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unidentified
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Governors from opposite ends of the political map come together from Deep Red Oklahoma to solid blue Maryland. | |
| Democratic Governor Wes Moore and Republican Governor Kevin Stitt sit down with host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Welcome to Ceasefire, where we seek to bridge the divide in American politics. | ||
| For a conversation, not a confrontation. | ||
| Red meets blue. | ||
| Great Plains meets Mid-Atlantic Friday, October 17th at 7 p.m. Eastern and Pacific. | ||
| Ceasefire, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Joined now by Representative Chrissy Houlihan, a Democrat of Pennsylvania. | ||
| Congresswoman, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Can you update us on the latest on the government shutdown and what, if any, negotiations are happening among the Democrats? | ||
|
unidentified
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So I have spent the last several weeks in D.C. hoping that I will be met by the other side and in conversation and negotiation to reopen the government. | |
| And unfortunately, that has not yet been the case. | ||
| I'm really hopeful that we have the opportunity to kind of get down to brass tacks and make sure that we do the right thing for the American public, which means that they need to be able to afford their health care. | ||
| To be honest, I'm one of the most bipartisan members of Congress year in and year out. | ||
| And it's really frustrating to me that I haven't been met and we haven't been met at all in terms of any sort of negotiations. | ||
| And we're now, I think, 15 days in. | ||
| What's the long-term strategy for Democrats? | ||
|
unidentified
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You know, I don't know that it's necessarily fair to call anything a strategy. | |
| It's just to do the right thing. | ||
| This issue here is that this is not a clean CR, as people have said. | ||
| This is a continuation of a very long and slow and painful shutdown that has started in the January timeframe and has been ongoing. | ||
| I think that people are starting to understand, the American people are starting to understand what is at stake in terms of their cost of health care. | ||
| But also, I heard another caller call in as well. | ||
| That's the beginning of the problem. | ||
| The problem is that people will shortly experience their health care premiums going up considerably, that people will shortly experience having Medicare and Medicaid unavailable to them. | ||
| This will hit red and blue states and red and blue people. | ||
| It doesn't discriminate. | ||
| But also, this is just one of the indicators of how expensive it is to exist right now as an American. | ||
| And so I think Democrats are not strategizing. | ||
| This is just the truth. | ||
| We need to make sure that we are taking care of the American people regardless of who you are and where you live and what political affiliation you have. | ||
| You're the top Democrat on the Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel. | ||
| The troops were paid yesterday. | ||
| Can you give us an update or an understanding on if National Guard, Reserve, civilian defense employees, contractors, any of those would be paid? | ||
|
unidentified
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So you're right. | |
| I do serve on the Armed Services Committee and specifically on the military personnel subcommittee. | ||
| So I've spent a lot of time in Congress now, seven years, focusing on the lives and livelihood of people who wear the uniform. | ||
| I myself wore the uniform, as well as my dad and my grandfather and many of my family members. | ||
| There couldn't be anything more important than honoring and valuing our American troops. | ||
| It is my understanding that the administration has used what I have decried as a slush fund, $150 billion extra dollars that they put into the big beautiful bill that had no purpose. | ||
| Well, the good news, I guess, if you can say it that way, is that a slush fund has allowed them to continue to pay our troops. | ||
| My understanding is our troops are being paid. | ||
| I don't believe or don't know yet whether the civilian sector and contractors, as an example, are being paid. | ||
| But it's astounding to me, and this is an indicator of what's going on, that we can just find money. | ||
| That is indeed not what's supposed to happen with our Constitution. | ||
| The Congress is supposed to be the one that allocates and appropriates money for specific purposes. | ||
| So we're responsible to the American taxpayer. | ||
| And part of what I'm fighting against right now is the fact that we're eroding the power of the purse. | ||
| We're eroding Article I of the Constitution. | ||
| And Congress needs to do our job. | ||
| And we need to make sure that we are the ones who decide what happens with the taxpayers' resources and money. | ||
| And there's a bill called the Pay Our Troops Act. | ||
| You are not a co-sponsor of that, but that would ensure, we'll put it on the screen, military, defense department, civilians, contractors, U.S. Coast Guard would receive their pay on a normal schedule. | ||
| What's the status of that bill? | ||
|
unidentified
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So the very first thing that people have to kind of understand about the House of Representatives is that we don't get to choose what we vote on unless we are in the majority. | |
| And so the majority right now is the Republican Party led by Representative Mike Johnson. | ||
| Mike Johnson decides whether we are there or not, literally in session or not. | ||
| And he and he alone and the rules committee that is under him decide what we vote on. | ||
| And so until such time as we are called back to Washington and until such time as he and the rules committee decide that we can vote on something like that, we cannot vote on that. | ||
| And that's one of the things that's most frustrating. | ||
| And you've seen that with the Epstein files. | ||
| There's really only one exception to that rule. | ||
| And that is if you sign a discharge petition and get 218 signatures to force a vote. | ||
| But even then, that doesn't force a vote if we're not in session. | ||
| And so I am enormously supportive of paying our troops. | ||
| Clearly, that has been my history over and over again. | ||
| In fact, I led a committee with Representative Don Bacon that gave junior enlisted more than 14% pay raise last Congress. | ||
| So I couldn't be more enthusiastic about making sure we honor our men and women in uniform, but I don't get to decide what I vote on. | ||
| Chrissy Julihan is on the program with us, and she will take your call so you can start to call in now. | ||
| Republicans are on 202748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| And there are roughly 15,000 of the VAs, more than 460,000 employees have been furloughed during the shutdown. | ||
| Can you give us an idea of how service at the VA might be affected by the shutdown? | ||
|
unidentified
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And again, this began before the formal shutdown of 15 days ago. | |
| I have a VA in my community in Coatesville, and our VA, of course, services people from around the western suburbs of Pennsylvania. | ||
| In the January timeframe, the government led by this administration began furloughs and layoffs of more than 30,000 people in the VA. | ||
| And then, of course, they've continued now into this shutdown. | ||
| It can't not affect service for our veterans. | ||
| And of course, that's a real problem. | ||
| In addition, many of the people who work at the VA are veterans themselves as well. | ||
| And so this is, again, part of what I believe to be a pretty insidious undermining of the VA itself with an intent, I believe, from the Republican Party to privatize it. | ||
| So if you weaken and weaken and further suffocate the VA, then it's easy to say, look, it's not working for our veterans. | ||
| And instead, rather, I think we should be supportive of the VA, and I think that we should be funding the VA. | ||
| And I think we should particularly be focused on mental health issues, as well as the largest growing population of veterans, which are women and women's health issues as well. | ||
| You and fellow vet Representative Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire are calling for Defense Secretary Hegzeth to roll back his plans to dismantle the Pentagon Women's Advisory Group. | ||
| Can you explain what that group was and why Secretary Hegseth would like to do away with it? | ||
|
unidentified
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So, this was a group, hopefully, will continue to be a group into the future, that was started 75 years ago in recognition that a population, a growing population of people serving in uniform were women. | |
| This group was bipartisan, apartisan indeed, made recommendations that 90-something percent of were adopted. | ||
| It's hard to find groups in Washington that actually work, but this was one. | ||
| And many of those things that were adopted did not necessarily directly have to do with women in service, but rather had to do with the quality of life of people in service. | ||
| As an example, paid leave, paid family leave was one of the things that they advocated for, and we were able to accomplish that a couple of Congresses ago. | ||
| I really do believe that there's an effort to literally control F, to control find any time that women or anybody else is mentioned in our armed services and just eliminate that organization. | ||
| And I think that that's at the peril of our readiness. | ||
| I think that's at the peril of our lethality as a force. | ||
| And I think that Maggie and I, Representative Goodlander, and I both having served, are really offended by the efforts of this Secretary of Defense, and it is still the Secretary of Defense, to do to undermine those who serve in the military who are women, which is more than 20% of the people in uniform now. | ||
| Let's go to calls now. | ||
| Let's go to Chris Grand Rapids, Michigan, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, Chris. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, I just heard on the news that the Congresswoman from she's a Democrat for the Agriculture Agriculture that Trump is now going to give Argentina a $40 billion payout from the taxpayers. | |
| And also, would they have a sign up for the ICE $50,000? | ||
| And where is the $17 trillion going to? | ||
| Why can't it fund people on Medicare and Medicaid? | ||
| And I thank the caller for calling in. | ||
| And I think you're speaking of Representative Angie Craig, who's the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee, who spoke to us in caucus yesterday while we were in Washington. | ||
| And what she was saying, and I believe what you're saying is true, billions and billions of dollars have been being found. | ||
| And again, I don't know from where because I certainly haven't been involved in it. | ||
| I haven't even been allowed to do my job in Washington. | ||
| But that money is going to Argentina as a bailout. | ||
| And what's interesting is that our farmers, and some of them are in my district, are losing their livelihoods because of row crops that are no longer being able to be grown and sold into places like China. | ||
| And so they need to make sure that they are being helped. | ||
| And in the meantime, China is buying row crops from places like Argentina. | ||
| And so it's a double whammy and a double insult for our folks who are farmers to do that. | ||
| I guess what you're kind of unearthing is one of my deeper concerns, which is where does all of this money seem to be coming from when we can't seem to pass a budget and we can't pass any of our 12 appropriations bills. | ||
| It feels like money is just flowing irregularly from random places. | ||
| And that's, of course, not how this is supposed to work. | ||
| And again, regardless of your political party, you should be worried when the Congress is not doing their job. | ||
| This is my job. | ||
| Please give every effort that you can to call your representative and ask them to come back to Washington. | ||
| And NBC News is reporting headline: U.S. support for Argentina could hit $40 billion. | ||
| Treasury Secretary Scott Besant said an additional $20 billion in private sector loans for Argentina could effectively double the value of a U.S. rescue plan. | ||
| Here's Anton St. Cloud, Florida, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| How are you doing today? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good. | |
| I just want to say that I feel that our politicians seem to have forgotten the foundation of our nation with debate, negotiation, and compromise. | ||
| Instead of willing to debate the issues that we are currently dealing with, they want to point fingers. | ||
| And that's not how this nation was created, is by pointing fingers. | ||
| It was by debating, by negotiating, and compromising. | ||
| And that's what needs to start happening. | ||
| So I really couldn't agree with the caller more. | ||
| As I've mentioned, I work really hard to be bipartisan. | ||
| I'm a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus. | ||
| I'm one of the founding people of a group called With Honor, which is a really diverse group of people who've worn the uniform. | ||
| I am one of the chairs of the Bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus. | ||
| I am the founder of the biotech bipartisan caucus, as well as the Women in Service Caucus, which is bipartisan, and the STEM and STEAM caucus, which is bipartisan. | ||
| I do everything I can to meet people in the middle and to bargain and negotiate because I think you're right, the caller is right, that we are here to serve the American people. | ||
| And I'm just as frustrated as you are that nobody is meeting me or any of our leadership halfway. | ||
| This is, you cannot ask for my vote on behalf of my community without allowing me to have an input or any sort of insight into how you're thinking or why you're thinking that. | ||
| And that's effectively what I'm being asked to do right now. | ||
| Gary's a Republican in Kentucky. | ||
| Gary, you're on with Representative Chrissy Houlihan of Pennsylvania. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, thank you. | |
| I'd like to know where the representative has been the last four or five, six, ten, whatever. | ||
| Insurance prices have been going up way, and that doesn't matter who this president, who's in charge, or whatever. | ||
| And by the way, what does Congress think they're going to do? | ||
| They think they're going to force an insurance company to lower their prices or stop raising the prices. | ||
| It's just that, you know, I always said, if you want to get a Democrat to do something, tell them it's an election year. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Congresswoman. | ||
|
unidentified
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Sure. | |
| And I would obviously respectfully disagree with the caller. | ||
| I think that we, I know I personally know that health care, health care is the biggest issue and in some cases, one of the largest items of people's budget. | ||
| And you're absolutely right that the health care cost is something that is untenable. | ||
| What's happening right now is that a tax credit is expiring. | ||
| This is not because prices are going up per se. | ||
| This is because the price to you, the person who pays the bill, is going up because of the expiration of these benefits, this tax credit. | ||
| This tax credit has created the opportunity for millions and millions of more Americans to have health care. | ||
| And that not only benefits the people who get the health care and can now afford to pay for it, but it also benefits those of us who have private insurance, as the caller was talking about, because it allows for all of us to have kind of regular and normal insurance rather than to have no insurance and to be seen only in the emergency room or only when we're very, very, very ill, which causes the cost of insurance to go up for all of us. | ||
| And so this is where I believe the Democrats are on the right side of justice. | ||
| And to be honest, I obviously believe that they are in most places, which is health care is something that we need to be addressing. | ||
| And I have been for the last seven years that I've been in office. | ||
| It is issue number one, issue number two, and issue number three. | ||
| And I think the American people recognize that Democrats stand for your health care. | ||
| Terry Dixon, Illinois, Democrat, good morning, Terry. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, good morning. | |
| Hey, I'm calling about the shutdown and stuff like that. | ||
| Okay, so the Congress passed three bills out of the House. | ||
| The House of Representatives, they've been in session, what, 12 days out of the last three months. | ||
| There's these other nine bills. | ||
| Why aren't they working on that? | ||
| You know, here we are with the shutdown, and they talk about, oh, it's so important. | ||
| Well, why aren't they in here working on those other nine bills and trying to get this done? | ||
| They want to extend it to December to do just that. | ||
| Why aren't they in there right now? | ||
| You should ask the Republican when he comes in this question. | ||
| Why aren't they doing their job? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| A thousand percent agree. | ||
| There is no reason why, even if the government is so-called shut down, that we are not at work on those appropriations bills. | ||
| The appropriations committee ought to be nose to the grindstone, bipartisanly together, working for the day when we do reopen the government so that we can ease the opportunity to make those votes happen. | ||
| The caller brings up a really, really good point. | ||
| As of right now, as of this conversation that we are all having, Mike Johnson has not canceled votes next week. | ||
| So theoretically, that means that next week we will all show up to Washington, D.C. | ||
| And as near as I can still stare at each other, because even if he reopens the government, we haven't primed the pump for any committee work, any committee hearings, any sort of markups, any sort of votes. | ||
| And I think that that's something that in the very first shutdown that I was involved in seven or so years ago, we still did. | ||
| We still met. | ||
| We still did markups. | ||
| We did all of those things, but we just needed to work through what was going on across the aisle on shutdown. | ||
| Again, one of the things that I remember from that last shutdown is we can't get anything done if we're not talking to each other. | ||
| And the only way that we can talk to each other, to be honest, is to be physically in the same space. | ||
| And I don't necessarily even mean that that needs to be the same room, you know, lock us in a room and make us get along. | ||
| But we need to be in Washington to be able to get this done because nothing is more pressureful or pressure cooker than being in Washington and having the need to get something done. | ||
| So I would totally agree with the caller that at a minimum we should be working on our committees. | ||
| I will end by saying I'm on the intelligence committee, one of, in my opinion, the most important committees in Washington, D.C., because we hear the things that you all should need to know and shouldn't have to know about what's going on in many of our intelligence communities. | ||
| We haven't had a hearing or a meeting or a markup or what's called a hotspots meeting in weeks. | ||
| The idea that Congress is supposed to be overseeing one of the most dangerous parts of our government without having any meetings at all should frighten the American public because our job is to oversee the intelligence community and to understand what's going on in the interest of our own national security. | ||
| Congresswoman, I want to ask you about the NOPE Act. | ||
| It's the No Political Enemies Act that you and a group of Democratic House and Senate members have introduced. | ||
| Can you explain what that is and why you introduced it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think that this is a piece of legislation that's trying to make sure that we understand that there is no place for political violence. | |
| And I think that this is one of the places where we have the opportunity to emphatically declare that. | ||
| And I do worry that we are, as many of the callers have said, we are in a place where we can't seem to find the kind word to say to one another, and we can't seem to recognize that we are all Americans. | ||
| We are all patriots and we all care for this country. | ||
| And I think that this is one of those efforts to try to make sure that people understand that, again, we will never get a vote on this. | ||
| And that's one of the things that's most frustrating to me, but that we all have the opportunity to say something against political extremism and political violence. | ||
| John in Indiana on the independent line, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I was wondering why we're giving all this money to all these billionaires, taxpayers' dollars, and they're laying off people. | |
| I appreciate the call and I agree emphatically. | ||
| I think one of the things that's most disingenuous about the piece of legislation that was passed in July on July 4th, unironically, was that it was a really big tax benefit to the most wealthy people and also to the for-profit sector. | ||
| In exchange, there were cuts made to the people, Medicaid cuts, as an example, SNAP benefits, as an example. | ||
| Those kinds of things that we're seeing eroded in our government, like our national health organizations, our CDC, are all because we're aiming that money and those resources at the most wealthy amongst us. | ||
| And I think that's a really bad way of running our government and benefits only the people who are already in fine positions. | ||
| You're also seeing that with this administration, where people are making money hand over fist on the opportunities that they themselves are created in the for-profit sector. | ||
| And you've seen this with Bitcoin announcements and a variety of other really harmful insider trading opportunities. | ||
| That also should be decried and stopped. | ||
| Brian and Houston, on the line for Republicans, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and good morning, Congressman. | |
| And thank you, first of all, for your service to the country. | ||
| While we can always disagree politically, I agree with you. | ||
| It should never be violent. | ||
| But thank you for your work to your constituents and to our country. | ||
| I do appreciate it. | ||
| A couple of points. | ||
| One, I do, even as a Republican, believe Representative-elect Grajalva should be seated during this time. | ||
| She is a now duly elected member of Congress or should be. | ||
| So she should be seated, even though we're in a pro forma session. | ||
| But I do have a question just when it comes to you guys passed the clean CR in the House to keep the government open, keep it funded. | ||
| But I'm curious to hear your opinion. | ||
| I know you don't normally get involved in the matters of the Senate, but should, you know, if Republicans do have full control of the House, Senate, and the White House, which I agree they do, however, in the Senate, you do need 60 votes. | ||
| So are you advocating for them to blow up the filibuster so they can pass it with 50, permanently eroding minority rights, or should the Democrats just give seven more votes, get it, but also then at that point you can filibuster to get your increase or keep the health care provisions in place for the end of the year and at least force votes on that moving forward. | ||
| So, all right, Brian. | ||
| Yep, let's get an answer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Brian, you sound like a really reasonable guy. | |
| I'd love to have a cup of coffee with you. | ||
| And thank you as well for your really interesting and kind questions and thoughtful questions. | ||
| You're absolutely right. | ||
| You know, the way that this can move forward, one way that this can move forward is if some Democratic senators decide that they're going to vote with the Republicans. | ||
| But again, we have to expect and demand that our government work by compromise. | ||
| And so I don't think that we can expect that those seven Democratic or I think it's five at this point in time members of the Senate should become Republicans and just vote to get along and get and move on, move along because there's a reason why they're withholding their vote, and that is health care, access to health care. | ||
| And it's also procedural, to your point. | ||
| We can't continue to just blow up the government because we can find ways to undermine it and how it works. | ||
| That's not how this is all supposed to work. | ||
| Things like breaking the filibuster, you're right, will be a permanent change to the way our government works that will be bad for everyone anytime that anybody's in the minority party. | ||
| And so that's why it's important that our senators hold tight and hold firm, but also are willing to negotiate. | ||
| And my understanding from my conversations with many of my colleagues who are in the Senate now, who came from the House, is that there is that willingness and that openness to talk about it. | ||
| But there isn't a willingness to just hope that things will happen that they have agreed to. | ||
| So, for instance, they will vote for the government to open in exchange for a promise of a vote next week or three weeks from now on health care. | ||
| The last nine months has proven to us as Democrats that you can't believe any of those promises. | ||
| They don't happen. | ||
| And in cases, even when they do happen, they are then undone by the administrative branch, by the executive branch itself. | ||
| And so at this point in time, it's not even a trust but verify. | ||
| It reminds me of Wimpy in Popeye. | ||
| Kindly give me a hamburger today that I'll pay for you for on Tuesday. | ||
| I just don't believe that. | ||
| And so I think we're in a really difficult place where I think people need to negotiate and meet one another. | ||
| And Margie is a Republican in Meadville, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Good morning, Margie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm glad the representative just was discussing cooperation and compromise because whenever Mike Johnson appears before a microphone, he's saying that the health care can't be discussed until some of the, | ||
| shall we say, silly things that USAID was funding millions, but silly for programs. | ||
| And all the serious issues have been transferred to the State Department. | ||
| So in the matter of cooperation, why wouldn't the Democrats say, okay, we'll remove those requests from the health care bills so we can move on? | ||
| That would be my question. | ||
| Thank you very much for the question. | ||
| And interestingly enough, I would argue or say that those things have happened, right? | ||
| I don't agree with the fact that USAID has been destroyed. | ||
| I believe in soft power as well as in the military, the power of our might. | ||
| I think that those were big mistakes, but those are things that have been done. | ||
| And now I think Mike Johnson is down to the serious stuff. | ||
| There isn't anything more serious than whether or not you have access to health care so that you can stay healthy, be healthy, remain healthy, and so that you don't end up being ill. | ||
| And make no mistake, people will die when they don't have access to health care. | ||
| And also, make no mistake again, it will cost us more when people don't have health care. | ||
| So, I sort of reject the premise that we need to kind of get serious so that we can get serious. | ||
| This couldn't be more serious, and the timing couldn't be more important. | ||
| Here, in another couple of weeks, November 1st, people will begin getting, if they haven't already, notices that their premiums will be going up. | ||
| And this is because of the expiration of these tax credits. | ||
| Additionally, in that big beautiful bill, there were pretty significant cuts to Medicaid as well. | ||
| And so, again, lots and lots of people from red and blue places are going to be losing their health care. | ||
| So, I really do think that the time is now to have this conversation and to have this negotiation. | ||
| It is not later. | ||
| This is, in my opinion, a ploy to sort of push this down the road, and there couldn't be anything more important than our health care. | ||
| We cannot push this down the road any further. | ||
| In addition to the extension of the ACA subsidies, what else are Democrats asking for? | ||
| Because this caller mentioned the reinstatement of USAID funding. | ||
| Previous callers said that the Democrats wanted to bring back funding for transgender surgeries overseas. | ||
| Can you tell us exactly what the Democrats are asking for beyond the health care subsidies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's emphatically untrue. | |
| I have been in Congress now for seven years, and I have never seen Democrats more singularly aligned and unified than now. | ||
| We're looking for health care, health care, health care relief. | ||
| And I don't think that there's a laundry list, and it's bananas to say that that laundry list would include surgery, overseas surgery, for trans folks. | ||
| This is the argument right now: open the government, work with Democrats, give relief to the American people on health care, and also be good to your word. | ||
| You know, let the system work the way it's supposed to work. | ||
| Stop undermining our democracy. | ||
| And I unfortunately don't know how we assure the American people that that will happen because it seems as though there are no guardrails and there are no exceptions to how we can, in the name of fraud, waste, and abuse, abuse the heck out of the American public. | ||
| That's Representative Chrissy Houlihan, Democrat of Pennsylvania, and member of the Armed Services and the Select Intelligence Committees. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| The Associated Press and other news organizations are reporting that former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton has been indicted by a Maryland grand jury for mishandling classified documents. | ||
| The charges come after both his Bethesda, Maryland home and Washington, D.C. office were searched by authorities. | ||
| He is the third critic of President Trump to be charged in the last month, joining former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. | ||
| The reporting goes on to note, however, that concerns about Mr. Bolton's stewardship of national secrets predated the second Trump administration. | ||
| Tonight will bring you the first debate in the New York City mayor's race with less than three weeks to go before Election Day. |