CSPAN - Washington Journal 10/05/2025

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Oct. 5, 2025 07:00-10:02 - CSPAN

03:01:54

Washington Journal 10/05/2025

Participants

Main

pedro echevarria

cspan 30:32

Appearances

christopher scalia

00:55

john curtis

sen/r 01:06

suhas subramanyam

rep/d 01:01

wes moore

d 01:53

Clips

anthony j hilder

00:25

barack obama

d 00:02

bill clinton

d 00:02

dasha burns

politico 00:04

dave walsh

00:23

donald j trump

admin 00:11

george h w bush

r 00:02

george w bush

r 00:04

jimmy carter

d 00:03

joe biden

d 00:03

justice neil gorsuch

scotus 00:14

ronald reagan

r 00:01

tommy chong

00:08

virgil goode

00:01

Callers

doc in indiana

callers 00:04

kim in wisconsin

callers 00:04

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll talk about the political impact of the government shutdown and campaign 2026 with Kyle Kondick, managing editor of the University of Virginia's Sabato's Crystal Ball.
		Then Stephen Cook with the Council on Foreign Relations talks about the reaction to the Trump administration's Gaza peace plan and broader strategy in the Middle East.
		Washington Journal starts now.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is the Washington Journal for October 5th.
		It's also the fifth day of the government shutdown.
		On Saturday, House Speaker Mike Johnson told his fellow Republicans that despite not planning on coming to Washington this week, they would be available within 48 hours if the Senate passes the GOP version of the short-term spending bill, a bill that does not include provisions for enhanced Obamacare subsidies and other health care-related topics that Democrats are searching for.
		You can call and share your thoughts not only on the shutdown, but these issues that underlie it by the following numbers.
		202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats and Independents, 202-748-8002.
		If you're a federal worker and you want to give your perspective on what's been going on the last almost week, 202748-8003 is how you do that.
		You can also post on our social media sites.
		That's facebook.com slash C-SPAN.
		And on X, it's at C-SPANWJ.
		The folks at YouGov have put out some polling, taking a look specifically at topics related to the shutdown.
		Here's some of the things they found.
		Under the category, most people don't expect it to last very long.
		This saying about four in 10 Americans expect the government to be shut down two weeks or less, including 16% who expect the shutdown to last less than a week, and 25% who expect it to be shut down for one to two weeks.
		Only 22% expect the shutdown to last three or four weeks or longer.
		When asked if the shutdown affected them personally, only 11% of Americans saying that the shutdown will definitely affect them, 25% saying it will probably affect them.
		And then 35% saying the shutdown will definitely or probably affect them is a smaller share of Americans than the 47% who say it will probably not affect them or definitely not affect them.
		And then when asking who is to blame for what's going on, Americans were split along party lines, 45% of Americans saying that President Trump is responsible for the shutdown, 45% saying congressional Republicans are, 36% saying congressional Democrats are.
		And then it goes on from there.
		You can find more information on that on the YouGov site.
		You can tell us your thoughts too about this shutdown and the issues that are behind it.
		Again, the numbers, Republicans, 202-748-8001, Democrats, 202-748-8002, and Independents, 202748-8002.
		Sorry, Democrats is 202-748-8000.
		It's 202-748-8003.
		If you're a federal worker and you want to give your perspective on that as well, Independent Line in North Carolina, this is Jeffrey on this government shutdown as it continues.
		Jeffrey, good morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you for taking the call.
		And I hope you allow me to express some concerns on a lot of the situation that you just reiterated.
		I just find it very disturbing that it's an issue where people trying to disacknowledge that that bill that passed, it is absolutely going to do tremendous damage.
		And it's not being in any way acknowledged that these professionals who are putting a lot of decisions that's changing the dynamics in America, and we're trusting people as we elect to do this.
		It is amazing that no one is holding that administration accountable.
		It's also disturbing that we, in the short term, has forgotten what Elon Musk did, came right in with his blessing, and now you don't even hear this man's name in any existence when he shut down and cut tremendous amount of federal jobs.
		And people right now are feeling the ramifications behind that.
		So, Jeffrey, how would you like the issue to be resolved?
		Honestly, truly, I think if America, the people in America, in this country, come to some common understanding and look at and hear the tone that's coming out from an administration that people are supposed to respect, look up to.
		It's just out of the normal.
		It's not the normal no more.
		And to make it seem like people right now who is listening to your program that are have been given notice, termination, closed, and the concern on this is people that had great incomes.
		What about the people that barely making it?
		It is not fair.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, let's hear from Marissa.
		Marissa in Montana, Democrats line on this government shutdown continuing.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning, C-SPAN.
		Good morning, America.
		Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark.
		Thank you.
		Thank you.
		My name is Marisa.
		I live in Belfry, Montana.
		And what I'd like to say is this.
		Number one, I'd like to speak directly just to Democrats.
		We never got to have our primary.
		What happened was with that whole thing, I'm not going to blame anybody, but that's what happened.
		We need, if there's any way, I don't know if this is possible, but we need to pick a Democratic leader and have one of those primary things where they all run and then we pick a Democratic leader, somebody that can stand up and talk back directly to Trump and just do nothing but stand up for the American people and talk back in a unified manner so that we can have a leader that will stand up and just talk directly back to Trump,
		just like and it's not, please stop, let us please stop deciding who's to blame.
		Let's remember that the Republicans had six months to figure out this budget and never did anything.
		And now all of a sudden we're doing this continuing.
		There's no reason for that.
		Let us please have a prime, let us please have some kind of a primary where we can pick a leader that can stand up and speak for the American people.
		I would really, that would really mean in a unified manner.
		Thank you so much, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark.
		Thank you.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From California, this is Maria joining us.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Republican line, good morning.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		Thank you for the opportunity.
		The previous lady just said it right.
		Everything she said is correct.
		Unfortunately, we people, we don't see what is going on.
		And we're blind and we're there.
		We don't hear.
		Republicans keep blaming the undocumented people for the shutdown.
		Everything is the fault of the undocumented people.
		It's unbelievable what is going on.
		And we need to do action now.
		We're moving too slow and they're moving way too fast.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So what's the message to your fellow Republicans then?
unidentified		Stop blaming the wrong people for they not doing their jobs.
		Stop blaming the undocumented, the illegal.
		Everything is the undocumented people.
		They blame it all on them.
		And this is crazy.
		It's unbelievable what is going on.
		It's unbelievable what is happening.
		We need to, like I said, the previous leadership is right.
		We need to do, we need to move and we need to stop believing everything they said.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, from New York, Independent Line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We'll hear from David.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		So it's really interesting, you know, what's going on.
		And the Democrats, I think, are just like in a total debacle right now.
		You know, they call it a continuing resolution for a reason, right?
		It's continuing what the government was already funding, right?
		It's not let's get together and let's legislate new laws or new ways of doing things in this government, right?
		The time for doing that was before the current one expired, right?
		So it's a continuing resolution.
		Like you said, you know, the Democrats are holding out because they want enhanced Obamacare.
		There was a time to do that.
		They failed to do that.
		We came up to a deadline.
		We passed a continuing resolution.
		Let's continue with what's currently in law.
		And then after that, we can go back to legislate.
		They don't want to legislate.
		Whenever they have a chance, they walk out.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that legislation will include discussions about extending the ACA subsidence?
unidentified		Well, it can.
		I mean, but it never happened.
		They never did it.
		So that's what I'm saying.
		It's called a continuing resolution.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Sure, but Speaker Johnson and others have said that they can have these discussions after they pass the short-term extension.
unidentified		Do you actually think that will happen?
		It all depends on whether people come to the table and they start to have discussions in a proper way.
		I mean, you can't just say, well, I'm going to be against this because Trump is for it or Republicans are for it.
		We got to stop playing in teams.
		This is not a game.
		This is our government.
		This is our country, right?
		So people need to get off of, I'm on this side or I'm on that side, or these people are evil.
		These people are evil.
		We're all Americans, right?
		There's certain laws already on the books.
		There's a way that we run our governments.
		We need to just forget about all of this is my team.
		That's their team.
		They're evil.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Yep, you got the point.
		David in there in New York, this is Politico saying that it was Speaker Johnson telling House Republicans on a private call yesterday that he will give 48-hour notice if they are needed for a vote at the Capitol this week, should the Senate approve the stopgap measure to reopen the government.
		According to four people with direct knowledge of the call, it was on the call that the speaker tried to rally his members saying the House has completed its work by already approving the seven-week stopgap measure.
		The House would return when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reopens the government, according to the story.
		But it's unlikely that the House will be back at all this week after the Speaker called off votes.
		The House currently out until October the 14th.
		Quote, no change of message, said one of the people, all of whom were granted an anonymity to discuss the call.
		We've done our work and let the Senate do theirs.
		This story does add that House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said on the call that the next upcoming pressure point for Democrats is October the 15th.
		That's the day when active duty military will miss their first paycheck, urging Republican members to pressure Democrats over this deadline.
		That's in Politico.
		If you want to read more there, we're taking your thoughts on this continuing shutdown.
		Jerry in Tennessee, Democrats lying.
		You're next up.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
		Thank you for taking my call this morning.
		To say the least, this is a mess.
		I mean, it is just absolutely a mess.
		But if the Democrats give in and pass this short spare spending bill, they'll never get this back to the floor again.
		And if people lose this Obamacare and stuff, it will devastate people like you're in my little town.
		It'll close our hospitals and people will die.
		I mean, that's just that simple.
		They can't afford this kind of increase.
		You're talking about a person that's paying $600 a month.
		Now you're talking about $1,800 a month.
		They can't afford that kind of stuff.
		And sure to goodness, if we can afford to build what was it, a half a million-dollar ballroom up in Washington, we can afford to help the poor people that need it.
		I mean, these people are hurting.
		We're already hurting down here.
		This inflation, this economy is not, it's not for poor people, can live on it.
		You know, we got steaks, $20 something a pound of them.
		Everybody right here eats them, but that's what they cost.
		And it's just a hammer on the porch.
		And this right here will be the beginning of the end of Medicare.
		Mark my word.
		It'll be the beginning of the end of Medicare and probably Social Security.
		But people just pray that these people get back, you know, some common sense.
		And if we can afford all these other things, we can afford to help people with their health care.
		But they say, well, they say 10 to 15 million people could lose their health care just simply because they can't afford it.
		You know, it's like everything else.
		People like to have a lot of things, but they can't afford it.
		They can't have it.
doc in indiana ▲ ● ▼		But I sure do appreciate you people for keeping us in the front line of that.
unidentified		And if we can afford all this other stuff, we can afford to help some poor people with their health care.
		That's what God, Jesus, told us to do when we come to this earth.
		So thank you and have a good day.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		That's Jerry in Tennessee.
		This story recently published about YouTube helping to pay for that ballroom as part of their settlement there saying four and a half years after YouTube banned the president's channel in the wake of the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol.
		The Alphabet Own Company agreed to pay the president 24.5 million money.
		That will go to build a new ballroom.
		The president sued the channel after his channel was shut down shortly after followers stormed the Capitol in wake of the election defeat by Joe Biden.
		You can read more about who's participating in building that ballroom on there and other sites.
		This is an Ohio Republican line.
		Robert, hello.
unidentified		Hi, this is Robert.
unidentified		I'm fed up with jerks and I'm fed up with nuts on the sidewalk, you know, and the NRA special interest taking care of that Wally Tabor show and banking on a McDonald's commercial and Chicago Columbus.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Hey, let's go to Timothy in North Carolina, Independent Line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Hi there.
unidentified		Yes, how are you doing?
		Fine, thank you.
		I wish I could say a good morning world and good morning America.
		But according to God, we are not good here on earth.
		For African people, we have broke the everlasting covenant from God.
		And America is not a Christian nation.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, how does that relate to the shutdown?
unidentified		Because the Republican is not governed.
		You sit right there and watch these people, the Republican Party, stop governing.
		They did not.
		They did not impeach Donald Trump.
		The whole world knew that.
		And they let this man back in there.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's stick to the topic at hand.
		When you say not governing specifically to the shutdown, I'll call her.
		Hold on, hold on.
		Let me ask the question.
		If you say that the government's not governing specifically, how so in this shutdown?
unidentified		You sit there and watch them people not do nothing about the border when nobody when Biden was in that seat.
		They played politics with them people, sending them people to the inner cities, calling chaos, and then sit back and put it on that TV and say, look, Biden didn't do nothing.
		Y'all did not tell this country that Biden did do something about that border.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, okay.
		That's continuing on when it comes to calls about the shutdown.
		You can do the same.
		Again, if you've called within the past 30 days, hold off from doing so today.
		But if you want to talk about the impact of the shutdown, at least what you would think of it, 202-748-8000-1 for Republicans, 202-748-8,000 for Democrats.
		Independents, 202748-8002.
		It was yesterday outside of the District of Columbia in Virginia that Virginia Representative, the Democrat Suhas Silbermanian, hosted a town hall that C-SPAN cameras were part of.
		And many of those participating asking about the shutdown, the impact on them personally, several talking about the impact of health care.
		Here's one of his constituents sharing those thoughts from yesterday.
unidentified		I am underemployed and paying for bare bones minimum coverage through the Virginia marketplace as provided by the Affordable Care Act.
		I'm increasingly concerned about what the Republicans are doing with our health care and the elimination of reasonable premiums, tax credits, and subsidies.
		I may lose my coverage again with their current policies and threats with a government shutdown.
		What are you and other Democrats doing about health care for Virginia workers?
		I'm going to take the extra 10 seconds.
		I also spent 25 years implementing democracy programs abroad, 25 years in service of the American people.
		I've helped with SNAP elections, so if you need help with that, I'd be happy to give you some advice.
		But I know painfully well what authoritarianism looks like.
		Can you also tell us what you and fellow Democrats are doing to help protect our democracy here in America and in Northern Virginia?
suhas subramanyam ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
		I'm keeping my answers very short today because we have a very long line.
		First of all, thank you so much.
		I'm so sorry about your experience.
		One thing to note is last time we had a budget fight, there were many Democrats that voted for what the Republicans put forward at the time because they wanted the assurance that federal workers and contractors wouldn't get riffed, laid off, fired, furloughed, and there wouldn't be this sort of plan by Russ Vote and other people at OMB to cut the federal workforce at its knees.
		And what's happened in the last six months is they did it anyway.
		And now they're threatening firings.
		Irony is, I believe, firing people during a shutdown is illegal, my reading of it.
		And so because of that, they're going to still try to fire people during the shutdown and use the shutdown as an excuse.
		But I want to see some changes, real changes to the way they're treating our community and federal workers and our community and contractors because right now, assurances aren't enough for me.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That was yesterday.
		And you can see that whole town hall, by the way, if you go to our website at c-span.org, you can also check it out on our app at C-SPANNow.
		Let's hear from Arthur in Florida, Republican line.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes.
		This shutdown is a tragedy on both sides.
		Both sides need to sit down and try to work out some type of a solution.
dave walsh ▲ ● ▼		They need to work, sit down, work out a solution to protect the American people.
unidentified		I mean, that's basically the bottom line on our ward.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		When you say, Arthur, work out a solution, does that mean Republicans allowing for some extension of, say, ACA subsidies and aspects of health care?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Should that be part of it?
unidentified		Basically, what we need to do is take care of America first.
		Take care of America first.
		The doctors need to be examining people when they're coming into this country to make sure they ain't bringing diseases in here with them.
		I mean, both sides need to sit down, which earn what they're being paid, earn what they're being paid.
dave walsh ▲ ● ▼		And because, I mean, they're being paid more in a month than I would make in 10 years.
dave walsh ▲ ● ▼		They need to sit down and work out a solution to this issue.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Arthur in Florida.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We're joined next in Georgia by Barbara, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Yes.
		I'm sick and tired of the Republicans blaming the Democrats for everything that happens.
		It's always Biden did it, or it's always the Democrats did it.
		And I'm sick and tired of them closing the government down when they had all this time to figure things out, and they can't even get up there and work for the people.
		They can't do it.
		They can't even agree how selfish and how small-minded these people are.
		I'm so sick and tired of Trump getting up there talking about the ballroom.
		And then he fires all these people in the government.
		And then where is the money going?
		Is he paying the deficit down?
		No.
		Have we heard anything about the money?
		No.
		So I'm fed up with it.
		I think he should be impeached.
		You know what else I think?
		I think he's covering up because he don't want people to know about the Epstein files.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Barbara, there in Georgia, 35 days, the longest shutdown in short-term recorded history when it comes to the federal government.
		That was in the previous Trump administration.
		That was also followed by, in 2018, three days under President Trump.
		Also, three days for President Bush in the 90s, five days under President Clinton in 95.
		Also in 95 into 96, 21 days.
		President Obama shutdown under his tenure for 16 days.
		That's according to House.gov, their history section.
		If you want to look at the history when it comes to the shutdown, you can talk about the people that are being affected if some have talked about the programs being affected as well.
		Josephine's up next.
		Josephine joins us from New Jersey, Independent Line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Good morning.
		Two points.
		First of all, we're the only nation in the entire world who writes a law and doesn't fund.
		That's what this debacle is all about.
		But more importantly, number importantly, that arbitrary number of 60 to pass the budget, that's arbitrary.
		It's not a law.
		All Thun has to say is, I've gotten rid of it, just like Reed did a lot of other things.
		He could do it instantly, done with.
		He has his count finished.
		So bringing other people, blame it on Thun, because he doesn't want to take the responsibility of removing the arbitrary number, which isn't a law.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Steve in Florida, Republican line from Tampa.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Steve, hello.
unidentified		Good morning.
		There are 2.9 million federal workers, not military.
		Of that, approximately 50% are typically furloughed during a shutdown.
		72% of that are Democrats.
		The reason the Democrats are trying to hold up the CR is they want to change things that were passed in the Big Beautiful bill.
		Okay.
		And there's no reason why a minority party should have responsibility for shutting down the government.
		When Nancy Pelosi was in charge, she passed the big beautiful, passed the bill without any Republican involvement.
		I think the Republicans are willing to sit down and talk as long as the Republicans agree to the CR.
		The CR is the same CR that was passed many times before.
		As Mike Johnson said, it's a clean CR.
		They haven't added anything.
		The other thing is that there's a tremendous amount of money being spent on illegals in the emergency rooms in this country.
		In Florida, 9.1 million people went to the emergency room last year.
		According to KFF, the organization that was on yesterday, they said that 1% are illegals.
		That would be 91,000.
		The average cost in a hospital visit is at least $1,000.
		That means $91 million was spent in Florida covering illegal going to emergency rooms.
		Illegals can't go to a doctor because they don't have insurance.
		So the only place they go is to the emergency room.
		That money is being paid back to the hospitals by the government.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Steve, there in Florida, when it comes to furloughs at specific agencies, when you combine the EPA, the Education Department, the Commerce Department, more than 80% of those furloughed, according to data from the New York Times and the Defense Department, 334,000 civilian employees.
		That's 45% of the total amount at the Justice Department, 12,800 employees, 11% of that total.
		Over at Homeland Security, 14,000 employees, 5% of the total there.
		And Veterans Affairs, 14,800 employees, 3% of the total there.
		Those are the numbers that are currently being furloughed during this time.
		Some of you are mentioning the departments that are being affected by that.
		Stella in Mississippi, Democrats line hi.
unidentified		Hi.
		I just want to know why they keep calling it a clean bill and that they're passing the same thing, just extending it.
		That's not true.
		Trump wants additional funds for security.
		What he wants it for is to put military in these cities.
		Why is no one talking about that?
		And also, where, like the other caller said, where are these trillions of dollars he's claiming going?
		And why is he putting gold in the White House when people can't buy food?
		That's my comment, but they keep saying it's a clean bill.
		And he's adding additional money for security, he says.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Security was added.
		Security money was added because of recent events, and that was for some justices, judicial branch, some judicial, and members of Congress as well.
		That's part of the debate over when it comes to the CR.
		Randy in Illinois, Independent Line.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning, Pedro.
		I'd like to help you out and say that I'm muting my TV and it's been 30 days since I called in.
		Pedro, I'm calling about all these government employees that you say are being furloughed and everything like that.
		And I hear that, you know, they're losing all this money and they're in these food lines and everything like that.
		And you know what, Pedro?
		They're not losing anything.
		You have to mention this on TV: that all these people ain't losing anything because once this is over, they're going to be happy as heck when they see $1,000 checks coming in for all this back pay that they get.
		And I guarantee you won't see any federal employees or any people laid off in a food line.
		That's all.
		I wish you would mention that, that they're all going to get paid back.
		So they ain't going to be losing nothing.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		One more call from New Hampshire, Republican line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Dan.
unidentified		Hello.
		Yeah, good morning.
		I just couple of points I want to make.
		You remember in the 2018 Democratic primary when they asked the question how many of these candidates would vote to give health care to undocumented workers or undocumented migrants, I should say.
		All the Democrats raised their hands.
		So, yeah, all these illegal immigrants are still in this country, eventually going to be given legal status, and that's what the Democrats want so that they can all get on health care, you know, get health care or get whatever benefits.
		That's why they don't want anybody removed from this country, you know, because they're expecting all these illegals to vote for them eventually.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And how does that relate to the shutdown?
unidentified		Well, that's phase one.
		The phase two is that with the ACA, I was an insurance agent for over 30 years, and the ACA is one of the worst pieces of legislation that was ever passed.
		And the Democrats passed this because eventually what they want is Medicare for all.
		You know, when people say that the Democrats are better on health care, it's government-run health care.
		You know, do we think we're going to have problems now with shortages and rationing and all these things that are happening?
		You know, the emergency rooms being packed and everything else.
		But yeah, this is all about making all these illegals legal, giving them benefits.
		And then, secondly, Medicare for all.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Dan in New Hampshire, finishing off this round of phones.
		Thank you for those who participated.
		We'll continue on on discussions of the shutdown in a little bit, but later on in the program, we'll talk about the current status of President Trump's plan over Gaza with reports of Hamas accepting parts of it.
		We'll take all those topics with Stephen Cook of the Council of Foreign Relations.
		Up next, the University of Virginia's Kalcondic talking about the politics of the shutdown, who might be impacted the most, and things related to that.
		That, when Washington Journal continues.
unidentified		Tonight, on C-SPAN's Q&A, Christopher Scalia, son of the late Justice Antonin Scalia and author of 13 novels conservatives will love but probably haven't read, recommends 13 novels with conservative themes that he says aren't widely known by conservatives.
christopher scalia ▲ ● ▼		The title isn't conservative novels.
		I think that It oversimplifies the case a little bit.
		I think that great literature is open to multiple, not infinite, but multiple interpretations and readings.
		And so I offer what I think are reasonable, conservative readings of all of these novels.
		But I think that there are alternate readings that progressives could offer.
		That would be reasonable.
		I wouldn't necessarily agree with them.
unidentified		Christopher Scalia with his book, 13 Novels Conservatives Will Love But Probably Haven't Read tonight at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
unidentified		You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app.
dasha burns ▲ ● ▼		I'm Dasha Burns, host of Ceasefire, bridging the divide in American politics.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Ceasefire premieres October 10th.
jimmy carter ▲ ● ▼		Democracy is always an unfinished creation.
ronald reagan ▲ ● ▼		Democracy is worth dying for.
george h w bush ▲ ● ▼		Democracy belongs to us all.
bill clinton ▲ ● ▼		We are here in the sanctuary of democracy.
george w bush ▲ ● ▼		Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies.
barack obama ▲ ● ▼		American democracy is bigger than any one person.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected.
joe biden ▲ ● ▼		We are still at our core a democracy.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.
unidentified		Washington Journal continues.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Kyle Kondick of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
		He's also the managing editor of Sabado's Crystal Ball and the co-author of the book, Campaign of Chaos, Trump Biden-Harris, and the 2024 American Election.
		Kyle Kondick, welcome back to C-SPAN.
unidentified		Thanks for having me.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Politics of shutdown.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's important to think about at this time?
unidentified		You know, I was coming over here this morning and I was looking at my phone and looking at, you know, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal.
		And, you know, it really wasn't a top story on those sites.
		I mean, obviously it's being covered a lot, but the point I just wanted to make is that this does not seem like an all-consuming sort of thing, even though, I mean, it's obviously it's a big story and you're going to reach a point where people are going to start missing paychecks.
		So this probably will turn into maybe a bigger deal later on, but I don't necessarily know if it's a huge national thing right now.
		I think it was maybe when it was first announced, but then we've gone several days and I just don't necessarily know if it's breaking through.
		So when you're thinking about who's going to feel the political pain here, that's always the question we ask.
		Typically you would say, well, it's the Democrats because they're the ones who aren't agreeing to sort of the status quo.
		The Democrats are saying, hey, wait a second, we can't trust this administration to make any deals anyway.
		They're going to go back and impound the funding or whatever.
		They have good cards to play, I think, on healthcare.
		And polling suggests that to the extent people are paying attention, Republicans are getting more blame.
		But again, it doesn't feel like some sort of huge story in the way I felt, like 2013, for instance.
		I guess I just sort of felt it was kind of a kind of a bigger deal.
		Maybe it'll get to that point later on in this month.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And a piece you recently took, wrote about it, you used the phrase, still he fights when it comes to the Democratic approach to this.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Can you elaborate on that piece?
unidentified		So prior or after Mitt Romney lost in 2012 and you had like the Tea Party and other things on the Republican side, I think there was this desire on the Republican side for like, hey, we, you know, we, John McCain, he was too moderate.
		You know, Mitt Romney was too moderate.
		We, you know, we need a fighter.
		And I think that Ted Cruz and the Tea Party and, you know, they use that shutdown to try to say, hey, we're going to, you know, we're going to fight.
		And Democrats haven't necessarily had that sort of impulse or that strong of an impulse.
		But the Democrats are starting to face the same problems Republicans did a dozen years ago.
		Democrats all of a sudden don't like their leaders.
		They're less likely to express a favorable attitude about their party.
		And they feel like they're getting run over by the Trump administration, which has been very aggressive, more so the second time than the first time.
		And so there's this desire to fight, to do something.
		And after Chuck Schumer decided not to shut the government down in March, his numbers took a big hit.
		And so they're just Democrats are sort of feeling it, I think, from their base in a way that they historically haven't.
		And that's sort of more reminiscent of what we're used to from Republicans.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Remind people what took place in March and what led Senator Schumer to take that action.
unidentified		So there was sort of another sort of similar situation where there had to be, I think it was a continuing resolution that's actually led up to this point now when it ran out.
		And so just like now, back in March, the Senate had to, you know, because of the filibuster had to provide 60 votes to pass this.
		And the Republicans only have 53.
		And so the Democrats needed to provide votes to prevent a shutdown back in March.
		They decided not to.
		I think there were 10 Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, who voted for that deal.
		And again, they sort of got beat up for it.
		Now, in hindsight, do I think that the Democrats made a bad decision back then?
		I don't necessarily think that they did.
		You also got to remember that was right around the time of Trump doing the quote-unquote liberation day, the tariff announcements and all that.
		And that's also the time where Trump's approval rating, which has been more robust in his second term, but is still relatively weak.
		That's around the time that it turned net negative.
		If they had done a shutdown back in March, would that have played out any differently?
		I don't necessarily, I think maybe it would have.
		But again, the sort of rule of thumb is that the party that doesn't vote for the quote-unquote clean CR is the one that's responsible for it.
		But it's easy for me to say that the public's ultimately going to make a determination one way or the other.
		But they may also just not necessarily be paying all that much attention to it either.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		If you want to ask your thoughts about the politics behind the shutdown, 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats, Independents, 202-748-8002.
		You can text Sisher's Law to 202-748-8003.
		You can also use that number if you're a federal employee and you're directly impacted by what's going on with the shutdown.
		And you can also post on Facebook and on X. Let's talk about the Republicans.
		Mike Johnson decides not even to come back next week.
		What do you think of that as a strategy?
unidentified		I sort of feel like they might be better off if they were actually just coming back and voting on this thing.
		Again, I mean, I know it's already passed the House, which is why they don't necessarily have to come back.
		They just kick this to the Senate.
		They also run the risk of allowing the president and the Senate to come up with an agreement that then they just have to sort of swallow later.
		You know, there is also another thing going on here completely unrelated to the shutdown, but that is that so the Democrats just held a safe House seat in a special election in Arizona.
		Adelina Grijalva won a special election.
		And whenever she's sworn in, she's not sworn in yet because the Republicans are delaying it because the House isn't in regular session.
		She will be the 218 signatory to this discharge petition related to files related to Jeffrey Epstein, which of course has been a thorn in the side of the Trump White House.
		They don't want the House to vote on that.
		And so one of the ways you could interpret it is that this isn't really about to shut down at all, or maybe it's partially about to shut down, but it's also about just sort of kicking the can down the road on letting her be sworn in and then having this, you know, the discharge position, discharge petition would allow the House to vote on something that, you know, that isn't supported by leadership.
		And so and there probably would be 218 votes to vote in favor of releasing these files.
		We would just be overwhelmingly Democrats, but there are a handful of Republicans who have signed on too, which is why it's right on the threshold of being, of getting that magic 218 number.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's the president's role in a shutdown?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You can talk about Trump, but historically, what role do they play typically?
unidentified		You know, it sort of varies.
		You know, in 2019, Trump himself kind of precipitated a shutdown because he was demanding funding for the border wall and the Democratic-controlled house didn't want to do it.
		Back in 2013, it was Barack Obama and the Democrats sort of with the status quo position, which is kind of where Republicans are right now.
		And, you know, I feel like in some ways, Trump is kind of turning up the temperature a little bit.
		And he's doing that in part through Russ Vogt, the OMB director, who is starting to threaten essentially blue states with, hey, we're going to turn off this funding, we're going to turn off that funding.
		And I do wonder if there is this inherent kind of chaos that's associated with Trump that I think in some ways could be politically helpful for him.
		But when you're thinking about who is to blame for a shutdown, which is a chaotic sort of thing, I wonder if to some people the default is just, oh, well, Trump's responsible.
		And again, Democrats are arguing Republicans are responsible anyway because they're not negotiating on extending these tax credits for the Affordable Care Act plans, or these, I'm sorry, subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans.
		But again, typically the position is that if you're in support of the sort of status quo, that's an easier position to defend than if you're using a shutdown to try to enact changes, which is what the Democrats are trying to do.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Our guest is the managing editor at Sabado's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
unidentified		What is that?
		Center for Politics has been around at UVA for a quarter century.
		We do a lot of things.
		We have classes.
		We have civics education programs for K through 12 schools.
		We do a lot of programs at the university.
		I'm moderating a panel on Wednesday.
		We do all sorts of stuff.
		And led by Professor Larry Sabadeau, who's been his institution at UVA going back to the 1970s.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And the Crystal Ball.
unidentified		Crystal Ball is a usually twice weekly newsletter, free to sign up, centerforpolitics.org backslash crystal ball.
		We talk about elections.
		We try to forecast elections.
		I wrote about the shutdown this week.
		We got elections coming up just about a month away in Virginia, New Jersey, California, some other places.
		And then, of course, we're looking ahead to the midterm too.
		So one of the big topics we've dealt with this year is redistricting and sort of looking at the nuts and bolts of how the district's changing, whether these things are legal or not, all sorts of stuff.
		So if you're interested in electoral politics, please sign up.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We'll talk about those elections in a bit.
		Let's hear from Jim.
		Jim's in Maryland, Republican line for our guest, Kyle Condick.
		Jim, go ahead.
unidentified		I don't.
		Let's go back to 2013.
		This is going to lead to the shutdown, but Harry Reid pulled the trigger on the first nuclear option.
		Okay.
		And then so he could get all justices except for supremes, I guess.
		Then I remember I was watching when Mitch McConnell said, you're going to regret this.
		I guess Harry thought he was going to be in there forever.
		Well, then Mitch McConnell did the same thing in 2017 so that they could get Neil Gorsuch in the Supreme Court.
		Okay.
		Now you can blame the Supreme Court we have on Harry Reid.
		And I think John Toon's going to come under some pressure and finally pull the trigger on the last nuclear option because what's the difference?
		I mean, they say, oh, then the Senate will be just like the House.
		Who cares?
		I mean, big deal.
		So, okay, got your point, Jim.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Thanks.
unidentified		Marjorie Taylor Greene, a fairly prominent House Republican from Georgia, she's saying that John Thune should just have Republicans do away with the filibuster and just use, you know, just eliminate the 60-vote threshold, and that would allow them to pass the CR through the Senate because the CR in the Senate has had 55 votes.
		So clearly, there's a majority in the Senate for it.
		But the Senate is a, you know, you need a three-fifths majority basically to do many things, not everything.
		A lot of the budget reconciliation process is just a simple majority vote.
		And that's how a lot of our sort of signature policy gets made.
		But yeah, I mean, there's this sort of escalating kind of arms race in terms of making the Senate kind of more of a straight majority chamber.
		And maybe we're headed there.
		I don't know if this is going to be what would cause that, because I would think that the party that does away with the filibuster for good is going to do it in favor of some giant legislative achievement or giant legislative goal.
		This is not that, I don't think.
		But yeah, I mean, I could imagine that happening at some point.
		Again, not necessarily here, and the caller recounts the history accurately as far as I know.
		I mean, there's, again, there's sort of tit for tat on judges in particular.
		And there was just one about Republicans in the Senate trying to make it faster to confirm some of Trump's nominees.
		So again, this is sort of an ongoing thing.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Florida, Democrats line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		James, hello.
unidentified		Good morning, gentlemen.
		Good morning.
		Thank you.
		Thank you for giving me the opportunity.
		I'm going to talk about the Affordable Care Act.
		I have a dear friend.
		She's a Republican, but she had diabetes, and it took her eyesight and her kidneys.
		So she was on the machine every three times a week and all that.
		In 2018, she had $1.7 million in medical bills.
		If it was the old plan, of course, you all know that it was only cover up to a million dollars.
		Then after that, you're responsible for 100%.
		This affordable care makes a big difference for individuals who own business of their own business.
		Or individual like my son works for a company who does not have medical insurance through them, he'd have to go out and they've got an Affordable Care Act.
		The Republican need to wake up and smell the copy and think about the American people.
		It is vital that this affordable care, and we're the only country in the world that have commercial health insurance where all other countries have government-run health care.
		And people said, Oh, you'll be waiting for six months for medical care.
		It's happening now when we're not in a good money.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha, James.
		Thank you for bringing that up.
		That center of the politics behind everything going back and forth between the Republicans and the Democrats.
unidentified		Yeah, I mean, the caller makes a good point about that.
		ACA is very important to a lot of different people.
		There are people who get coverage now who didn't have it before.
		And even in the midst of this shutdown, Republicans don't want to essentially be pushed through the shutdown to negotiate on these ACA subsidies.
		But they are concerned about it.
		There's reporting about that.
		And maybe there would be some sort of deal.
		And what's happening with the shutdown, it kind of reminds me of, I talked about redistricting earlier.
		So in Texas, Texas has a new Republican-leaning map that the White House asked for.
		It should allow the Republicans to win at least a few more extra seats in Texas.
		But one of the things that the Texas Democrats did is they broke quorum, which is something you can do in Texas.
		Left the state.
		And they weren't really going to stop this redistricting plan, but by breaking quorum, they were, they would argue, able to bring more attention to it.
		And so it sort of makes it a bigger deal.
		And maybe that's what the shutdown is doing for Democrats now federally in that they want to make a big deal about the ACA.
		You know, it's interesting that the 2013 shutdown fight was about the ACA too.
		Republicans tried to use it to block or delay implementation of the ACA.
		But the ACA was such a, quote-unquote Obamacare, was such an anvil for Democrats during the Obama years.
		But then in the Trump years, it became a political asset.
		And I think it continues to be a political asset.
		Democrats, despite having a lot of problems in terms of how they're viewed as a party, Democrats do still have an advantage on the health care issue.
		And I think they feel like they've got a good argument on this and an argument that even a lot of Republicans agree with.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Speaking of Democrats consistently, and this is from Newsweek, but you've seen it too, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez-Masto of Nevada, and then Independent Angus King supporting the Republican effort.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's the best way to think about why they're doing that?
unidentified		You know, Fetterman has said specifically that he doesn't really believe in shutdowns.
		I think the other two are kind of in a similar vein there.
		I think what Republicans would say is, hey, we're unified, you guys are not.
		And so that's part of it, too.
		And I think Republicans are probably hopeful that over time they could chip away more senators.
		But the other Democrats have generally stood firm here.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to Alexis.
		Alexis is in Michigan, in Detroit, Independent Line.
		You're on with Kyle Condic.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Yes, I want to follow up on a call you had earlier, Pedro.
		Some guy from Tampa, I think, was giving the statistic that some percentage of some percentage of federal workers were Democrats.
		How would someone know that?
		Do you have a list of all the federal employees and what their party affiliation is?
		I don't quite get that.
		So to follow up on that question, I want to know some Democrat demographic statistics.
		I'm assuming Maryland and Virginia have the most federal employees, but I don't know.
		Can somebody tell me what are the top three states that have federal employees?
		And then deeper dive, I'd like to know what percentage, if you know, male, female, black, white, and the most important thing I'd like to know is what percentage of the federal workforce is foreign-born thinks?
		I don't have those statistics at hand.
		I can tell you that, you know, Virginia and Maryland obviously do rank pretty highly in terms of federal workers.
		And this is why we've got these elections coming up in Virginia in November, why you see sort of a particular focus on Virginia and discussions.
		And it's not just Northern Virginia and, of course, its proximity to Washington, D.C.
		But there's also a very heavy military presence in Hampton Roads and Norfolk.
		I mean, Norfolk's the biggest, I believe it's the biggest naval base in the world.
		So you have a lot of folks down there, and those are some people who are going to be missing paychecks.
		Although, again, they'll be made whole, assuming that there's some sort of agreement here.
		In terms of the political leanings of federal workers, I don't think there would necessarily be any statistics about that.
		I think there were some numbers floating around about political donations that maybe skewed Democratic, although for the vast majority of federal workers probably aren't giving donations.
		I don't know that with 100% certainty, but that would be my guess anyway.
		So the other ones I would have to look up later on.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I suppose Democrats would say, maybe some Republicans, that regardless of what happens, federal employees depending on their politics regards of that, are affected at the end of the day.
unidentified		Yeah, and look, there are people who come and go and who are sort of specifically kind of political appointees that serve at the pleasure of the president.
		And so, you know, when a Biden leaves office, those people all leave office with him.
		And, you know, when Trump leaves office, you know, particularly if there's a Democrat who takes over in 2029, that those people will go.
		I think what the Trump administration and some of the kind of intellectual architects of the Trump administration sort of believe that, oh, well, there's this quote-unquote deep state and it's heavily Democratic and therefore it's sort of impeding them.
		And so they want sort of more ability to hire and fire people and sort of do away with some civil service protections for certain jobs.
		But do you really want, I mean, again, different people have different reactions to this, but we went through this whole fight in the United States in the late 18th century about whether we should have civil service requirements for jobs and how much patronage you would have.
		And I think that this current administration takes almost kind of like a pre-civil service reform view to that.
		And they think more about Andrew Jackson, who I believe the president has a portrait of Andrew Jackson in his office.
		And Jackson was a very sort of disruptive force in the same way that I think that Trump is.
		Jackson was associated with what was called the spoil system, which was that you win the election, you basically bring in all your people to run the government and to have the jobs in the government.
		We sort of moved away from that as a country, but I feel like this administration is sort of more supportive of kind of that older style thinking about it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Alexis, are you still there?
unidentified		Yeah.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I want to let you know that the Washington Post, as of December of last year, provided a map where federal workers live in the United States.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		It may not give you the most complete up-to-date data, but at least it's a starting point.
unidentified		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, let's hear from Richard.
		Richard in Colorado, Republican line.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, first I'd say to say something I like to show when he was in, he had more common sense than the Democratic Party than anybody.
unidentified		And I wish he would have come over to the Republican Party because I thought that he fit more in the Republican Party than the Democratic part.
anthony j hilder ▲ ● ▼		The only one criticism I had as far as this kind of last term under Biden was you were against that, oh, the Trump remember the infrastructure act because it really wasn't spending on the infrastructure and it was wasting a lot of money and then you ended up voting for it.
unidentified		And you were really the one that was keeping it from getting passed.
		Kind of like an explanation of that.
		And then I'd like to comment on the budget system.
		You know, private industry goes through these turmoils all the time where they have to cut employees or they got reduced costs in order to save a company.
		So this is not uncommon in the American workforce.
		So why should the federal government be protected any different than what the common people are in the private workforce?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Richard in Colorado.
unidentified		I didn't quite catch if the caller was, I think the caller was talking about Joe Manchin.
		I believe so, yeah.
		And, you know, but he mentioned something about switching parties, and that actually made me think of John Fetterman, Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, who actually has better favorability with Republicans now in Pennsylvania.
		There was a Quinnipiac poll that came out that suggested that.
		Fetterman has said he's not going to switch parties, but the Republicans are really kind of being nice to him.
		They're trying to, I think they're trying to cultivate him a little bit, and he's facing a lot of criticism for Democrats, in part because of his views on Israel and Gaza and a number of other things.
		But that's just something interesting to watch.
		Fetterman's term is not up until 2028.
		I don't necessarily even know if he's going to run for another term, but it is kind of reminiscent of Kirsten Sinema when she was a Democratic senator from Arizona.
		She never left the Democratic caucus.
		She did become an independent, though, and she only served for one term.
		In terms of protections for the workforce, obviously, if the federal, you know, the federal government can lay people off just like anyone else.
		I guess the criticism of Trump is that the way in which they're doing it, Democrats argue is basically illegal.
		And the other thing about the federal government is that so much of the cost of it is tied up in Social Security and Medicare and the sorts of things that if you really want to save big money, you have to cut places that aren't just as simple as laying off people.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		As far as the shutdown impacting elections, you can talk about 2026, but let's look at a couple of the weeks of the elections that take place, particularly those governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey.
unidentified		Yeah, there was a great report in Semaphore.
		Dave Weigel and one of his colleagues wrote about it.
		And this was as of several days ago, but they didn't really see, they were talking to people in New Jersey and Virginia.
		They didn't really see that there was much of an impact.
		I haven't necessarily heard there's much of an impact.
		I did mention Virginia is pretty high on the list in terms of federal workers, but then it's also a question of who's blamed.
		And this is why, again, it's easy to say, oh, well, the Democrats aren't voting for the clean CR, so therefore they're responsible.
		But the public may react to it in a totally different way, and it might be wound up in their feelings about Trump.
		If Trump uses the shutdown as a pretext to lay people off, then it's easy to blame him if you're someone who's affected by that.
		So it doesn't seem like there's a big impact as of now.
		Maybe that could change over the course of the month.
		You have people already voting.
		In Virginia, you've got about 350,000 votes cast, which is probably going to be more than 10% of the total.
		In New Jersey, there's a number of mail ballots.
		I think it's fewer because Virginia has this early in-person voting going on.
		But you're starting to see votes already trickle in in these races.
		And so whatever impact there is, maybe it would be less than if it was a month ago because people have already voted.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And 26 is?
unidentified		You know, the one thing I thought about is that so in 2013, obviously Republicans really took it on the chin during the shutdown fight.
		Again, it was right around this time, you know, throughout the month of October.
		You know, Democrats actually took like a half a dozen point lead on House generic ballot polling, which is sort of a good marker as to how people are going to vote in the House.
		You know, Republicans ended up winning the House easily.
		They actually won their biggest majority since before the Great Depression.
		They netted nine Senate seats, so they flipped control of the Senate.
		We had a caller referring to Harry Reid, the then Senate majority leader.
		He lost that position in 2014.
		Mitch McConnell, a Republican, became the Senate majority leader then.
		There was one race in particular where the shutdown did seem to have some lingering impact, and that was one of the few kind of weak spots for Republicans is that there were a couple of Republican incumbents who lost who had sort of made basically boneheaded comments.
		One of them, Lee Terry, a Republican from Nebraska too, which is the Omaha district that Don Bacon represents now, he had made a comment about, you know, he didn't want to give up his paycheck from the shutdown.
		And members of Congress are paid, I think, regardless of whether the shutdown.
		And that was used against him in the campaign.
		Now, there were other things that he had problems with.
		So I'm sort of looking to see if there's anything like that that comes out of this fight.
		But for the most part, I wouldn't expect it to be a big thing.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Kyle Condic joining us for this conversation.
		We'll go to Michigan Democrats line.
		We'll hear from Brian.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hey, good afternoon.
		Good morning, guys.
		How are you doing today?
		Good.
		Good.
		Hey, I wanted to give you a quick call here.
		Thanks for taking my call first of all.
		But in regards to the shutdown, I believe that the Democrats should have shut down the government.
		There is no other way that the Republicans were listening.
		They did all of their dealings behind closed doors.
		They did not attempt to talk to the Democrats or reach out across the aisle or give them any sense of being part of the negotiations.
		My second point is illegal immigrants do not receive social security or Medicare, Medicaid.
		It's a lie.
		And I'm so sick of Republicans getting on TV and lying and saying that they get these benefits that they don't get.
		So, you know, what do they have to gain?
		And the gain is the fact that they can lie and continue to have their base just continue to believe in what they're believing in.
		But the ultimate thing is we're fighting left or right.
		And the fight should be against the billionaires.
		The billionaires are the ones who are garning all this money.
		They're the ones who are the ones who are being the beneficiaries of all of the decisions.
		And we're fighting amongst ourselves for pennies.
		It's another guilded edge, as far as I can see.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's Brian in Michigan.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		He's back to this idea of the fight.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah, and I think that the caller sort of makes the point as to, hey, this is the one lever as Democrats that we have to pull.
		And so therefore, let's pull it and hope that you could sort of, again, peg it to the Affordable Care Act, an issue that the Democrats still have an advantage on.
		And also, there is this issue.
		And I think it's a real complaint from the Democratic side that any budget agreement they come up with, they can't necessarily trust the White House to go forward with.
		They've already tried these quote-unquote pocket rescissions.
		And basically, the White House is, I think, trying to set up sort of a legal fight in which they can sort of make the argument that they can impound funds.
		This goes back.
		There's a big Supreme Court decision.
		I think it was during the Nixon administration because Nixon tried to do that too.
		It's like, you know, Congress is going to appropriate this money.
		Well, I'm not going to spend it.
		And the court said, you know, the executive has to spend it.
		But, you know, I don't necessarily know what this court would say about it, but it is something that seems to be on the horizon here.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Ohio, this is Terry, Independent Lying.
		Thanks for calling.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hi.
		Yeah.
		So I just want to echo the last few points have been right spot on.
		I mean, the fact of the matter is until the billionaires and millionaires start getting text, we're not getting anywhere.
		And the Supreme Court has upheld what Trump's been doing without any possibility of intervention at all.
		And so those are the two things that are causing the biggest problems here.
		So, yeah, right now we have a Republican Party and the president going wild that is killing our country.
		Those are the two, those are the two things, really.
		That's all.
		That's all I have to say today.
		I want to thank everybody and listening intently to the commentary and love it.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Terry in Ohio Conduct the longest shutdown, 35 days.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		When do we start seeing thawing when it comes to this?
unidentified		It's a great question.
		I think October 15th is the sort of the missed paycheck point.
		And so that becomes a problem.
		You've got a lot of people who are living paycheck to paycheck.
		I mean, obviously they need to be paid.
		And so maybe sort of the back half of the month, the House isn't in session as we talked about earlier.
		And they were supposed to come back next week or rather tomorrow.
		They're not doing that.
		And so, you know, I don't necessarily see a resolution coming this week.
		And, you know, I don't know what the end game is.
		And again, it doesn't really feel like either side is necessarily having its feet held to the fire.
		You know, one thing I'm curious about is I do think the polls will help set the direction of this.
		If, you know, again, the sort of the general breakdown was that if you said, hey, who's responsible?
		You know, Trump or the Republicans, the Democrats, or both equally, or, you know, no opinion, you know, both equally was like 25, 30% or something.
		Democrats are maybe 25 to 30%.
		The Republicans were 40%.
		Maybe my math isn't quite accurate there.
		But basically, the Republicans are getting more blame, but it was sort of squishy.
		Does that change?
		Is there a swing one way or the other?
		And that could maybe help inform the discussion.
		What if there actually is an impact on some of these elections we have coming up?
		What if there's a problem for the Democrats in Virginia?
		I'm just hypothetically, I think Abigail Spanberger's in good shape in that race.
		But what if we get to a point where there's some sort of problem?
		Does that change the Democrats' opinion on it at all?
		I just don't know.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From George.
		George is in Pennsylvania.
		Democrats line.
		Hello.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yeah, hello.
		Am I coming in clear?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Yep, you're on.
unidentified		Yeah.
		So we've got a hodgepodge of different things here.
		The way that this is impacting, first of all, if you get rid of all these immigrants, you're not going to have a workforce.
		I mean, this is common sense.
		And that's who's always been our workforce.
		And, you know, they should spend this money that they're allocating the reserves to go places.
		Spend it on really processing people.
		Get the people, put a monitor on them and process them in like a couple weeks, a month, and make them citizens.
		Save the money for that kind of stuff.
		Be smart about it.
		The other thing is, like, I'm an independent contractor.
		And since Obamacare, now I pay $2,500 a month for health insurance.
		I'm just a small guy.
		I'm a proprietor, owner of a roofing business.
		And it's like $30,000 a year.
		And I have stage four liver disease.
		They say I'm going to need new liver or going to get liver cancer.
		And I'm like, well, let's do the operation.
		I have the insurance.
		Oh, no, you can't do it unless you're dying.
		So I spend $100,000 every three and a half years on health insurance that I don't even really use.
		And that's what Obamacare did to me.
		So, I mean, I think there's enough money to take care of everybody, but we're not being smart about it, allowing funds to go to different countries.
		And I know we're all connected in the world, but there's enough here with these huge expenditures to take care of the health care and be smart about the people that are here.
		There are resources.
		White people don't want to work that hard.
		Black people don't want to work that hard.
		It's always been people with a certain amount of desperation coming here with the ability to prosper because of the liberties we have.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, George, thanks.
unidentified		You know, it does kind of get at the complicated public opinion about immigration in that there's, I think there's a desire that I think Trump's like strong on the border is a winning political message.
		I think that probably did hurt the Biden administration, that they were seen as just sort of sort of asleep at the switch at the border.
		But at the same time, I don't necessarily think that there's this huge desire to carry out the mass deportation that the Trump administration clearly prioritizes and is animating some of the moves that they're making of trying to send the National Guard to Chicago and to Washington, D.C. Of course, Washington, D.C. has a different sort of legal status.
		But it's almost like I think past possible immigration deals would be a combination of border security, but then also trying to do something with people who may be here illegally that maybe stop short of just outright deportation.
		And I think the public would kind of be able to get there, but I don't necessarily think you'd be able to get majorities in Congress for that, for that sort of thing.
		Even though back in like 2013, there was a possibility of some sort of big grand compromise in immigration.
		It just didn't work out.
		And if anything, I think that the parties are maybe further apart in immigration now than they were a dozen years ago.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Al.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Al is from Massachusetts, Republican line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Good morning.
		I know the Democrats are struggling for polls to go in their way.
		I hope it's not the same polls from the Iowa newspaper that called the election Harris up by 5%.
		But anyways, you talk about health insurance costs.
		When an immigrant goes to the emergency room, who pays for that?
		That gets passed on to our insurance costs.
		It gets passed on.
		Somebody's paying for that.
		That's our point.
		The Democrats now have a $37 trillion in the hole for our grandchildren.
		When does it end?
		The Republicans are trying to get control of the spending here.
		So let's think about our grandchildren.
		And one final point.
		You brought this up about being about Epstein.
		Nobody's saying a word about Bill Clinton.
		It was his FBI that ignored the victims.
		And it happened to be Bill Clinton was very close to him, and Epstein was a big donor.
		We are not hearing a word from the left-wing media complex.
		And you say that Donald Trump is a disruptor.
		He is a disruptive.
		He's disrupting the system you people created and love.
		That's what he's disrupting.
		And you still don't get it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How conduct, could President Trump turn around and tell Republicans, look, come to some resolve in this, and people would follow.
unidentified		You know, there was this meeting with the congressional leaders and Trump on Monday that it seems like the Republicans didn't necessarily want to have, I think, precisely for the reason that you discussed and that Trump is kind of unpredictable.
		And, you know, maybe he would just say, I want a deal here.
		And, you know, the point about the polls is a fair one.
		I mean, I think that Trump was underestimated in all three of his elections.
		I think, broadly speaking, the polls were probably, I think they were better in 2024 than they were in 2016.
		Actually, 2020 was the year that was really the biggest miss, but that's, of course, the election that Trump lost.
		And so it wasn't necessarily really realized at the time that that was the case.
		But, you know, the parties are doing their own polling.
		I mean, I think they believe in this stuff and they sort of understand where the public is.
		I mean, I was just reading, there was just a story today about how this is separate from the shutdown, but it's important for 2026.
		And you've got the one big beautiful bill that the Republicans, the Republicans passed.
		And Republicans seem to, and their own internal numbers seem to suggest that it's not really resonating in a positive way.
		And so they're trying to change the way that they're talking about it.
		So it's not just the Democrats who are doing the polls.
		The Republicans are too.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I suppose that everybody drew their line in the sand.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And so it's hard to step back from that.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
		And, you know, and again, in terms of the shutdown, like, you know, does Trump sort of start to feel that the heat in some way?
		It doesn't necessarily seem that that's happening now, but, you know, again, he's an unpredictable person.
		And he also has the benefit, the great benefit to him that, you know, what he says goes with the Republicans is that, you know, Jon Thune and Speaker Johnson might, you know, push back at times.
		But if Trump wants to do something, he's going to do it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And you wrote about how, because they like a fighter too, and they see that in Trump.
unidentified		Yeah.
		And look, this is, he, I mean, the caller said it, you know, that he's that he's a disruptor, disrupting what I think Republicans see as a as a kind of liberal-leaning overall kind of federal infrastructure.
		Whether you agree with that or not, a lot of Republicans feel that way.
		And Trump is disruptive to it, and they love that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's take one more call.
		This will be from Willie in Little Rock, Arkansas, Independent Line.
		Willie, your last call.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
		I can't understand why we got so many people in the deep south depending on subsidies and a different program.
		And then the Republicans act like the people that vote for them don't exist and don't care about the ones that don't vote for.
		So we live in a society where we got a president.
		I was born in 1942.
		And since 1942, from Rollerbill up to what we got now, I had never seen a president get away with all the stuff he get away with.
		We don't have no congresses to try to control it.
		We don't have no federal court to try to do anything about the policies he pushes.
		So we're going to come to the point where after a while, we're going to be doing like Russia or China.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's Willie in Little Rock, Arkansas, Kyle Condick.
		We've talked about a lot of different topics when it comes to the shutdown.
		What are you watching for?
		And what other things that maybe we haven't talked about?
		What are you watching?
unidentified		Well, look, I mean, the end game here is interesting.
		And your guess is as good as mine, as good as anyone else's as to what goes on about it.
		But again, just what I sort of started with at the start of the segment, like, I just, I kind of, you know, there's this idea, I mean, there's such low trust in all sorts of aspects of American life, but particularly the federal government.
		And, you know, I also just kind of wonder if people are just sort of checked out about it.
		And so there's this, again, there's this huge fight going on in Washington.
		But, you know, do people actually notice it?
		And, you know, did they see like they want to go to a national park or something and maybe the national park ends up being closed or something like that?
		You know, maybe that'll help determine how this thing ends is how people feel about it in that way.
		But again, it just doesn't seem to be resonating a whole lot with the broader public.
		And that's always something that's worth keeping in mind.
		It's like people like us, you know, we spend so much time looking at these things.
		And, you know, it's almost like the more you know, maybe like the less likely you are to actually know what average people think about it because maybe they're either not thinking about it or they're thinking about it in different ways.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We're obsessive that way.
unidentified		Yeah, no, I freely admit that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You know, thecenterforpolitics.org/slash crystal ball is the website for our guest work, Kyle Konduck of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and the managing editor of the Crystal Ball.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Thanks, as always.
unidentified		Thanks for having me.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We'll continue with your calls on the shutdown.
		And if you want to make your comments, it's Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
		Federal workers, call us as well, 202-748-8003.
		will take those calls when Washington Journal continues.
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		Washington Journal continues.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Again, we continue on with your calls about this federal shutdown.
		And if you want to call us, pick the line that best represents you.
		If you've called us within the last 30 days, hold off from doing so.
		And if you would turn down your television as you get ready to get on the air, WTOP, the local radio station here in Washington, D.C., reports on one aspect of the government shutdown, saying it's the National Gallery of Art starting today, closing temporarily due to the shutdown matters.
		The museum, which is federally funded and without a budget from Congress, cannot continue operations beyond reserve funding.
		This is similar to past shutdowns where federally funded institutions like the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Museums had to suspend operations once reserve funds ran out.
		The Smithsonians, by the way, said they can remain open using prior year funding, that only up till October the 11th.
		Let's hear from Bruce.
		Bruce, in New York, Democrats line.
		Hello, your first up.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning, Pedro.
		Thank you very much for taking the call.
		And good morning, C-SPAN America.
		I want to point out that looking through things through a political lens is not always the best for us common people to understand.
		And the way I see the whole United States is a giant union.
		And frankly, I think people would understand this situation better if they saw this as one big giant contract negotiation and strike.
		And there is a book out that's been out for some time called The Confessions of a Union Buster.
		And it's on YouTube in four parts.
		The whole book is entirely covered on YouTube.
		It's a wonderful expose about how union busting works.
		And the Republican Party is essentially working like union busters.
		I'd remind people that sometime, not too in the past, Musk and Trump were on X, and Trump was praising and laughing with Musk about how Musk handles his employees when they do any kind of job action.
		He just fires them.
		And frankly, it seems to me that Trump is also handling his entire attitude is much like a hardball management firm that just simply crashes and fires everybody if they try to do anything.
		So I see this as a great visual for people to understand rather than the political lens of a broken government.
		I see this as a hardball job action contract negotiation for the common people.
		And I think that might be a big help.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Bruce Blair in New York.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from David also in New York, Republican line.
unidentified		Yes.
		Hi, Pedro.
		Good morning, everyone.
		And my voice is a little screwed up.
		I'm getting over an operation.
		Anyways, yeah, I think that this whole stoppage is all because of, from what I can tell, it's the predictions that the cost of medical is going to go sky high here, it looks like, in the next year and probably beyond.
		And I think a lot of that is from the illegals, and that's also helped with the cost of housing and basically inflation and the free money that they gave out during the layoffs for the pandemic, which they're still trying to run on here.
		And, you know, it's got to stop somewhere.
		And I've called before with this one thing, was the phrase of the day.
		Now, you hear that on the mainstream media.
		It doesn't matter what channel you watch, but each day you turn on the other channels, because I watch all the channels.
		And the phrase of the day, the same words, the whole thing.
		And they've been going after Trump here lies for 10 years.
		And it's a lot of those things that the mainstream media's news anchors, a lot of them have all been fired because of that.
		And there's one show you can watch is Sunday Morning Futures on Fox Business.
		And they tell the truth.
		And Fox tells the truth.
		You just have to listen.
		And when the other channels are telling you, don't listen to Fox.
		That's why.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, okay.
		Let's go to Norman.
		Norman in New Hampshire, Independent Line.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, everyone.
		Yeah, you know, I'm a disabled veteran, and I grew up in Massachusetts.
		But when I see the way this government is being run, we're at a standstill.
		And, you know, people are fighting against one another.
		And I believe that Donald Trump wants total control, you know, total control of the military.
		It's almost like martial law right now.
		And, you know, he's an individual who has an ego so big, even his press secretary from Atkinson, New Hampshire, you know, she ran for political things.
		She's his voice or his mouth.
		And she is playing into the American people, and it's a savvy thing.
		And I believe that our enemies love it that we're imploding from.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Back to the topic at hand.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How does this relate to the shutdown?
unidentified		Well, it's control.
		When Biden beat Trump, Trump said he wasn't a good loser.
		So he wants to be a winner.
		This is no different than the Capitol getting overrun.
		But he's using the government to do it.
		And we're at a standstill.
		The prices of everything has gone skyrocketing.
		Nobody's going to turn back and lower prices now because they're paying into the one big, beautiful bill.
		And, you know, but we're at odds with each other.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Sandra, who's a federal worker.
		We've set aside a line for those who were federal employees 2027 48-8003.
		If you want to call in and give your perspective, Sandra from Georgia also identifies as a Democrat.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		So as a former federal employee going through the retirement process, I've been in a budget world for 32 years.
		And so I have been managing an appropriation.
		And each year we go through the shutdown, we go through the process.
		As a programmer, a program analyst, they work with Congress to solidify all the programs that they need funded for each year.
		And then the budget analyst comes back and executes.
		So looking at this bill now and the way things are managed, it just breaks my heart that as a budget analyst, we sat down and managed every billion, billions of dollars that we had to justify to Congress.
		We made sure it was spent appropriately according to the regulation, according to the Appropriation Acts.
		But right now, looking at how things are done, it's just, they're just spending and spending.
		And unfortunately, the federal workers, everybody are looking at the funding sources all being applied to the federal employees.
		As everybody knows, we are the lowest paid entity compared to corporate office.
		And so how they could use the shutdown to lay off more workers and to downsize, they do not know the impact of what's going on with the federal employees.
		So if I lose half of my team and we still have $14 billion to manage, that means that the seven left have to work countless hours to manage this budget.
		And then we bring on new people who do not know the budget process.
		They do not know the appropriated law.
		They don't know how to manage.
		They don't even know what the requirements are, what we have to go through.
		So for them to want to lay off and fire more federal employees and bring on inexperienced people as their buddy-buddy system to manage good government is going to take many years to reach.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Sandra there giving her perspective.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Gary in Virginia, Republican line.
unidentified		Thank you, Pedro.
		I've lived through three government shutdowns.
		I've lost money on all three of the last three government shutdowns.
		The last one in 2019, Jerome Powell said there's negligible effect on Wall Street about these shutdowns.
		But we lost a lot of money and we had to pay more to borrow money because we lost one of our gold stars with Moody's or Fitch's.
		And we had to pay 0.85% more to borrow money because we're not as a good borrower because we lost one of our gold stars.
		And everybody who has an appointment with a doctor or diagnostic center that's a veteran, their appointment is broken because they're paid through a different entity other than the Veterans Affairs.
		They're paid through the Commerce Department or some agency that is shut down.
		So if you got cancer or tumor or something, and you don't want to wait another three or four months because it's not unusual to wait three or four months to get an appointment with a specialist or a diagnostic center.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Gary there in Sterling, Virginia.
		It was the VA Secretary Doug Collins on this program for a short interview talking about the shutdown and how it would impact those who get care from the VA.
		If you're interested in seeing more of that interview, go to our website at cspan.org in which he talks about what things are effective and in that short interview.
		That's the website, and that will take you to that segment if you're interested in looking at that.
		Let's hear from Robert.
		Robert in Florida, Independent Line.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hey, Robert in Florida.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
		One more time for Robert.
		Okay, let's go to Carol.
		Carol in Florida as well.
		Democrats line.
unidentified		Yes, I am.
unidentified		This is Carol DeSario from Florida.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Robert in Florida.
unidentified		Hello.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're on.
unidentified		Hello there.
unidentified		I'm Carol DeSario from Florida.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're on the air.
unidentified		Go ahead.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to Carol.
unidentified		I'm here from Florida.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Democrats Line.
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		My complaint is.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Carol, you're going to have to stop listening to your television and just go ahead with your comment, please.
unidentified		Okay, I'd like to know why the Senate and Congress get paid while they're on vacation.
		They're on vacation more than they're working.
		My complaint is.
		I'd like to know.
		And on day one, Trump said he would never touch Medicaid.
		And he's touching all the health subsidies we have.
		I'm at 90 years old.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		I'm 90 years old, and I'm afraid that I'm going to lose all my health insurance due to the Republicans.
		They are at fault here.
		They have the Congress, they have the Senate, they have the presidency.
		And they'll never stop.
		They'll never stop taking away.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		That's Carol there in Florida.
		Again, if you want to keep calling, you pick the line that best represents you, and you can talk to us about your thoughts on the government shutdown.
		You've probably seen several of these, but this is from USA Today that was on October the 1st, asking if the President and Congress still get paid during a shutdown, saying that after it occurs, that thousands of workers are furloughed.
		Some lawmakers and the president will continue to receive salaries.
		It's the 15th shutdown since 1981.
		There's no immediate end in sight as Congressional Democrats demand those health care policy changes.
		During government shutdown, all federal agencies and services deemed, quote, non-essential stop working with employees furloughed and sent home without pay until matters are solved.
		The White House, during past shutdowns, furloughed a significant portion of the staff.
		Essential offices like the National Security Council will continue operating while others will be scaled back.
		There's other categories there, too, if you're interested in finding out who actually gets paid during a shutdown, including legislators and members of Congress.
		Let's go to Paul.
		Paul in Illinois, Republican line.
unidentified		Yes, this is Paul from Illinois.
		And I can assure that lady that just called from Florida that her benefits will stay intact.
		She doesn't have to worry about it, and they will be grandfathered.
		And it's not Trump doing it.
		It is Congress and our congressmen that are working on the laws and the changes to the laws.
		My comment is that in this case, there's a straight path forward.
		Democrats are stonewalling 100% of the way right now because they want to have everything their way or they're going to walk out, which is what they did.
		They say they're willing to compromise and sit down and talk, but they won't compromise anything.
		They want 100% their way versus the Senate going ahead and passing the bill that the House has already passed.
		Then they can move forward.
		Then they can compromise and negotiate on health care costs, which are not even going to expire until the end of the year.
		So they've got time to work that.
		But the Democrats have drawn the line and said, we're not going to budge one inch.
		They're not willing to compromise.
		They're not willing to sit down and negotiate.
		And that's why the Republicans have said, okay, if you're not willing to do that, we're going to wait until you say you're ready to do that.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Paul, can I ask, what assures you that Republicans will actually talk about those issues if a clean CR were passed?
unidentified		They have stood at the podium and said that they are willing to do that and that we have to make some adjustment somewhere.
		It's costing billions of dollars in health care right now, and our health care is not the greatest in the world.
		So we're spending all this money and we've got poor health care.
		So we need to address those issues and we need to do that in the health care arena.
		And that's what needs to be negotiated and compromised on and move forward with a better health care system and not continue spending billions going down the drain with one of the poorest health care systems we have.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Harold joins us from Memphis, Tennessee, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello.
		I would like to make a statement.
		That young man that just spoke, he must not be an American because he's saying that that guy in the White House is doing a good job.
		I differ.
		Now, in regards to the layoff, I'm a union man, and I know what unions do.
		They help people.
		They help people gain a good foot in America with good wages and good jobs.
		Right now, we don't have jobs.
		We're getting jobs taken away.
		And I would like to make a point.
		Let us not get distracted because the president is trying to give people tax breaks that didn't ask for them.
		That's why we are in the shape that we're in now.
		Thank you, David.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Caller.
		It was in an interview yesterday that Utah Republican Senator John Curtis asked about how long Democrats could hold out in passing that so-called clean CR short-term spending bill.
		Here's a bit of that conversation from yesterday.
unidentified		Do you think that the threat of their public employees unions getting the brunt of the and their favorite programs getting the brunt of the blowback here could actually force the Democrats to end this?
john curtis ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm surprised the Democrats didn't factor this into their calculus.
		But Chuck Shumu did last March.
		He mentioned he did not want to see a shutdown under President Trump.
		And if you think back to President Obama when he was shutting down the mall and the veterans memorials and things like that, this has always been used by the president as a political tool.
		And in a shutdown, you hand the keys to the administration.
		And those of us who are advocates for more control from the legislative branch know that basically a shutdown is to say, okay, we're abdicating our responsibility.
		And here are the keys, Mr. President.
		And I'm not sure that the Democrats will like shutdown 2.0 from President Trump.
unidentified		How long do you think this goes on, Senator?
john curtis ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've sadly been a part of a lot of these.
		There is no momentum right now towards it ending, if that makes sense.
		So that changes quickly.
		You know, that could change quickly.
		My guess is we're well into next week before people start having serious conversations.
		We can resolve it quickly, but I think people ought to buckle up and expect this one to be a little bit longer.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is from North Carolina, Independent Line.
		We will hear from Joseph.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
		I'd like to just say that I think that Mr. Trump is doing the best job that he can do.
		And I feel that he's doing a remarkable job, actually, with his international problems and national problems.
		I think the Democrats are holding up things.
		I think a couple of commentators have said that there is nothing in the proposal to go to illegal migrants.
		And I want to just say that in paragraph 2141 of Mr. Schumer's bill proposal, there is evidence that there would be reimbursement for Medicaid to illegals.
		I also feel that this is a burden that shouldn't be placed on American taxpayers.
		I'm actually a physician, and I have treated illegals who do not have medical insurance, and it is a burden on the hospitals that have to treat them.
		But we do treat them because we treat anyone who comes to us seeking aid.
		However, I think there's a misconception about the proposal, and I think the Democrats have overshot something here, and I think that what they should do is pull back and try to work out an agreement with the Republicans for our health care system.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Joseph there in North Carolina.
		Some of those key requests from Democrats when it comes to passing things and resolving the shutdown.
		It would be the extension of the pandemic era expansions of Obamacare premium subsidies.
		It would also include spending guardrails to prevent the Trump administration from ignoring congressional spending directives and clawing back funds through impoundments and rescissions.
		That was reported on the 2nd of October by the Washington Times.
		Let's go to Lou.
		Lou is joining us from Tampa, Florida, Republican line.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, Pedro.
		Good morning, America.
		Look, the senator from Utah is saying it's going to go on a little bit longer, right?
		This whole thing's got, they got to get these guys, the big shots in the room, Boone and Schumer and Jeffries, and they have to go into these committees.
		They said that they can work out a deal towards the end of the year.
		The shutdown's got to end for America, okay?
		I don't think Trump really wants to shut down.
		The Democrats are still pissed off that Trump won last year and they're getting phone calls from their big political backers.
		Oh, no, no, no, don't make a deal with Trump because they don't want to, you know, they don't want to lose it next year, all right?
		Trump's been doing the right thing, okay?
		But the Democrats, Schumer, and Mr. Jeffries, they got to get in the room and get into those committees and get this stuff done.
		Come on, fellas.
		Get yourself back into Washington and get this thing done this week.
		Thank you very much.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Democrats line from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Tiffany joins us next.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hey, Pedro, I think the last caller is completely incorrect.
		The Democrats are showing up.
		It's just the Republicans are not.
		And I'm glad that you and your previous guests spoke on the history with Reed and then McConnell counteracting.
		When President Trump was in office his first term, he made a vow that he was going to dismantle anything that Obama did.
		And he has set out to do that.
		When he had a thing with Harris when they debated, he said that they had some type of insurance available, but it was only conceptual.
		He couldn't speak directly on it.
		I'm not for sure who believes the man.
		And why would you believe him?
		This is just a distraction from the Ebstein.
		This is a distraction from the ballroom that he's building.
		This is a distraction for everything that he wants to do.
		I think you guys should point back as far as things that he said in the first term and compare them to what he's doing on 2.0.
		Because Trump 2.0 is very evil.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		All of that, the things the president has said or any previous president on policy matters, you can go back in time yourself and check them out through the magic of our website.
		It's a search box and you type it in.
		And if you want to find out things that have been said by this president and others when it comes to economic matters or shutdowns or any other matter, go to our website at cspan.org, access our video library, which is available to you free.
		And there it is, everything we've taken in on topics, including things the presidents have said over the years on the variety of topics.
		You can find that at cspan.org.
		Let's go to Rich.
		Rich in Hickory Hills, Illinois, Independent Line.
		Hello.
unidentified		Good morning, Rick.
		Thanks for taking my call, Pedro.
		I'm just, you know, for me, the whole state of this environment that I'm living in is just going from bad to worse on a daily basis.
		You know, we're shutting down the government.
		We can't, everything is blaming somebody else for, you know, it's not a cooperative effort to try to resolve issues.
		It's just nothing but name-calling and backstabbing.
		And it's fighting against ourselves.
		So the problems are getting just worse.
		And to me, there's like no respect, and it starts up at the top of the food chain there at the White House and just through the Senate, through the Congress.
		It's everybody blaming everybody else for why it isn't working.
		And to me, it's just like, I don't understand why people aren't seeing that, you know, this isn't about cooperation and trying to resolve the problems.
		It's about, you know, creating some kind of environment for some political agenda.
		And, you know, this is why we are where we're at.
		And, you know, I don't understand what's good about it.
		That's all I had.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Thanks.
		Michigan next, Republican line.
		This is Bill.
unidentified		Hi, Pedro.
		Let's support C-SPAN people.
		Pedro, you need to write a book when you retire.
		The ACA is not affordable, never has been.
		They bring them out with lies.
		Barack Obama made it clear you keep your doctor, you keep your insurance, which we couldn't.
		Nancy Pelosi wouldn't let us read it, just pass it.
		And Biden was smiling all the way.
		Now, America, how do we figure anything good is going to come out when it was born of lies?
		I'm one who only lets you lie to me once.
		Second time, shame on me.
		Ain't going to be no shame on me.
		Thank you, Pedro, for hearing me.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		One more call, and this will be from Virginia in South Carolina, Democrats line.
unidentified		Yes, I'm the spouse of a now-deceased Vietnam veteran.
		I also have two great-grandchildren who are currently in the military.
		I have five members of my family who are federal workers.
		Most of them work in the medical field, both psychological and physical.
		I am calling around to members of Congress, Democratic members of Congress, telling them to stand their grounds on the shutdown.
		I also feel that this is what the Republican government is doing is a distraction while Trump gains more and more footage and making this democracy an eritocracy or a dictatorship.
		If the average American knew what it was like to live under those types of government, they would be up in arms against the Republican people that we have now in Congress.
		This man was a draft dodger.
		He has people making decisions about the military who has never been in the military.
		Years before, we always had many people in Congress who were members of the, had been in the military.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Virginia, before you get too far, you have people directly infected by the shutdown, it sounds like.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Why would you call your members of Congress to encourage them to hold their ground, particularly Democrats?
unidentified		I'm calling Democrats to tell them to hold their grounds.
		I know that's why I worked as a navigator for the Affordable Care Act.
		I know the kind of people who don't have medical insurance.
		I know the kind of people who, after being able to get medical insurance, it was a saving grace for them.
		A person who had walked around with a tumor in their stomach, going to work every day, who could not get the tumor removed because she had no insurance.
		People whose children were sick. could not get the kind of medical help that they needed because of the lack of good medical insurance.
		And all of these people who are talking about the affordable care, they don't know what they are talking about.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's for okay, Virginia, finishing off this round of calls.
		Thanks for your perspective.
		She brings up the military.
		It's later today that the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will be part of a celebration to mark the U.S. Navy's 250th birthday.
		Also participating is the Navy Secretary and President Trump himself.
		And that will be at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.
		You can see live coverage of this as part of our America 250 programming and coverage of America 250 on our main channel C-SPAN, C-SPAN now, our app, and C-SPAN.org, the website.
		Coming up, a discussion taking a look at recent news about Hamas possibly accepting parts of the president's plan for Gaza.
		Stephen Cook, the Council on Foreign Relations joins us for that discussion.
		And Washington Journal continues.
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		Washington Journal continues.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Stephen Cook joining us from the Council on Foreign Relations Studies, the Middle East, amongst other things, here to talk about what's going on in Gaza.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Good morning to you.
unidentified		Good morning.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's the best way to interpret the last 24 hours?
unidentified		Well, there's been some cautious optimism, I think, is called for here.
		President Trump put a lot of pressure on the Israelis.
		He put a lot of pressure on Hamas through a variety of threats and diplomatic maneuvers.
		And now there's going to be a negotiation on Monday in Cairo about the modalities of returning hostages and the line to which Israel will initially withdraw.
		So it's hopeful.
		But of course, if you go through this 20-point plan that the president presented about a week ago, there are a lot of details in there that still need to be worked out.
		And in Hamas's initial response, they said, we will return the hostages, but everything else is open to negotiation.
		That's not what the president said.
		President Trump said, take it or leave it, but he seems to now accept the idea that Hamas wants to negotiate, one, their disarmament, and two, their political role in Gaza after this terrible war comes to an end.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's start with those two, the disarmament.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's the sticking point there?
unidentified		Well, the sticking point is that Israel demands that Hamas disarm, as does the United States.
		This agreement demands that Hamas disarms.
		Hamas doesn't want to disarm.
		On the political role, the agreement says that Hamas should not have a political role going forward in Gaza.
		Hamas says that is subject to negotiation, and the president seems to have accepted the idea that this will be litigated over a period of time.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		When the president is planning on sending Stephen Witkoff over to Egypt, amongst others, what role do they have to take in all this going forward?
unidentified		Yeah, his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who played that role during his first administration, and a number of other Americans are going over to Cairo to oversee these negotiations and essentially put pressure on the Israelis and Hamas to come to an agreement quickly.
unidentified		The president has said this has to happen very, very quickly on Israeli withdrawal and getting the hostages out.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I was going to say pressure on Hamas, but what's the pressure on Israel at this point from the president and other factors?
unidentified		Well, the president has given Prime Minister Netanyahu a lot of leeway on a variety of things.
		So he sort of owes the president.
		And because the president is transactional, I think that the prime minister doesn't know what would come next, what kind of pressure, whether it is regarding U.S. aid, American diplomatic support at the U.N., all kinds of levers that the president can push.
		In addition to the fact, President Trump has put domestic political pressure, domestic Israeli political pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu.
		Something like 80 to 85 percent of the Israeli public wants this war to end and the hostages to come home immediately.
		It would be hard on the level of U.S.-Israel relations as well as Netanyahu's domestic politics for him to defy the president on this.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You've probably seen recent polling on this in the Washington Post this morning.
		It talks about support.
		32% of those registering saying that the U.S. is too supportive of Israel.
		47% saying the level of U.S. support of Israel is not about right and then not supportive enough of those 20%.
		I'm sure you see numbers like that all the time.
		How do all those things factor into currently these negotiations in the future, what goes on over there?
unidentified		Yeah, well, undoubtedly, the politics of the U.S.-Israel relationship is changing.
		It was changing before Hamas's terrorist attacks on October 7th, 2023.
		And the war over the last couple of years have accelerated that dynamic.
		And there is considerably less support for Israel within the Democratic Party.
		And it's even starting to fall off among Republicans.
		President Trump has said that he will work to rebuild Israel's image in the United States and the world.
		That seems to me just a throwaway line.
		The Israelis have a lot of work to do.
		This is going to be a generational problem for them.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And so let's go forward to Monday.
		Everybody's sitting down.
		What's the expectation?
		And where do you begin?
unidentified		I think that the Israelis are going to present their list of people that they know are in Gaza.
		They're going to present their line from which they are going to withdraw.
		And the American expectation is for Hamas to say, okay, these are the number of people that we will return in exchange for, in exchange for about 1,700 Gazans who've been picked up by the Israelis during the last two years, as well as 200 or so Palestinians who are serving life sentences for violence against Israelis prior to October 7th.
		So there is going to be an exchange of people here.
		And then there's, I'm sure, going to be a lot of litigating to what line the Israelis withdraw.
		President Trump has presented a map, but now that he has accepted Hamas's reservations and negotiations, there will ensue about what actual line the Israelis are going to move to.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		David Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations joining us for this discussion, the events in Israel concerning Gaza.
		You can ask him questions about it: 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, and Independence 202-748-8002.
		You can also text us thoughts at 202-748-8003.
		David Cook, or Stephen Cook, about this plan.
		20 points.
		You mentioned some of the technicalities of it.
		One of them I want to read to you and get your interpretation of it.
		One of those points made by the president saying Gaza will be governed under a temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee responsoring for delivering day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people of Gaza.
		What does that language mean?
unidentified		Basically, it means that Hamas has no role in the administration of Gaza in the day after, and that you will find Palestinians who are unaffiliated either with Hamas or any of the other militant groups, which is at this point pretty hard to find in the Gaza Strip.
		But nevertheless, they will vet people who will administer daily life for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and be part of the reconstruction process.
		This is a critical demand of the Israelis that Hamas not be able to be part of governance because this is a way they accumulate power and resources in order to conduct operations against Israel.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I'm interested in the term technocratic as part of it.
unidentified		Well, look, you know, there are Palestinian ministries in which the daily lives of Palestinians have been run.
		Before Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007 in a small civil war between them and the rival factions, it was administered from Ramallah in the West Bank, and there were outpost ministries in the Gaza Strip.
		They envisioned something similar, though not without the participation of the Palestinian Authority, which is also something that the Israelis demand, that the Palestinian Authority from Ramallah not have a role in the reconstruction and administration of Gaza as well.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Also, one of those points saying that Trump economic development plan to rebuild and energize Gaza will be created by a convening panel of experts who have helped birth some of the thriving modern miracle cities in the Middle East.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We heard a little bit about this when these initial talks talk, but what does this mean?
unidentified		Well, President Trump visited the Gulf in May.
		He spent time in Riyadh.
		He spent time in Doha, the capital of Qatar, and he spent time in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.
		These are incredible cities that have popped up from the desert.
		They remind me of Cities in the Cloud from the old Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back.
		And this is something that the Emiratis, the Saudis, and the countries have been able to do on their own.
		Of course, they have great, great wealth in order to do it.
		And I think the expectation is that those countries will contribute to the reconstruction of Gaza and be part of this economic redevelopment of Gaza.
		There have been talks about this, though, for decades, and it has never really materialized.
		Over many, many years, Gulf countries have contributed or pledged contributions for the reconstruction and economic development of Gaza.
		It has failed to materialize, in part because of Hamas and Hamas' taking over, and in part because Hamas is there, and there are these periodic conflicts between Israel and Hamas.
		And who wants to put money in a place where five years after putting that money in place is going to be bombed?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And then if Hamas not being there is a condition, how do you ensure that?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		How do you guarantee that?
unidentified		Well, that's part of what in this plan is an international stabilization force, which will be made up of as of yet unnamed Arab and Muslim countries that will ensure that Hamas cannot, one, rearm, and two, this board that the president is convening ensures that Hamas is not involved in the administration of the Gaza Strip.
		These are details that are left unaddressed in the agreement.
		They will have to be negotiated.
		I suspect it will take a very, very long time.
		I think the optimism here is that we might get hostages coming out of Gaza in exchange for Palestinians, and that's about it.
		I'm suspicious that this entire plan, or even major parts of it, actually will be implemented.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		He's here to take your questions.
		Our first question comes from Tim.
		Tim joins us from New York, Independent Line.
		You're on with our guest, Stephen Cook.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'd like to find out when the last time was that America had any say in what Israel does with respect to Gaza and Israelis and the whole Zionist influence in America that influences our policymakers.
		Well, it's great to get the first call from a fellow New Yorker.
		I think that it's important to understand that there is a very close strategic relationship between the United States and Israel.
		But I think that it is inaccurate to suggest that the Israelis just do whatever they want.
		It is certainly the case that throughout this conflict in Gaza, the Israelis have taken American advice and then at times, many times, proceeded to pursue their military operations as they see fit.
		All that said, what we are seeing right now would not have happened without the president putting a lot of pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, along with Hamas, has not evinced a lot of interest in a ceasefire and hostage deal.
		This is an agreement that could have happened a year ago, but the president saw an opportunity after the Israelis struck Qatar's capital, Doha, where Hamas' leadership was meeting, to put a lot of pressure on the Israeli leadership in order to bring them to the table at this moment.
		As far as influence in the United States, look, this goes back in history.
		I think that there is a core constituencies for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, not just among the American Jewish community, but certainly among the evangelical community, which has often supported a very robust and strong American relationship with Israel.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Wolf is in Indiana.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Republican line.
unidentified		Hi.
		Good morning.
		Thank you very much for taking my call.
		I'm an old New Yorker, too, but I got out of New York 25 years ago.
		I'm out here in Indiana.
		So, hey, I've been watching history repeat itself.
		And for thousands of years, the Jews and the Arabs have been slaughtering each other, and it's never going to stop.
		And I mean, it's Hatfield and McCoy's all over again.
		And why not the United States take all its business, all its money, mind its business, take care of American citizens of all shades of color, race, and ethnicities, and let the Jews and the Arabs slaughter each other.
kim in wisconsin ▲ ● ▼		And then when whoever wins, then we can wipe them out too and be done with this whole thing.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We'll leave it there.
unidentified		Well, 25 years in Indiana, certainly I picked up on the New York accent, which is much like my own.
		Look, I think that this is a conflict that I think American policymakers have told themselves over many years has a resolution.
		I think they've just been telling themselves that.
		There doesn't seem to be a resolution in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
		And particularly now, after October 7th, even if you talk to Israelis who are fully committed to the idea of living side by side and in peace with their Palestinian neighbors in a two-state solution, support for that among the Israeli public has diminished considerably.
		It is now in the low 20%.
		And the same thing on the other side, after this devastating conflict, it's hard to imagine that Palestinians believe that there will be a two-state solution.
		What's interesting about President Trump is that he ran for office three times on removing the United States from the Middle East, from disentangling the United States from these conflicts in the region.
		And now he's more directly involved in them than he, I think, had ever imagined or any of his voters had ever imagined.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		To step back a little bit, we're approaching two years since October the 7th.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's the stronghold that Hamas currently has in Gaza, in your estimation?
unidentified		Well, it is hard to know.
		And of course, the Israelis contend that they have killed thousands upon thousands and thousands of Hamas fighters.
		And I think military analysts will tell you that that is true.
		That Hamas is no longer a real organized group any longer.
		Its command and control have been smashed.
		The Israelis have killed its leadership.
		And what is happening now is that you have kind of independent Hamas cadres who are taking the fight onto themselves and fighting Israeli forces independently of any central command in Gaza.
		That is the problem that the Israelis face: they may have undermined the command and control of Hamas.
		They have certainly made it extremely difficult for Hamas to undertake an attack like October 7th again.
		But those Hamas fighters continue to be there and continue to fight.
		And that's why the Israeli goal of utterly destroying Hamas seems, at the time when they announced it, and now two years on, seems like it was a goal that could not be achieved.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Is a decentralized Hamas more of a danger?
unidentified		Well, that is a very significant concern.
		What Hamas has done is they recruited younger members, people who have suffered greatly in Gaza to fight against the Israelis, and they are beyond this leadership that has been smashed.
		So you have very small groups who are operating against Israeli forces, which is one of the reasons why the IDF senior command wanted to take not only this deal that's on the table, but the deal before, because they don't want to get caught in what we've come to know as a forever war, where they are essentially fighting small atomized groups of militants who kill soldiers with roadside bombs, ambush them, those kinds of things.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is from David.
		David joins us in New York.
		Independent line, David, you're on with our guest, Stephen Cook.
		Go ahead.
		David from New York, hello.
unidentified		Yeah, something.
unidentified		I'm sorry.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		So, hey, Stephen Cook, southern New York as well.
		So good to speak to you.
		I'm just calling to find out what you think of and I understand that the whole Israeli and Palestinian issue has been going on forever and has a lot of geopolitical consequences and importance.
		But I just wonder, seeing that you're the Trump administration in your Middle East and foreign, you know, I'm sorry, you're not from the Trump administration, but that you're concerned with Middle East and African affairs.
		What do you think about the Nigerian genocide that's happening with Christians and why that doesn't have the same amount of, I guess, media coverage or why it's not seen as kind of equivalent with what people say or what is happening in Gaza, right?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, David and your thanks.
unidentified		Thanks very much.
		Let me just say, strong showing for New Yorkers this morning, very proud of that.
		But, you know, when I look at the Middle East and essentially North Africa, so Nigeria is somewhat beyond my area of expertise, but the caller raises a very, very good question.
		There are conflicts all over the world.
		Nigeria, there is a genocide going on in Sudan.
		There are other terrible situations, the situation of the Uyghurs in China.
		What's happening with the Kurds in Syria and Turkey or the Druze in Syria as well.
		These are all conflicts that have not gotten the same kind of attention that the situation in Gaza.
		That's not to suggest that there shouldn't be sustained attention on Gaza as well.
		But I think that's a very good question to be asking folks in the news media, as well as those in universities and elsewhere, why there is this focus on the Gaza Strip.
		I think part of it is the shocking nature of Hamas's attacks on southern Israel almost two years ago.
		And because this is a long-running conflict that has a domestic political component in the United States, there is a large and active constituency that is supportive of Israel and a growing and active constituency that is supportive of Palestinian rights and Palestinian justice in this country.
		And it creates a very significant and often tumultuous debate in the United States.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What did you make of at the United Nations General Assembly that former recognition of a Palestinian state by several European leaders?
unidentified		Well, it is certainly a change in policy, but on the ground, my concern is, one, it doesn't change anything and that the Israeli government will take steps to make it even more difficult for the Palestinians to realize their goal of statehood.
		Even before the Brits and the French and the Belgians and others announced their recognition of a Palestinian state, the Israelis announced the approval of 3,400 new housing units in a part of the West Bank that will essentially bisect any kind of Palestinian state.
		And one of the Palestinian demands is that they have a contiguous state on the West Bank at the least.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Stephen Cook from the Council on Foreign Relations joining us for this conversation in Florida.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Arnold Democrats line.
unidentified		Yeah, how you doing this morning?
		My comment is, you made the comment about Trump being, you know, a transitional.
		I mean, you know, you always want something.
		He did make a comment a few months back about Gaza could become a world-class tourist area.
		My theory is that's what he is after all along here.
		And Greg Kushner and that crowd, that's what's going to happen here.
		He's trying to take that over so that he can establish a U.S. owned Gaza.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Arnold in Florida.
unidentified		Well, I think that Arnold is referring to a statement that the president made back in February alongside Prime Minister Netanyahu, in which he essentially laid out that the United States would own the Gaza Strip and that Palestinians there would be moved out while the strip was being reconstructed.
		Folks have referred to this as the Gaza Largo Plan.
		And I think that some of the things, the fact that Jared Kushner is involved in this and a number of others who have a background in real estate and obviously close to the president, fuels suspicions that this is in fact a way to put into practice this Gaza-Largo plan.
		But it also seems clear that the president has been moved by the suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and very much would like this war to come to an end.
		I suspect that he has moved off of his Gaza-Largo plan.
		He has now said that only Palestinians who would like to leave voluntarily will leave, and those who do will get a guarantee that they can return.
		There is also an envision in this plan.
		It's a full cooperation of the Arab world and major Muslim states like Indonesia, Turkey, and Pakistan.
		None of those countries would agree to a plan that would result in the United States owning the Gaza Strip.
		In fact, when the president laid this out last February, all of them rejected that plan and coalesced around another plan that the Egyptians had put forward for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, much of which is, I think, baked into the ideas from Trump's 20-point plan.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Stephen Cook, other countries is part of the topic of an editorial in the Washington Post this morning.
		It's called Groundhog Day in Gaza.
		It looks forward to Cairo.
		It says this.
		Pressure from Qatar and Turkey certainly played a huge role in getting Hamas this far, but behind the scenes, the Turks and most of the Arab states reportedly have reservations.
		The real work in Cairo will involve bridging those divides and further isolating dead enders in Hamas.
unidentified		Look, I think that these countries went to a meeting with President Trump at the end of September and he laid out this plan.
		I think it's hard for them to come out of a meeting with the president and not say anything other than the most positive things about his plan.
		But of course, these countries believe a number of things.
		One, there's actually not enough for Hamas in this plan to get them to agree.
		And that's where the hard work stands.
		The Egyptians, in particular, want to have a UN resolution and they want a more robust statement about a Palestinian state, which is, of course, radioactive in Israel at this point.
		So this kind of vaguish language that's in the 20-point plan is a way to bridge those differences.
		Now the hard work begins on negotiations, which is why folks like me, I'm skeptical that we're going to get anywhere in terms of the actual implementation of all 20 points.
		Hopefully, Israeli hostages will come out in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and that will perhaps create some momentum for some negotiation, but I'm quite skeptical of it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		It's from Jim.
		Jim is in Iowa.
		Good morning on our Independent Line.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'm wondering why it seems so conspicuously absent from any of the conversation the public is made aware of why nobody is talking about somewhere between $533 billion and a trillion dollars in natural gas resources in Gaza's territorial waters.
		And perhaps we might relate that all the way back to the reason why the Israeli military was withdrawn from the border shortly before the October 7th incident.
		And so many civilians were killed by Israeli health arm missiles in their automobiles, which were promptly buried.
		The automobiles were buried after October 7th.
		Well, I'm not quite sure what the car is referring to with regard to automobiles being buried, but there is very significant gas fines off of Gaza.
		And in fact, there have been all kinds of discussions about how to exploit that gas for the benefit of the Palestinians.
		And in fact, there is something called the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, of which the Palestinians are part.
		The Palestinian Authority is part of it.
		The Israelis are part of it.
		The Egyptians, the Cypriots, the Greeks, a variety of others.
		And if there were some change in the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian Authority or some new Palestinian governing body, there is the possibility that those gas deposits can be exploited for the benefit of Palestinians in Gaza and beyond.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Dennis.
		Dennis in Georgia.
		Hello there.
		Democrats line.
unidentified		Yeah, morning, morning.
		The question that I have is: have the United States ever been an honest broker under both Democrats and Republicans' administration and under United States law?
		If a country is committing genocide, why would the United States still be funding them?
		And we have funded Israel to the tune of about over $3 billion per year.
		And if we add up all of those costs throughout the funding, it comes up to be, I guess, trillions of dollars that we have funded.
		Wouldn't it be better for us to use the money in the United States as opposed to propping up Israel?
		Well, Carl has raised a number of very, very good questions there.
		First, let me point out that the vast majority of the aid that the United States sends to Israel, which is only military assistance, is spent here in the United States.
		So it's not propping up the Israeli government at all.
		It is, in fact, contributing to the employment of defense workers in places like South Carolina, California, and other parts of the United States.
		On this question of genocide, which is a combustible issue, it is contested.
		I'm not an international law expert, but my international law expert friends have told me that there is a question at the heart of this charge of genocide is this question of intent.
		And if you look at the statements of some Israeli ministers, it seems to be clear that there is intent with regard to genocide.
		And then you look at the statements of other Israeli ministers, and it's not so clear at all.
		It is certainly the policy of both the Biden administration and the Trump administration that Israel is not engaged in genocide and that they will continue America's historic support for Israel.
		There is a special relationship.
		That special relationship, though, is changing.
		And I think that there is some discussion here in Washington, and certainly discussion in Jerusalem about how, over a period of time, to change the aid relationship between the United States and Israel.
		I've written about phasing out these 10-year memorandums of understanding in which the United States commits to contributing about $3 billion a year, sometimes it's more, to Israel's defense efforts because this is a major industrialized country with a very significant GDP and GDP per capita.
		And the Israelis certainly are able to defend themselves.
		October 7th was sort of an anomaly in this.
		And I think that Israelis would like to see this come to an end, at least some Israelis would like to see this come to an end because they don't want to be dependent upon the United States any longer.
		And if we do phase out these memorandums of understanding, if the United States phases out these memorandums, we aren't as complicit in those parts of Israeli behavior that we don't like.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Stephen Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations joining us.
		How there's still conflict going on in Gaza?
		How does that complicate matters as far as the plan is concerned?
unidentified		Well, once the president, first of all, the Israelis accepted the president's 20-point plan when he announced it.
		And then once he stated that Hamas had accepted it and that the Israelis should stop their operations in the Gaza Strip, the Israelis stopped their operations in the Gaza Strip.
		They went from an offensive posture to one they're in defensive mode.
		They've stopped in place.
		They haven't begun to withdraw.
		That is the subject of negotiations Monday in Cairo.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Michael.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Michael is in Illinois, Independent Line.
unidentified		Yeah, thanks for taking my call.
		This program is a bit of a joke to me.
		You know, in your commercial, C-SPAN always says that they're unbiased.
		And your current guest is approaching 100 programs that you've had since the October situation started, where you put forward the Israeli perspective.
		And only three programs, I counted them, only three that put forward sort of a Palestinian point of view.
		Israel is committing genocide.
		There's no debate about this.
		Your argument, sir, is the same that I think Herman Goering made on the stand at Nuremberg trials, you know, trying to defend himself.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		So, Caller, you've watched our program.
		You've noted our programs.
		You're calling in for our guests.
		What's the question to them?
unidentified		Well, so the question is basically this.
		Why are you ignoring what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians prior to October 7th?
		17 years, they were under siege in Gaza.
		Nothing in, nothing out, except Israel, what they would allow.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Caller, thanks.
unidentified		Well, it's the first time I've been called a comedian and Herman Goering, notorious Nazi leader.
		Sort of startling.
		First, let me just say, I consider myself to be an objective analyst.
		And if you read my work, I'm equally critical of just about everybody.
		And I certainly don't believe that I offer the Israeli perspective.
		I'm just relaying what my genuine experts in international law have relayed to me about the question of Israeli genocide.
		There's also this question of Hamas's culpability in an attempted genocide on October 7th.
		What I would say is that having spent time living in the Palestinian areas in Ramullah and spending quite a bit of time in the Arab world, it is critical to understand that while Israel did withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and left its settlements, that since Hamas, which is a terrorist organization, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, its charter is out there.
		Its 1988 charter is out there for everybody to read.
		It's translated in English.
		If you go back to last October 7th, their statement, Hamas's statement announcing Operation El Aqsa flood is genocidal, that it has, since Hamas has taken over the Gaza Strip, the Gaza Strip has been under closure and blockade by both Israel as well as Egypt.
		Egypt has been a full partner with Israel in blockading the Gaza Strip.
		Prior to Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, there were something like 12 entry points in and out of the Gaza Strip that Israelis and Palestinians could use.
		Now there are two or three and that's extraordinarily unfortunate.
		And the Palestinians have been living under closure for all of these years.
		And it is true that Israeli governments have not been interested in negotiating with Palestinians over two-state solution and the status of the Gaza Strip.
		That is in large part because they believe, one, they don't have a partner, and two, there is on the Israeli right the view that the Gaza Strip should be reoccupied by Israel and Palestinians kicked out of the Gaza Strip.
		That's something I don't think the U.S. government would countenance.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Our guest is the author of the book, The End of Ambition: America's Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Why the end of ambition in this case?
unidentified		Well, this is my statement on 30 years in which the United States believed it could use its power to transform the Middle East, whether it was to forge democracy in Egypt, transform Iraqi society, or in fact build a Palestinian state.
		And it's my plea to give up those kinds of dreams, but also not necessarily to withdraw from the Middle East, but to be in the Middle East based on the things that are actually important to the United States.
		During this period of 30 years where the United States had all of this power, it's the only superpower.
		It's everything and anything in the Middle East became of critical importance to the United States.
		And we ended up failing.
		I think the return on investment is probably less than zero.
		But the Middle East nevertheless remains important to the United States.
		And there are critical interests for the United States in the Middle East.
		And it's my plea for us to focus on those things rather than on the things that it would be nice to have but that are beyond the power of the United States to make happen.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What main elements are the realistic approach when it comes to the Middle East?
unidentified		Yeah, I think there are some that are, I think, going to be familiar to people.
		Preventing threats to the free flow of energy resources out of the region.
		It is true that the United States imports relatively small amounts of energy from the Middle East.
		But if we want a healthy global economic order, energy from the Middle East is extremely important.
		I think we want to have robust nonproliferation and counterterrorism policies.
		We want to have a strong U.S.-Israel relationship so that Israel can make concessions should there be a government in place that wants to make concessions.
		But that relationship really does need to change.
		It's time to start thinking about how to phase out aid to Israel.
		There's a few others in there.
		Great power competition is something that we should focus on.
		I think the folks in Washington who say we need to withdraw from the Middle East to focus on Asia aren't looking at this competition with a rising power called China globally.
		And the Middle East is literally in the middle between Washington and Beijing, and Beijing has a lot of interest there as well.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Terry Smith and Indiana.
		Democrats line.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yeah, I just want to ask a question.
		After you clear, I think it's a wonderful thing that if you could get in there in Gaza and, you know, spend all kinds of money on it, make it independent or freedom, whatever.
		But where's all this money going to come from?
		Is it going to come from the United States once again, like we did Japan?
		After we blew it all the hell, we had to rebuild Japan.
		Now we've got to rebuild Gaza with our tax money.
		And then after that happens, nobody has any insurance.
		Kind of like when you guys sold our jobs outside the country.
		I mean, you guys are messing around with the United States.
		You're going to make us into a World War II, I mean, a World War III country.
		And I'm sorry that, but I just don't understand why you want to pour all this money, our tax money, into Gaza.
		It's just so many questions here.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, let our guests deal with the one you posed.
unidentified		Well, thanks very much for the question.
		It's an important one.
		And I think that the plan that the President has put forward relies on reconstruction funds not coming from the United States, but actually coming from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, European countries, countries in East Asia that are allied with the United States.
		It is not, It is not in the intention of the Trump administration to spend a taxpayer dollar on reconstructing the Gaza Strip.
		Those countries are concerned, however, that without an actual pathway towards a Palestinian state, that reconstruction money will be wasted in another round of violence between Israel and the Palestinians.
		Let me just point out also that these kinds of ideas that the president has put forward, whether it's his Gaza-Largo plan or the plan that's currently on the table, have been tried before.
		After the Israelis withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the World Bank, global NGOs, all had plans about how to uplift the Gaza Strip and turn it into something that people would have a stake in, that would be governed in a way that isn't a threat to Israel.
		Those plans were undermined by Hamas and other militant groups in the Gaza Strip, who very shortly after Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip started lobby rockets into Israel's southern communities within sovereign Israel and leading up to all of these years to the October 7, 2023 attacks.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		One more call.
		This will be from Troy and Pittsburgh, Republican line.
		Go ahead.
		You're next.
		Your last call.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		I got to direct you on a couple of things.
		One, the Philadelphia corridor has been the only reason that Gaza has weapons.
		The next thing is they've been blockaded.
		There's a gate around it.
		Also, on the West Bank, they're gated.
		You can't get in the Gaza Strip.
		And also, they annexed Golden Heights and they're in Syria and they're in Lebanon.
		So before you go off talking about these experts you've been talking to, I guess you've been talking to the wrong guys because when I was over there fighting in Iraq, we couldn't even mention Israel.
		So but what you're also not talking about is in the Middle East is where we got rich with standard oil out of Ohio.
		So that's what Rockefeller went over there and that's that helped our country become the hegemon that it is.
		So that's all I want to say.
		Thank you.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Troy and Pittsburgh.
unidentified		I think two points of clarification for Troy.
		First of all, it's the Philadelphia corridor.
		And I think he's quite right.
		Is that with the Israelis having withdrawn from the Philadelphia corridor as a result of the 2005 agreement on its withdrawal that Israel has with Egypt, it provided an opportunity for a tremendous amount of weapons smuggling through the Refah crossing, which is Gaza's border with Egypt, as well as underneath the Refah crossing.
		In terms of the question of standard oil and so on, the United States was well on its way to being a global power before it became deeply intertwined with energy resources from the Middle East.
		But the point is well taken.
		The United States has spent a significant amount of resources over many years, but in particular since 1970, after the British withdrew from the Persian Gulf east of Suez, as they say, the United States has been the power that has helped to prevent disruptions to the free flow of energy resources out of the region to the benefit of all Americans.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		It's reported on CNN that the president apparently had a back and forth with the anchor Jake Tappert there.
		And this is the reporting saying President Donald Trump told CNN Hamas faces, quote, complete obliteration if the group refuses to cede power and control of Gaza.
		When you hear things like that, how much do you think is rhetoric?
		How much do you think is reality?
unidentified		Well, I'm not sure what he means by total obliteration here.
		I mean, if you look at the state of the Gaza Strip that's been destroyed, and as we were discussing before, Hamas isn't really as organized as people make it out to be.
		There is this leadership outside of the Gaza Strip.
		There is a semblance of a leadership within the Gaza Strip, but these atomized militant groups and among Hamas, they don't necessarily agree on things.
		I think the president sees this as a way to get Hamas to perform via pressure from the Qataris and the Egyptians.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		CFR.org is the website for our guest Stephen Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations for this discussion.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for your time.
unidentified		Thanks for having me.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We'll finish the show with Open Forum.
		And if you want to participate, it's 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, and Independents, 202-748-8002.
		Go ahead and call.
		We'll take those calls from Washington Journal Continues.
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pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And pass precedent nomination.
		Why are you doing this?
		This is outrageous.
unidentified		This is a kangaroo card.
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pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		The new term of the Supreme Court opens tomorrow.
		And as tradition holds, before that, on the Sunday before, they hold what is known as the Red Mass.
		It's the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of D.C. and the John Carroll Society hosting that.
		And you can see it on our website at c-span.org.
		The mass calls for God's blessings and guidance on those responsible for administering justice.
		That Red Mass taking place right now.
		Let's show you a bit of it.
unidentified		May Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, and bring us to everlasting life.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And again, that's the Red Mass.
		You can continue watching on our website and our app if you're interested in finding out more.
		Also, you can also stay close to C-SPAN as major arguments from the Supreme Court we take and show you as the justices debate these things, all part of our coverage at C-SPAN.
		On this open forum from Missouri Independent Line, this is Kay.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Well, actually, I was holding for a question for Dr. Cook, the last expert that was on about the Middle East.
		And I am going to go ahead and ask my questions.
		Maybe some other callers have some answers.
		I would like to preface my questions with a comment about both Trump and Netanyahu.
		Both of them lie to their people all the time.
		So it is hard to know what is true and what is not.
		But my first question has to do with our bombing of the strategic strikes in Iran.
		When we made those strikes, I'm wondering what effect that has on negotiations today because of the very savagery of it, killing quite a few people there and so forth.
		And it's my understanding from the different sources that I have read and watched, we did not take out their entire nuclear program anyway.
		So there's that.
		So what effect does that have on these negotiations?
		And the second is Trump admonished or warned or however you want to phrase that, Netanyahu to hold off on bombing Gaza anymore, but yet the doctors that are there said that five people were killed yesterday, just yesterday after that talk on Friday, to agree to a ceasefire.
		Well, that wasn't really a ceasefire.
		But what effect will that have on the negotiations with Hamas?
		All right, those are my questions.
		You know, the Middle East has always been a quandary for the United States, as everyone knows, and it's very difficult.
		The history is long and complicated.
		All right.
		Thank you for having me.
		I just love C-SPAN.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You do.
		Let's go to Joe.
		Joe in New Orleans Democrats line.
		Hi.
unidentified		Good morning.
		A caller earlier asked about where is the funding to coming from to restore Gaza Strip.
		We forget that the Saudis or the Arabian countries gave Kushner $2 billion with a B and did give, and that money has not been explained as to what's going to be done with it.
		Trump and Netanyahu are in on redeveloping Gaza to become a resort where they can make money.
		He's allowing The bombing of Gaza to continue to get rid of or to crumble the infrastructure where all they have to do is go in and sweep, get the debris out.
		It's all planned, has been in the plan a long time.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Kenneth is next.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		He's in Maryland, Republican line.
unidentified		Yeah, did you say Ken?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Ken, yes, go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Yeah, what people are ignoring when they try to paint the Israelis as some sort of genocidal system is that from the very beginning of its birth, the Arabs have tried to destroy the Jewish nation, have tried to kill them, have done everything they can to eradicate the Jews,
		who just have a small little piece of land in the whole world that they got a hold of after they were eradicated by the Nazis.
		In fact, some of those Arab leaders went to Germany during the World War II and were allied with the Nazis.
		And this is forgotten by the public.
		The public doesn't even know it.
		And the fact of the matter is, is that when the Hamas did their thing, the Arab people were out there celebrating.
		As far as I'm concerned, all those who are celebrating the attack on Israel, the unprovoked attack on Israel, ought to be killed.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, hold on.
		We're going to stop you there.
		Let's go to Maryland Democrats line.
		Mark, go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		Thank you for the opportunity.
		I'd like to provide a somewhat different perspective on the shutdown.
		I do remember when Republicans used to say about Obamacare, death panels for grandma.
		And I strongly suggest the Dems turn the table and sharpen the elbows and start saying what the Republicans are doing is telling grandma to walk the plank and take your family with you.
		That's point number one.
		Second, who would fly a plane or drive a car without the gauge's functioning indicators?
		Right now, Friday, the jobs report didn't come out.
		Right now, the CDC is not updating in the wastewater the spread of COVID.
		These are serious issues deliberately being dismantled, unfortunately, by the President of the United States.
		Mark.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Mark there in Maryland giving us a call on this open forum.
		A couple more things to show you.
		This is the front page of today's Chicago Tribune under the headline, Trump OK is calling up 300 guard troops.
		The subhead, Pritzker, objects to move, saying that the President's administration issued the ultimatum, call up your troops or we will.
		That's the front page there.
		If you go to the Associated Press, they are reporting and others this morning that a federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked the President's administration from deploying National Guard in Portland.
		Ruling Saturday, that was in a lawsuit that was bought by the city and state.
		The U.S. District Judge Karen Immergut issued the order pending further arguments in the suit.
		She said the relatively small protest in the city had seen did not justify the use of federalized forces, allowing the deployment that could harm Oregon's state sovereignty.
		In part writing, this country has a long-standing and foundational tradition of resistance to government outreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs.
		This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition.
		This is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law.
		That garnered a response from Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff for policy at the White House, writing in on X saying this legal insurrection.
		The president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, not an Oregon judge.
		Portland, Oregon, law enforcement, at the direction of local leaders, have refused to aid ICE officers facing relentless terrorist assault and threats to life.
		There are more.
		There's more there from Stephen Miller if you're interested in reading more.
		Let's hear from Bill.
		Bill in New Jersey, Independent Line.
unidentified		Yeah, I want to talk about the national debt.
		It's one of the worst things we have going on in this country, and it's going to affect people for the next generations to come.
		I'm suggesting that to help get rid of the national debt, that we change the way we collect Social Security.
		Right now, we collect it from the employee and the employer up to $170,000.
		After that, there's no Social Security collected.
		Now, we have all these people that are making millions and millions of dollars, like the big sports figures and this CEO from the insurance company that was killed in New York.
		He was getting $10 million a year.
		They can certainly afford to pay their Social Security, and their employer, if they can afford to pay $10 million a year to him, they can afford to pay the Social Security.
		If we collected Social Security on all the earnings, the amount of going into Social Security would at least triple.
		And my suggestion would be that for ever how long it would take, somebody with access to the figures would have to figure it out.
		I don't have access to it.
		The employees' money would go directly into Social Security.
		The employers, part of the Social Security, would go directly into a fund to pay down the national debt.
		Right now, we're not paying it down.
		We're just paying interest.
		My cousin once said you get nothing for interest.
		He's absolutely correct.
		And that's what the country's doing.
		We're paying interest to people that probably are friends of people that are big shots in the government.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's Bill there in New Jersey, a story from the Washington Post this morning, as of 6 o'clock this morning, saying the Trump administration preparing a plan that will make it harder for older Americans to qualify for Social Security disability payments, part of an overhaul of the federal safety net for poor, older, and disabled people.
		Currently, the Social Security Administration evaluates disability claims by considering age, work experience, and education to determine if a person can adjust to other types of work.
		Older applicants, typically over 50, have a better chance of qualifying because age is treated as a limitation in adapting to many jobs.
		But now officials are considering eliminating age as a factor entirely, raising the threshold to age 60, according to three people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions.
		If you want to read more of those at the Washington Post, you can find that story.
		Martin is next in New York, Republican line.
unidentified		Yes, good morning, C-SPAN.
unidentified		Can you hear me?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You're on.
		Go ahead.
		We can hear you fine.
unidentified		Okay, I just got finished reading the book by Philip Kerr, K-E-R-R.
tommy chong ▲ ● ▼		He's an expert on Germany from the 1920s on, and he speaks about what happened in Germany.
unidentified		He's a very efficient guy.
		The Gestapo, people heard of the day of the broken glasses.
		That was the Gestapo.
		They went all throughout Germany breaking the glasses of business, Jewish business owners, took them out, murdered them, killed them.
		Huge graves.
		This was the Gestapo.
		They were also part of the camps that the Nazis run.
		Now, The honorable Democratic Party and their cohorts in the news media claim that ICE is the new Gestapo in America.
		It's Trump's Gestapo.
		This is the kind of garbage that we get from, this is so sick to accuse Trump and the wonderful people that are keeping us safe as possible and to do that.
		But they go on and on with their lies.
		The other lie that they tell is that it was Trump's people that killed Kurt, that good man who was assassinated and murdered.
		Oh, no, they say.
		And you can hear this from the view.
		You can hear this from Maxine Waters and the crew, whatever they call them, people, but crew, whatever it's called.
		It is so disgusting.
		And the news media, of course, is joining with them in allowing these lies to stand as lies.
		And you guys should do a better job, I think, in letting people know what's going on.
		These are not Gestapos.
		These are great Americans that are protecting us.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We got your point, Martin.
		Let's go to Richard.
		Richard in Missouri, Democrats line.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
		You know, about that people running around mass.
		That's what the Clu Cliff Klan, they're not the Gestapo.
		They're the Klan.
		And I'm worried about this deal down in Venezuela.
		I'm afraid that we're killing all them people in them boats.
		That's just murder.
		That's Trump and this guy.
		They should go to world court for being tried for murder.
		Now, if you want to invade Venezuela, you want to think what happened at the Bay of Pigs.
		Trump just go ahead and send the soldiers in there.
		Hell are just a bunch of dummies, he said.
		So they're your sons and daughters that's going to do the fighting.
		Not that bunch in Washington, D.C.
		The other people, if they were waiting for somebody to kill one of the National Guard, and then hell, hell will break loose.
		So that's all I got to say about it.
		We're in trouble.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Indiana is next on our independent line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Jim.
unidentified		Hello.
		Yeah, that's a couple comments.
		We have a government shutdown.
		These partial shutdowns are not a government shutdown.
		Politicians have decided partial shutdown is what they'll call a shutdown.
		Bring the military in if we shut down, or don't call it a shutdown.
		And then, being a veteran, I'm a U.S. Navy submarine veteran.
		I remember the headlines from when I was in service.
		It'd be interesting to see what our active duty military veterans think when the headlines are Trump conquers Washington, D.C.
		The next headline will be Trump conquers Chicago.
		Trump conquers Portland.
		What are the veterans going to think about this?
virgil goode ▲ ● ▼		That's all I got.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		When it comes to the shutdown, it was the Democratic governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, posting a video yesterday about steps his state is taking in light of it because of its proximity to Washington, D.C., and the amount of federal workers that live in his state.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Here's part of that from yesterday.
wes moore ▲ ● ▼		These are the three steps that we are taking effective today.
		First, keep government programs running and keep state employees on the job.
		Second, deliver protections that help Marylanders keep a roof over their heads, keep their lights on, and keep groceries in the fridge.
		Third, expand emergency resources for federal workers who are furloughed, who are fired, or asked to work without pay.
		These are the immediate actions that we are prepared to announce right now.
		A few weeks ago, I was in Baltimore, and I met a woman who's living in a new and affordable housing unit that our administration helped to build.
		We talked about how she was doing, and we talked about all the struggles of this moment.
		But in the end, she said something that I won't forget.
		She just simply said, thank God we're in Maryland.
unidentified		She was speaking for all of us.
wes moore ▲ ● ▼		This is a state where we protect each other.
		Even when the arrows are sharp and even when the swords are strong, we always stand tall.
		And in Maryland, we will never bend the knee.
		So, Maryland, we're going to be okay.
		We have faced hard times before, and we will face them again.
		And we will get through this moment as we always have together.
		May God bless the great state of Maryland.
		And may we all continue to do the work to leave no one behind.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Irene in California, Republican line.
unidentified		Yes, hi, good morning.
		Yes, in regards to your guest, well, CFR, let's see if our guest, he said Israel gets the okay from America first.
		That's not true.
		What Israeli did on June 8th, 1967, Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors and Marines and wounding over 171.
		What's happening today, during a ceasefire, bombing every day.
		Actually, there's bombing every day even with or without a ceasefire, but there's a ceasefire going on.
		They have negotiations going on.
		And over 60 Palestinians died the other day, 40 before that.
		I mean, every day Palestinians die.
		And it's not like 60,000 dead.
		It's in the hundreds of thousands dead because you're not counting the ones that are blown to bits with these 2,000-pound bombs or whatever bombs they're using today in today's time.
		So it's over 100,000.
		I watch Democracy Now and they have more, they have the statistics and that's mainly the high number.
		I have a letter.
		It was printed in the Women's Voice and it says, Israeli sadistic crimes in Gaza.
		Okay, and this is actually, this is not after October 7th, 2022.
		This is April 5th, 1957.
		And it says the Israelis took over Gaza November 2nd, 1956.
		They would line up the young men, the alt men, line them up and shoot them, execute them in front of their wives, parents, brothers and sisters without any reason or cause.
		Those were killed in this manner, numbered 250.
		Okay, okay, okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Well, we'll go to the next call.
		Let's go to Liz.
		Liz in New Jersey, Democrats line.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Good morning.
justice neil gorsuch ▲ ● ▼		I'm just calling to advocate that maybe we put an article that was written in the Philadelphia Inquirer on September 26th of this year by Jeff Grammage.
unidentified		And his title for it is For the Undocumented Immigrant, quote, no easy path.
		And he explains our past and our current immigration policies and why a lot of the talking points, particularly that MAGA constantly harps on, are just false.
		They're not true at all.
		But it's done in a very straightforward manner.
		It's not an opinion piece.
		It's the research on who we let in, why we let him in, when we didn't let them in.
		And I think people need to get their facts straight because they assume there was all these orderly transitions to America in the past.
		It's not so.
		All right.
		So.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Joseph and Maryland, Independent Line.
		You're next on this open forum.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Hey, thank you.
		Thank you very much for all your work you always do, sir, Pedro.
		And I would like to say for Maryland, since Governor Westmore got a few minutes there or seconds, we're not so happy with Governor Westmore.
		Ever since his days at Robin Hood or whatever it was, down to lying about his bronze star, it's not so great in Maryland, Governor Moore.
		We know you want to run for president here.
		We call him plastic man.
		We're not happy at all with what he does and says.
		Our bridges aren't getting built.
		Never mind all that.
		Larry Hogan neither.
		They both play their game for the corporations.
		Fake masks from North Korea, South Korea, wherever.
		It's all Korea, getting used to be divided.
		Anyway, I just want to say to our people, each person gets on here and blames the other side.
		Even the independents get on here and blames the other side.
		We're never going to get anywhere.
		It is good to point out facts, Pedro, and let people know where they've done wrong.
		But we've all done wrong.
		We're all making mistakes every day.
		Every day.
		And I just say that here living in D.C. for 56 years now, and my family's been here for longer than that.
		And my great-grandma in 1909 in Brooklyn, New York, was in a Mohawk Indian reservation.
		Elizabeth Staker, she was mean.
		I thought she was the meanest old lady in the world over there in Prince George's County sitting in her rocking chair.
		Little old white-looking lady.
		I never messed with great Nana.
		And she just looks scared.
		She was in the Mohawk Indian Reservation.
		1980-something.
		I'm sitting here with her in Forestville, Maryland, right by D.C. Didn't know she was in an Indian reservation.
		Her husband died in a Mohawk sanitarium in New York.
		In New York, Pedro, I don't know if you know this or not, but you can look it up on Congress.
		In New York City in like 1920 or something like that, any white, black man could go up to the police and say that Indian drinks too much, and they would lock him up.
		My great-grandfather got locked up like that.
		I didn't know.
		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, let's go to Tom.
		Tom in Ohio, Republican line.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Pedro, brother, how are you, man?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Fine, thank you.
		Go ahead.
		You're on.
unidentified		I've got to say this first.
		I have a disclaimer.
		My sources have asked for anonymity.
		George Soros was in Berlin as a Hitler youth and served Hitler.
		He came to America to escape Germany and now a multi-billionaire who hates America and is aiding and abetting the Demarats attempt to change our constitutional republic into a Marxist nation.
		He funds Antifa.
		Republicans aren't Nazis.
		The only party that has the financial support of a true Nazi is the Demarats.
		Have a nice day, brother.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Mary up next, Mary from Las Vegas, Democrats line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Oh, brother, George Searles.
		Let's bring out a boogeyman.
		I know there's someone else to be afraid of.
		If your bridges aren't getting fixed and your roads aren't getting fixed, talk to the president.
		He's impounding all the money from the infrastructure, bipartisan infrastructure bill that President Biden passed.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Pat, Pat in Michigan, Independent Line.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		That woman is right on talking about USS Liberty when Israel killed 34 Americans on that communications ship.
		And that's exactly what they're doing to all the journalists over there.
		The hundreds of journalists that they've killed so that all their war crimes are not being exposed in Gaza.
		And they're trying to bulldoze the whole place over so all the little kids that are buried under the rubble won't be exposed either at any time.
		Reach for the phone.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's Pat in Michigan.
		Joe Marie is in Arizona, and Joe Marie is our last call, Republican Line.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Good morning, Pedro.
		I want to talk a little bit about Wes Moore, the video you showed.
		That man cannot be trusted.
		Tell the truth.
		He's stolen valor.
		Not one time, not two times, but three times.
		And he had to admit to it.
		So anybody that even would consider believing anything that comes out of that Democrat's mouth, just like most Democrats, the lies, the lies, the lies.
		Ouch.
		Anyway, have a blessed day.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Joe Marie finishing off this open forum, also finishing off our program for today.
		Another edition of Washington Journal comes your way tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.
		We'll see you then.
unidentified		C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy.
		From Washington and across the country.
		Coming up Monday morning, we'll preview the new Supreme Court term and key upcoming cases with SCOTIS Blog co-founder and reporter Amy Howe.
		Then a discussion about the government shutdown, first with Newsweek White House correspondent Daniel Bush, then with NBC News senior congressional reporter Scott Wong.
		C-SPAN's Washington Journal.
		Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Monday morning on C-SPAN.
		C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-SPAN.org.
		Later today, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will be part of a celebration to mark the U.S. Navy's 250th birthday.
		President Trump and Navy Secretary John Phelan will also attend this event, being held at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.
		You can watch our coverage live at 3 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at cspan.org.
		Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, Christopher Scalia, son of the late Justice Antonin Scalia and author of 13 novels conservatives will love but probably haven't read.
		recommends 13 novels with conservative themes that he says aren't widely known by conservatives.
christopher scalia ▲ ● ▼		The title isn't conservative novels.
		I think that that oversimplifies the case a little bit.
		I think that great literature is open to multiple, not infinite, but multiple interpretations and readings.
		And so I offer what I think are reasonable conservative readings of all of these novels.
		But I think that there are alternate readings that progressives could offer.
		That would be reasonable.
		I wouldn't necessarily agree with them.
unidentified		Christopher Scalia, with his book, 13 Novels Conservatives Will Love But Probably Haven't Read, tonight at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A.

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