CSPAN - Washington Journal 10/19/2025

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Oct. 19, 2025 07:00-10:00 - CSPAN

02:59:53

Washington Journal 10/19/2025

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tammy thueringer

cspan 28:09

Appearances

chuck schumer

sen/d 01:46

dasha burns

politico 00:34

kevin stitt

01:23

mike johnson

rep/r 01:52

wes moore

d 01:14

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david rubenstein

00:08

donald j trump

admin 00:23

elizabeth warren

sen/d 00:26

john grisham

00:16

shane connor

00:12

tim kaine

sen/d 00:05

wayne paul

00:27

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doug in kansas

callers 00:03

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		A pair of former congressmen, Virginia Republican Tom Davis and New York Democrat Steve Israel.
		And senior advisor of the U.S. program at the International Crisis Group, Brian Finnecan, discusses recent actions by the Trump administration using the military to combat the drug trade.
		Washington Journal starts now.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		This is Washington Journal for Sunday, October 19th.
		It appears the government shutdown will hit the three-week mark after the Senate voted down the House-passed short-term spending deal for the 10th time last week.
		Republicans and Democrats are pointing their fingers at each other, hoping Americans will blame the other party for the impasse.
		But a new poll finds President Trump and Congressional Republicans and Democrats are all at fault.
		For the first hour of today's program, we're asking you, who do you blame for the government shutdown?
		Here are the lines.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		Democrats, 202-74-88000.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		Federal workers, you can give us a call at 202-748-8003.
		You can also text your comments to that same number, 202-748-8003.
		Be sure to include your name and city.
		You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ.
		Good morning, and thank you for being with us.
		We'll get to your calls and comments in just a few moments.
		But first, we want to talk more about the findings of that new poll.
		And to do that, we are joined by Marjorie Connolly.
		She's a senior fellow at the Associated Press NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
		Marjorie, thank you for getting up early on a Sunday and being with us.
unidentified		Thank you for having me.
unidentified		Good morning.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll start by having you explain what the AP Nork Center is.
unidentified		So NORC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center.
		It's headquartered in Chicago.
		And about 15 years ago or so, they joined forces with the AP to do research, polling for AP, to have objective views of what the public thinks on different issues facing, you know, policy issues, sometimes lighthearted things, but just to get an idea of what the public has to say on issues facing the country these days.
		And so then we do the surveys for the Associated Press, you know, several, you know, once about once a month or so.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And you just had some new polling.
		The polling done, just so people are aware, it was conducted October 9th through the 13th.
		So the second week of the government shutdown.
		What were you hoping to learn from the poll?
unidentified		Well, we asked several questions about the shutdown.
		We had asked, we'd done a similar poll at the time of the last shutdown in 2019.
		So we repeated two of those questions, which were whether you thought it was a major problem for the country and whether you who basically whether you blame the Republicans or the Democrats in Congress or the president.
		And so we wanted to see if there was anything, any difference from before and basically also to find out what the public is thinking about right now.
		And that's what we did and found out.
		And what we found is there's partisan differences, which you would expect.
		Democrats blame the Republicans and President Trump.
		Republicans blame Democrats.
		Independents blame everybody.
		And we also found that most people think it is a problem for the country.
		A very few people think it's not a problem at all.
		Democrats are a little bit more likely to say it's a major problem than Republicans.
		But overall, the public thinks it's a problem.
		And we didn't ask them what they think, whether they think it should be finished or when they think it should be finished, but we just think that we know that they think it's a problem.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And the Affordable Care Act subsidies are a key sticking point in the shutdown with efforts trying to resolve it.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What did the survey tell you about that issue?
unidentified		We did ask them a question about that issue.
		We did not tie it with the shutdown.
		We just asked them whether they thought that the tax credits should be extended or not.
		And we found that a large percentage of people, to be honest, are not paying that much attention to this issue.
		It was about 40-some percent said they neither favored it or nor opposed it, which is basically the equivalent of saying, I don't know that much about it.
		But again, there are partisan differences.
		You know, almost two-thirds of Democrats definitely favored extending the tax credits, whereas Republicans and independents were much more likely to say they neither favored nor opposed.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And then you also asked respondents about how they feel about Congress as an institution.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		How did it do?
unidentified		Congress does not do very well with anybody.
		There are some partisan differences, but in general, less than 10% say they have a lot, a great deal of confidence in Congress, regardless of their party identification.
		Democrats and independents were more likely to say they have no confidence in Congress at all.
		But in general, people sort of guaranteed in the middle, and the middle is only some confidence.
		That has not been the Congress has not had a lot of confidence in quite a number of years.
		We also asked about the executive branch, and the partisan differences were bigger.
		Republicans had more confidence in the White House than Democrats, not surprisingly, but they also weren't over, excuse me, not overwhelmingly confident in the executive branch either.
		Only about 30% said they had a lot of confidence in the executive branch.
		So the public doesn't have a huge amount of confidence in the three branches of government right now.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And in addition to the three branches of government, you also asked how people are viewing the Republican and Democratic parties.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What did the polling find there?
unidentified		We found that the Republicans were much more positive about their party than the Democrats are.
		91% of, excuse me, 84% of Republicans said they had a positive view of the Republican Party.
		But only 67%, you know, still a majority, but still not an overwhelming majority of Democrats had a positive view of the Democratic Party.
		Both partisans had a negative view of the other side, which is not surprising and usually is pretty consistent all the time.
		We always have partisan differences on that question.
		But the Republicans are much more positive about their party than the Democrats are of theirs.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Mary, or I'm sorry, Marjorie, as I mentioned, a lot of outlets picking up talking about the findings of this new survey.
		When it comes to methodology, how many people did you talk with?
		And what was the political breakdown of the survey, just so people understand Who you were talking with to get these results?
unidentified		We talked to almost 1,300 people across the country.
		The survey was done by a portion of NORC called Amerispeak.
		It's a panel survey and about equally Republicans and Democrats.
		And so it's a non-part, a probability sample.
		So they're sampled over time.
		And they can do the survey either online or by phone, whichever they're more comfortable with.
		And they can do the survey in English or Spanish, again, whichever language they're more comfortable with.
		So we like to give people a lot of options when they're doing the survey.
		And we, and about 1,300 people is about a good sample.
		We have, they've been a margin of sampling error of about plus or minus four percentage points.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Marjorie Connolly is a senior fellow at the Associated Press Nork Center for Public Affairs Research.
		You can find the results of the survey online at nork.org as well as their other surveys and work.
		Marjorie, thank you so much for being with us this morning.
unidentified		Thank you.
		You have a good day.
		Bye.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We are taking your calls for the first hour of today's Washington Journal asking, who do you blame for the government shutdown?
		You can give us a call.
		The lines there on your screen.
		Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		Democrats, 202-748-8000.
		And Independents, 202-748-8002.
		We also have a line set aside.
		If you are a federal worker, you can give us a call at 202-748-8003.
		We will start with Mary, who is calling from Fort Washington.
		I believe it's Maryland on the line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Mary.
unidentified		Good morning, C-SPAN.
		Good morning.
		Yes, it's Fort Washington, Maryland.
		I don't know about the media speaking for the Democratic Party because this is not like just an ordinary shutdown.
		This is a people's shutdown.
		We, the people, call our representatives and senators and said, no, you cannot give in to the Republicans.
		And they don't trust them.
		They don't trust them to open their government up now and then negotiate.
		What has proven that the Republicans are faithful and truthful?
		The Trump administration has shut this country down since January.
		So the shutdown, to me, is a piece of cake, except for people not getting paid.
		It affects my sister.
		She's on furlough.
		But if she needs some finances, I got her back.
		And that's what's happening.
		People are helping each other during the shutdown.
		And like I said, it's not about pointing fingers at each.
		Republicans are refusing to negotiate.
		They have the House, the presidency, and the Senate, but they're making up lies daily, constant lies.
		Mike Johnson just looks like an idiot.
		And he's, I mean, does the Republican Party see the protests?
		These, to me, are people that are not going to be voting Republican next year.
		So I believe that the Democrats will take the House, the Senate, and the presidency because I don't think Donald Trump is fit enough to continue to be president.
		His toxicity is so bad that the Republicans are going to have to make up their mind.
		Are they going to support the Constitution and the people?
		Are they going to support this person who is unfit and who's shut this country down since January?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Mary in Maryland.
		Jeffrey is calling from Greensboro, North Carolina, the line for independence.
		Good morning, Jeffrey.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		Thank you for taking the call.
		And please let me get an opportunity to express this.
		It is tragic to say that we are experienced this in America.
		And it's very sad and disturbing that our values or constitutional opinions that we have a right to disagree on terms of our politicians that get elected and this administration,
		and starting with Mr. Trump, that he is outright saying he's going to, with the shutdown, the Democratic division of people who work in federal jobs.
		All of these jobs are going to be cut for people and families that are depending on what they rightfully should have, the opportunity to still get paid.
		And with this government shutdown, it's just, you know, coming from the leader.
		A lot of things that he are, you know, insinuating is fault.
		And a lot of people will not speak up behind it.
		And it's very disturbing that we are in a time like this where it is really crushing the freedom that we once had.
		We may have our disagreements and opinions who was elected, but at least it didn't come to this deep where it is just definitely dividing us as people.
		But those rallies that was out there yesterday, there wasn't violence.
		There was no type of tear gas.
		There was no type of anti-Semitic type of against police.
		These are people that are really afraid and standing up to really make notice to in America, not just America, but worldwide.
		People are seeing how we are living in America.
		And supposed to be the example of everything that is democracy or a place where this is the opportunity for people to all be embraced and have opportunities.
		I don't see that.
		I don't see it whatsoever.
		And the accountability from the Republicans that are just going along with Mr. Trump reiterates.
		And no Congress whatsoever goes right to his death.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Jeffrey in North Carolina.
		Sal is calling from Brooklyn, New York, line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Sal.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		How are you?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Sal.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Do you well?
unidentified		Yeah, I'm talking about Trump.
		You know, whatever he's doing, he's going to destroy his whole party.
		When they stop voting again in Congress and Senators, people who voted for him, Republican people who voted for him, are going to lose their Medicare, a Medicaid.
		I'm not going to vote for Manny.
		All Republican people.
		They're going to lose everything.
		He's just like his father.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Sal in New York.
		It was last week on Tuesday during a news conference that House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about his plan for resolving the budget impasse.
		Here's a clip from that press conference.
unidentified		You've been doing this every single day, coming up here trying to pressure Senate Democrats.
		They've been not budgeting.
		They've blocked this bill time and time again.
		So at what point, for the good of the country, do you need to change your strategy to try to wish you a deal with that?
mike johnson ▲ ● ▼		It's a great question.
		Manu asks, why don't I change my strategy?
		I don't have any strategy, Manu.
		I'm doing the right thing, the clearly obvious thing, the traditional thing.
		That's exactly what Chuck Schumer voted for in March of this year and gave impassioned speeches was the right and only thing.
		I don't have anything to negotiate.
		I'll say this again to everyone here.
		We did not load up the temporary funding bill with any Republican priorities or partisan priorities at all.
		I don't have anything that I can take off of that document to make it more palatable for them.
		So all I am able to do is come to this microphone every day, look right into the camera and plead with the American people, as Chairwoman said, to call your Senate Democrats and ask them to do the right thing.
		We're not playing games.
		They're playing a game.
		We're not.
		The strategy is to do the right and obvious thing and keep the government moving for the people.
unidentified		Why don't we move closer to their position?
mike johnson ▲ ● ▼		Their position is this, Manu.
		Their position is they want to spend $1.5 trillion in your tax dollars to fund nonsense overseas.
		They want to give $200 billion to illegal aliens.
		We are not going to do that.
		We're not going to do it.
		The American people don't want us to do it.
		And they're using this for partisan political purposes to give themselves cover.
		They don't want the Marxists to kick.
		Chuck Schumer doesn't want to get a Marxist candidate challenge, AOC or someone else.
		Momdami is probably going to be the, sadly, shockingly, the mayor of New York City.
		Marxism is on the rise in them.
		Hey, this is not your father's Democratic Party, everybody, okay?
		They're turning into communists openly.
		And so Chuck Schumer does not fashion himself as a communist just yet.
		So he's got to show a fight to these people.
		That's what this is about.
		I'm not playing his game, Manu.
		I cannot go in and say, oh, gee, Chuck, what can I offer you?
		You know what?
		Maybe we'll just send $10 billion overseas to LGBTQ plus initiatives in the Horn of Africa or Malaysia or wherever you want to do that.
		No, no.
unidentified		We're not wasting taxpayers' dollars.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Alex is calling from Delaware on the line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Alex.
		Who do you blame for the government shutdown?
unidentified		And so, Chuck Schumer.
		Everybody, it's obvious that the Democrats shut it down.
		They need 60 votes in the Senate.
		Just about all but one Republican has voted yes.
		And all the Democrats except three have voted no.
		So it's telling you right there, Nan, that the Democrats shut it down.
		I don't know why everybody's got to be wondering who did this and who didn't.
		And another thing is the Republicans, they have to have their own protest out there with millions of people against the Democrats' policies.
		I don't know why they ain't doing that.
		They should be doing this.
		That's enough I've got to say.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Alex in Delaware.
		Eddie is calling from Georgia, the line for independence.
		Good morning, Eddie.
		Did we lose Eddie?
		Nope, I'm sorry.
		There he is.
		Good morning, Eddie.
unidentified		I'm here.
unidentified		You hear me?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Yes, go ahead, Eddie.
unidentified		Yes.
		It's just a mess.
		The Republicans, like they say, when they first got in there, we know, we already knew that nothing is going to get passed.
		It's always going to be fighting against each other.
		We know the Republicans shut this down.
		But I mean, this stuff's still booming.
		You know, a government shutdown, it's just something somebody, just the Republicans and the Democrats to fuss about.
		You know.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		So, Eddie, what would you like to see the two sides do?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		How would you like this government shutdown to end?
unidentified		They need to just get back to the table, stop lying with each other, stop telling lies, and be grown men that we put in in Washington to do the job.
		Don't take everything from the poor people.
		I mean, and give everything to the rich.
		That's wrong.
		Mike Johnson just came over there and told all those lies about, no, we ain't going to give money to, but Trump just gave $20 to $30 billion to another country with our money needs to stay here.
		You know, when he making money, oh, nobody ain't got nothing to say.
		The Republicans ain't got nothing to say when Trump out there making money.
		Trump is just got, I mean, Trump just got them all blindsided.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Eddie in Georgia.
		Paul is calling from Plantation Florida on the line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Paul.
		Who do you blame for the government shutdown?
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		You know, I'm really disappointed that you and other people have not clearly stated to the American people that this shutdown is a strategy by the Democrats to bypass regular order.
		What is regular order?
		Regular order is when bills come to the floor of Congress, they've been debated in committees, and the committees send the bills to the floor.
		But the Democrats lost the last election.
		So what they're finding is that the majority votes in the committees are Republican.
		And they're bypassing the results of the election.
		So it is clearly, there is no debate that this is a way to bypass regular order.
		Regular order is in the Constitution of the United States, okay?
		So there is no debate as to who is to blame for this.
		Now, I would like to say something else, too.
		The favorite tool of the Democrat Party and the press is to make people crazy over Medicare and Medicaid.
		Let me just tell you this, okay?
		I am a Republican.
		And the reason you don't have to worry about Medicare and Medicaid is people like me, yes, a Republican.
		Because I'm telling you right now, and the people listening to me, if the Republican Party does a single thing to deny or cut benefits to the people I hear calling into this program, me as a donor, and I am on donor list for the Republican Party, if they do a single thing to cut your benefits, not only will they not get my vote, they'll lose my money.
		So the people who are going crazy, just think about this, okay?
		Over the last 50 years, it's always been the same argument.
		The Republicans don't like Medicare.
		They might cut it, blah, blah, blah.
		Let me see, how many opportunities have the Republicans have had to cut Medicare, to cut Medicaid?
		Did they do it?
		What are you so worried about?
		It's never happened and it never will happen.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Paul in Florida.
		Roy is calling from North Carolina on the line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Roy.
unidentified		Thank you so much.
		Well, of course, I blame the Republicans party, but the thing I blame, I don't hear one word about in the mainstream media, and I hear it mentioned a couple of times on C-SPAN, is our military expenditures is 16% of our total $7.2 trillion budget, and that's not including the VA.
		The U.S. Department of Defense is pushing $900 billion now, I believe they want for it.
		It just goes up every year.
		There's no war or anything.
		And then the VA has doubled in just the past few years.
		Everybody's been very generous with the VA.
		It's something like $340 billion.
		It was just like $160, not too many years ago.
		So that's like just for military, that's $1.24 trillion a year.
		I think we're something like 30%, 37%.
		I've been looking this up, there's different figures of the total world expenditures.
		That's us, and we're 4% of the world's population.
		That's nine times what we should be.
		And there's no discussion about, you know, it wouldn't take a meat axe to it or a chainsaw like they're doing everything else like U.S.A. And oh, by the way, Mike Johnson, that clip you played a little while ago, that was great about the fear-mongering they're doing.
		That is the worst thing.
		Him talking about billions of dollars going to trans something in Africa and the U.S. aid that was right there at the ports they just destroyed.
		The professionals that are being fired willy-nilly.
		This just has to be so destructive on the future.
		They're making a big mess.
		Someone's going to have to clean up this mess.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Roy in North Carolina.
		Roy bringing up a clip of Speaker Mike Johnson that we played when he spoke to reporters last week.
		The Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, also speaking to members of the press last week.
		Here is a clip of him alongside House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		So Hakeem and I just had another really good meeting, and we're on the same page.
		The American people are in a crisis in health care, and we are fighting for them.
		We are on their side.
		The American people are seeing that we are on their side, doing everything we can to get the Republicans to negotiate and address this crisis.
		And it is devastating.
		People every day are getting notices from their insurance companies in their states.
		The average American on ACA could see their costs double, even triple.
		And that's in red states, that's in blue states, that's in every state.
		I just talked about a person in the North Country, Stefanik's district, who now pays $2,800 for health care.
		They'll have to pay $20,000.
		What is a family going to do when they see that to have health care, to keep their health care insurance, they got to come up with $20,000?
unidentified		What do they do?
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		What do they tell their children that they can't go to the doctors they've been seeing?
		What do they do if someone has cancer and is cut off from treatment?
		What do they do if their hospital closes and another hospital's 100 miles away and they can't get to their doctors?
		So the American people are facing one of the most devastating crises they have faced in terms of cost.
		And we still have not heard crickets out of any negotiation with Johnson or with Thune.
		The Republicans are on the defensive.
		They keep changing their stories and changing their arguments.
		But we are on the side of the American people.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
		This is a headline from CNBC.
		Democrats' distrust of Trump keeps them from forming gangs to negotiate government shutdown.
		It says that Capitol Hill remains locked in a stalemate as the government shutdown trudges into a third week, and Democrats say their lack of trust in President Trump is a major obstacle to negotiations.
		It says in past legislative disputes, bipartisan coalitions known as gangs have formed to break log jams.
		The groups have helped lay out early framework for major deals before getting buy-in from leadership and other lawmakers.
		In the current funding lapse, which is already longer than most previous government shutdowns, those gangs are nowhere to be found.
		It says that there have been some bipartisan talks around Democrats' key demand, an extension of enhanced premium credits for the Affordable Care Act health insurance premiums, which are set to expire at the end of the year.
		But no specific group has convened to hash out those details or, more broadly, negotiate an end to the shutdown.
		Back to your calls asking, who do you blame for the government shutdown?
		Let's hear from Marjorie, who's calling from Monterey, California, on the line for federal workers.
		Good morning, Marjorie.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		I just want to give everybody the real, what's really going on with federal employees, okay?
		First of all, I'm talking about the 800 number.
		I work for Social Security Administration.
		The 800 number that you call every day, or whoever calls when they need some help, your local offices, do you know that they're having to do a food drive within our offices because people are food insecure?
		We're going on our third week.
		We're going on our second paycheck.
		No pay.
		We're working with no pay.
		That's the reality of it, people.
		So whoever's to blame, because we're nonpartisan, we're there for the American people.
		It is a mute point.
		Only because the reality of it is we've got people that are so they don't know how they're going to make their bills.
		They don't know how they're going to feed their families.
		This is the reality of it.
		And it's not something you would expect as a federal employee.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Margie, how long have you been a federal employee?
unidentified		Five years.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		So this is your first shutdown, or were you there for the 2019?
unidentified		I was just coming in when the 2019 kicked in.
		I was just going through training, so I really didn't feel it.
		But I'm feeling this one.
		I can guarantee you that.
		Another thing that I think is just unbelievable, we were told this was going to happen.
		We were told back in February when we received one of the emails from OPM or HR.
		And in the third paragraph, it says in the last sentence, if you are not loyal to the administration, you will be considered untrustworthy and will be investigated to the fullest extent, including separation.
		Now, now we're talking about leaning towards Democratic people.
		We are nonpartisan in the federal government as far as employees go.
		We don't do that.
		We don't gear towards Republican or Democrat.
		We are there for the American people.
		And it's just, you know, when we receive these emails daily, it's a very tumultuous environment.
		But we're trying to keep our head up.
		We're trying to serve the people as best we can.
		It's a different kind of pride when you work for the federal government and you're working for the American people.
		But the reality of it is, folks, we're not getting paid.
		We're food insecure.
		We don't know how we're going to make our bills.
		But if this is regarding health insurance for Americans, and if this is regarding making sure people's insurance premiums are not going to go up, I wouldn't have believed it until my cousin brought over his letter that said $350 a month to $1,000 a month in January.
		If I wouldn't have seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Margie, are you someone who takes calls from people when they call into the Social Security hotline?
unidentified		I absolutely do.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		How many calls do you talk?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		How many people do you talk within a day?
unidentified		Probably about 60, 60 different calls a day.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What would happen if you weren't taking those calls?
unidentified		Oh, boy.
		Wow.
		What a disaster.
		The whole times would get triple.
		I mean, people would be as, I don't know who would take care of them.
		I mean, you want somebody experienced on that phone.
		You want somebody who knows what they're doing that can guide you in the proper direction.
		I think that it would be tumultuous.
		It would be bad for the field offices or your local offices.
		It would be whole times would be just incredible.
		You would never get through.
		You'd never get through.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Margie in California talking about her experience as a federal worker during this government shutdown, which is now entering day 19.
		Let's hear from Gina, who is calling from Pikayun, Mississippi, on the line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Gina.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Wow.
		It's just so unbelievable that, first of all, the Democrats that call in on this show that have allowed themselves to be so brainwashed by all the BS lies that are told on this show, facts that are not even correct, like that guy that just called in about the military facts.
		Those facts are not even true.
		They are lies.
		Do you people realize that most of the stuff you hear on this show are lies?
		Do you believe that young people in our country who do not cannot afford insurance or health care, you are voting and you want your party to give it health care to illegals?
		Do you know how absurd that is?
		That is what your party wants Republicans to do, to give the health care to illegals over our own people in this country.
		I'm not talking about people who qualify for Medicaid.
		No, there are millions of people in this country who cannot afford insurance, but don't qualify for Medicaid.
		What about those people?
		Do you people?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Gina in Mississippi.
		Roy in California is calling on the line for federal workers.
		Good morning, Roy.
unidentified		Good morning.
		The issue right now is that Republicans are being disingenuous.
		Okay.
		I work for the National Cemetery Administration, where we bury veterans and their dependents.
		That's still ongoing.
		Okay.
		But back to the shutdown.
		The disingenuousness is this.
		In March, they passed a continuing resolution that was negotiated with Chuck Schumer in the Senate.
		Then in July, they passed the great big beautiful bill, which eviscerated all the stuff for the Affordable Care Act, which is going to make all the premiums rise for health care.
		And that's what they're trying to negotiate.
		Johnson is being disingenuous when he says, oh, they want to send money overseas for trans.
		Well, that's false.
		If we're concerned about sending money overseas, we need to know why we're sending $40 billion overseas to Argentina because Trump says he likes, likes, likes the president of Argentina.
		At the same time, they're undercutting the farmers here with the soy product.
		You know, it makes no sense.
		The entire Republican Party being disingenuous.
		And to the ladies that just call from wherever complaining about the lies.
		Yes, there are lies coming from your Trump Liken party.
		You have a nice day.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Right.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		You're calling on the line for federal workers, and you said that you work for the Cemetery Association or the Cemetery.
unidentified		Are you part of the VA?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Are you what's your status right now?
		Are you furloughed or are you still working?
unidentified		No, we're working because we're essentially with they can't store bodies, you know, especially when people have contracted with funeral homes, which are private entities.
		They would have to store the bodies.
		Now, cremated remains.
		That's a different story.
		But yes, it's an ongoing operation.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And how are you and your coworkers there holding up through the shutdown, which is now on day 19?
unidentified		We go to work.
unidentified		We go to work.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Roy, how long have you worked there?
unidentified		Eight years.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Eight years.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		So you were there during the last shutdown as well?
unidentified		Yes, we got paid.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Is this one, does it feel different or about the same?
unidentified		Well, you know, the anxiety is because you never know.
		And with the current administration, you know, the way they're eliminating others because, you know, it's how they feel.
		You know.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Roy in California, a federal worker calling to talk about his experience.
		Stephen is calling from Lexington, Kentucky, on the line for independence.
		Good morning, Stephen.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, and happy Sunday to everyone.
		And thank you for letting me speak your opinion.
		I guess the simple answer is Trump, he's to blame for this.
		I mean, honestly, he's in charge.
		All those Republicans just are allegiance to the guy without even questioning what the topic is.
		So yeah, everything is to blame for him between the shutdown, between families being pulled apart.
		Yeah, anything you can point out going on right now is definitely his problem.
		And yeah, the Republicans just lie to people's faces, which is wild.
		Like everyone else is saying, we just sent billions of dollars to Argentina to a country that has nothing to do with us, really.
		We're just in them a favor.
		And so we are over here suffering.
		People aren't getting paid.
		People don't get their Medicaid.
		Oh, and let's go back in history for a second.
		Two years ago, Texas was shipping migrants to blue cities.
		Do you guys remember that?
		You know, you guys were shipping people illegally to blue cities.
		Now those same states are sending troops, federal troops to the same city that they shipped people to.
		Like it was all by design.
		Abbott sent people there, like to Chicago, to New York.
		This is all by design.
		Republicans, they love small government, less government.
		That's what they're doing right now.
		It's part of the playbook.
		So yeah, they just lie to people's faces.
		And essentially, it's all going down the toilet at this point.
		I have no faith that we can ever come back from this because when it goes the other way with Democrats, everyone's just going to go to jail that has been allegiant to Trump.
		It's essentially going to be chaotic, even worse, the other way, because the pendulum always swings.
		So everybody that's allegiance to Trump right now is going to get arrested without a doubt.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Stephen in Kentucky.
		Stephen said that he believes that the blame should fall on President Trump, according to a new AP Nork polling that was done from October 9th through the 13th that found that 58% of respondents say President Trump is to blame.
		58% also said congressional Republicans.
		And 54% said congressional Democrats.
		Those reflect the overall thoughts of respondents.
		It was last week that President Trump was asked about what he could do to resolve the shutdown.
		Here's that clip.
unidentified		Do you think we can see your deal-making skills applied to the government shutdown anytime soon?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Well, look, I mean, all we want to do is just extend.
		We don't want anything.
		We just want to extend, live with the deal that they had.
		They want to spend $1.5 trillion on illegal immigrants, and they want to destroy health care for everyone else.
		And it's crazy.
		It's crazy.
		People that are here illegally, they want to spend $1.5 trillion.
		So we're just not going to do it.
		No, we have to take care of our health care.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		About 20 minutes left in this first hour of this morning's Washington Journal.
		We're asking you, who do you blame for the government shutdown?
		Let's hear from Sue, who's calling from Warren, Michigan, on the line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Sue.
unidentified		Yeah, hi.
		Oh, we definitely blame Trump.
		Trump and his Republican Party there that do anything he says, no matter how illegal it is.
		It's embarrassing.
		I mean, those people, the Republicans who are supposed to be working this out, they're all on vacation.
		We're paying them to be on vacation and not meet with the Democrats.
		And as far as the Democrats, I'm a little nervous.
		But as far as the Democrats paying for illegals health care, that is a lie.
		It is illegal to do that.
		There would be a stop on that immediately.
		So Trump and the rest of the Republicans are lying about that.
		And his MAGA people are listening to that.
		They think it's true, and it's not true.
		And somebody needs to come out and have some type of a debate and show that this is not true.
		Democrats are not asking to pay for illegals.
		They're asking to pay for people under Medicaid and to stop this increase in the health care.
		Okay, so that's what they're doing.
		And Republicans keep lying about it.
		They keep saying that Democrats are trying to pay for illegal immigrants health care.
		They are not doing that.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		I got your point, Sue.
		We'll go to Eugene in Orange Park, Florida, on the line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Eugene.
unidentified		I don't understand why somebody in the main media, including your first, yourself, how many Republican senators are there?
unidentified		Do you know?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		How many are there, Eugene?
unidentified		How many Republican senators are there?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		How many, Eugene?
unidentified		There's 53 Republicans, 47 or 48 Democrats, senators.
unidentified		Okay.
wayne paul ▲ ● ▼		If all 53 Republican senators voted to keep the damn government open, who's to blame then, you idiot?
unidentified		It all voted to keep it open, regardless.
unidentified		Who's the idiot here?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Eugene in Florida.
		Michael is calling from Tyrone at New York on the line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Michael.
unidentified		Hey, good morning, everybody.
		It's all about the blame game here on your topic.
		And it's interesting because I have a lot of Republican colleagues, a lot of friends that are Republicans, and a lot of friends that are Democrats.
		And there's one common thing that's happening now that I see in discussion with my Republican friends.
		They're starting to realize that they're being lied to.
		Okay?
		I mean, Mr. Johnson gets on TV and he says that we're giving, we're going to fund the health care for illegal immigrants.
		The Democrats have spelled it right out in writing.
		I mean, we got congresswomen from Hawaii and everything that are getting on, and these are just awesome people.
		When you hear them speak, when you hear these people speak, you can tell how genuine they are.
		And when it seems to me like you see people like Mike Johnson get up on the pulpit and Mr. Scalese get up on the pulpit, there's a lot of hatred coming out of their voices.
		And this is all driven by, it's not just by Trump himself.
		I'm going to tell you who it's driven by.
		And everybody needs to get a grip on this.
		Is it the billionaires in our country and the people that are very extremely wealthy that fund all this campaign and CPACs and what have you to where they funnel the money through?
		There's a piece of legislation called Citizens United.
		Read up on that.
		It gives them the same alienable rights as all of our Americans.
		It gives corporations and people the same alienable rights.
		So the funding that comes out of their interest goes to their interest when the lobbyists go after it.
		But it's the billionaires and the very wealthy that are in control of our government right now.
		And these people that are up there, like Trump, he's being told what to do.
		Okay?
		Hey, here's my message.
		And I'll leave you with this.
		I want the billionaires and there's very wealthy people that are up there that are going to watch a whole ton of people across the spectrum suffer of not having health insurance and die.
		People are going to die from this if they don't get this thing fixed and get it funded.
		Tell those billionaires, stop being so darn greedy, okay, and keep things civil in government.
		Do not interfere with the will of the people.
		And that's what they're doing.
		Okay?
		Leave our government officials alone.
		Don't threaten them.
		Don't use all this tactics of you're not going to get funding for your reelection if you don't do what we want.
		That's just what's happening, folks.
		It's the billionaire class and the very extremely wealthy taking our country over right now.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Michael in New York.
		Tim is calling from New York, Line for Independence.
		Good morning, Tim.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I don't know about the American people.
		It seems they're fighting over scraps.
		They should go to Europe and see they can go into a hospital.
		They can have cancer.
		They can get treated and then get charged to dying.
		And, you know, some of these programs started back after World War II.
		And for us to be fighting over, you know, welfare benefits and Medicaid is just, I think, obscene.
		Trump has a mental problem.
		He's been diagnosed by many psychiatrists as having narcissistic tendencies, so he doesn't care if people die in the streets and his right-wing cadre is just going to follow him right off the cliff.
		It's been a transfer of wealth in this country for the past 40 years with $50 trillion going to the top 1%, and people wonder why they don't have anything.
		I would say that a good solution to the problem, if there is one, is to have the Republicans and Democrats, because, of course, the media is a big part of this problem.
		As that woman who recently called said, she has a monopoly on the truth because she listens to Fox News.
		You should have somebody from each side actually come on C-SPAN and debate this bill so that they can challenge each other rather than just stand from their individual podiums with their individual microphones and spout whatever benefits them most because it is law that immigrants are not allowed to get benefits.
		What they get is from individual states if the states want to give them benefits like California can do it.
		But the federal government does not give them any Social Security or medical benefits or anything.
		It's against the law.
		So that's, I guess, is as much as I can say right now.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Tim in New York, Brad, calling from Clear Fork, West Virginia, on the line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Brad.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
		Looks like you're having a good day there with all these politicianal people, you could say, running the country down.
		I was a Democrat before the election, and I had considered changing multiple times.
		And when Hussein Jeffrey, that's what I call him, Hussein, and Schumer and Crockett and Cortez, Cortez, she's running everybody down, calling names.
		She looks like Mr. Redd on TV that used to be the horse when she smiles.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		This is a headline from The Hill.
		GOP rep says energy is being wasted on assigning blame during shutdown instead of finding a solution.
		It says that Republican Representative Kevin Kiley of California said Thursday that members of Congress are exerting too much energy dishing out blame for the ongoing government shutdown instead of ending it.
		Quote, all of the energy is going toward assigning blame to one side or the other when it should be going toward trying to find a solution that will get us out of this impasse.
		Kylie told News Nation's Blake Berman on The Hill.
		News Nation is the Hill's sister company.
		It also says that the shutdown, which began October 1st, is tied for the fourth longest in U.S. history.
		It goes on to talk about the ACA tax subsidies, which are behind it.
		It also says Kylie, who said he is, quote, extremely concerned about the impending increase in premiums, expressed support for a quote, temporary relief for those who would be impacted.
		According to KFF, more than 24 million Americans are enrolled in the ACA marketplace, 92% of whom received ACA credit subsidies this year.
		It says that both sides have pointed fingers at each other, but according to a poll released Thursday by the Associated Press Norwick Center for Public Research, roughly three-quarters of Americans surveyed said Republicans, Democrats, and President Trump deserve either a moderate or great deal of blame for the shutdown.
		It was last week that Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke on social media, putting the blame squarely on Republicans for the shutdown.
elizabeth warren ▲ ● ▼		So we're all starting to hear from the people who will be affected by the Republican health care cuts.
		It will make basic health care unaffordable.
		We just moved into our first home, and now I'm concerned we won't be able to afford basic services like food, electricity, and heating.
unidentified		Yeah, Jason, you got it right.
elizabeth warren ▲ ● ▼		The Republicans would rather shut down government than make sure that your health care costs don't go through the roof.
unidentified		That's what this fight is all about.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We're taking calls asking you, who do you blame for the government shutdown?
		Next week is Jerry Colling from Wisconsin on the line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Jerry.
unidentified		Hi.
		I do blame the Republicans, but mostly Trump.
		He's so jealous about the ACA because it's Obama that he could care less what it does to the American people.
		He's willing to let the whole health care system of our country just fail, which means hospitals will fail.
		They can't afford to take care of people that have no insurance, and that's what will happen.
		And when Mike Johnson gets up and says what he said in the clip you showed, they're all lies.
		We do not give health care, free health care to illegal aliens.
		He knows it.
		But unfortunately, the Republicans can't seem to get that in their heads because they just watch Fox News or whatever.
		I wish there was a way that we could prove that they do not get that.
		And we're not sending millions overseas to Africa for trans studies.
		We just don't.
		In fact, illegal aliens who work pay social security, they pay taxes, but they'll never get the benefit of that.
		We get the benefit of that.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Jerry in Wisconsin.
		Debbie is calling from Pennsylvania on the line for independence.
		Good morning, Debbie.
unidentified		Good morning, Tammy.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		Yeah, from my perspective, I blame it on the Democrats, and that's because during the last four years, they're the ones that got us $37 trillion in debt and raised the deficit.
		And we're all having to pay for the sins of the Democrats the last four years.
		Also, with the 12 appropriation bills that Mike Johnson's been talking about, eight of those are from the Democrats from last year under Biden.
		Chuck Schumer had from June up to 271 or 275 days to get that done.
		And that's why we almost had the government shutdown back at Christmastime last year.
		And then it went to extend till March this year.
		And we're still going through those eight.
		And then the other four new ones that the Republicans came up with.
		So I definitely also believe that the Democrats purposely have us in a shutdown.
		I don't believe it's for their fighting for the insurance.
		I believe it's because they knew by shutting down the government that it would defund the police, the National Guard, the ICE, ATF, and DEA, and those people would walk away from their jobs because of not getting paid.
		And therefore, Trump would have no help to get the legal immigrants and non-criminal and criminal.
		And I think that's the purpose of the government shutdown as far as the Democrats go.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Debbie in Pennsylvania.
		Timothy is calling from Rockhill, South Carolina.
		Line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Timothy.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		Let's get the first thing squared away.
		Back in November, we elected Donald J. Trump as president.
		Okay.
wayne paul ▲ ● ▼		Number two, the last 13 times, Democrats have voted to keep the government open so that they can sit down and talk.
		Number three, the Republicans only have 53 Republicans.
		It takes 60 to get past filibuster.
unidentified		So that's just the way it is.
		Democrats in this country is holding the country hostage.
		Do what he's supposed to do like he did it the last 13 times.
		Open up the government, sit down and negotiate, and then stop being babies.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Timothy in South Carolina.
		James is calling from Burbank, California, on the line for Democrats.
		Hi, James.
unidentified		Hello, I'm James from California.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, James.
		Go ahead.
		You're on the air.
unidentified		Okay, well, I'm not a fan of Trump's in any way whatsoever.
		And I blame the Johnson and the Republicans for the shutdown.
		I can see no other reason to blame anybody else.
		And I think the dyes that Trump uses on his hair, I think, has affected his brain.
		And so I just say thank you for listening to me.
		And I used to be a Republican, and when Republicans let Reagan keep going, even though he had no memory, that's when I left him.
		So thank you for listening.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was James in California.
		Elaine is calling from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the line for federal workers.
		Good morning, Elaine.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'm calling because my grandparents, my great-grandparents, and my parents were born in South Carolina, and they moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for better opportunities.
		We talk about immigration.
		However, my parents were born here, and they were not allowed to vote hardly.
		It was difficult and dangerous.
		They came up north for better opportunities and their future children.
		So it's not only immigrants that they're trying to withhold from opportunities.
		My parents were not allowed to even vote.
		So they came up here to do better.
		And now look at all the things that have happened that they have worked hard for and helped their children have better opportunities.
		So it's not just immigrants.
		They did not want black people to continue to grow in a positive way.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Are you a federal worker?
unidentified		Sorry.
		I am a retired federal worker.
		And I'm so glad that I'm so sorry for the federal employees that are subjected to the things that they are subjected to.
		They work very hard.
		It's an honest living.
		They have to pass tests to get these jobs.
		No one gives it to them.
		Most of us were, we were never, most of us were not appointed.
		And I'm just so surprised that all the legal things that have put in place are now being destroyed and not working.
		I believed in the Supreme Court.
		And I thought if things didn't work in the lower courts, it would eventually get to the top and someone would do the right thing.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Elaine in Pennsylvania.
		Kay is calling, or I'm sorry, Ray is calling from Atlanta, Georgia, on the line for independence.
		Good morning, Ray.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yes, I'm an independent.
		I don't like Republicans or Democrats.
		I'm a free thinker.
		Gentlemen, everyone who keeps calling says they have 53 senators.
		They need more votes.
		Then you negotiate.
		Period.
		What happened to the negotiator-in-chief?
		What happened to the deal maker, person that solves all of these wars?
		This is just a 1960s strategy.
		Giving someone somebody to look down on.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Look up the quote from LBJ, What You Can Do If You Give Sorry, that looks like we lost our caller, and that was our last caller for this first hour of Washington Journal.
		Later this morning on the program, International Crisis Group U.S. Program, Senior Advisor Brian Finukan discusses recent Trump administration's actions using the U.S. military to combat the drug trade.
		But first, after the break, a conversation with two former members of Congress, Democrat Steve Israel of New York and Tom Davis of Virginia, on the impacts and political ramifications of the government shutdown.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		On the premiere of C-SPAN Ceasefire, Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Rahm Emanuel reflected on their unexpected friendship and found common ground on one of the world's most pressing issues, Israel and Hamas.
		And I have no problem saying it.
		President Trump deserves credit here.
		Some of them I probably won't say that.
tim kaine ▲ ● ▼		I'm grateful for Rob speaking plainly about giving President Trump credit here.
unidentified		Today, governors from opposite ends of the political map come together from Deep Red Oklahoma to Solid Blue, Maryland.
unidentified		Democratic Governor Wes Moore and Republican Governor Kevin Stitt sit down with host Dasha Burns.
dasha burns ▲ ● ▼		Welcome to Ceasefire, where we seek to bridge the divide in American politics.
unidentified		For a conversation, not a confrontation.
		Red meets blue.
		Great Plains meets Mid-Atlantic today at 7 p.m. Eastern and Pacific.
		Ceasefire, only on C-SPAN.
		This fall, C-SPAN invites you on a powerful journey through the stories that define a nation.
		From the halls of our nation's most iconic libraries comes America's Book Club, a bold, original series where ideas, history, and democracy meet.
		Hosted by renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein, each week features in-depth conversations with the thinkers shaping our national story.
		Among this season's remarkable guests, John Grisham, master storyteller of the American justice system.
		Justice Amy Coney Barrett, exploring the Constitution, the court, and the role of law in American life.
		Famed chef and global relief entrepreneur Jose Andres, reimagining food.
		Henry Louis Gates, chronicler of race, identity, and the American experience.
		The books, the voices, the places that preserve our past and spark the ideas that will shape our future.
		America's Book Club premiering this fall.
		Sundays at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Joining us now to discuss the impacts and political ramification of the government shutdown are two former U.S. Representatives, Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia, and Steve Israel, Democrat of New York.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Congressman, thank you so much for joining us on the program.
unidentified		Thanks for having us.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We will get to the shutdown, but first, I know you're familiar faces probably to our audience, but discuss your backgrounds and your service in Congress.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Congressman Davis, we'll start with you.
unidentified		Yeah, I was, well, I was the head of the county government out in Fairfax County, Virginia, chairman of the county board, so our equivalent of mayor before I came to Congress.
		I served seven terms.
		I was chairman of the Republican Campaign Committee for two cycles and chairman of the House Oversight Committee and was a very active legislator.
		And I left Congress undefeated and unindicted.
		Something I'm very proud of.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Congressman Israel.
unidentified		Yeah, I represented Long Island, New York for 16 years when I got to Congress.
		The one guy I feared the most was Tom Davis because he was the chairman of the Republican Committee and I was squarely in his crosshairs.
		I chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and I think I'm one of two members, former members, who, like Davis, left Congress undefeated and unindicted.
		I left Congress to open up a bookstore and write books.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		A point of pride these days, not being indicted.
		Well, let's talk a little bit about the shutdown that's happening right now.
		It's the 21st lapse in funding since 1980, those lapses resulting in 10 shutdowns.
		You both serving during those times.
		Did the shutdown of the government achieve anything politically and or benefit your party's Congressman Davis?
unidentified		Well, I represented a district with 50,000 federal employees.
		So shutting down the government, I'd vote whichever party wanted to open up the government, put my people back to work.
		I think it was different imperatives in those days than it is today.
		And just to take a second to sketch what's happened over the last 30 years, most of these members are from single-party districts, so they don't care about the voters at large.
		They care about their primary voters.
		Their primary voters all receive different information.
		Republicans get different information.
		They watch different news media.
		They get different feeds than Democrats.
		So there's a huge misunderstanding.
		And the end result is when members come to Congress, the minority party is no longer a minority shareholder in government.
		They're the opposition party.
		And to open the government, it takes Democratic votes in the Senate.
		The Republicans preside over the Senate, but it takes 60 votes in the Senate, and they need Democratic cooperation to do that.
		And they're not getting it right now because the Democrats have an argument that's my way or the highway.
		Republicans have used it.
		Traditionally, as you know, we continue government at usual spending limits and negotiate.
		I think the Democrats this time felt a lot of pressure from their base to stand up to Trump.
		And so the government shut down and we are where we are.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Congressman Israel, your reaction to what Congressman Davis just said about the pressure on Democrats.
unidentified		Well, it turns out there's pressure on everyone.
		There was an AP Nork poll out just a few days ago that said that exactly what has happened in past shutdowns, at a certain point, the electorate, the American people, blame everybody.
		It becomes a pox on all your houses.
		Shutdowns tend to benefit one party for a moment and then maybe benefit another.
		But what happens inevitably is voters begin to become disgusted with it.
		You know, it may animate the base of the Republican base or the Democratic base, but at a certain point, it begins to rebound.
		Voters just want it solved.
		They become tired of the posturing, and they don't want to vote based on who's winning the shutdown fight, but based on who's going to end the shutdown.
		I think that you're beginning to see that now, kind of the equalization of blame and responsibility.
		Also, members go home.
		Tom knows this very well.
		Tom, I don't know how many members that I had during shutdowns, candidates, incumbents, who would come back and say, look, I'm just catching hell at home.
		You've got to figure a way out of this.
		The leadership has to figure a way out of this.
		And that's when both parties begin to calculate differently.
		They begin focusing on a way out rather than digging very much deeper.
		Let me just say one other thing.
		You can credit one party or the other.
		You know who really gets hurt in this?
		The American people.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Congressman Israel, you just talked about that new AP NORC poll.
		Wanted to show a chart or the results of that polling.
		Who's responsible for the shutdown?
		This is the, it reflects the overall respondents.
		58%, said President Trump, 58% congressional Republicans, 54% congressional Democrats.
		When we look at blame, is it a potential political motivator, especially outside a party's base and among independents?
unidentified		Well, I don't, ultimately, a shutdown has no electoral consequences, never has and never will.
		They're basically forgotten.
		People in a midterm election or a congressional election, Tammy, are voting on the economy.
		They're voting on jobs.
		They're voting on paychecks.
		And they're also voting as a referendum on the president who happens to be there at the time.
		I can't think, and Tom is a political trivia expert, I cannot think of a shutdown that even registered in polls in the next congressional election.
		So they're magnified at the moment, but I don't think they have long-term electoral consequences.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Former Congressman Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia, and Steve Israel, Democrat of New York, are joining us for the next 35 minutes or so talking about the government shutdown and the impacts and political ramifications.
		If you have a question or comment for them, you can start calling in now the lines, Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
		If you are a federal worker, you can go ahead and give us a call at 202-748-8003.
		Congressman Davis, the current shutdown, Democrats want to extend these expiring ACA subsidies.
		That's at the heart of the matter.
		Republicans say they have to pass the clean spending bill before they're willing to negotiate.
		Is lack of trust a key problem here?
unidentified		Well, I think there is a lack of trust between the two parties, and I think it's accelerated over the last few years.
		And I think that's part of the problem here.
		But just remember this, traditionally before this, 13 times, Democrats have voted for what's called a clean CR, which the Republicans have offered this time.
		I think this time the Democratic base really does not like Donald Trump, and they want him to fight.
		The problem is federal government, employees are held hostage to this, and they're the hostages in this thing.
		Not just that they're not getting paid, but key services plans aren't being processed.
		And we're starting to see some squeaking from all sides at this point as the public becomes more fed up with this.
		I think maybe one party ends up playing its hand.
		might be winning at the beginning, but at this point this is going to affect turnout, people not showing up that might have shown up and the like instead of taking it out on one party or the other.
		And Steve's right.
		I've seen very little ramifications the following November to these shutdowns that generally happen the year before.
		There may be some ramifications in the races in Virginia this year, and particularly where you have Northern Virginia is a third of the state vote, a lot of federal employees and contractors that are affected by this.
		Remember, federal contractors also aren't getting paid during this period of time.
		And federal contracts, people are not allowed to work on those contracts in some cases.
		And so companies have to decide: do we keep our people on or do we let them go?
		Or do we just eat the costs?
		Depending how long this goes on, that's going to have ramifications.
		And I think that has ramifications in the Virginia governor's race and the statewide races there.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Congressman Israel, your colleague Tom Davis, just mentioning the CR.
		The current version would extend funding through November 21st if it was passed.
		If that were to happen, do you think anything would be different when it comes to negotiating those ACA subsidies?
unidentified		Look, the Republicans must negotiate and must extend those subsidies for people who are already paying premiums that are way too high or may lose their health insurance.
		If the Republicans go into next year without extending these subsidies, that will have an impact on the midterm elections.
		People will remember that their premiums increased by threefold or fourfold or that they lost their insurance when they go vote.
		They won't remember a shutdown.
		And so I think that the Republicans, at some point, they've got to negotiate this.
		Now, if you're a Democrat and you're in the minority and you just don't have the votes to get what you need, this is the only shot you have.
		The Republicans need your votes.
		And I don't know, I think Tom would agree with this.
		In every scenario, in my 16 years in Congress, when both parties had to strike a deal, when one party needed the other, then the final deal reflected the values and priorities of both parties.
		In this case, it is a value and priority of Democrats to extend those subsidies.
		It is the only leverage they have.
		And because their votes are needed to pass a clean CR or any other kind of CR, this is what's in their armaments.
		This is what they get to negotiate with.
		And they also know that the Republicans can't go much past January 1st without fixing this.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Congressman Davis, do you agree with what he just said?
unidentified		Well, I agree with what he's saying, but I would add that these subsidies don't expire until December 31.
		The group that put the end date on these subsidies were the Democrats who passed this extra money as part of the Recovery Act and put the expiration date, December 31.
		These were Democratic initiatives put in during COVID that were going to be temporary.
		Now they want to make them permanent.
		It's a trillion dollars.
		And let me make this point.
		We're spending more money today for interest on the national debt than we are for national defense.
		This is crazy.
		And nobody seems to care until all of a sudden it hits.
		I said it's fine until it isn't.
		And this is unsustainable.
		We know this doesn't end well.
		We just don't know when it doesn't end well.
		And nobody wants to stop the party.
		We saw this when the Republicans went through the tax cut extensions and the like.
		Basically extending national debt by making sure these tax cuts could continue.
		Now, I understand the reasons for that.
		They were in a hole not disagreeing with it, but somewhere, sometime, this is going to hit.
		And it's not going to be pretty.
		And this is just another example of, well, let's spend another trillion dollars and keep the voters happy so we can go on and get elected.
		You can't continue to do this.
		And I think some Republicans have dug in on this and have said, look, we'll negotiate this, but you don't get the whole boat.
		We may have to put some income limits on who's getting the subsidies and the like.
		This was Obamacare.
		This was supposed to be paid for itself, and it hasn't worked out that way.
		Medical costs have continued to rise.
		And this is a result of that.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We have callers waiting to talk with you both.
		Let's start with Betty's calling from Crossville, Tennessee, on the line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Betty.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		How are you?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We're doing well, Betty.
unidentified		I am agreeing with both Tom and Steve, but Tom cleaned up what Steve said, and I appreciate that, Mr. Tom.
		You are yeah, and I am agreeing.
		But there's one thing I want to say: I kind of blame President Biden and the Democrats for letting and allowing our borders to stay open for the illegals to come in, and then they won't want to fund their health care.
		A lot of those illegals should not have come across our borders.
		And some of them did need help.
		I think that is true.
		I was born in the U.S. My father, he fought in World War II for our freedom.
		And I want to thank you for allowing me to speak on this Republican line today.
		I don't blame Mr. Trump.
		I voted for him both times.
		I don't blame the Republicans.
		And I love Speaker Johnson.
		I love the Republican Party and our Senator, Marcia Blackburn.
		I've reached out to her a couple of times about a couple of issues, but I do blame the Biden administration.
		That's the final line.
		I can't go.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Betty and Congressman Israel.
		I saw you shaking your head.
		We'll give you a chance to respond first and then Congressman Davis.
unidentified		Betty, with all the respect in the world, and thank you for calling in early on a Sunday.
		What you said is just not true.
		It's not accurate.
		It's not true.
		It is being pumped out by some.
		And even Republican leaders have stopped using it.
		Many Republican leaders have stopped using that argument.
		The enhanced tax credits cannot be provided to people who came here illegally.
		They just can't.
		And they're not.
		This is just factually incorrect.
		If you cross the border illegally, if you came here illegally, you cannot get Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act benefits, and you certainly don't get those premiums.
		Those premiums are for hardworking, middle-class Americans and working Americans who now, for the first time, actually have health insurance as opposed to having to get sicker because the health insurance companies gouged them and they couldn't afford to pay premiums.
		They now have health insurance.
		They're working hard.
		They want to stay healthy.
		They want their families to stay healthy.
		And this protects them against skyrocketing premium increases by the health insurance companies.
		This is something that Republicans and Democrats agreed on.
		Now, if you want to repeal Obamacare, which the Republicans and President Trump have attempted to do dozens and dozens of times, go for it.
		Go do it.
		You don't like the Affordable Care Act?
		Repeal it.
		But they haven't been able to because they know it's so dicey.
		So instead, they find other aspects of it that they want to repeal or reduce.
		This is one of them.
		This has nothing to do with illegal immigration.
		We ought to protect our borders, strengthen our borders.
		I'm all for that.
		But we ought not fall into the trap, this conspiracy theory that the Democrats want to shut down the government in order to provide free health care to illegal immigrants.
		It's just not true.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Congressman Davis.
unidentified		Well, yeah, look, the Obamacare had many ramifications.
		Part of it was the premium support Steve's talking about.
		The other part of it was Medicaid expansion, and some states have elected to give people who are here undocumented Medicaid dollars.
		But I think the point here is what the Republicans are arguing is that hospitals take anybody who comes in there, including illegals.
		They don't ask questions in their reimbursements.
		And I think that's how they get to that question.
		But I think Steve is right fundamentally that in terms of the premium support, basically people that are here illegally are not eligible for those policies.
		I think I got that right, Steve.
		Yep.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Richard, who's calling from New Jersey on the line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Richard.
unidentified		Hi.
		Thank you both for having the intentional fortitude of being on C-SPAN.
		I have a question for Mr. Davis about something Mike Johnson said.
		But first, let me make a quick comment about the division in the country.
		When I look down from the 20,000-foot level, what I see is one party who basically wants to give away the farm.
		They want to, you know, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, you know, take care of the sick.
		Everybody should share, both here and abroad.
		I call that party the lovers.
		Okay.
		The other party, the leader of that party, gets up and says how much he hates half of America.
		The guts of that party were those people marching in Charlottesville.
		I call those people the haters.
		Now, both hate and love are very important human feelings and often can lead to very bad things and extremes.
		Now, the question about what Mike Johnson said.
		Mike Johnson called Democrats socialists and communists and Marxists.
		Funny thing, he didn't call them fascists.
		Now, my question to you, Mr. Davis, are you anti-fascist or are you pro-fascist or okay with fascism?
		Which is it?
		Which do you think?
		Well, I'm certainly not fascist.
		I believe in the Democratic system.
		I think my congressional and my whole electoral career, I've been that, but I don't divide us into lovers and haters.
		I think that there's love and hate in both parties because these are coalitions.
		And coalitions are pretty disparate sometimes when you get within that group.
		There are dissonant elements within those coalitions that make it up.
		And you have some people that feel very intensely sometimes, and sometimes that turns into hate.
		I mean, look at the Democratic candidate for Attorney General of Virginia, talking about wanting to put two bullets into the Speaker of the House, the Republican Speaker of the House, have their children die, piss on their graves.
		Those are the kind of language that's not a lover.
		I think you have it on both sides.
		And I think sometimes, depending on the information we receive, we tend to look at the world as black and white.
		Steve, I think we look at it as a little bit more gray because we've been there and fought the campaigns and recognized that sometimes it's not as clear-cut as it looks to people.
		This is a struggle for power.
		You do have different worldviews and philosophies that divide the parties.
		We say the parties are ideologically sorted today.
		But I think there's a lot of love in both parties, and there is some hate among people who take this stuff very, very seriously sometimes.
		Get intensified.
		Certainly, the people that shot Steve Scalia, Charlie Kirk, these weren't lovers.
		And so I think both parties would disown those kinds of people, but you can't always control them.
		Tammy, may I get on?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Please go ahead.
unidentified		First of all, thank you, Tom.
		I agree with you completely.
		Look, Tom Davis was the guy who wanted to defeat me when he chaired the National Republican Campaign Committee.
		And my job was to try and defeat Republicans.
		But at the end of the day, people like Tom Davis and myself and many others understood that the politics ended on Election Day.
		And then you had to govern.
		Then you had to work together.
		And there were quite a few, Democrats and Republicans. who managed to reconcile their differences and realize if each one could get, if each party could get something, we could move not further to the right, further to the left, but forward.
		The problem now is all the energy is on the further left and further right.
		You saw the No Kings rally over the weekend, 7 million people on the streets.
		You saw the Tea Party come to Congress and the Trump rallies.
		All the energy has drifted further to the left and further to the right where it happens to be louder.
		But I think, and I think Tom would agree with me, most Americans see themselves more towards the center.
		And they deserve more members of Congress who are willing to find some common ground and not follow the lead to those extremes.
		The problem is, as Tom said before, Congress is so gerrymandered now, and the nation seems to be kind of sorting itself out ideologically that most members of Congress don't fear being beaten by the opposite party, but by somebody on their left flank or right flank.
		And that's become very dangerous, and I think helps explain why we see the kind of vitriol that we do on both sides.
		Let me add to that.
		I think we put it like 85% of the House members, the only race that matters is the primary.
		November is what we call a constitutional formality.
		These districts are so sordid, and it's about to get worse.
		But with what California and California, they're asking California voters to be complicit in this now, in Texas, in other states where these legislatures are now gerrymandering, basically taking voters out of the equation in November.
		So no wonder members cater to their own party and more of the extremes of that party because that's where the energy factors tend to be in primary elections.
		And it's just driven us apart as a country and made compromise punishable instead of being rewarded.
		And politicians like to be rewarded and like to get re-elected.
		And I think that's fundamentally part of the problem.
		The other party goes, how do people get their information?
		Democrats get their information from completely different sources than Republicans.
		People are fed algorithms.
		The in-depth, where do you get in-depth news you can trust?
		Very difficult to sort that out.
		These are business models where newspapers and cable TV, they're all trying to stay alive.
		And so they have to feed their beast every day and feed a certain group to keep their eyeballs and their ears attuned.
		And it's been a very polarizing factor, and very few politicians can rise above that because November doesn't count.
		It's the primaries.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Stephanie is calling from South Carolina on the line for independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Stephanie.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yes, I just wanted to say that the shutdown wouldn't ordinarily affect my life.
		I'm retired.
		But now I'm having to open my home to relatives who are affected by the shutdown.
		That might not be a big thing to some people, but it's big to me because I'm retired.
		I'm a veteran.
		I have a disability.
		My home is set up for me.
		It's not a large house.
		But what are you going to do?
		You can't just throw children out into the street.
		Listen, the whole shutdown is about the Epstein files anyway.
		And I can't wait to read Virginia Duffray's memoir, which I've already pre-ordered.
		It comes out on Tuesday, and the title is Nobody's Girl.
		I hope she names names so we can get these pedophiles out of government.
		These people are compromised.
		They can't govern because they're compromised.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Congressman Davis talking about a completely different issue.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What is pulling it down?
unidentified		Look, there has been some media coverage that Johnson will not swear in the new member from Arizona because that would get 218 votes on a discharge petition to get the Epstein files out.
		But that's not the reason government shut down.
		Government shut down because I think as Representative Israel said, the only leverage the Democrats feel they have at this point is to shut the government down to get that discussion on extending health care costs.
		The irony in this is that the federal employee unions, who traditionally are for clean resolutions and keeping the government open, are complicit with this.
		They basically said, oh, we care more about health care than keeping the government open right now.
		We'll see how long this goes.
		You can close the government for a few days and a week and basically nobody feels it, but when it goes on for lengths of time, a lot of unintended consequences take place.
		And the federal workers have already been under assault over the last few weeks.
		They've been cut significantly in terms of their jobs.
		We had a lot of early retirements.
		And getting people to come and work for the federal government, we want the best and the brightest.
		We want good people.
		Who's going to work for the federal government if that's the way you're treated?
		And I think you have to worry long term about a bureaucracy that's functioning smoothly with competent people, whether it's cancer research, whether it's ICE agents, whether it's scientists, whatever.
		And I think the federal workforce takes a blow through all this.
		And, you know, shutting, I never would vote to shut the government down lightly, but I had 50,000 federal employees I represented.
		But I think at this point, the parties, and I blame the Democrats more because they're the ones who voted for clean resolutions 13 straight times until Trump came in and now reversed their position.
		But there's blame, you can look at all sides of this.
		But I think there are going to be some unintended consequences coming out of this thing that hurt our efficiencies.
		And in a competitive world, in a dangerous world, what do you think our competitors around the world are looking at and our enemies around the world when they see this happen?
		It's just not a good look.
		And you rely on leaders to come to the table and work something out.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Congressman Israel, I'll give you a chance to respond to our caller, Stephanie and Congressman Davis.
unidentified		Yeah, well, I would just respond respectfully to Tom.
		Look, Democrats did vote for clean CRs.
		There were no overriding policy issues, imperatives, or criticalities that they needed to negotiate for.
		I will remind everyone that it was President Trump who was willing to shut down the federal government because of an extraneous issue at the time, and that is he wanted a border wall.
		And so he was willing to inject that policy debate into a shutdown.
		Now for the Democrats, making sure that people, that 4 million people don't lose their insurance immediately.
		Another 10 million people don't look at triple or quadruple premiums.
		That's their imperative.
		And for as long as Republicans need their votes, you bet they're going to fight for their values on those priorities and see if they can use that leverage to help the American people.
		President Trump tried to do it on a border wall.
		Steve, you're right.
		The parties have switched sides on this argument, basically.
		Yes.
		And I always like to say, if you don't have a high tolerance for hypocrisy, you probably don't belong in Congress.
		The biggest party on Capitol Hills around the country appears to be the Hypocrisy Party, right, Tom?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Marty, who's calling from Pleasington, California, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Marty.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yeah, I have a comment.
		First off, before I get to my comment, I'd like to say a couple things.
		One for Mr. Davis and Israel.
		You're right.
		From what I understand, there's only like 22 districts that are toss-up districts when it comes to Congress.
		Everything else is locked in.
		You're a Democrat, you're going to get in.
		You're a Republican to get in.
		So only 22.
		And that's ridiculous because we should have representation across the board.
		And for Mr. Israel, I hear what you're saying about no health care for illegals.
		However, in a debate, the presidential candidates were asked, would you want health care for illegal aliens?
		And every single one of them raised their hand.
		And as the party leader goes, which is the president, that's the way the party's going to go.
		So don't say that they don't want it because eventually that will happen.
		Now, here's my comment to both of you.
		The reason why there's shutdowns is because Congress has no skin in the game.
		If you're a federal employee, you're not going to get paid.
		You'll get paid later on in a month or so, but Congress continues to get paid flat out.
		What I would suggest would be that if there's a shutdown for three weeks, one day, five days, whatever it is, that Congress will not be paid.
		And when the employees come back to work, they're given their pay.
		Congress will not be given their pay.
		And that would stop this because then you would get together because you know that now you have skin in the game because if you shut it down for 30 days, you just lost 30 days' pay.
		And that's my comment.
		And that's the only way I think we'll be able to fix this.
		I understand why we have the shutdowns because the party that is the minority will be able to have some kind of leverage.
		But when you shut down the government for that long, there's really no reason for that.
		And that's my opinion.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Congressman Davis, give me a chance to ask you to ask me.
unidentified		Three comments.
		Number one is, with all this gerrymandering going on, the one thing that's different in California, in your state, is they're asking the voters to now be complicit.
		Politicians have used gerrymandering.
		Now, they're asking the voters to be complicit in gerrymandering in California.
		And I think the voters now get their say over whether they don't like this nonsense.
		I recognize the argument that we want to stop Trump and not let Texas move on.
		But they're asking voters to now get their hands dirty in this thing.
		I think once this starts, I think it's going to be continuing to spiral down.
		I agree that no budget, no pay.
		I think that makes a lot of sense.
		But we have something called the 27th Amendment.
		It says you can't alter a member's pay during their time period, and you run into some problems when you start implementing that.
		There are some members, though, who have pledged they will not take pay during this period.
		And I think you should look to your member and say, are they setting an example because of their activities?
		The rest of federal employees can't get paid.
		Are you taking your paycheck or are you not going to take your paycheck?
		And they have that right, and I think members can be held accountable on that basis.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Congressman Israel.
unidentified		Thank you.
		I agree with Tom on whether members should accept pay or not.
		I do want to say, look, what California is doing, a referendum on whether there should be redistricting, is a direct response to an awful decision by Texas to rig the game, to do mid-decade redistricting.
		Why?
		Because they know that it's looking bleak right now for the Republicans, just based on historic precedent, to retain the majority.
		And so they've got to fight for every seat and sometimes fight unfairly.
		And so Texas decides on its own, fine, we'll just try and pick up five seats for the Republicans in Texas with mid-decade redistricting.
		What California has done is say, well, you know, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
		If you're going to take five seats away from us, then we're going to try and equalize.
		You know, we'll see you and raise you.
		You take five seats away from us in mid-decade, we're going to do it as well.
		And then that spills over to other states that are now considering whether to join that horrible party, in my view.
		This is not good for democracy.
		It's going to divide Congress even further.
		We ought to go back to a fundamental respect for the Constitution and the census and not use gerrymandering as a political tool, as a weaponized tool to win seats, but simply to establish how many constituents each member of Congress has.
		If it were up to me, we would outlaw, we would prohibit any kind of partisan redistricting anywhere.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Congressman Davis, you were both nodding and shaking your hands.
unidentified		I mean, Steve and I were both campaign committee chairman.
		We get the joke on this kind of thing.
		I mean, the one thing in California is they're asking now the voters to be complicit in this.
		Voters like to think that they're not part of this partisan gerrymandering, but I recognize the intensity out there, the amount of money being spent on the referendum and the like.
		And I know your state of New York did a midterm redistricting the last time, and you picked up three seats.
		So I hope, Steve, this isn't the new normal.
		Yeah, actually, New York, Tom, they tried to do redistricting and couldn't do it.
		The Democrats couldn't do it.
		It ended up going to a court.
		The courts actually made districts more compact and actually limited.
		In a Democratic state, the courts actually limited potential Democratic pickup opportunities.
		This is why New York, believe it or not, has one of the most moderate delegations because there are just more centrist districts in the state.
		I wish that was the model throughout the rest of the country.
		But they did come back in a midterm, I mean, in a mid-cycle and redistricted for 2024.
		Well, yes, in response to what was happening in Texas.
		No, I agree.
		You know, I don't know who started this.
		I don't know who started this, but I think we can agree this has just gotten way out of hand, and it undermines the pillars of democracy and people's respect when they see the rules being picked.
		And they're just basically the November vote doesn't count for anything.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And we're talking about gerrymandering this mid-decade congressional redistricting.
		Something that you just said, Congressman Israel, moderates.
		You're talking about the moderates in New York.
		There are fewer political moderates in Congress right now.
		Why?
unidentified		Well, I would say, and Tom and I have had extensive discussions on this.
		I would say for several reasons.
		Number one, because of gerrymandering, because districts are drawn against moderates.
		They're drawn to protect an incumbent, which means you need more base voters from your party in those districts, which pulls the districts further to the left and the right and creates a political disincentive for a member of Congress to compromise and an incentive to reflect the passions of the base.
		Also, residential sorting patterns.
		We're so divided in America right now that we're choosing to live based on ideology.
		And then finally, I'll just give you this quick data point.
		When I was elected to Congress in 2020, I'm sorry, in 2000, there were about, you could argue, 75 to 125 fairly moderate districts where members campaigned on bipartisanship, where they campaigned on crossing the aisle.
		Today, there are 13 House districts represented by Democrats that voted for Donald Trump and three House districts represented by Republicans that voted for Kamala Harris.
		Those are the pure toss-up districts.
		Out of 435, 16 are kind of crossover districts.
		Now, I would add another 10, 15 to that, based on the environment, but certainly in my view, no more than 30 low 30s House districts where if you talk about compromise and moderation, you actually get re-elected.
		All the others, those words are just curse words in congressional campaigns.
		In other words, if you compromise, you get punished.
		You don't get rewarded for most of these members who make up the caucuses that elect the leaders of those caucuses.
		So it's kind of this never-ending cycle that just moves politics further and further apart.
		Compromise becomes something that you pay a price at the ballot box for sitting down and compromising.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Some states have moved to primaries that drive away from a political center things like ranked choice voting.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that that would have any impact if more states adopted that type of well I think jungle primaries have helped on the margins?
unidentified		Alaska has it, Washington State has it, California has it, Louisiana did.
		I'm not sure if they still do.
		I think the jury is still out in terms of what ranked choice voting does at this point.
		I think actually ranked choice voting, you get more extreme candidates in there because they're not disrupting things.
		They can make their statement and not jeopardize the partisan balance of the thing because their votes get a second.
		They can still vote for their party.
		But I think the jury's still out in terms of how all this works at this point.
		And Steve's right, residential sorting patterns, people like to live around people like themselves.
		It's hard to find and draw a Republican district in a major metropolitan area today.
		These are just heavy blue balls, bright blue bulbs coming out.
		I like to, look into my neighborhood out in Fairfax County, if you put up a Trump sign, it's like a hate crime.
		And we had a neighbor who put one up and people went and said, would you take it down?
		We find it offensive.
		You go out 50 miles, people are putting up their own Trump signs, putting up, it's a sign of who they are.
		Very polarized in those cases.
		And the districts reflect that.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from Max, who's calling from San Antonio, Texas, on the line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Max.
unidentified		Good morning, and good morning, gentlemen.
		Thank you for your service.
		Normally, when we get to an impasse like this, the log jam is broken one of three ways.
		Either the president calls members of both parties to the House and drives a solution there, or the leadership drives a solution in Congress.
		But there have been times where there have been a third way, and members who are moderates on both sides of the aisle have gotten together and they proposed a third solution.
		And that puts pressure on the system to resolve things.
		Now, even if we had a situation where someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene and AOC, people who are not necessarily moderates, proposed a third solution, wouldn't that be better?
		And are there other ways to break the log jam?
		How do we handle this?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Congressman Israel, would you like to answer first?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
unidentified		So, Max, you're entirely right.
		There are several ways to end the gridlock.
		One is that a critical mass of members seeks some alternative.
		Now, there was a bill that was introduced by several moderate House Democrats recently that would extend the Affordable Care Act premium credits one year and reopen the government.
		So that's out there.
		And my guess is that they put it out there just to signal and to alert other members that there may be an alternative here and to see if it gets traction.
		Ultimately, every shutdown that I lived through as chair of Driple C and as a backbencher ultimately followed this pattern.
		One party thought that they were enjoying all the benefits of the shutdown.
		That tended to wear off within several weeks.
		Americans begin blaming both parties.
		Members come back from competitive districts and say to their leadership, this is turning against us.
		We need to find a way out.
		On the Senate, I think that Leader Schumer, you know, he needs to keep his Democrats together.
		And he's got, you know, there are several very competitive Senate races.
		And so at the point that those senators in those competitive districts feel that this is turning against them, they're going to argue to Senator Schumer, or to Leader Schumer, that he needs to begin thinking about a way out.
		At the same time, Republican senators are going to argue to Thune that this needs to end, and they're going to call the president and say, you need to break this log jam.
		So this is not going to be a forever shutdown because the cost benefits change and they're constantly reevaluated and calculated by both parties.
		But Steve, would you agree?
		I think both sides think they're winning right now because with their bases, their bases love what they're doing.
		Yeah.
		The voters as a whole.
		Yeah, but Tommy, you know, it tends to wear off.
		And look, this is the problem right now.
		Neither side sees an incentive.
		No, it cave in right now.
		And it is, it's wearing, it's wearing on both at this point as you take a look at the polling.
		And Democrats may see a diminution in turnout that might have been theirs from federal workers who just say a pox on both your houses.
		But this is only going to be broken, in my opinion, in the Senate.
		The House has passed what they are capable of passing right now.
		The Senate will have to pass something and ping pong it back to the House.
		And I think that's where the action is, which is the reason I think Speaker Johnson hasn't called the House back into session that.
		And I don't think he wants to open up some other matters as well.
		That doesn't mean negotiations have ceased on these other appropriation bills.
		I think there is some discussions going on.
		Steve was an appropriator and may have different information on that.
		But the Senate has got to come to some conclusion.
		And to do that, you're going to need at least eight Democratic votes in the Senate.
		And right now, you have three.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Larry is calling from Arkansas on the line for independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Larry.
unidentified		Good morning, Tammy.
		I just got a couple of statements.
		The Democrat gentleman, if you would play on News Nation last Wednesday what the senator from Pennsylvania had to say about the shutdown, the only honest Democrat has talked lately.
		It was playing the Democrats got themselves voted into a box, and they got all these people that are chasing after them to do something because Affordable Care Act is not affordable.
		The second thing is gerrymandering.
		That started in Massachusetts.
		If you look at gerrymandering, Massachusetts has 10 or 11 representatives to go to the House of Representatives.
		Zero Republicans.
		California has 52.
		40% of the people vote Republican.
		They only have nine that goes there.
		You talked about where the gerrymandering comes from.
		Thank you very much.
		Thank you.
		Let me just note.
		California is a commission state.
		It's not a Democratic gerrymander.
		The way the numbers, as Steve and I have noted with residential sorting patterns, you just have where Republicans live in places, Democrats live in places, or a handful of competitive seats out there.
		But that's not strictly a gerrymander, at least right now.
		This is done by a commission, as is Washington State and a number of other states where commissions draw these lines.
		But look, again, the incentives are for people to stay in their box.
		If you go outside that party coalition, you get ambushed in a primary.
		And by the way, we don't talk about campaign finance laws, but some super PAC can come in and ambush you at that point and spend tremendous amounts of money if you cross one of the party coalitions in a primary.
		So every incentive for members is to stay within that party coalition and you stay together.
		I think eventually this log jam gets broken.
		We'll just have to see what the long-term damage is.
		I'll just add federal employees have just gone through a very difficult time once you get through Doge, once you get through some of the layoffs, the voluntary retirements where we lost some very good people that went to other places and now this.
		And you have to take a look at long-term, how does the federal government function when you don't have the best and brightest coming to Washington adding their service.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Chris is calling from Bothwell, Washington on the line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Chris.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I have my ballot in my hand, and it's actually what I've taken some notes on.
		I wanted to say thanks to C-SPAN first of all.
		I have a question.
		I'd like two responses to.
		I'll keep it just what I put on my notes.
		People are rude.
		I'm also one of the people I'm talking about.
		I'm sometimes rude.
		But there's a difference I want to point out.
		The Republican Party will Photoshop a hat on a Democrat or something like that.
		The Democrat Party will make jokes about killing Republicans or threats.
		I got kicked out of a local bar for heckling when such a joke was made.
		Politics is very messy, but in the spirit of Charlie Kirk, martyred for free speech, I have this question.
		What is plenary authority in the context of the executive branch?
		And I guess how can things go sideways or go correctly?
		And thank you for listening to my question.
		She's looking at me first, Steve.
		Let's take a crack at this, okay, Steve.
		Look, what has happened over the last 20 years is, as I said before, the minority party no longer considers themselves minority shareholders.
		They operate as the opposition party.
		It starts with voters.
		Voters used to split their tickets.
		Steve ran in a district that had a lot of Republicans in it.
		It had been a Republican district before he took it, turned Republican briefly afterwards.
		I ran in a district where I beat a Democratic incumbent and it went back to the Democratic Party when I left.
		We were in competitive areas.
		We had to talk to everybody.
		It was like survival for us to make sure that we talked to everybody, not just one party when we went through it.
		It no longer operates that way.
		As I said, people, you talk to your party base because of the way that these districts are drawn.
		And I think that's unfortunate.
		But it starts with voters who no longer vote for the name on the jersey.
		They vote for the color of the jersey.
		And if they're, this is parliamentary elections now, where you have popular governors running, but when they run for the Senate, they're just wearing the wrong jersey and they can't get elected to the Senate.
		Voters now recognize this is about direction of government, and we act like it's a parliamentary system.
		It's not.
		It's a balance of power structure.
		And this just hasn't worked very, very well.
		And I heard former President Obama the other day say that it ought to be more parliamentary.
		Well, that's certainly been the way it's going.
		I like a balance of power structure.
		It's being tested right now, but not just from President Trump.
		President Biden got overridden over 20 times by courts for using his authority in excess of what executive branch powers were doing.
		Presidents do this basically out of frustration because Congress is no longer a productive branch.
		Everything is, they're sitting there, Republicans versus Democrats.
		You need 60 votes in the Senate.
		It just hasn't worked again.
		I think you need that the leadership needs to recognize that at some point the country as a whole is suffering and we need to get some things done.
		But that's my intro.
		What do you think, Steve?
		I agree completely.
		As Congress becomes less functional, presidents tend to decide that they're going to exert their own authorities.
		I think there's a real problem.
		Look, I'm not a lawyer, much to my mother's shame, but I've read the Constitution many times.
		Article 1 of the Constitution has 4,000 words.
		Article 2 has about a thousand words.
		Most power is derived from the Congress, the People's House, the Senate.
		Those powers are invested in the Congress because Congress is a representative of the people.
		I don't care whether it's a Democratic president or a Republican president.
		When that power begins to seep, migrate, or is hijacked from a president, it's bad for America.
		We're about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of America, which began with our Constitution.
		And our founders made a decision that they didn't want tyrants in the presidency.
		They didn't want presidents who would declare war without Congress's consent, that would engage in policies without congressional consultations or approval.
	And we're in a situation right now where Congress has very much ceded their powers to a president who has an impulse to exceed the constitutional norms and the guardrails that have existed since the founding of our Constitution, since the founding of the country.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Congressman Israel, you left Congress in 2017.
		Since then, you've written a couple books.
		You have a new one coming out next month.
		Really quickly, 30 seconds.
		Pitch your book and see if you can get Congressman Davis to read it.
unidentified		Congressman Davis is not only reading it, but he's hosting a book launch at Politics and Pros in Washington on January 9th.
		It's a historic spy thriller based on actual events, Nazis attempting to do harm to Albert Einstein, while Albert Einstein is trying to warn President Roosevelt that Adolf Hitler is developing an atomic bomb.
		These things happened, and I spin it in a fast-paced historic spy thriller that even Tom Davis is going to read and enjoy.
		I look forward to it.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		How far are you into the book?
unidentified		I haven't seen it yet, but I'm there at the sponsor, and I will have read it, and I'll have a lot of questions for Steve on that night.
unidentified		I'm sure.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We appreciate you both being here, Congressman, former Congressman Steve Israel, Democrat of New York, and Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We appreciate you both being here.
unidentified		Thank you for having us.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Later this morning on Washington Journal, International Crisis Group U.S. Program Senior Advisor Brian Finuku discusses recent Trump administration actions using the U.S. military to combat the drug trade.
		But up next, more of your calls and comments in our open forum.
		You can start calling in now.
		The lines there on your screen.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		And Independents 202-748-8002.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Today, watch the premiere of C-SPAN's bold new original series, America's Book Club, with our guest, John Grisham, former politician, lawyer and bestselling author whose books, including A Time to Kill, The Firm.
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		He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
john grisham ▲ ● ▼		We just sold a film watch to the firm to Paramount for more money than made in 10 years of Praxim Law.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		After you heard that, how long after that did you quit the practice alone?
john grisham ▲ ● ▼		15 minutes.
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		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back.
		We are in open forum for the next 20 minutes or so.
		We'll start with Tony, who's calling from Charlotte, North Carolina, on the line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Tony.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Hi, this is, I just wanted to say one thing.
		I was wanting to put this to the Congressmen, but however, they're gone, so I understand that.
		This is the deal.
		We need to stop playing with the American people.
		Number one, the filibuster rule can be easily overturned with a 51-majority vote.
		It doesn't need a supermajority.
		If the Republicans wanted to pass this bill, all they have to do in the Senate, come to the Senate, pass a bill to get rid of the filibuster, 51 votes, boom, and then just go ahead and pass what they have.
		The reason why they're doing the filibuster is because they want to pull the Democrats over the bridge with them so they can run out to the cameras and say, this is a bipartisan deal.
		We did this in a bipartisan way.
		That's what I wanted to say.
		So all these arguments that they're coming on here is a moot point.
		The next time someone gets up there talking about it's the Democrats' fault, it's the Republicans' faults, just tell, let them go to this one point.
		They can get rid of the filibuster, simple majority vote, get rid of the filibuster, and go ahead and pass their legislation.
		That's all I wanted to say.
		I wanted to put that into the conversation because all of this is a moot point.
		Republicans have control of the Senate, the House, and the presidency, and half of the, and most of the courts.
		So it's in.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Tony in North Carolina.
		Dave is calling from Lake Bluff, Illinois on the line for independence.
		Good morning, Dave.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		First, thank you, Tammy, for C-SPAN.
		And thank you to the congressman for coming on and talking.
		You know, I'm a lifelong independent voter.
		I'm a lawyer.
		I've been a lobbyist.
		I appreciate what the congressmen said.
		I think they both said this about, you know, hypocrisy in politics that sort of some degree is unavoidable.
		So we've been talking on the program and around the country about a breakdown of trust and about polarization that has sprung up in our country and our discourse.
		And, you know, we've been talking about that in terms of the media that folks consume and where they live and things like that.
		So, you know, I think we all need to figure out a way.
		I don't know how, but I think we need to look at the incentive structure and think about if there's any way that as Americans together, we can just promote a media literacy culture where we all agree to go, you know, to go really hard on ideas, but soft on each other as neighbors and fellow Americans.
		And, you know, I think one of the things you just really don't hear enough talked about, I don't think, on either side is the national debt.
		I mean, I'm a 40-year-old, again, independent voter, basically a libertarian, not in any right-wing sense, but just in the sort of old-fashioned liberal sense.
		And, you know, I have two young children.
		And I think in America, what we need to be looking at right now is social breakdown of a kind that some people in poverty already see, some people in other countries already see, but many of us in the United States are not familiar with.
		And if we go down this road where constructive dialogue is impossible, we are all in trouble.
		Our families, our livelihoods, our neighbors.
		So for me, I'm going to stay focused on the big picture and how we can work together on that.
		And thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Dave in Illinois.
		Steve is calling from Indiana, line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Steve.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I got a few things I wanted to talk about.
		About the Democratic Party has lost, has seemed to have lost touch with the American people.
		Hello?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Steve, are you still there?
unidentified		I was getting some feedback there.
		I didn't know what was going on.
		We forgot about, in other words, we're $37 trillion in debt.
		And in another 10 years, the rate we're going, we're going to be at least $40 trillion, $45 trillion in debt.
		And the Democratic Party seems to forget about it's all the Republicans have been fighting the Democrats on every dime of this money for the past 10 years.
		The whole through Biden's whole administration, the Republican Party, has fought them on every bit of this money that they can't.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Steve, I'm sorry, we're going to have to end it there because you're dropping in and out.
		Give us a call back if you can.
		Andrea is in Buffalo, New York, line for Democrats.
		Hi, Andrea.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		In regards to the gentleman that called from, I believe it was Illinois, he was an independent.
		I totally agree with you.
		We really have to get to a point where we have more civil dialogue.
		And in regards to Democrats being too far left, I think we as Americans need to stop thinking about left, right, Democrat, Republican, and just get back down to the Constitution.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Andrea in New York.
		Mark is calling from Durango, Colorado, line for independence.
		Good morning, Mark.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		I'm a licensed insurance health insurance broker in Colorado.
		And every year I get recertified for Connect for Health Colorado.
		And that's our state's version of the Affordable Care Act.
		And so going on there, you can absolutely sign up undocumented.
		And so I wish we would have got a hold of that congressman before.
		So you can go on there, and it's called Omni Salad, O-M-N-I Salad.
		And I can go on there and sign undocumented people for free health insurance.
		So I'm not sure what the number was last year, but since the Inflation Reduction Act is sunsetting, they're going to allow 7,600 undocumented to get on the silver plan, which ends up being a free plan.
		So they do get free health insurance, undocumented.
		And so I can go on ConnectRelt Colorado, and then there's a secure platform which I can go on, and their information cannot be found by the feds.
		And it's a secure site.
		And look it up.
		It's real easy.
		You can pull up OmniSalad.
		And that's all.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Mark in Colorado.
		We are on day 19 of a government shutdown.
		And a programming note we want to share is this week's ceasefire.
		Republican Governor Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma and Democratic Governor Wes Moore of Maryland, chair and vice chair of the National Governors Association.
		Join host Dasha Burns for a conversation about how policies in Washington are impacting the states among the thorniest issues, President Trump's threats to deploy the National Guard to several states in his ongoing crackdown on crime.
kevin stitt ▲ ● ▼		Agree with Governor Moore on is the President of the United States has the authority to federalize the troops in that state.
		And so President Trump has a tough decision to make because when he sees ICE agents being attacked in a certain city, even though it might be over the objection of the local governor, the President of the United States has that right to do that.
		And there's case law there.
		President Eisenhower, over the objection of the opposite party governor in Arkansas to desegregate schools, called in the National Guard.
		And so there's case law where that happens.
		And when the President of the United States wants to federalize those troops, we all agree that he has the authority to do it.
		Should he work with the governors?
		100%.
		But then the question is, when there's a disagreement, when he calls Governor Newsom and says, hey, I'm going to send them in to protect a federal building and Newsom says no, then who has the authority?
		Well, it's pretty clear in our Constitution that the President of the United States has that authority.
		So we support President Trump on it.
		The only thing I caution was let's not send, let's pit one state against another.
		But I mean, I sent troops to the southern border in support of Governor Abbott, and I'll send them to Pritzker if he wants me to do something, or I'm going to send them to Memphis if Governor Lee calls me.
		But that's the question.
dasha burns ▲ ● ▼		That's the big difference, right?
		Upon the request of those governors.
		It's so interesting to hear you both talk about this because I'm hearing this kind of like flipping of the script of Republican talking points versus Democratic talking points.
		Because Governor Moore, what you're saying is essentially a long-held Republican position around the primacy of states' rights over federal authority here.
		What's your perspective on what you're hearing from your colleague here?
wes moore ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, and actually, and I completely agree with Governor Stitt that the president has the authority to do it.
		My question is the judgment, whether or not it's the right thing to do.
		And I think about it in context of this, you know, and again, as someone who, you know, I've deployed with soldiers overseas.
		I've worn the uniform of this country.
		I've served with people who are willing to put their life on the line.
		And all of us, each and every one of us as governors, we serve as commanders in chief of our National Guards.
		That is a responsibility that we take very seriously.
		And we owe it to the people who serve in uniform.
		We owe it to their family members to be very, very smart and very sober about how, when, and where we mobilize these remarkable men and women.
		And the point that, you know, the president absolutely has the authority to do it.
		The thing that I would hope for is that don't remember who we are asked, don't forget who we are asking to mobilize.
		These are citizen soldiers.
		These are people who have jobs, people who have families, that we're asking them to leave both of those things because they trust the judgment of the commanders-in-chief.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That's all coming up on this week's ceasefire Friday nights at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern with Rhea's Saturday and Sunday morning at 10 a.m. Eastern.
		Back to your calls.
		Let's hear from Beth in Florida, line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Beth.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I would like to speak on the shutdown and say a word to on the Medicare, or I'm sorry, Medicaid cuts.
		We've got to back up a couple of years here.
		We've been trying to pass a budget.
		And every time the Republicans have been in charge of the House and the Senate, we've had a problem.
		We haven't actually passed the budget since the 1990s.
		But we keep having these CRs and we keep pushing it down the road.
		But this time, we are in a shutdown simply because Mike Johnson can't count.
		He knows that he's got to pass a bill in the House that will pass when it gets to the Senate.
		And that in the Senate, currently, he needed 60 votes.
		And this is not a clean CR, as he's trying to put it.
		Clean, that it doesn't have any amendments, yes.
		Clean as to that it relates to the last CR?
		No.
		Because we had a CR back in the spring.
		Then we had the big, beautiful bill, and then we've had a refision.
		And the reason we had the big, beautiful bill, and it was the one big, beautiful bill, is because they put it into, what is it, resolution, where they get to vote on everything as long as it's financial.
		So we've had a recess and a recess and a recess.
		I think there's only been, what, 15 days since they passed the big, beautiful bill that the Republican, or that the House has been in session because Mike Johnson has sent everybody home.
		And I was counting down the days there of when they're going to come back from the recess in August.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Beth in Florida.
		Tom is calling from Rochester, New York, line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Tom.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I do thank C-SPAN for allowing us to have a voice.
		And I would like to, my comment is, what ICE is wearing masks.
		How do we know that these are American servicemen serving our country instead of some commander-in-chief when he kiss up to Putin Chief and Kim John-un?
		How do we know these actually are Americans?
		That's my comment.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Tom in New York.
		Tim is calling from Highs Point, High Point, Ohio, Line for Independence.
		Good morning, Tom.
		Or Tim.
unidentified		Yes, ma'am.
		Thank you for letting me call in today.
		What I want to talk about is the shutdown.
		These are the questions that I have, and I would hope that some of the Republicans or Trump supporters, people who support this administration, can explain to me.
		During our shutdown, I've just recently heard that $20 to $40 billion has been given to Argentina for what?
		I don't understand it.
		Dodge, when Trump first came in office, doge plan to found billions of fraud, waste, and abuse.
		Tariffs out of Trump's own mouth have brought in trillions out of tariffs.
		I just read this morning that Christy Noam is having two private jets built for $200 million.
		Trump is working on the ballroom.
		Trump has a plan to build the arches by the Arlington Cemetery.
		I just seen a video of him selling his watches.
		Why are we in a shutdown?
		I would like to know if any of the Trump supporters or people who support this administration and see this shutdown and people, the American people are struggling, why are we in a shutdown, especially with this $220 billion sent to Argentina?
		I don't understand it.
		Why?
		And I just found out, too, that Argentina now is selling their soybeans to China, which we should sell to China.
		And I'm hearing that they're selling metric tons of soya beans.
		So we're losing money.
		So I just want to know if anybody can call in and explain this who supports this type of activity.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Tim in Ohio.
		This is a headline on the Axios website.
		It says, no kings protests draw huge crowds across the U.S. says that nearly 7 million protesters gathered across the U.S. on Saturday to take part in rallies against President Trump and his administration.
		It says this latest round of protests comes as the government shutdown approaches its third week in opposition to Trump's military crackdown on Democratic-led cities grows.
		It says more than 2,700 events were planned as part of the protests across 50 states as of Saturday, as well as several internationally, including in London, Paris, Rome, and Lisbon, Portugal.
		It says that GOP lawmakers condemned the movement as, quote, a hate American rally and cast blame on the protests for the continued government shutdown.
		Just a few minutes left in this open form.
		Antonio is calling from New York on the line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Antonio.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Hi, how are you?
		I think I've got a question.
		A couple of things.
		First of all, I don't know if the love knows that there's three years and two months left of Trump.
		It's a long time to be in misery.
		Somebody also mentioned about being civil.
		I saw the protests where I was.
		Every sign, Nazi, anti-American, deplorable, all the signs.
		These are people like me, people that fought in Iraq, people that came home.
		You're calling us Nazis.
		I mean, whatever.
		But the other thing I have to say is about the National Guard.
		I don't know where some of these people live.
		I do see a lot of people that seem to be living in gated near Yankee Stadium that have to walk home from the train station to Grand Concourse.
		They would love the National Guard there.
		I'm from there.
		I know for a fact.
		So if you didn't live there and you don't know how it feels to come home at 10 o'clock at night walking in the streets of New York, then you're in another world.
		Anyway, I hope everything works out for this next three years and a half.
		But I think the best thing is to work together instead of having what's going on now.
		I appreciate you taking the time to answer and have a great day.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Antonio in New York.
		Manuel is calling from Brighton, Colorado, line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Manuel.
unidentified		Good morning.
		The reason I'm calling, I attended the march yesterday and really felt energized.
		I have really been tired of the way the Republicans have lied to the American people.
		The illegal aliens are not entitled to any benefits under the law.
		And the Republican Party is basically lying to its constituents.
		Secondly, with respect to the funding, the Republican Party gave a tax, major, major tax break to the rich.
		And when you have all of this money no longer available, what's going to happen?
		You're going to have an economic situation that is not good.
		And what's happening is all the lying that the Republican Party is doing is hurting our country.
		We need people who tell the truth, not liars like Donald Trump and all of his followers.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Manuel in Colorado.
		Keith is calling from Minnesota on the line for independence.
		Good morning, Keith.
unidentified		Good morning.
		A couple statements and then something to think about.
		I'm a 30-year-plus veteran professional firefighter that retired due to age.
		It's a young man's game.
		And I had to go get another full-time job just to pay for my health care because I can't afford outright policy.
		Another one would be this GOP shutdown, well, whatever, the Congress shutdown and Johnson sending his house back home.
		They shouldn't be allowed to go and leave until the government's backed open, so they shouldn't be able to be sent home on vacation.
		Third one would be the Trump retribution campaign that he's got going on using our DOJ to go after his enemies.
		He shouldn't be allowed to use taxpayers' dollars for his personal vendettas.
		There should be some transparency on how much that's costing everyone for them to direct resources towards his enemies.
		And the fourth thing would be, you know, everyone, this is the United States.
		It's not supposed to be us versus them.
		We're on the same team.
		Republicans are the offense right now.
		Democrats have to be the defensive team.
		It's supposed to be us against China, us against Russia, us against North Korea.
		So come on, everybody.
		Wake up.
		We're on the same team.
		Cool down the harshness towards each other.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		That was Keith in Minnesota.
		And our last call for this open forum segment is Scott in Illinois, line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Scott.
unidentified		Thank you.
		God bless you, Tammy, and your family, and God bless America.
		Tammy, I fell two weeks ago.
		I'm having one hell of a year.
		But thanks for calling.
		I got two quick topics.
		The first topic is about us Vietnam veterans.
		World War II greatest generation.
		Korea, forgotten war.
		Vietnam, we came back.
		I was in my dress blues Air Force.
		I got spat upon baby killer.
		A lot of us did.
		A lot of us are drug addicts and alcoholics and homeless.
		They say 20 of us are killing each other every day.
		It's like, it's okay.
		Now, when they say thank you for your service, everybody's saying that to me.
		You can name a street off an Iraqi veteran.
		You can name a post office off of Afghanistan veteran.
		It's okay with me.
		It's fine you say that.
		But please, American people, if you say it to a vet, please mean it from the heart.
		Okay, secondary, I've thought about this a long time.
		I've done studies on death row.
		Okay, these guys and women, not many, but mostly guys, on death row, they've done horrendous, horrendous crimes.
		As anybody studies every state, if you're on death row, it's just like catching your wife in bed with your best friend.
		These guys are brutal.
		And no country, I've been around the world three times and no country in the world puts up with this.
		I say give them 10 years of appeals, have it written, have it televised by a private company like one o'clock in the morning, and have whoever rents the movie, rents the pay-per-view, and they can jumble the picture where you can't record it.
		And have a disclaimer where they are responsible.
		No children should watch it.
		But show executions.
		And maybe some of these creeps that are killing our kids will like, whoa, they're serious about this.
		But I'm just saying, okay, well, God bless you.
		I want to leave on a little levity.
		What did one potato chip say to the other?
		I'm Chesters.
		Are you free to lay?
		Thank you so much.
		Bye-bye.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Scott, hope you're doing well after your fall.
		That was our last call for this open forum segment.
		Up next, International Crisis Group U.S. Program Senior Advisor Brian Binukun discusses recent Trump administration actions using the military to combat the drug trade.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Today, watch the premiere of C-SPAN's bold new original series, America's Book Club, with our guest, John Grisham, former politician, lawyer, and best-selling author, whose books, including A Time to Kill, The Firm, and The Pelican Brief.
unidentified		He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
john grisham ▲ ● ▼		We just sold the film much to the firm to Paramount for more money than made in 10 years of practicing law.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		After you heard that, how long after that did you quit the practice of law?
john grisham ▲ ● ▼		15 minutes.
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		Washington Journal continues.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Joining us now to discuss President Trump's actions, administration actions using U.S. military to combat the drug trade is Brian Fenukin.
		He is a U.S. program senior advisor for the International Crisis Group.
		Brian, thank you so much for being with us this morning.
unidentified		Good morning.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We'll start by having you tell us about your organization.
		What is the mission?
		Who do you work with?
		And how are you funded?
unidentified		So the International Crisis Group is an organization dedicated to preventing and ending deadly conflict.
		We work around the world.
		We talk to and study all relevant conflict actors.
		And in my case, the case of the U.S. program, the International Crisis Group, we are focused on the U.S. government as a conflict actor.
		We are funded by a range of sources, governmental foundations, and individuals.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And you have been with this organization for several years now.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What is your background in the area for this U.S. program?
unidentified		So I'm a lawyer by training.
unidentified		I spent a decade working at the State Department as an attorney advisor in the legal office there, advising the U.S. government on a range of legal issues, including, and principally focused on the use of military force, counterterrorism, the law of war.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And you are joining us today.
		We are talking about the Trump administration's efforts and what we're seeing when it comes to working against drug cartels.
		It was earlier this month that the administration declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and pronounced that the U.S. is now in a, quote, armed conflict with them.
		What does the president have the power when it comes to declaring something like that?
unidentified		Well, I think it's important to recognize that an armed conflict, whether it exists, is a question of fact.
		The president of the United States cannot simply declare that armed conflict exists.
		And furthermore, as a matter of U.S. constitutional law, it is, of course, Congress and Article 1 of the Constitution that has the power to declare war, not the U.S. President.
		But what we have going on here is that the Trump administration is asserting that there is an armed conflict with unspecified, quote, designated terrorist organizations in the Caribbean and Latin America and using that supposed but make-believe armed conflict as a basis to engage in premeditated killing.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		So when it comes to what we're seeing, what power does the president have?
unidentified		Well, the legal power of the executive branch in this space, the actual legal power, is to conduct law enforcement, as the U.S. government has done for decades.
		There's a well-established playbook that the Navy and the Coast Guard have used to stop, interdict, board, search, and we're warranted taking into custody individuals aboard vessels suspected of smuggling narcotics.
		And this is ongoing in the Pacific as we speak.
		That is the lawful power that the executive branch has here.
		What we are seeing now with these strikes in the Caribbean is an unlawful use of military force.
		This is lethal killing, lethal action outside of the law.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have condemned the actions of the Trump administration.
		What you're talking about, I don't think you can see it, but we're showing some of the strikes, the unclassified video on our screen right now.
		And there have been efforts to curb actions and what can be done.
		Remind our audience what power or role Congress plays when it comes to this issue.
unidentified		Well, as I mentioned a moment ago, it is Congress that has the constitutional authority to declare war and other associated war powers, not the president.
		It is not the president who can decide unilaterally by himself who the country is at war with.
		And moreover, it is Congress that passes and enacts U.S. criminal statutes.
		And there are criminal statutes implicated by these premeditated killings in the Caribbean, including one that makes it a crime to commit murder on the high seas, okay?
		And another statute that makes it a crime to conspire to engage in murder outside the United States.
		And that's in addition to Article 118 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which service members are subject to, which also makes murder a crime.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And as these stories play out, as people may read, they will likely see both the War Powers Act and an AUMF.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Remind our audience what those are.
unidentified		Okay, so the War Powers Resolution of 1973 is a framework statute enacted by Congress over President Nixon's veto towards the end of the Vietnam War.
		And the intent was to restore the constitutional balance between Congress and the executive with respect to war powers.
		The war powers resolution imposes certain notification requirements when the president uses military force without prior congressional authorization.
		It also imposes a 60-day clock for the termination of any such unauthorized military operations.
		And in this case, that 60-day clock is ticking in the Caribbean.
		And it also provides for expedited procedures for members to force a vote on terminating unauthorized military operations.
		And so we've already seen one such vote a few weeks ago with respect to the strikes in the Caribbean in a resolution introduced by Senators Schiff and Kane that got bipartisan support.
		Senator Kane has introduced a new resolution with respect to potential military action in Venezuela.
		Now, with respect to an AUMF, when Congress acts to authorize the use of force, it can do so in two principal ways.
		The first is declarational war.
		Of course, Congress has not issued a declaration of war since the Second World War.
		But the other mechanism which has been used more recently is an authorization for the use of military force.
		And this, for example, is how Congress authorized the use of military force following the 9-11 attacks in the 2001 AOF.
		It is also how Congress authorized the invasion of Iraq in the 2002 AMF.
		There is no authorization for the use of military force for the ongoing U.S. military operations, the ongoing strikes in the Caribbean.
		There is a draft being circulated, reportedly introduced by or being drafted by Representative Corey Mills in the House.
		It is not clear whether the administration supports that AOMF, and it's far from clear how much support it would actually gather within Congress if it were to be formally introduced.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Brian Finoukin is a U.S. program senior advisor at the International Crisis Group.
		He is with us for the next 30 minutes or so for a discussion about President Trump's, the administration's action using U.S. military to combat drug trade.
		If you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now the lines.
		Republicans 202-748-8001.
		Democrats 202-748-8000.
		And Independents 202-748-8002.
		Brian, the U.S. military has carried out several strikes on boats now in the Caribbean, killing more than two dozen people.
		The most recent strike left a couple of survivors, which the U.S. detained and then released just, I believe it was yesterday.
		Explain the legal basis there for detention, their detention, and is the U.S. responsible for any injuries, long-term impacts to those survivors.
unidentified		Well, there may not have been a legal basis for the detention, which is likely why the administration repatriated these individuals reportedly to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia.
		As I said a moment ago, despite the Trump administration pretending or claiming that there is an armed conflict in the Caribbean, that's false.
		There is no armed conflict.
		The U.S. is using military force, using lethal force outside of armed conflict.
		That means not only that these killings are illegal, but it also means that the law of war doesn't apply and doesn't provide a basis to detain these individuals or anyone captured.
		So this is very different than, say, the U.S. war on terror, the U.S. conflict with al-Qaeda, in which there was legal authorization of the law of war to kill people and to detain people.
		That's not the case here.
		So there was no law of war basis to detain these individuals.
		And it's not clear, frankly, whether there was a basis in using law enforcement authorities to detain these people prior to trial.
		It's not clear whether there was probable cause to arrest these individuals.
		It's not clear whether the administration had sufficient legal basis to put them on trial.
		And so I think the administration was faced with a range of bad options.
		And I think the least worst option from its perspective was simply to repatriate them because any sort of legal process in the courts, whether it was a habeas litigation challenging their detention or criminal prosecution, would have been politically inconvenient.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		We have callers waiting to talk with you.
		We'll start with Bob, who's calling from Ohio on the line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Bob.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thanks for taking my call.
		I believe that the Supreme Court that gave Trump immunity while he was in office should be tried right along with Trump for murder.
		Trump is killing these people without any justification.
		And he is blowing up these boats.
		He doesn't have no idea what's on the boat.
		And if they had any drugs on the boat, they would be at the bottom of the ocean, and there's no way to prove it.
		Why in the world are we trying this man and getting him out of office?
		This is the worst man that I've ever seen.
		He's evil.
		He's nothing but evil.
		Him and Miller and his justice, she's as evil as he is, plus she's stupid as a log.
		I don't understand what is going on in this country no more.
		I'm 74 years old.
		I'm an old veteran.
		This would have never come about, even in Nixon's days.
		And Nixon was one of the most corrupt presidents I've ever seen in my lifetime until I seen Trump.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Brian.
unidentified		So I think it's certainly true that the Supreme Court's immunity decision has eroded the legal guardrails on the executive.
		I also want to note that I advised on counterterrorism operations under presidents of both parties, including in the first Trump administration.
		And I talked to dozens of other former U.S. government lawyers, both judge advocate generals, military lawyers, and also civilians who similarly advised on U.S. counterterrorism operations.
		None of them are defending these actions in the Caribbean.
		The universal response has been shock.
		And what I hear from within the U.S. government is the same for career lawyers who are still in the government.
		There is no legal basis for these killings.
		I think your caller is correct that murder is the term we use for premeditated killing outside of armed conflict.
		And that's what's at stake here.
		The president of the United States is asserting a license to kill outside the law.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Donald is calling from Greensboro, North Carolina, line for independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Donald.
unidentified		Hi, I'm excited.
doug in kansas ▲ ● ▼		This is my first time calling in.
unidentified		I believe a lot of people have it wrong.
		I'm an American, and there's a place in Washington called the war room.
		Okay, we have to have faith in our president and the people that are in the war room because conversations there do not get out to the media.
		Okay.
		To think that Americans would be killing innocent people on boats, I mean, come on now.
		That's just propaganda from the Democrat side.
		I'm an independent, but what's said in the war room and for people to come on and talk on your show about we're killing innocent people, Trump doesn't know what he's doing or who's on the boats, is absurd.
		Just talk to anybody in the military.
		They know what's going on in the war room.
		Have faith in America that we are doing the right thing, and we're not killing innocent people.
		They probably know the names of each person on those boats.
		Believe me, have faith in America.
		Stop being anti-Trump haters.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Donald, we'll get a response from Brian.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Brian.
unidentified		So I took part in deliberations over the use of lethal force in counterterrorism and other contexts, including under the first Trump administration.
		And so I'm very familiar with the processes that take place here.
		There is no war room as such, but there is a constitutional provision that gives Congress, Congress, not the president, Congress, the power to declare war.
		Congress has not done that here.
		And yes, what we are in fact seeing here is the president engaged in premeditated killing of the law.
		As whether these people are innocent, well, they have not been charged, much less convicted of any crime.
		We have a justice system that handles that, okay?
		There's been no due process provided here.
		Instead, we have simply premeditated killing.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		I think we lost Brian.
		We will work to get that reconnected, but continue to take your calls until we do.
		Let's hear from John.
		Oh, I believe Brian's back.
		Brian, are you there?
unidentified		I'm here.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Thought we lost you.
		Go ahead, continue where you left off.
unidentified		No, I was saying that, you know, what we're seeing in the Caribbean is very much premeditated killing outside the law.
		There's been no due process.
		Okay.
		We have a justice system to handle accusations of criminality that's not been used here.
		We have a well-established law enforcement playbook that I mentioned earlier, whereby the Coast Guard and Navy stop and interdict vessels, take people into custody if there's probable cause, and then people prosecute in the U.S. criminal justice system.
		That's not taking place here.
		Instead, we just have the president killing people outside the law.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And, Brian, you've talked about U.S. law and what's in place and what's not.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		What has been the reaction from the international community and what kind of international laws could we be dealing with here?
unidentified		Well, the reaction internationally has been mixed.
		I will say that the legal experts around the globe have almost universally condemned these strikes, including experts at the United Nations, who have characterized these as a violation of the right to life under human rights law, characterized these as extradition killings, extradition executions, and compared them, frankly,
		to the extradition killings that the former Philippine president Duterte engaged in when he's in power.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		John is calling from Pennsylvania on the line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, John.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Whatever happened to the Monroe Doctrine?
		I thought we weren't allowed to do this, what Trump's doing.
		And also, why do the military people say no to the president whenever he's doing something illegal like this?
		I don't understand that.
		Just following orders blindly like that.
		I can't understand that.
		So, would you answer my question about the Monroe Doctrine?
		And my understanding of it is we can't attack another country in this hemisphere for no reason at all.
		And it was especially going on their land.
		He wants to go now send forces on Venezuela land.
		And also, one other thing: how does he get the right to give $20 billion to Argentina?
		I'll hang up and listen to your answer.
		So the Monroe Doctrine is a foreign policy doctrine of the U.S. government, typically characterized for the 19th century by excluding European powers from the Western Hemisphere.
		So that's not really a play here, although you do occasionally hear it invoked with respect to Russian or Chinese support for Venezuela.
		In terms of why the military is implementing these orders, it's a very good question.
		I think that there's a few responses.
		One, these are directives coming from the President of the United States himself.
		So it may be a high bar for JAGS or service members to push back against that on the grounds that the orders themselves are illegal or patently unlawful.
		And there's also reportedly secret, we haven't seen it, but reportedly a legal memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice.
		The Office of Counsel functions like a Supreme Court within the executive branch.
		But this memorand supposedly blesses these strikes in the Caribbean.
		And so it's very difficult for lawyers within the executive branch, including the military, to push back against such a legal permission slip.
		And this is very actually reminiscent of the torture fiasco of the Bush administration, where you also had an office legal counsel memo blessing torture in that case.
		In this case, we have a murder memo instead of a torture memo.
		This murder memo has not been publicly disclosed.
		Members of Congress have requested it, but it's something that the administration should share with Congress and should share with the American public.
		This murder memo is the president's de facto license to kill.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Kenny is calling from Sitka, Kentucky, on the line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Kenny.
unidentified		Morning.
unidentified		Y'all having a great day.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		So far, so good, Kenny.
shane connor ▲ ● ▼		Okay, my question is: I mean, we got the DEA goes into all these other countries and they go into Mexico, and they got Chopa, and they brought him to New York and prosecuted him.
unidentified		And why?
		They know these boats is loaded down with cocaine.
		So would it be okay if there's a DEA drone hitting them?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Brian, did you hear Kenny's question?
unidentified		Yeah.
		Yeah.
		So, Kenny, I think you make an important point there, which is that the U.S. has established law enforcement tools for addressing narcotics smuggling.
		It's working with the Mexican government to prosecute, extradite, and handle transfers of cartel leaders.
		And I also think it's notable that these strikes are not taking place in Mexico.
		Okay.
		The president, other members of the administration have claimed that there's fentanyl aboard the vessels that they're striking in the Caribbean.
		The president asserted that yesterday with respect to the most recent strike on the semi-submersible.
		That's simply false.
		The fentanyl coming to the United States is coming from Mexico.
		But the United States is not doing strikes in Mexico because it would be catastrophic for U.S.-Mexican bilateral relations, including with respect to law enforcement cooperation, sort of cooperation we see with the extradition or transfer of cartel leaders or cooperation on migration.
		And so the strikes in the Caribbean, or so they have a consolation prize where the administration can posture as being tough on drugs or tough on the cartels, but not actually rupture U.S. relations with Mexico or some of the other countries in the region.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		And Brian, the caller mentioning the work of the DEA there.
		It was last week that President Trump acknowledged that he had authorized CIA covert operations in Venezuela.
		Talk about how that comes into play, and is it unusual for a president to announce such operations?
unidentified		It's very unusual.
		But I think it's necessary to take a step back and put these strikes in the Caribbean and this alleged CIA covert action finding in broader context.
		We have a massive, had since August, a massive military buildup in the Caribbean.
		We have saber rattling by the administration against the leader of Venezuela.
		And, you know, U.S. policy is currently being driven by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has made no secret of his desire for regime change in Caracas.
		And so these strikes in the Caribbean also function as coercive signaling against the Maduro government.
		You know, the administration has not just labeled people aboard these boats as, quote, narco-terrorists.
		It's also labeled Maduro as a narco-terrorist.
		Administration has also been talking about potentially taking strikes on land, including in President Trump's post yesterday.
		And so these strikes, the disclosure, and then the president's confirmation of this covert action finding are all intended to put pressure on Maduro.
		I think the desire or calculation by the Trump administration is that they will coerce Maduro either into stepping down or potentially embolden figures in his government to topple him.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		John is calling from Manning, North Dakota, on the line for independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, John.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Ryan, you seem to know what you're talking about.
		You are the expert.
		I was wondering how why is Trump doing this besides for entertainment purposes?
		And, you know, you sit around at a bar and watch this stuff on TV.
		Everybody goes crazy.
		Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're showing them now.
		Why is he doing this?
		And how do we stop him?
		Well, as for why the president is doing this, I want to say this as a descriptive matter, not as a normative matter.
		The president enjoys dramatic performative uses of military force, particularly strikes on supposed terrorists, broadly defined.
		You know, this is true in his first term in office.
		Okay.
		It's also true in this term.
		And we see this with him posting these videos on social media of these strikes.
		Okay, so the president enjoys these performances.
		As to how to stop him, Congress has tools available to halt this unauthorized military action, to halt these unlawful killings.
		One of the principal tools is legislation under the War Powers Resolution.
		As I mentioned earlier, there was an attempt a few weeks ago in the Senate to move such a resolution.
		Now a new resolution has been introduced under the War Powers Resolution from Senator Kaine to bar military action in Venezuela.
		And so it's really Congress's role to push back against this and Congress's role to assert its constitutional prerogatives here.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Linda is calling from Orange, Connecticut, on the line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Linda.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Thank you for the C-Stand crew for working 365 days a year.
		My question is: I find it curious that just this last week, the Senate unanimously voted to repeal the 2002 Iraq war resolution.
		It's curious for lots of reasons, but why now?
		Do you see a tie-in with the actions in the Caribbean with the Senate almost taking like a preventative measure removing the Iraq war resolution?
		Thank you, everyone.
		Have a good day.
		It's a great question.
		I think what we saw last week with this vote on the 2002 Iraq authorization for use of military force is a culmination of years of bipartisan effort to take that zombie war authorization off the books.
		The effort led in large part by Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia.
		It's good constitutional hygiene.
		It's good for Congress to reassert its prerogatives in war and peace.
		It's good to have this zombie war authorization off the books so it can't be misused.
		That was an authorization, of course, to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein two decades ago.
		Those purposes are long past being relevant here.
		So it's a great move by the Senate to move to repeal it.
		And hopefully the Congress will, the House will fall suit.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Paul is calling from Palm Harbor, Florida, line for Republicans.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Paul.
unidentified		Hello, good morning.
		Well, I have at least a couple of questions.
		One question is: does the military tell these people, stop or I'll shoot?
		And also, I want to know that.
		And also, if you're bringing drugs and killing people in here, what are we supposed to do?
		Let you kill millions of people?
		That's a message.
		Supreme Court probably will judge on this one way or the other.
		Is it legal or not?
		But would you answer?
		Is the military following telling these people, stop or I'll shoot?
		Can you please answer that?
		We have no indication there's any prior warning provided to the vessels being targeted.
		I think the only indications are that there's not been any warning given prior to the strikes on these vessels.
		And I want to say that that differs from the normal manner in which the U.S. has handled drug smuggling at sea, which is that there are law enforcement interdictions, interdictions conducted by the Coast Guard and Navy working jointly in a law enforcement paradigm where the vessels are stopped, boarded, searched, and if there's probable cause, individuals aboard vessels will be taken into custody and then prosecuted in the U.S. criminal justice system.
		On the course of those law enforcement interdictions, there will sometimes be a warning fire, okay, or even fire, disabling fire against the engines to stop the vessels.
		But only if there is an immediate threat of serious injury or threat to life will lethal force be used, okay?
		That's what's different about what's going on here.
		Lethal force is being used in the first instance, and it's being used outside the law.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Tim is calling from Arkansas on the line for independence.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Tim.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Well, yeah, it'd be nice if this was Star Trek and we could just target their engines and put them down.
		But there's drugs that are killing people, and they've already been declared a terrorist organization.
		But I seem to hear a tinge of hypocrisy because you had a comment about the SCOTUS talking about immunity, but I'm old enough to remember that Barack Obama sold traded guns, was it fast and furious, illegally, and managed to get border patrol killed?
		I seem to remember Joe Biden just happened to stop enforcing the border and let 20 million cross the border illegally.
		Now, even if 95% of them people are great, you got a million killers and thieves and drug dealers.
		I don't know, there's a slight bit of hypocrisy.
		We want the safety in this hemisphere, not to have foreign governments sending in their private security, drug-running soldiers supplied by Chinese fentanyl coming over here.
		I'm fine with taking out a couple of speed boats.
		I guess it'd be nice if you could shout down to them from the airplane: hey, stop there.
		But, You know.
		Thank you.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Brian, your response.
unidentified		Well, as I mentioned earlier, there is an established playbook whereby the Coast Guard working with the Navy will stop and interdict vessels suspected of smuggling drugs.
		And where necessary, use disabling fire.
		Okay.
		That's, of course, not what's taking place here.
		Again, there is no evidence that fentanyl is aboard these vessels.
		Fentanyl is entering the United States from Mexico, not northern South America.
		There was a good exchange on this subject at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing a week or so ago with Senator Reed, a ranking member, asking an administration official about this.
		Well, fentanyl is coming into the United States from Mexico.
		Why are you bombing these vessels in the Caribbean?
		And there was no response.
		The administration officials simply said, well, the president direct is to do so.
		Okay.
		So the fentanyl card is an abstraction.
		It is a red herring.
		Fentanyl is not aboard these vessels.
		I would also note that it is significant that President, this administration has designated a variety of criminal organizations and narcos in Latin America as, quote, terrorists or foreign terrorist organizations that started doing so in February.
		That's unprecedented and baseless.
		Okay.
		Criminal organizations such as Trinidad Agua and other entities in Latin America are not terrorists.
		Terrorism implies the use of violence against civilians for political, religious, or ideological ends.
		That's different from crime.
		And so the administration is very intentionally, though, trying to use the rhetoric, framing, tools, and tropes of terrorism and counterterrorism and repurpose those to new ends to label cartels and criminal organizations, Latin America as terrorists, but also domestic political opponents as terrorists and immigrants generally as terrorists.
		And I think your caller reflected that to some degree, sort of lumping them all together, the immigrants, narcos as terrorists.
		That's a misapplication of that label, but it is dangerous because this administration is in the Caribbean claiming the prerogative to kill quote terrorists outside the law based solely on the president's own say-so.
		And the question is, you know, where else will that license to kill be used?
		Where else will this administration use this supposed prerogative to kill terrorists?
		Will it use that at home, in the United States, against domestic political opponents it labels terrorists?
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Brian, John from Asheville, North Carolina sent us this text.
		It says, regardless of their legality, are these boat strikes considered, quote, official acts?
		If so, Trump would be immune from any prosecution.
		What levers could be pulled to hold him accountable for murder under these circumstances well the institutional actor that here that needs a pushback is the U.S. Congress.
unidentified		As I mentioned earlier, there are tools available under the War Powers Resolution.
		There are other mechanisms that Congress could use, such as defunding these military operations to bring them to a halt.
		But fundamentally, it is Congress's job to rein in an executive that is acting lawlessly.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Joe is calling from Mitchellville, Iowa, on the line for Democrats.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Joe.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Great subject.
		Thank you.
		I'm trying to formulate my question.
		I really am enjoying your guest.
		I'm a farmer in Iowa that's really trying to make decisions where we're headed.
		I don't like what the Trump administration is doing.
		So my question, when we look back at history, for example, any regime changes or anything that's gone on in the past, where are we headed?
		Because there's a lot of details in our conversation this morning, but how long should we expect the Trump administration to just run without any check and balances?
		I feel like our country is offset and not being checked and balanced.
		And do you, with all your knowledge, Brian, see how long this is going to take?
		I mean, we're going to have to go into a full civil war to get back to the check and balances.
		And I appreciate your comments this morning.
		Great day to everybody.
		And thank you for all the people that showed up to the No Kings Acts protests this weekend or get-togethers.
		Thank you.
		Well, good question.
		I think the key point here is that the future is not already determined.
		I don't think people should give in to defeatism or fatalism.
		The American public has agency here.
		And they should expect their elected representatives in Congress to push back against these lawless killings in the Caribbean, push back against other abuses of power.
		That is the role of Congress in our constitutional scheme.
		Our Constitution is not self-executing.
		It relies on constitutional actors and it relies on the American public to make it work.
		And so it's the responsibility of our elected members of Congress and the responsibility of the American public to rein in these abuses.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Ken is calling from Arizona, line for Republicans.
		Ken, we only have a couple of minutes left.
		Do you have a quick question?
unidentified		Yeah, just a statement.
		I worked previously in DEA and that, and I can guarantee you that these drugs boats that are coming out of Venezuela and into the international waters are being tracked by DEA or CIA from the time they leave the coast and get into international waters.
		I think Trump has every right to blow them out of the water.
		They're domestic terrorists, and I think most American people are right there with him.
tammy thueringer ▲ ● ▼		Brian, your response?
unidentified		Well, it's certainly true that the administration has acknowledged that it had the option, at least with respect to the first strike, to stop and interdict the vessel, as has been typically done in a law enforcement paradigm for death to.
		It chose instead to engage in premeditated killing.
		As I said at the outset, we have a term for premeditated killing outside of armed conflict, and that term is murder.
		Now, again, the administration simply designating an individual or an entity as a terrorist and using that as a basis to kill them, that should be deeply troubling to your viewers here because it's not clear where that asserted prerogative, that sort of license to kill, ends.
		The administration has identified no living principles licensed to kill people it calls terrorists.
		And it could well be applied here at home in the United States.

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