long, Washington Post columnist and Navy Federal Credit Union Chief Economist.
		conversation coming up when Washington Journal continues.
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pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		A discussion on the U.S. economy and joining us for this discussion, Heather Long.
		She is the chief economist of Navy Federal Credit Union.
		Washington Post column is here to talk about the economy and other things.
		Heather Long, thank you so much for giving us your time.
heather long ▲ ● ▼		It's great to be here.
heather long ▲ ● ▼		A lot to discuss on the economy.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		As far as 30,000 foot level, how would you describe it today?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I keep calling this a slow-speed economy.
		We're not in a recession.
		This is also not a boom.
		You know, last year and the year before, we were growing almost 3%.
		Now we're around this year, it's going to be around 1.5%, 1.6%.
		I think people can feel that.
		The main thing that people are worried about, and I'm right there with them for many months, I wrote a Washington Post piece way back in January: the job market is frozen.
		You know, everyone knows people who are struggling to find a job right now.
		And I worry that it's going from frozen to cracking in the job market.
		You know, now we're not just seeing no hiring, but we're seeing companies start to do layoffs.
		Many industries start to do layoffs, and that's worrying.
		We need to cut that and stop that before it really spirals.
		Of course, the other big story, everybody knows what it is with the tariffs.
		The good news so far is it's been pretty muted, pretty modest.
		I know I bought my kids' shoes for back to school, and they were up a couple of dollars, but it wasn't the end of the world kind of situation.
		But we do anticipate the next six months, I've been calling the next six months, or a turbulent economy.
		That's when the bulk of the tariff impact is going to come through.
		We're obviously having a very soft patch in the labor market.
		And so this is going to be when push comes to shove the next few months.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Also, this week the Federal Reserve meets, how does that factor into the equation?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		Definitely.
		I've been saying since July, I agree with the White House, the Federal Reserve needs to reduce interest rates.
		Right now, they're at a level almost 4.5%.
		That's really a straitjacket on the economy.
		It's meant to slow the economy down.
		We don't need that right now.
		With things looking more turbulent, we need a little bit of relief.
		We're definitely going to get that this week with probably a 25-point, you know, modest reduction.
		I think we're going to see it again in October and December of some more cuts.
		Now, nothing's ever a guarantee with the Fed.
		They're going to try to keep their options open.
		But the reality is, with this kind of turbulence going on, they need to lower those interest rates.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So let's assume that happens.
		All those interest rate cuts happen.
		What's the ripple effect?
		What signs do we see as far as its impact?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		Well, the number one sign that we want to see, we were talking about that frozen or cracking job market.
		We need to prevent further layoffs.
		Once those layoffs start, people stop spending and then we get into a really dicey situation.
		So the hope is that with the reductions in the interest rates, companies will say, okay, I'll give it a little more time, see how things shake out in early 2026 before making big layoffs.
		The other one, look, I'm sitting here from Navy Federal Credit Union.
		I can tell you every day people text me and call us and say, is it a good time to buy a home?
		And look, we all know it's been really unaffordable in the last several years to buy a home, the most unaffordable time in 40 years.
		I'm sure the students at Purdue we're going to talk to soon feel that pressure.
		But so lowering those interest rates should help a little bit, get the mortgage rates, the auto loan rates down a little bit.
		We hope to see what's been a frozen real estate market start to thaw.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for the segue.
		Heather Long joining us and if you have questions for her about the economy, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents, 202-748-8002.
		You can text your questions at 202-748-8003.
		As our guest said, joining us from Purdue University, several students to participate in this segment.
		You can wave, guys.
		It's okay.
		Let the audience show that you're there.
		And they'll join us throughout the course of this segment asking their own questions about the U.S. economy, particularly as it relates to them.
		In fact, we have a student to start us off.
		So, student there in Purdue, go ahead, say your name, what year you are, and what your question.
unidentified		Hi, my name is Bethany.
		I'm a sophomore.
		And my question for Heather is, you write about the decline of the middle class in one of your most recent Washington Post columns.
		I think my generation is no stranger to an economic crisis.
		And I think one of the most prevalent questions that we have is, what can we take now?
		What steps can we take now to build a financial safety net and also position ourselves within that dwindling middle class?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		It's a great question.
		I hear it a lot.
		I think the biggest advice that I have to you and your classmates is to try to stay optimistic.
		There is so much pessimism right now.
		A lot of people who unfortunately do not think the American dream is possible anymore.
		Of course, we haven't even talked about AI and how that's rapidly changing the economy and the world at the moment.
		But I think at the end of the day, look, the same steps that many people take can get you to a better place in life.
		It sounds really simple, but trying to save a little bit each month in a rainy day fund, trying to save a little bit in your 401k to get that match from the company.
		And the number one piece of advice that I always give young people when you're starting out, find cheap housing.
		I know it's hard to do, but I can tell you I rented a room in my first several years in the workforce from an older woman, the equivalent of a baby boomer, and today, and it was great.
		We had a lot of fun.
		I learned a lot from her.
		She's become a lifelong friend, and it was really cheap.
		I paid her by the week, a couple hundred dollars a week.
		So sometimes I hear people say, I need my own place.
		You know, that's a sign of me growing up.
		No, that's a sign of financial irresponsibility to be spending so much of your paycheck on rent or decorating your place.
		So that's kind of the early tips.
		Otherwise, just AI.
		Embrace AI, use it every day, become that person at your wherever organization you join that is AI savvy, and I think you will thrive.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I was going to say, as far as the students, they're going to be looking for work.
		AI is going to be one of those things that determine jobs of the future.
		Where does that intersection happen as far as as students go forward, careers they should be looking for, and the potential of AI to undermine some of those careers?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		It's no doubt we're in a huge sea chains.
		My generation of older millennials came of age in the internet boom and the personal computing boom.
		And, you know, but that turned out to be a benefit for a lot of millennials.
		And I think, as you're saying, you're AI native.
		They're probably using it far more sophisticated ways than I am.
		What I will say out today is Anthropic, one of the big AI companies, actually has a really great new release where they show state by state how people are using AI.
		Like DC actually is one of the biggest places that AI is being used for better or worse.
		And it also breaks down the types of skills and tasks that are being more and more done by AI.
		So again, I'd take a look at resources like that if I were a young person trying to understand where to go.
		The other thing I can say perennially is if you're not, AI isn't your thing.
		You don't want to be in tech or whatnot.
		Healthcare, you know, the only other industry that always hires even during downturns is anything related to health care.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		To the student's point, what defines middle class these days?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's a great question.
		The Washington Post, I'm still affiliated with them, has done some great surveys on this.
		And look, the median income in the United States for a household is around $80,000.
		And so, you know, somewhere in that $60,000 to $100,000 range is the dollar figure most people think about.
		Obviously, that doesn't go very far in a lot of cities.
		But when you really ask people what is middle class, it's the hope and belief that they should be able to use that amount of money they're earning every year to have a home, to be able to purchase a home.
		Maybe not at 25 like our grandparents did, but at some point in their life.
		And to have, I always say to have enough to cover the basics and then, you know, take your kid to Chunky Cheese or take them to Hershey Park or whatever, you know, whatever your favorite fun thing to do is.
		You know, it doesn't mean you're going on some yacht, but you want to have the money to do a few fun things in life.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Carrie in New Hampshire, Independent Line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're on with our guest, Heather Long.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Hi.
		I just want to ask you what you think of why do you think the reason is that we are in this problem with the interest rates having to go up?
		And you don't think it's because of the indecisiveness of President Trump and what he's doing to the economy.
		I mean, it was going pretty good before he became president.
		And with all his indecisiveness with tariffs and having to, you know, not bringing down grocery prices and all that, I'm just curious what you think about that.
		And middle class is a little bit more than bringing your kids to chunky cheese.
heather long ▲ ● ▼		Fair enough.
		Yes.
		We did.
		So look, I would say this.
		The Federal Reserve has been very clear that they would have been lowering interest rates in the spring and summer if it weren't for the tariffs and this massive amount of uncertainty that business is and all of us are living through right now.
		One of the toughest questions in economics right now is what is the tariff rate right now on different countries?
		Is it being enforced?
		So no doubt this uncertainty, this cloud, is part of the reason that companies have stopped hiring in many industries and is part of the reason that middle class is, I call it the middle class squeeze.
		The reality is, you know, middle class budgets, and we see this at Navy Federal Credit Union, people can generally pay their bills right now, but there's not extra money.
		This is very different than 2022 when people had excess savings and had those stimulus payments during the pandemic and they were able to keep spending.
		Now they can't and now they're very worried as we see the prices rise.
		And what the trend that we're really seeing is people bargain hunting.
		They're shopping more at Walmart, at the Dollar General, at Costco, and less at some of the pricier brands and stores out there.
		They're going from the name brand detergent to the generic to save money and bargain hunt.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Chicago is where Peter is.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Peter, hello, Democrats Line.
unidentified		Hi, how are you today?
russell in wyoming ▲ ● ▼		Listen, last week there was a gentleman on MSNBC.
unidentified		He was a farmer, and they were having a meeting in Arkansas.
		And he said the farmers are barely breaking even or they're underwater.
		And he says the soybeans.
		Now, China used to buy $12 billion a year soybeans from the farmers here in the United States.
		Right now, they're buying zero.
		China has gone elsewhere to buy their soybeans.
marty schachter ▲ ● ▼		Now, if you remember during the Trump administration, the first one, he had to bail out the farmers.
unidentified		Now, the farmers, when they pass this agricultural bill, they do get a subsidy.
		But he's saying that a lot of farmers are going to go out of business here because of the tariffs.
		So I would like you to respond on that.
		And thank you very much.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Peter in Chicago.
heather long ▲ ● ▼		Peter makes an excellent point.
		He's there sitting there in Illinois, a big grain state.
		I'm from the state of Pennsylvania originally.
		We're a pretty big dairy state.
		And look, he said it well.
		The reality is that we may be in a slow-speed economy, but some sectors, particularly agriculture and real estate, are basically in a recession right now.
		This is really tough times.
		They are some of the casualties of what's going on.
		The White House would argue it's worth it to transition the economy.
		But if you're a farmer sitting and struggling right now, another program that I think was very bizarre to take away was a lot of farmers used to get paid to send their extra crops to the food banks.
		And so many food banks I've talked to are like, what's going on?
		Why would we stop this wonderful program that really didn't cost much money?
		So farmers have definitely been nickel and dimed and on top of the trade headwinds of not having as many places to sell abroad.
		And I think it's going to be, I don't see much changing in the coming months, unfortunately, for that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Again, we've been joined by students from Purdue University for this conversation with Heather Long.
		Our next student is here for his question.
		Student, go ahead.
unidentified		Hi, I'm John.
		I'm a sophomore here at Purdue.
		And my question is, what effects do government policies like loan forgiveness have on the overall U.S. economy?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		It's a great question.
		You know, so obviously a lot of young people, my generation, millennial, Gen Z coming up behind.
		When you have a huge amount of debt, it's really a weight.
		It's a weight that makes your spending less overall.
		It takes a long time to build your middle-class life that people are aiming for.
		We know that, for instance, the first time that people can buy a home, the median age is now almost 40 years old.
		That's really shot up.
		And a big part of that is people's student loans being so onerous and so large.
		We've also seen the repayment of student loans that started in the past year or so.
		Millions of Americans are struggling to repay, and they've had their credit scores really tarnished by the fact that they haven't been able to pay.
		So it's been a real big jolt, particularly for younger Americans right now.
		But you're right, there's a bigger debate here that needs to happen that John's pointing to that, is it fair to forgive loans?
		Which loans do we want to forgive?
		What about the millions of Americans who don't go to college?
		Are we doing enough to support them, especially with apprenticeships and trade schools?
		So I think the question nationally really needs to have a debate.
		What is the best way to spend dollars on young Americans to help them launch careers?
		And I think that's shifted a lot for your generation versus mine.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Anne-Marie in Florida Republican line.
		Good morning.
		Go ahead, please.
unidentified		Yes.
		Hi.
		I was calling because there was a caller just a few calls ago that was talking about the economy being great the last four years ago.
		No.
		Actually, I feel like it was the worst it had been in a long time.
		And now that Trump's in, he's trying to fix what the last administration did with all the mistakes that they made while they were in office.
		So I don't, you know, it's not like a switch of a button that he can just push and everything's back on track.
		It takes time.
		And he's working on it.
		And I see where the things are getting better.
		It just, it's not a quick process.
		So.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Anne-Marie, thank you.
heather long ▲ ● ▼		I'll just respond.
		Anne-Marie makes a good point, which is, look, inflation was the highest in 40 years in 2022.
		We all lived through that and know very well how, and that stings.
		It still stings for people.
		There's still a lot of anxiety.
		I think where a lot of Americans, middle-class Americans, and we see it in our own polling as well at Navy Federal, are really anxious is that we are starting to see some costs rise again, inflation trend up again.
		Now it's not near where it was in 2022 in those Biden years.
		But look, what really scared me, and I tweeted about this last week, is when we got the latest inflation report, almost every basic necessity is going up in price again, from housing to gas to car ownership to food and clothing.
		And so that's where I get nervous about people getting squeezed.
		You know, what are middle-class people not going to be able to afford in the coming months as they have to ship their budget around?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Heather Long, you talked about jobs earlier.
		We saw a large revision of jobs reported in the last couple of months from the federal government.
		And one of the people talked about those revisions was Caroline Levitt from the White House last week.
		I want to play a little bit of what she had to say, get your response to it.
karoline leavitt ▲ ● ▼		Let me just say something about the revisions that came out this morning.
		And this was one of the biggest revisions in absolute terms in decades.
		And the benchmark year, March 2024 to 2025, shows that the job growth was vastly weaker during the Biden administration than ever previously reported.
		Between this revision and last year's job growth was actually overstated by approximately 2 million jobs.
		And the Biden administration stood up here and vouched for that data and told you that data was real.
		And when President Trump calls into question the veracity of that data like he did before he took the oath of office and even now as President of the United States, he was ridiculed for that.
		And turns out this revision proves two things.
		Number one, the president was right.
		And this is why we need new leadership at the Fed.
		And this makes it very clear that President Trump inherited a much worse economy by the Biden administration than ever reported.
		And it also proves that the Federal Reserve is holding our monetary policy far too restrictive.
		Interest rates are too high.
		The Fed needs to cut the rates because of the mess that we inherited from the Biden administration.
unidentified		The president has said a year.
		Secretary of Beston said maybe the fourth quarter.
		When can we expect these numbers to increase?
karoline leavitt ▲ ● ▼		Well, first, we need accurate numbers.
		We need truthful and honest data, which is why the president took the monumental step to try and appoint and confirm new leadership at the BLS so we can have data that we can actually rely on.
		And that's what the president is doing, and we hope that his nominee will soon be confirmed.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So Heather Long, she points back to the previous administration as far as things happening.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's the reality there?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's interesting.
		JD Vance retweeted my tweet about some of this last week.
		So I was very much in the mix on it.
		Look, I think a couple things are going on here that people need to understand.
		Number one, I agree with the White House that it is alarming to see to go from, we thought there was almost 2 million jobs created between that period she's referencing, April 2024 to March 2025.
		In reality, it was half that much, you know, and that's not great.
		And that was all happening before we have the tariff impact.
		So, you know, I'd been talking about the frozen job market since January.
		Well, that frozen may have started in the summer of 2024, and people could feel that.
		So I think that is concerning that where we stand.
		But I think we got to separate a little bit.
		It doesn't mean the numbers are totally bogus.
		I do have a lot of faith still in our statistical agencies.
		We need to fund them.
		We want to keep our data as best it can.
		But they're right that we shouldn't accept these unusually large revisions as standard.
		We want to do better.
		We need to do better.
		And we can do better by funding these agencies and improving our collection more.
		So hopefully that happens going forward.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Heather Long is the chief economist for Navy Federal Credit Union.
		She's also a columnist for the Washington Post.
		We're back to Indiana for our next question from a student.
unidentified		Hi, I'm Benny.
		I'm also a sophomore at Purdue.
		My question is, how does one financially prepare to enter the real world economically as we graduate?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		Ooh, good question.
		Can I ask actually you maybe, did you have any finance, financial education, either in high school or college?
		Do you feel prepared?
		Do you watch TikTok or YouTube videos?
		Where do you learn about finance?
unidentified		Yeah, I would say a mix of from older adults, my life.
unidentified		And yes, social media, TikTok, YouTube, things of that nature.
heather long ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, I applaud you for seeking out that information.
		I think one of the great tragedies in the United States is that we don't teach financial education in K through 12 and then have a required segment in college to do it.
		I wrote a piece once, an op-ed, a column that's argued that financial education should be as important as sex education, which was so revolutionary for a while in the 80s and 90s.
		These are fundamental skills that people want.
		Young people want to know this.
		And so look, I think you're doing a lot of the right things, seeking out smart people to follow on YouTube, on TikTok, learning the basics.
		There's a lot of great apps today.
		I'm kind of jealous that your generation has all access to all these budget apps that can really tell you and analyze where are you spending your money, how can you save more, how can you get going.
		But I think anyone, look, I'm kind of middle-aged now and don't look too closely at the hair.
		But look, what I would tell you, everyone in my generation would say to you, start saving early, even if it's only $10 a week or whatever, because compound interest is your friend.
		The more you can put away, invest in the stock market, you will thank yourself when you hit my age.
		And when you hit your grandparents' age, you will look very, very smart.
		But it's hard.
		It's hard when your friends are saying, let's go to the Beyoncé concert or let's go to these other high-priced items.
		Sometimes you have to say no, and I know that's hard.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		For younger people, what's their relationship with banks investing, those kind of things that we grew up and know is commonplace.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's their relationship to that, do you think?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		I think, you know, I'd be curious what students say, but I think it's actually been a little bit better because the stock market has done so well in the last few years.
		And so it's similar to, you know, I was in high school in the 90s and people wanted to talk about this in the hallway during the tech boom.
		You know, stocks were going up.
		It was a topic of conversation, even at my public high school in the middle of Pennsylvania.
		Definitely not the New York financial capital of the world.
		And so in that sense, places like Robin Hood, the No Fee app, have really democratized the ability to invest or even buy fractions of shares in a way that I couldn't in my growing up years.
		So in that sense, when I talk to young people, they seem a little bit more savvy about some of the basics.
		But the hard one, the one that's gotten much harder that I really feel for the students as you launch your careers is the housing component.
		Even in cheap, so-called cheaper places of America, the Texas and Floridas of the world, housing costs have really gone up.
		There are not many places that are super affordable anymore to launch.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You highlighted this with another student, but how much does student loan factor into as an anchor as far as a student's ability once they graduate to be financially responsible and make it financial?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's a huge weight.
		Think about that couple hundred dollars a month that has to go to repaying your loans, you know, could have gone to investing.
		Usually that's the trade-off, and that's why people end up saving a lot less and their whole life gets delayed.
		Their life to go out and buy a home or to go out and have a child is very expensive in the United States these days.
		What I will say, when I travel the country, people love apprenticeships.
		And I keep saying, why don't, you know, we managed to double the apprenticeships in the first Trump administration.
		We need to like triple, quadruple it.
		As a nation, we should be having three to five million students doing these apprenticeships.
		And so many of them say I love apprenticeship because I don't have any debt doing this.
		It launches my career, and I'm actually making money while I go through these programs.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Tony.
		Tony is in South Carolina, Independent Line.
		Thanks for waiting.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, the economy is really not good.
		It's went downhill in the last, I'd say, two and a half years.
		We can blame whatever party.
		But my problem is who is setting market rate on apartment rentals in America today?
		Looks like the hedge funds have bought up almost all these complexes.
		Are these big real estate developers?
		Are they working together to set market rate?
		Because it's about to price a whole bunch of people out of housing.
		That's my comment.
		Thanks for what you do.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Tony, thanks.
heather long ▲ ● ▼		He makes a good point.
		I couldn't catch where Tony was calling from South Carolina because, yes, this whole point, I get asked about it a lot, of big companies, corporations, hedge fund type, buying up a lot of the available housing.
		It's not a huge factor nationally, but it is in some markets.
		I'm not as familiar with South Carolina, but Atlanta, for instance, is a place where they have a significant holding, you know, 25% or more in some neighborhoods.
		And that does, that does really start to keep the prices up and price people out.
		So, but look, it's an ongoing concern, and we think about it every day at Navy Federal Credit Union.
		You know, we're trying to help military and veteran members get their first home or get on that ladder.
		And it's really tough right now with the home prices.
		A reporter called me the other day and said, well, home prices are coming down, Heather, aren't they?
		And I said, okay, well, let's think about this.
		They've gone up $150,000, $200,000 in the past five years.
		And now you can get a $10,000 discount on that.
		So still really.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You got to keep it in perspective.
		There's a viewer who sent us a text this morning.
		He asked about the number of civil servants that are engaged in that deferred resignation program, people who took the buyout.
		I suppose, how does that factor into future jobs numbers when we calculate how many fewer federal workers there are?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a great question.
		So so far a year to date, we're down almost 100,000.
		So these are people who have already left or have chosen to quit.
		And we anticipate, based on reporting from Washington Post and some other really good sources, you know, we anticipate that there's going to be another roughly 150,000 who leave who took the deferred buyout.
		You know, their money ends in September 30th.
		And so the question is when that full amount will show up.
		Will it show up right away?
		It probably doesn't show up until the August and November survey.
		So we wouldn't see that in the jobs data that we all talk about until November or even December.
		But yeah, it's coming.
		It's part of it's already here.
		And, you know, there's effects that spill out from that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Larry.
		Larry joins us in Tennessee, Republican line.
		Hi, Larry.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I have two basic comments.
		One is that I learned many years ago to pay myself first.
		Every payday, I take a portion of my pay and set it aside for me or my family.
		The other is that, and you can always put some amount back.
		But one of the other things that I think that our younger people nowadays have what I call a rat problem.
		Everything they that they they want everything right now.
		They're not willing to stay out of debt and build income up to where they can afford things.
		A boat, a jet ski, a car, or whatever it might be, they have to have it right now.
		Patience is not something that's very prevalent nowadays in this society.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, let's get Heather Long's take on that.
heather long ▲ ● ▼		It's great advice.
		I echo everything you've said.
		We certainly see it in our data that people who automatically send some of their paycheck into savings every week or every other week when they get paid do better because the money is out of sight and out of mind and going right into paying yourself.
		I like that.
		And look, I worry a lot about what you're saying.
		The right now, rat now, however you said it was really, really catchy.
		And I worry especially as we enter this AI age.
		I mean, AI knows everything about you and it can really sell you things and mess with your brain and that instinct.
		I know I've fallen trapped to it occasionally.
		I'd like to say I never have, but the impulse buy when you're scanning on your phone and you see something and they keep feeding it to you.
		They know what you like.
		They know what you've clicked.
		And it's hard.
		It's hard to shut that part of your brain off and hard to say no.
		And I think it's only going to get harder.
		So to be able to do that and practice that, I love the no-buy movement that a lot of Gen Z are embracing, that notion of, you know, let's celebrate that we're not spending money or, you know, that let's have clothing swaps instead of buying new.
		I think all of that is really smart and brilliant.
		And I've adopted some of it myself.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Again, we've been joined by students from Purdue University during this segment.
		I think our fourth and final student is with us.
		Go ahead, sir.
unidentified		Hi, I'm Tate, and I'm a junior.
unidentified		In regards to cost of living, especially for young adults, are there any cities or regions that we should look into that have more opportunity?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you're sitting in one, Tate.
		I think you're smart to go to Purdue.
		You know, the Midwest is certainly still way more affordable.
		You know, the big one is the housing.
		I know we keep talking about it, whether rent or home buying, but it's the biggest part of most people's budgets, certainly in their 20s and 30s.
		And so if you can go where those costs are kept down, obviously a lot of people point still to Texas and to the southeast, parts of Florida, parts of the Carolinas, Alabama, Arkansas are still relatively, way more affordable than most of the coastal areas, certainly Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and California.
		So I think you're wise.
		I can tell you personally, I'm not just giving you some statistics.
		You know, I personally, I started my first job in London when I was living with an older woman in the room that I rented from her.
		And then I moved back to my hometown for a few years in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which is relatively one of the more affordable areas on the East Coast.
		And look, I was able to save way more than my friends in New York and Washington, D.C., and Boston because my housing costs, I remember I moved to New York after, and the woman looked at the paper and said, you can't be real that that's what you were paying for your house.
		And I said, yeah, and that was a whole house, not just a room.
		So if you can find a good opportunity in a lower housing cost area, do it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Dan, Dan in Ohio Democrats Line, you're on with our guests.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		I just had one basic question.
		My wife and I, we're just on Social Security and we're afraid that we can't lose principal.
		And so we're putting our money in regular banks, earning, you know, maybe 4% if we're lucky.
		And we can live with that as long as we know that the money is safe.
		So that's my question.
		Is our money safe in the bank?
		Is the FDIC going to be able to back us up if something goes wrong with the system?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it's a great question.
		I would say yes.
		I still have full faith and credit in the FDIC guarantee.
		Or if you use a credit union, there's a similar regulator that backs credit unions up to the amount a couple hundred thousand dollars.
		And so I think you're smart.
		I will say one advice I give to friends and family is it's often good to have two accounts in two different financial institutions.
		Not so much that you're at risk of losing your money, but sometimes in this age, data gets hacked, systems temporarily go haywire.
		You know, it's the technology can fail.
		And so that could mean that you were locked out of accessing your money for a few days until the bank or credit union can resume.
		So my advice is always to try to use two financial institutions, at least keep a little bit of money in a second one or a credit union.
		No self-interest here, but I think that's the way, that's the bigger risk that I worry about is hacking of a bank than that it would totally lose money.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Republican Line, Robert in New York City.
unidentified		Hello.
		All right, good morning.
		I've got three quick questions for you.
		The first is about it.
		Does Audibot and AI change the economy, knowing that our company could buy a box of stock and use them to fudge the stock market?
		And the third one is, what the definition of what do you think about it?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, look, you're right.
		It's amazing we haven't talked more about AI in this segment.
		We talked about it a little bit with the Purdue students, but it's a game changer.
		The only debate is how fast all of this is going to happen, how fast the changes are coming.
		I worry a lot that if we enter the next recession or downturn, whenever that could be, whether it's next year or several years down the line, usually in recessions, we see a lot of job loss go on.
		And I think in the AI age, there will be even more impetus potentially to lay people off and to try to replace people with robots or with some sort of technology and software.
		So I think that's a big concern.
		I will say it opens up a lot of opportunities.
		It's going to be a need to retrain many people.
		I'm jealous of the young people at Purdue who are coming out of college, who can figure out how to navigate their careers from the get-go in the AI age.
		They don't have to retrain.
		And so, but yes, there's some big changes coming.
		And the reality is the U.S. safety, social safety net is probably not ready.
unidentified		Yes.
heather long ▲ ● ▼		Really not ready for that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Do you see when it comes to AI, like we saw with the internet earlier, this desire for regulation from Capitol Hill?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And if that's the case, what happens to the sector overall, do you think?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's an interesting question.
		I mean, right now it seems very, let's not regulate too much in order to let it grow and keep the United States at the forefront of this growth.
		And, you know, that's probably the right thing to do.
		You don't want to tamp it down too early when we're still just trying to understand where some of the impacts are.
		I mean, I was blown away that some people use AI agents as their boyfriend or girlfriend.
		I mean, there's just so many uses that are way beyond my understanding.
		But what worries me is, and from economic perspective, look, whether the job losses and changes are small or large, why aren't we preparing?
		Why don't we improve our unemployment insurance system that's so antiquated and really needed a lot of support, life support during the pandemic?
		And now we've rolled a lot of those protections back.
		And why aren't we beefing up our job training, our apprenticeship programs, you know, to help people learn while they earn and get into a new field and a new career?
		And that's where you got to scratch your head and say, there's bipartisan support for this, but we haven't done it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We have a student back for some extra credit with another question for you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So go ahead.
unidentified		Hi.
		I texted some of my friends telling them that I was going to be talking with an economist today.
		And one of the questions that a lot of my friends wanted to know was, how does like Gen Z choices of our spending affect the economy?
		When it comes to, you know, we're a lot, we're very conscious about where our products come from, you know, the ethics of companies that we buy from.
		How does our things like, you know, we do boycotts a lot and stuff like that?
		How does that actually affect the economy?
		And is stuff like that really effective to make, you know, changes in politics?
heather long ▲ ● ▼		It's a great question.
		I did a whole Washington Post podcast related to this a couple of months ago, but that I would recommend.
		But, you know, here's a couple of quick thoughts.
		It's, yes, look, consumption is still the heartbeat of the U.S. economy.
		And so where you spend your money, how you spend your money matters.
		And we can see it right now.
		You know, a lot of people, as we were talking about, feel that middle-class squeeze and they're going from buying generic brands or buying name brands like Tide or whatever to buying a generic brand.
		And companies are adjusting to that and they're trying to lure those people back and trying to change in order to their products and their pricing in order to lure people back.
		I think the same thing is true, like you're saying with Gen Z. When Gen Z really gravitates towards certain clothing brands that are more ethical and sustainable or towards certain food brands, other companies are noticing a lot of the fast casual brands are struggling right now because they're not seen as valuable or as sustainable by Gen Z.
		And so there's a big influence going on there and it will continue.
		I will say, stepping back, I wrote a column that was very popular in August about the K-shape economy.
		And it is the truth in the United States now that about half of all spending is coming from the top 10% of earners.
		So right or wrong in the United States, the rich do have the biggest sway on our consumer economy.
		But I wouldn't let that deter you and you and your friends from continuing to spend your money where you think you can get the most value and where you can think you can get the most ethical and sustainable value.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We have been joined by students from Purdue University asking questions of our guests.
		Tell your instructor you get an A today.
		Thank you for your participation very much.
		Thanks for everybody.
		And Heather Long, thank you for talking to them and our viewers and us during this time.
		Heather Long, you can find her work in the Washington Post.
		She is the chief economist for Navy Federal Credit Union.
		Thank you so much.
heather long ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for having me.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And that's our program today.

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