Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Source
Participants
Main
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glenn grothman
rep/r06:04
glenn ivey
rep/d07:05
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jeff merkley
sen/d07:48
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john mcardle
cspan43:02
Appearances
chuck schumer
sen/d01:49
donald j trump
admin03:42
justice amy coney barrett
scotus00:38
mike johnson
rep/r02:39
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russell means
00:33
Clips
david rubenstein
00:05
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jim marrs
00:19
justice neil gorsuch
scotus00:03
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rachel scott
abc00:20
willie nelson
00:21
Callers
doc in indiana
callers00:13
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Voice
Speaker
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Jeff Merkley Holds Senate Floor00:07:48
unidentified
Here's a look at some of our live coverage today on the C-SPAN Networks.
On C-SPAN at 10 a.m. Eastern, House Democratic leaders will speak at a party committee hearing to address the effects of the shutdown.
And at 3:30, a Senate Aging Committee hearing on modernizing the healthcare services industry with entrepreneur Mark Cuban.
Over on C-SPAN 2 at 7 a.m., it's Prime Minister's Questions.
Kier Starmer takes questions from members of the House of Commons on domestic and foreign policy issues.
And later, the Senate's back in session.
Lawmakers are set to vote again on a funding measure to end the ongoing government shutdown.
On C-SPAN 3 at 10:15 a.m., the Senate Judiciary Committee will hear testimony from President Trump's nominees to serve in the Justice Department.
And at 1:30 Eastern, legal experts discuss the current state of the rule of law and separation of powers in the U.S. government, hosted by the Society for the Rule of Law.
You can also watch live coverage on the C-SPAN Now app or online at c-SPAN.org.
C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
We're funded by these television companies and more, including WOW.
The world has changed.
Today, the fast, reliable internet connection is something no one can live without.
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WOW supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll talk about the Trump administration's trade and tariffs agenda, including recent trade tensions with China.
The Wall Street Journal's Gavin Bade is our guest.
Then Maryland Democratic Congressman Glenn Ivey, a member of the Appropriations Committee, covers the government shutdown and the Democrats strategy.
And Ryan Berg with the Center for Strategic and International Studies on the recent tensions between the U.S., Venezuela, and Colombia over allegations of drug trafficking.
Also, Wisconsin Republican Congressman Glenn Grothman on the government shutdown and the Republican strategy.
It's Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025, day 22 of the government shutdown.
And while much of the federal government remains closed, the U.S. Senate was in session last night as Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley has held the floor now for close to 13 hours to protest what he calls President Trump's threat to democracy.
The marathon floor speech began at 6.23 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, and the third term sender is still going at this hour.
We'll show you some of his remarks this morning as we hear from you about that speech and the ongoing government shutdown.
Phone lines are split as usual for you to call in.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Independents 202-748-8002.
Special line for federal workers, 202-748-8003.
That's also the number you can send us a text on or catch up with us on social media.
On X, it's at C-SPANWJ.
On Facebook, it's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
And a very good Wednesday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in now.
It was yesterday evening, 6:23 p.m. Eastern time, that Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley sent this text out, this tweet out to his social media followers saying, I'm holding the Senate floor to protest Trump's grave threats to democracy.
We cannot pretend that this is normal.
And then he took the Senate floor, and this is how he began his marathon speech.
Senator Jeff Merkley continued to speak on the Senate floor.
If you want to watch that live, you can watch over at C-SPAN2.
Here's the schedule for the day in the Senate.
The Senate is scheduled to come in at 10 a.m. Eastern, but if Jeff Merkley is still holding the floor at that point, he will still be allowed to speak for as long as he is standing there.
There may be other Democratic senators to come into the Senate and give him a break in the form of another question.
It's just been Senator Andy Kim so far.
We'll continue to watch what happens as we continue to talk to you about the ongoing government shutdown and the latest from Capitol Hill.
202-748-8000 for Democrats to call in this morning on the Washington Journal.
I'm having a heart attack and I don't have any life insurance.
And are the hospitals going to take care of me?
Are they going to ask me for my birth certificate to where I was born?
Are they going to ask me, am I Democrat so that they don't have to serve me because I'm not a Republican?
I'm worried about the people who will not have health care because they can't afford it.
And they go to the hospital for emergency.
That's why they have the bats, but they're talking about the people who's not born in this country can use the hospital only in emergency, sir.
But I'm worried about what they're going to ask me.
Do I have to walk around with my birth certificate to prove to the cops in my neighborhood that I'm American?
Do I have to do this because they're kicking up people of my color, of my race, because do I have to go around like this after living in this country free for 78 years?
The pain that the Democrats have caused during this reckless and completely unnecessary affair, and you could call it the Schumer shutdown or the Democrat shutdown.
You can call it whatever you want.
And I will say this, that we have Darth Vader.
You know Darth Vader, right?
Darth Vader is a man who I think is sitting right.
Is that Darth?
Stand up, please, Darth Vader.
Stand up.
Does everybody know this is, they call him Darth Vader.
I call him a fine man.
But he's cutting Democrat priorities, and they're never going to get them back.
And they've caused us, and they've really allowed us to do it.
And by the way, thank you.
You're doing a great job, I have to tell you.
So really a great job.
Because many of the things that they're cutting, like the New York project, $20 billion we're cutting it, they're not going to get it back.
I mean, they're not going to get a lot of things back.
They may not get it back.
Maybe we'll talk to them about it.
But they're losing the things that they wanted.
But many of the things that they wanted are things that we don't want.
Today I'm calling on every Senate Democrat to stop the madness to let our country get back.
In the greatest moment in the history of our country in terms of wealth, in terms of job creation, and in terms of investment coming in, these guys go on strike.
President Trump yesterday from that gathering at the White House with Senate Republicans, and it was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer who chided Republicans for gathering at the White House instead of negotiating on the government shutdown.
This was Chuck Schumer talking to reporters yesterday.
While millions of Americans are feeling the squeeze, the House is on vacation.
And Senate Republicans, well, they're at the White House today, not for negotiations or to work on any path out of the shutdown, but for a pep rally.
And as I've understood it, when they made comments afterwards, they didn't even talk about health care once, as I understand it, because they just finished.
That's right.
Republicans today will join the president to celebrate staying strong, being unified.
So as millions of Americans continue to endure the pain of one of the longest shutdowns in American history, Republicans will be celebrating keeping it going.
Isn't that a disgrace?
Apparently, Republicans don't have the time of day to fix people's health care to lower costs, but there's plenty of time for a photo op and celebrate their pain.
Let me be clear.
Americans don't have time for Republicans and Trump's parties.
The pain for families is intensifying as notices continue to go out in the states.
Every day this shutdown drags on, more families are getting letters from their insurers' warrant warning them that their premiums will skyrocket.
For more than 20 million Americans, steep premium hikes, increase of 114%.
Hundreds of millions could do more.
Hundreds of millions more, hundreds of millions more could see their costs skyrocket next year because it's going to go up for everybody, not just those on federal insurance.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, that was yesterday this morning.
Chuck Schumer's colleague, Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, continues to hold the Senate floor.
He's been there all night long and is continued to talk this morning about this book, How Democracies Die.
It's a 2018 book by Harvard professors Steve Levitsky and Daniel Ziblat.
C-SPAN covered it on book TV back in 2018, if you want to get a better sense of the book that has sort of been the outline for Jeff Merkley's now close to 13-hour address on the Senate floor.
He'll keep the floor for as long as he's talking.
We'll see how far he goes this morning.
We'll keep checking in and we'll hear from you about it as we also hear about day 22 of the government shutdown.
202-748-8000 for Democrats to call in.
202-748-8001 for Republicans.
Independents, it's 202-748-8002.
This is Mitchell in New Jersey.
Democrat, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Good morning.
I wanted to talk about how this shutdown ends.
First of all, just a preparatory comment.
I do support the Democrats taking the shutdown.
I don't think that they have much of a choice because of the impoundment of funds and the way things are being spent.
I mean, programs that have been previously approved are getting cut by pocket rescissions, which I think are illegal, but they're working their way through the courts.
I mean, the president has found a way to cancel things that he doesn't want and to pay for what he wants to pay and not what Congress has appropriated.
Now, I want to specifically focus in on what Senator Federman was talking about yesterday in terms of eliminating the filibuster.
I am not aligned philosophically with Senator Fetterman, as he seems to be acquiescing to the Republicans much more than I'm comfortable with.
Working with them is one thing, but just giving them a pass is something else.
However, I feel conflicted about the filibuster.
I do kind of agree with him that we need to get rid of this.
The Democrats are going to have to, if they're going to be an effective party in the future, make some very, very tough calls.
And I think the filibuster is getting in the way of that.
Eliminating the filibuster is something that neither side wants to do.
Now, the Democrats are not, they normally wouldn't pull a thing like a government shutdown.
That doesn't seem to be primarily in their wheelhouse unless they're forced into it.
While the Republicans, I think, have been using that as a weapon in budget fights and also in the even more serious debt ceiling fights.
And it's getting pretty dangerous because a debt ceiling shutdown would really cripple the international economy, let alone the U.S. economy.
It would really, really put us in a very serious hull.
You say it needs to happen because of some big things you want Democrats to do.
The argument for keeping the filibuster is that if Democrats get rid of it or help get rid of it and eventually take power back and do big things, the other side, Republicans, can then use the lack of a filibuster, just a straight majority, to also do big things that Democrats might not agree with.
Are you concerned about that, that it could be used by both sides to do some very big things?
unidentified
That's a good point.
And I do see the conflict of what I'm saying here because how can I support a shutdown and also support the ending the filibuster, which would, of course, eliminate a country?
It will force each party to own their agenda.
They will be completely responsible for it.
They can't finger point at the end of the day and say, well, the Democrats are this or the Republicans are this.
They will own their agenda.
And I think it's time that they do own their agenda.
The filibuster is not allowing any long-term debate on anything.
They're not debating.
They're just calling a filibuster.
I mean, they don't stay on the floor.
They don't talk it out.
They don't have to hold the floor anymore.
They just call a filibuster if they don't have the number of votes.
So Jeff Merkley has held the floor for now just about 13 hours.
Have you watched any of his address?
Did you catch that overnight or seen it this morning?
unidentified
No, I just heard about that, and I'm aware of like Corey Booker and other senators using floor time.
I get that, but that generally is not, you know, and they're allowed to debate and discuss this, but that is not how the modern filibuster is working at all.
I mean, what's happening is they call a filibuster, and once they have the, and that's pretty much it.
Now, they can stand on the floor or not, but that generally, it generally is used to obstruct.
And I think it's outlived its usefulness.
I don't think it's adding anything.
You know, Jeff Merkley is talking to an empty hall now.
I mean, you know, and the government is shut down already.
So, I mean, it's not something that they're using or have to use in order to exercise the filibuster.
Jeff Merkley or any other Democrat or Republican doesn't have to stand there all day, you know, and keep talking and pull on the floor like Mr. Smith goes to Washington.
He will have to stand there and keep talking, or Republicans could adjourn the Senate and then start a new day's business.
They're expected or at least scheduled to start it at 10 a.m.
We'll see what happens.
But Mitchell, we'll take your point from New Jersey.
Speaking of New Jersey, the record for delivering the longest individual floor speech in U.S. Senate history, of course, was April of this year.
Corey Booker, Democrat from New Jersey, his floor speech lasting 25 hours and five minutes.
As Chad Pergram of Fox News notes, when it comes to Jeff Merkley, he had a marathon floor speech of 15 hours and 28 minutes back in April of 2017.
He was then protesting the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in that speech.
We'll see if he beats that number today.
He's at 13 hours so far.
He's been speaking all night long.
Ed's next out of Troy, North Carolina.
Republican, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, John.
How are you doing this morning?
I'm doing well, Ed.
What I've been listening for the last several days and all those people calling in about everything being shut down and all.
But last weekend, there was two stories out of one was out of Charlotte and the other one came out of Greensboro.
The one out of Charlotte with this guy with had been caught with $14 million fraud for Medicare.
And the one coming out of Greensboro was that during the Biden administration, the last few years of it, that Biden administration had paroled 2.8 million immigrants, which do receive all of the benefits of Medicare and all that.
Bill Clinton's Legacy00:04:20
unidentified
Yeah.
For all these folks that don't believe that, you know, I wish C-SPAN would pull those two stories up and let the American people see what just one man did in Charlotte and the 2.8 that gets all of the benefits.
Nick, the old saying is that everybody hates Congress, but they like their congressperson, their individual.
Do you like yours?
unidentified
I don't.
No, this is wrong.
This is an old wives' tale.
I don't like my congressman, especially in my district.
I never liked her.
Okay, let's go.
Let's be serious now.
You saw this alarmist government shutdown clock CISPAN does now on your screen, and you even have the minutes.
I find this distasteful.
It must say 21 days and not so prominently.
But if you want to do that on your right side, then on the left side of the screen, please put, and you have that number easily available, and you showed it many times, please put the amount per taxpayer that is the national debt, per taxpayer, not per citizen, and per taxpayer, it is $250,000 and change.
That's what should alarm Americans, not the clowns in Congress.
Okay?
Nick, the party.
I'm really disappointed in my party.
I'm still raised to the Democrat, and I hope sometime they will turn around and become like Bill Clinton again.
And the debt per taxpayer, which is the number that you asked, is $327,000 per taxpayer in this country.
That's U.S.debtClock.org.
That's Nick.
This is Al out of Watertown, Tennessee, Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Yeah, just a couple of things.
One, on your call-in categories, you always do the same: Republican, Democrat, Independent, and then government employees or whatever.
What would be more accurate if you had a category for net contributors to the Treasury?
Because on something like this, the people that actually contribute more to the Treasury than they take out of the Treasury are going to have a completely different perspective.
I'm in that category.
I pay for other people's free stuff.
Now, on why this is stuck is the Obamacare subsidy.
Well, they're not keeping costs down for the people with the subsidy.
It is called cost shifting.
Senator Merkley's Midnight Protest00:03:13
unidentified
The cost is the same.
The question is who pays for it?
And the Democrats want to shift the cost of the people who get the free stuff to the people who pay for the free stuff.
It is just that simple.
It's cost shifting.
So when you hear somebody say, well, we need to get the cost down for medicine and medical care, no, what they're saying is we need to shift the cost to the people who are paying for it, not the people who are receiving it.
It is now 7.24 a.m. Eastern Time, meaning that Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, is going into his now 14th hour.
He's spoken for over 13 hours on the Senate floor, and he's continued to do so this morning, holding it this morning to protest what he calls President Trump's overreach.
He's gotten one break in the form of a question from New Jersey Senator Andy Kim, fellow Democrat.
It was about a seven-minute long question to allow that seven-minute break.
Andy Kim, around midnight, posted this video about Jeff Merkley on his social media page.
unidentified
It's late into the night here at the Capitol.
Very few people here, but one person that is here is Senator Merkley from Oregon, someone who has now been speaking on the floor of the Senate for hours, raising the concerns about the overreach of power by Donald Trump, the authoritarianism that we're seeing rising up right now in his own home state in Oregon as we see the military National Guard being deployed,
ICE agents being deployed, and people within his community under assault by those that are sworn to protect Americans.
I'm proud of Senator Merkley for raising this and using this as a moment to focus the attention of the American people on the concerns and the threats that are out there.
When Donald Trump calls other Americans the enemy from within, when he tells generals and admirals that they should use our cities as training grounds for our military, these are dangerous times, and it's important that we don't underestimate the fragility of our democracy.
So I was proud to be able to join Senator Merkley in his efforts to continue to show the American people and explain the dangers that we're in.
And I'm proud of him for standing up for our country this night.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere on the 18th of April in 1975.
Hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year.
And lo, as he looks on the Belfry's height, a glimmer and then a gleam of light.
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, but lingers and gazes till full on his sight, a second lamp in the Belfry burns.
One lamp the British are attacking by land.
Two lamps the British are attacking by sea.
A hurry of hoofs in a village street, a shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, and beneath from the pebbles in passing a spark struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet.
That was all.
And yet, through the gloom and the light, the fate of the nation was writing that night.
And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight kindled the land into flame with its heat.
So through the night rode Paul Revere.
And so through the night went his cry of alarm to every Middlesex village and farm.
A cry of defiance and not of fear.
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, and a word that shall echo forevermore.
For born on the night wind of the past, through all of our history to the last, in the hour of darkness and peril and need, the people will waken and listen to hear the hurrying hoofbeats of that steed and the midnight message of Paul Revere.
My father was a mechanic.
He grew up in a household that I believe early on did not have a radio, let alone, certainly didn't have television.
And his mother would bring the family together and they would read poems.
And my father learned just by hearing them any number of poems that he would recite as I was growing up.
Something would trigger that.
And I can imagine him now, my dad, the mechanic, hearing about the situation we are in with the threat to our republic and thinking back to how the colonies were threatened by the British.
And when they were threatened, Paul Revere rode through the night to warn people and that that's what has to happen in a democracy when there are authoritarian impulses that gain hold.
That was Senator Jeff Merkley about seven and a half hours ago at midnight last night.
He's still on the floor this morning, holding the floor now over 13 hours, taking your calls this morning about that speech, that marathon speech, and the ongoing government shutdown.
Okay, I agree with the fact that the Democrats need to work to open the government.
I also think that there are Republicans who have been out of the Capitol now for weeks and they're not working to open the government either.
And I'm appalled, and I'm a Republican, I'm appalled that our president, who has not supported programs like SNAP and Medicaid and Medicare,
wants us taxpayers to pay him $230 million To pay him back for all of the cases that have been filed against him.
I'm appalled by that when there are so many Americans who really need the help of programs like SNAP, like food banks, who are going to be inundated with requests for help from people who've never had to request help before and who don't have the money to provide that help.
I'm appalled.
And I think both sides are equally to blame.
And I think we need to stop demonizing each other.
I've heard some of my fellow Republicans call Democrats deranged.
I've heard Democrats call Republicans all kinds of despicable names.
And we need to stop the hate speech.
And we need to realize that the other side is not the enemy.
We are all Americans.
And we need to begin working together.
As my high school home ech teacher told us once, girls, we can disagree without being disagreeable.
And we need to get back to that idea.
But I don't believe we owe President Trump $230 million of taxpayer money.
And I don't believe that he ought to have destroyed part of the White House and paved over the rose garden to build a ballroom.
Let his private donors pay as they're paying for the ballroom.
Let them pay him back for the money that he wants from the Justice Department.
And here's those stories that Suzanne was referencing there from the New York Times.
Trump said to demand the Justice Department pay him $230 million for past cases.
Senior Department officials who were defense lawyers for the president and those in his orbit are now in jobs that typically must approve any such payment, underscoring, as the New York Times writes, the potential ethical conflicts.
You can read more there in the New York Times.
To the front page of the Washington Post, a new picture of the ongoing construction taking place at the White House.
It's the east wing of the White House.
So the picture on the front page of the Washington Post that you will see here in just a second is taken from the Treasury Department building looking from east to west towards the White House, the ongoing demolition of the East Wing there, making way for what is planned to be a 90,000 square foot ballroom.
Cries of overreach as the East Wing is decimated further is the headline in the Washington Post.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit created by Congress to help preserve historic buildings, sending a letter on Tuesday to the administration warning that the planned 90,000 square foot ballroom will overwhelm the White House itself, which is approximately about 55,000 square feet.
Quoting from the letter, we respectfully urge the administration and the National Park Service to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review process.
That was the letter sent to the White House.
White House officials dismissed the criticism as, quote, manufactured outrage, according to the Washington Post.
Quote, for more than a century, U.S. presidents have been renovating, expanding, and modernizing the White House to meet the needs of the present day.
The White House response team saying that the privately funded ballroom will be a quote bold, necessary addition to the presidential grounds.
And some more pictures in today's papers.
Tina Smith, Democrat from Minnesota, the senator, put this out on her social media page with a picture of the demolition saying, seeing the White House torn apart is really emblematic of the times that we are in.
Once again, we are a nation of talkers, unable to solve any problems.
Let's start with, well, let's start with healthcare.
Let's move to education.
Pick a topic.
And once again, where is the legislative branch?
Well, the House was only in session this year.
Are you ready?
135 days.
And once again, the legislative branch is going to abdicate all their responsibilities.
We're going to go ahead and we're going to print lots of money.
That's what we do in the United States.
We are the great debtor nation and we're going to print, print, print.
Now, when you are trying to take care of a nation's business, it's really important that we should be there at least 300 days a year, working diligently, because as you know, you've had plenty of guests on that said, can't pass a budget, haven't passed a budget, don't do this, can't do that.
Well, that's what happens.
The legislative branch has literally castrated itself and has become a useless limb on a body.
That's what it is.
It's a useless limb on a body.
And if the American people, whether Democrat, Republican, Independent, can't see the failure of our legislative branch, I wish we would focus more on the legislative branch and less on the individual.
One of the earlier callers was talking about getting rid of the filibuster that it may allow the legislative branch to take bolder action, as he said.
unidentified
Steven, that's like you said, that's always called, I just call that the nuclear option.
And both parties have wrestled with that to get what they want when they want it.
At least they're trying to avoid that nuclear option because that's what it would be.
And then that's just going to come haunt each and other party.
Remember, it's about who can be in control and for how long.
And so, right now, you know, Donald Trump's only going to be the president, and I voted for him twice, and I'm a Democrat.
I live in Maryland.
I've been under, I'm 61, I've been under Democratic rule for 61 years, and we're 3 billion in the hole in this state.
My point being is maybe if we got rid of the legislative branch and we brought in Americans, just like we do with jury duty, you know, you have to come in and you have to listen to the trial and you have to come.
So, maybe if we started saying, hey, you guys, we're all going to bring you to Washington.
You're going to sit in the barracks type style.
You've got to serve 30 days.
And we go ahead, we, the American people, go ahead and we sit down and we try to figure out some of these things with, are you ready?
Kind of like try to grab some experts and some people in this topic or this region and bring in some common sense individuals that aren't.
Here's the most important thing, John, that aren't being bought and paid for by lobbyists.
Because when we have lobbyists and we have special interest groups, we can go down the line with all the special interest groups that's irrelevant because everybody's trying to either keep it the way it is or to get it changed a little bit.
I like the idea of us, the American people, being the legislative branch, coming down, serving 30 days, 30 days.
Maybe instead of that being the ballroom, that big ballroom that they're building, maybe that could be the barracks where the American people come down.
Democrats, Republicans, Independents, we sit down and we try to hash out, are you ready?
Our nation's problems, because we are not solving any of our problems.
And regardless of the party, we always come back to the same things every year.
Guess what?
Education's failing.
Health care is expensive.
Insurance is going up out of the roof.
We talked about this.
We beat it like a dead horse, but we never solve the problem.
Go ahead and keep calling in as we show you the head of the United States House of Representatives, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, speaking with reporters yesterday.
Today, I want to put a final point on some of the very real consequences we're seeing and what they mean for Americans around the country.
And I'll zoom in on some of these key Democrat states where the senators continue to dig their heels in and vote against opening the government.
Yesterday from NBC News, here's the headline, air traffic control staffing issues cause flight delays across the country.
The Secretary of Transportation said 53% of flight delays are now due to staffing issues, and usually that number is 5%.
From Colorado, food banks face growing crises as shutdown impacts become a reality.
That's the headline from Sky High News.
What are Colorado's two Democrat senators doing?
You've got Hicken Looper and Bennett.
They both now voted 11 times to keep the government closed.
Virginia, here's the headline yesterday, KSL.
Virginia employees fear shutdowns impact on veterans' medical care.
And meanwhile, their two Democrat senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, have voted repeatedly to put their thumb in the eye of those veterans.
And they won't end this pain.
From Hawaii, Hawaii News Now says, headline, government shutdown impacts telehealth for seniors in Hawaii.
Seniors in Hawaii rely upon telehealth.
Guess who's shutting it down?
Their two Democrat senators, Brian Schatz and Maisie Hirono, voted again and again to keep the government closed and disrupt the health services for seniors in their own state.
They've got a lot to answer to.
From California, here's a headline, ABC 7 News.
Almeida food banks step in to help TSA workers, families impacted by government shutdown.
That is disgusting.
And both of California's senators, Padilla and Schiff, have voted 11 times to block the pay of those TSA agents and their families, the paychecks they rely upon.
From Illinois, WIFR, yesterday, federal courts in northern Illinois reduce operations due to government shutdown.
The courts are reducing operations, and you've got Illinois Democrats, Senators Duckworth and Durbin have voted to keep the government closed.
We can do this all day long.
That's a sample.
Democrats used to care about the harm that shutdowns caused hardworking Americans, but now we can all see very clearly that was always based on politics and not principle.
Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday on headlines across the country, here's one more from today's Wall Street Journal, Farm Aid Funding Frozen by Shutdown to be released.
The story noting that the Trump administration is planning to release more than $3 billion in aid to U.S. farmers that had been frozen as a result of the government shutdown as the agriculture sector grapples with the fallout from the president's tariffs.
President Trump directed the Agriculture Department to distribute the money from a fund that was used to bail out distressed farmers during Trump's first term, according to administration officials the Wall Street Journal talked to because of furloughs and closed USADA offices, farmers have been unable to access some of the department's safety net programs.
On Thursday, USDA plans to resume Farm Service Agency core operations, which have been closed for three weeks during the government shutdown, and that would allow farmers to access aid, including some of those safety net programs they're reporting today.
Taking your phone calls, this is Kevin out of the Hoosier State Republican.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, John.
Good morning, C-Stan Joint audience.
I'm going to get some quick points in.
I know our time is limited.
I agree with the previous caller.
We have to come together as a country.
The politicians need to do this.
It needs to be bipartisan.
There's people hurting out there.
And I just want to-that's my most important point.
Second of all, as far as the renovations at the White House, even though I'm Republican, the optics aren't good.
People are hurting out there.
I don't.
As far as the House being out of session, those optics aren't good.
People are hurting.
They need to be in there.
Just not good optics.
But I'm going to.
My last point is: as far as deportations, I'd like, I know things they need to be doing it in a just way.
But the last point I wanted to make was: President Barack Obama had 3.1 million deportations in eight years.
Didn't get much media pushback, but I wanted to get that point in.
My first-time caller, so I do have some points I want to make.
Also, I agree with the other two gentlemen that Congress, I believe, is responsible because they are like the guardrail to whatever is not being done for the people and can pull in some of the things that the president is saying and allowing.
I believe that the temperature of this country will start from the head down to the people, and the head would be our president.
Whatever temperature he is spewing out there, whether it be peace or hate or making fun of the people, some of the stuff that I've seen as a Christian is totally disgusting, like the flying of the plane and excretion coming down on the people.
We are the people, the United States of America, not divided.
We are one.
A house divided cannot stand.
And that's what the word of God says as well.
And we cannot do this as a red state, blue state, because there are red people, blue people in each state.
So when you're trying to hurt one people, you're hurting all the people.
We need to come together.
Congress is a guardrail.
Do your job and then let's come together.
Mike Johnson, you can call the people back and let's do why the Republicans and the Democrats can't agree on this health care plan because Republicans are not going to keep their word when it comes to, okay, we agree to the end of the year, but when the end of the year come, then all of a sudden you don't remember what you had promised that you were going to go with.
So the people can't just live for one year and know that, okay, things may be okay, but the next year, the sky race of the insurance is going to go so high.
We can't live.
We won't have any insurance if we try to keep the insurance, let it go as high as the insurance companies want it to go.
Tripling people insurance.
Obamacare, as they call it, ACA, may not have been perfect, but it allowed people to keep their children that were maybe still in college or whatever up to, I think it was age 26.
This allowed people that couldn't afford insurance, little small companies that couldn't give insurance, allowed the people to be able to buy on the market.
So it may not have been perfect, but it did allow people to get insurance that could not afford insurance before.
Do you believe they should be extended at the same rates?
unidentified
I think they should negotiate because, you know, medical costs in Hawaii here, I'm in Hawaii, and I've seen strike by Kapiolani Medical.
I've seen strike by Kaiser.
Medical costs are rising.
So, I mean, where does it end?
But, you know, I think they need to negotiate.
They need to sit down and they need to talk, Democrats and Republicans, and negotiate and come up with something.
Maybe not 100% of what the subsidies were, but closely, maybe 80%, maybe 50%.
I don't know.
But that's something they need to sit down and they need to talk about.
Because I do, I'm in favor of the Obamacare, and I think it's a good thing because there's a lot of people affected by that, both in the red and blue states, and especially in Hawaii here.
If you're confident in something, if you know it's going to work, change the rules, apply the nuclear option, and let's get on with business.
I mean, if they're so confident that their bill will satisfy the American people, I would think that's the simplest way to accomplish that with the nuclear option and let the chips fall where they may.
That's Al in Boston, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
Stick around, though.
Plenty more to talk about.
Later this morning, a conversation with Ryan Berg of the Center for Strategic and International Studies about the rising tensions between the United States and Venezuela.
But first, after the break, a closer look at the Trump administration's trade and tariff policies, a preview as well of President Trump's planned meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Stick around for that conversation with Gavin Bade right after the break.
unidentified
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold new original series.
Sunday, with our guest, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Only the fifth woman to serve on the high court and author of the book, Listening to the Law.
She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader, David Rubinstein.
I think what I want them to take away from the book is that they should be proud of the court.
And I want them to be able, I want them to understand the way the court grapples with the legal questions that matter to the country.
unidentified
Watch America's Book Club with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
Friday on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, in a time of sharp political divides, two senators from opposite sides of the aisle come together for a candid conversation.
Delaware Democrat Senator Chris Coons and Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford discuss cooperation on key foreign policy and the government shutdown.
They join host Dasha Burns to talk about what really matters.
Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
America marks 250 years, and C-SPAN is there to commemorate every moment.
From the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the voices shaping our nation's future, we bring you unprecedented all-platform coverage, exploring the stories, sights, and spirit that make up America.
U.S.-China Trade Talks Expected00:15:43
unidentified
Join us for remarkable coast-to-coast coverage, celebrating our nation's journey like no other network can.
These trade deals are all about pressure points and where you can push.
This was the lead of your story from last week.
In its standoff with Washington, Beijing thinks that it has found America's Achilles heel, President Trump's fixation on the stock market.
Explain.
unidentified
Absolutely.
Well, President Trump, when the Chinese put on these export controls, he once again threatened a 100% additional tariff on China.
If you think back to earlier this year, tariffs did actually go that high.
We had 145% tariffs on China for a short time.
And what happened is the stock market went into a tailspin.
We saw disruptions in the bond market as well.
And ultimately, the president had to back down.
The Chinese saw this.
They observed this.
They know that the U.S. economy cannot withstand triple-digit tariffs for long.
And so if push does come to shove and Trump puts those in place, they think they can outlast the U.S. in any trade war because the president likes to see stocks go up.
He does not like to see disruptions in other markets.
And they think that they can hold on for longer.
So that's the card that they're playing in these talks.
Whether or not it will work, I think remains to be seen.
As we look ahead to that meeting, it would take place, expected to take place in South Korea at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit that's taking place.
Do we know anything about who would be in that meeting?
Would it be a one-on-one meeting, a two-on-two, three-on-three?
If so, who would join President Trump?
Who would join Xi Jinping?
unidentified
I think that a lot of the details are still being worked out.
Oftentimes, Trump really likes these to be mono-amano, right?
Like he likes to deal with other leaders on a personal basis.
And I think that's especially true with Xi Jinping, who he sees as his near-peer rival here.
China's really the only country that has challenged U.S. trade actions this year.
They're the only one to really have retaliated in a lasting way.
And so I think he sees this as a test of his personal mettle, as well as, you know, a big, high-stakes economic encounter as well.
Gavin Bay joining us from the Wall Street Journal, Trade and Economic Policy Reporter.
If you have questions on that front, give us a call.
Phone lines, as usual.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
As folks are calling in, switch gears for me.
Take us to the tariff case before the Supreme Court.
November 5th is when we're expecting that case to be heard.
President Trump has said he may attend that case personally.
What is this case about?
What are the justices being asked to decide?
unidentified
Basically, this case focuses on Trump's so-called reciprocal tariffs.
These are the ones that he unveiled back in April on Liberation Day.
It's not all of the tariffs they've put in place, but think about it as like 70% of Trump's second term tariffs.
To put these tariffs in place, Trump used a novel interpretation of a 1970s emergency economic law and said that that law justifies him putting these broad tariffs on virtually every U.S. trading partner.
The only problem is that law does not mention tariffs specifically.
And so affected industries in the U.S. have filed and actually won two lower court cases saying that this law actually does not allow him to use these use tariffs in such a sweeping way.
And so the Supreme Court will be looking at that emergency law and trying to decide what is the scope of the president's emergency powers under this act when it comes to when it comes to economic warfare, basically, and when it comes to setting tariffs on on virtually the entire world.
So it's going to be a very, very high-stakes case for the U.S. here.
And then one other story, this from today's Wall Street Journal.
If you can just dig a little bit deeper on it, farm aid funding frozen by shutdown is now set to be released.
Explain some of the background here.
We mentioned this in our previous segment.
unidentified
Yeah, absolutely.
I think farmers are really feeling the squeeze right now.
They need loans ahead of, you know, it's harvesting season right now, the time when a lot of them get their finances in order for next planting season.
They need the farm loans to kind of get over the hump into next year, right?
At the same time, you've seen U.S. farmers really be buffeted in foreign markets right now.
We mentioned Brazil not buying U.S. farm commodities.
Beef prices are very, very high.
Trump came in and said, maybe we'll buy beef from Argentina.
That sparked the ire of many cattle ranchers and senators from those states.
So I think there's a lot of moving parts in the agriculture industry right now as we go through this shutdown and the continuation of these global trade tensions.
You're going in and out, but I think we got the same thing.
unidentified
Yes, Chinese purchases of farmland, a very hot topic among many in Congress these days.
You know, generally, the U.S. is a relatively open market.
We let companies from around the world come in and invest in U.S., like the agricultural sector, the industrial sector.
There are rising concerns in Congress and among some in the administration that Chinese companies may be coming in and not just buying farmland, but buying farmland, as LaCaller said, adjacent to U.S. military sites, near strategic U.S. military bases, that maybe we wouldn't want a foreign adversary's company being right next door to that.
So there are a couple options on the table here.
One is strengthening investment reviews.
We have something called the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States.
There have been bills and proposals.
Indeed, indeed.
There have been proposals to expand its jurisdiction to look into these sorts of cases.
And then also some legislative proposals to tighten up in just the farm sector as well, some of the reviews here.
So I think this is something that certainly people in Washington are talking about.
We haven't seen any concrete movement yet, but it's something we can see on the horizon.
Just for folks who've never heard of that, what do they do?
Who's it made up of?
Who gets to make these decisions?
unidentified
Yeah, it's an interagency group.
Again, it's the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
You may have heard it called CFIUS.
These are representatives from the Defense Department, Treasury, Ag Department, Commerce, an interagency group that comes together.
And when a company wants to make a big strategic investment in the U.S., they will review that company, make sure there aren't ties to foreign military adversaries, other nefarious actors, and then make a determination whether that investment should be allowed to go through, whether there maybe need to be some regulations put into place.
This is something we saw, for instance, with the TikTok deal.
There was a CIFIA review ongoing through the Biden administration on that.
And there's been a lot more of these cases for the committee to review.
It's been strengthened in past years, in recent years by Congress.
And it's really, you know, in a very technical sense, there is a spotlight on this committee going forward because, you know, we are blurring the line, some would say, between, you know, economic security, national security, and just normal economic functioning in this country.
In terms of normal economic functioning in this country, a question from America Inc. following along and watching from X saying which branch of government should determine which countries and goods to tariff?
Should it be the president or Congress?
unidentified
This is an interesting issue.
The Constitution originally said Congress, right?
Trade tariffs, that is an Article I congressional prerogative.
Now, over decades, Congress has ceded authority on trade to the president through a number of laws dating back through the mid-20th century.
And originally that was to give the president more authority to go out and make trade deals.
And kind of part and parcel with that is enhanced tariff authority.
And so now that President Trump is really flexing that muscle and really going out and tariffing other countries, you've seen some legislative proposals really from both parties in Congress to take some of that authority back.
I don't think we'll see anything move in the short term here, but we have seen some interesting votes in Congress, some interesting alliances between Republicans and Democrats.
I think it's going to be something to watch, especially as we see more of these price increases related to tariffs kind of filter through the economy in months to come.
What's been the most interesting alliance in your mind?
unidentified
I think we've seen a couple of Republicans, for instance, Mitch McConnell, the former Republican leader in the Senate, he has voted for Senate resolutions that would take back some of this authority, that would cancel some of President Trump's emergency authority over these so-called reciprocal tariffs.
These are the same tariffs that will come up before the Supreme Court.
So Mitch McConnell has done that.
Rand Paul, more of a libertarian streak from Kentucky, he's voted for that.
And then we've seen a bill from Chuck Grassley.
He's from Iowa.
He's a Republican.
He used to be chair of the Senate Finance Committee.
He teamed up with Maria Cantwell for a bill that would actually, probably the most robust bill on tap in Congress right now that would take some of that authority back on trade from the executive.
Now, Senate leadership, Senate Republican leadership is not going to let a lot of these bills go forward, but I do think you could see clamoring from some vulnerable Republicans next year as we go into election season and as price increases related to these tariffs, again, continue to filter through the economy.
Because I don't think economists think that we've seen all of that happen yet.
Nations Negotiate Tariffs00:15:45
unidentified
There's still kind of more ripple effects from these tariffs to come.
A U.S.-China trade deal certainly would be the biggest trade deal to watch.
But what other trade deals are we working on right now?
What else are you covering?
unidentified
Yeah, there's been a number of trade frameworks that we've signed with other nations.
Now, these are not bona fide, you know, legal trade deals, as you would see, like the U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal from Trump's first term that replaced NAFTA.
These are executive agreements that Trump has signed with countries like Japan, economies like the European Union.
They're working on finalizing the terms of it with South Korea.
We've seen a number of them in Southeast Asian nations, Vietnam, Indonesia.
There are a lot of details to be worked out.
Usually what has happened in these deals is that the U.S. has agreed to decrease their tariffs from Trump's very high threatened levels in exchange for reductions in tariff and trade barriers in other nations.
And in return, they get a break on some of their tariffs.
For instance, in the European Union and Japan, they got their automotive tariffs down from 25% to 15%, so they can still sell into the U.S. market and make a profit.
In exchange, we got a number of concessions from them.
But again, these things are still being worked through.
The details are still very much up in the air in a lot of these.
So I think it's kind of a rolling ball when it comes to these trade negotiations.
Is that the focus of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit?
Or what goes on at the summit where we're expecting President Trump and Xi Jinping to meet?
unidentified
It's a broad-based economic summit.
So you will see countries talking about trade deals with the U.S. You'll see them talking about regional economic cooperation amongst their nations as well.
They'll talk about currency.
They'll talk about any range of economic issues.
So I do think while the Trump G Summit may overshadow some of those proceedings for a U.S. audience, it's also very important for these other nations to meet with each other, enhance regional economic cooperation.
These tariffs seem to be, to me, just I know that it's a type of money that's taken in, but there seems to be no accurate posting of where these tariffs go, what are they being used for, and just inform the public more what they're being used for and accountability.
Jay Sanders wants you to dig down, as it were, on soybeans.
If China can switch from buying its soybeans in the U.S. to making all its soybean purchases from South America, what does that say about the overall supply of soybeans?
Is the world supply greater than the world demand?
unidentified
I'm not sure about the global supply and demand.
I do think we've certainly got, it seems like we've got enough soybeans to go around.
I think more the question here is a question of price, right?
When President Trump put his tariffs on China, they retaliated.
They have 30% tariffs on the U.S. around about.
And so that makes U.S. soybeans more expensive.
It's better for them to buy from a Brazilian company, an Argentinian company.
China has spent a lot of money developing farmland in those countries, getting farms of every type off the ground.
And soybeans are also a durable good.
So the Chinese can keep them, you know, keep them offshore in big tankers or transport vessels.
They can keep them throughout the year.
It's something that doesn't decay very, very quickly.
So it's an easily substituted good.
And so when you have a price increase from a tariff on U.S. soybeans, the market's going to react.
Is rare earth minerals an easily substituted good?
unidentified
No, and that's a problem for us, right?
We have, I mean, the president this week signed a critical minerals deal with Australia.
The whole idea is to get some of these minerals from Australia, invest in more of the processing capabilities.
And so, without going into much detail on this, the point is that China really has the vast majority of these processing facilities.
We used to do it in the U.S., it's costly, it's polluting.
We let a lot of that slide to China over decades under both Republican and Democratic presidents, and now they really corner the market.
So, we have these, you know, these rare earth magnets that go into everything from, like I said, cars to guided missiles and things like that.
They've really got us, you know, they've got us in a corner on these things.
And while so, I think it's going to take a number of years for us to build up the capabilities, the processing capabilities, to be able to counter China's dominance in this sector.
Likewise, the U.S. has dominance in a lot of sectors as well, and we've seen us flex our muscles on export controls too.
And that's why I think you see the sides meeting and saying, hey, we both need things from one another.
Maybe we can take the temperature down a little bit.
And my producer, Leslie Collins, tells me he's on the grounds of the White House right now, and he may come to the stakeout camera in the next five minutes or so.
So we'll take that if he does.
We'll continue to watch the White House grounds and continue to take your phone calls with Gavin Bade.
Your story from earlier this week, the U.S. is tiptoeing away from many of Trump's signature tariffs.
Explain which ones you dug in on.
unidentified
Sure thing.
So this is regarding the so-called reciprocal tariffs.
These are the subject of that Supreme Court case next month.
So to think about this, think about Trump's second term tariffs in two buckets.
One of them is the reciprocal tariffs.
The other is the so-called Section 232 tariffs.
These are other national security-related tariffs on steel and aluminum, automotive, other sectors.
These are sector by sector, industry-by-industry tariffs.
What we've seen over the past few weeks and months is the administration is slowly taking the emphasis off of the reciprocal tariffs, these ones that are really at legal risk.
They're putting more exemptions, more carve-outs in place.
They're offering to carve out more goods from those tariffs.
And they're actually at the same time that they're stepping away from those tariffs slightly.
The other bucket, the Section 232s, they're expanding them greatly.
They're rolling out tariffs on new sectors.
They're expanding the scope of tariffs that they have on certain industries.
Industries, like the automotive industry, like steel and aluminum, and so what we see is kind of a shift in emphasis from reciprocal tariffs to these so-called section 232s, in part because there's such a legal risk to the reciprocal tariffs right now and, by contrast, section 232 has been used, all it's been used numerous times by, you know, by administrations of both parties.
It's on much firmer legal ground.
So I think you see them kind of building a plan b in case those other tariffs get thrown out by the Supreme Court.
They'll still have a lot of the economy covered by this separate set of so-called section 232 tariffs, and so it's a complicated issue.
But you think you know one set of tariffs, another set of tariffs.
They're de-emphasizing one, they're emphasizing the one that's on shorter legal footing here, and I think you'll kind of see that play out as this uh, Supreme Court case moves forward.
So make foreign businesses pay the same taxes fines fees licenses surcharges permits, health costs, minimum wage, environmental standards, safety costs, etc.
And follow, and make them follow, the same rules that American businesses have to pay.
unidentified
And that's my comment, what Mickey describes not exactly what is usually considered free trade certainly, but I think there is a big push to, you know, equalize some of these terms of trade and equalize regulations across a number of countries.
This is something the president has actually prioritized say, in um negotiations with the European Union.
He has push the, pushed the Europeans to uh, decrease a lot of their regulations on things like the automotive sector, other sectors, to kind of more more reflect what you would see in the United States.
He's pushed for this in Japan as well.
Obviously, this is a very contentious issue.
These other countries have regulations in place for good reasons, as that that's how they feel and so it's.
It's always a give and take.
If you, president Trump, has said, if you want access to our markets, you need to treat U.s firms more like we treat them in our country, now I would say for the caller, you know, if a.
If a foreign company is coming here, you know they're going to be subject to the same laws and regulations as U.s firms.
Now, whether or not you know, companies find ways to skirt around them.
I think both domestic and foreign firms in the?
U.s are always trying to find ways around regulations.
But I think getting down to the brass tax of what He's talking about, that has been a priority for the administration, to bring down regulations on U.S. Firms in other Countries.
And we've seen them, you know, have some preliminary success with that.
As I'm saying, you know, we have to see how these trade deals work out.
They're not classic legal trade deals.
But he has been extracting some concessions on that.
So I think that that's something that, to the caller's point, the President Trump has prioritized.
Final minute, what are you working on this week?
Looking ahead to the Trump Xi meeting and the reciprocal tariffs case at the Supreme Court as well.
There's also a tariff case on Italian pasta that has been a more technocratic case, kind of out of the headlines.
But it's an administrative review on these duties on Italian pasta.
There's been a big that's gotten messed up for some reason or another.
Now the Italians are facing 100% tariffs on pasta if they don't in this very technocratic administrative review find a way to get those tariffs down.
So look out for that article in a few days here.
I think we'll have it at least early next week.
We're going to see if we, you know, the Italians would really, really like to avoid that.
Authors Discussing Books00:03:03
unidentified
I'm sure a lot of pasta eating consumers in the U.S. would too.
Coming up in about 30 minutes, a conversation with Ryan Berg of the Center for Strategic and International Studies about the rising tensions between the United States and Venezuela.
But after the break, it's more of your phone calls.
It is open forum.
Go ahead and start calling in now on phone lines for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.
And we will get to your calls right after the break.
unidentified
Friday on C-SPAN's Ceasefire.
In a time of sharp political divides, two senators from opposite sides of the aisle come together for a candid conversation.
Delaware Democrat Senator Chris Coons and Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford discuss cooperation on key foreign policy and the government shutdown.
They join host Dasha Burns to talk about what really matters.
Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
Book TV, every Sunday on C-SPAN 2, features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books.
Here's a look of what's coming up this weekend.
At 1 p.m. Eastern, we visit Chicago for the Printers Row Litfest, where authors gather to discuss parenting, Harriet Tubman, the future of democracy, and more.
Then at 7 p.m. Eastern, it's America's Book Club.
From the Great Hall of the Library of Congress, Master of the Legal Thriller John Grisham joins host David Rubinstein to discuss the author's early life, writing process, latest novel, and his work with wrongfully convicted prisoners.
At 8:30 p.m. Eastern, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kevin Sack, with his book Mother Emmanuel, talks about the long history of the African Methodist Episcopal Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, including the 2015 shooting that killed the church's then pastor and eight parishioners.
And at 9:15 p.m. Eastern, Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization, Eric Trump, with his book Under Siege, talks about growing up as a Trump and his family's involvement in business and politics.
Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
We were expecting the Senate to come in at 10 a.m. Eastern.
Though the Senate has been in all night long, that's because Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley has held the floor now for more than 14 hours.
A speech he began at 6:23 p.m. Eastern Time yesterday, warning about what he calls the authoritarianism of Donald Trump.
He has been on the floor all night.
He was given a break right around 10:30 p.m. Eastern yesterday by New Jersey Senator Andy Kim.
And that was it until this morning, just in the past few minutes.
It's Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar who have been engaging in a bit of back and forth with Jeff Merkley on the Senate floor.
So those have been the first breaks he's gotten from fellow Democrats since late last night.
Again, it's more than 14 hours speaking.
The last time Jeff Merkley spoke all night on the Senate floor, it was 2017 in opposition to Supreme Court Justice nominee Neil Gorsuch.
That speech lasted 15 hours and 27 minutes.
The longest speech on the Senate floor, of course, Corey Booker, dating back to April of this year.
Corey Booker's speech lasted a full 25 hours and five minutes.
And Corey Booker, among those who have been tweeting throughout the night about the Senator Jeff Merkley's speech on the Senate floor, Corey Booker saying, Jeff Merkley has always stood up for our country.
Last night at 10:20 p.m. Eastern, he said, I'll be watching his speech late into the night.
And I hope all Americans listen to what he says about the use of authoritarian tactics in our democracy.
That speech is getting a lot of attention, and we will dip into it for a few minutes here so you can hear from Jeff Merkley.
Thank you very much to my colleague from New York for those two questions.
And one of the questions that my colleague from Minnesota asked about was mentioning a $230 million in compensation that Trump is trying to get out of the government.
And so I found the story about that and wanted to fill folks in on what that is.
President Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million.
That's a lot out of money.
Folks in my neighborhood, a million dollars seems like an unfathomable sum.
And here we're talking about $230 million, a quarter billion dollars in compensation for the federal investigation into him, according to people familiar with the matter.
This is an article by Devlin Barrett and Tyler Pager on October 21st, 2025.
So hot off the press, if you will.
The people familiar with the matter who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit.
So you have the president suing his own government.
And he has the Justice Department in which there are people who were on his defense team now working who would be the ones to ultimately approve a settlement.
This situation, this article goes on to say, situation has no parallel in American history.
As Mr. Trump, a presidential candidate, was pursued by federal law enforcement and eventually won the election, taking over the very government that must now review his claims.
It is also the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts created by installing the president's former lawyers atop the Justice Department.
Sure, those are confirmation, and there's no longer a filibuster, 60-vote rule when it comes to confirmations in the Senate.
unidentified
Exactly right.
That's what I'm saying.
There's no longer the 60-vote rule.
So if they can break it for the affirm these judges, then surely they can break it to open up the government.
Second thing that I wanted to say is it's really a disgrace that this man, as they say he's not taking a paycheck, this president is stealing from the United States all kinds of ways.
Now he wants a $230 million judgment.
For what?
He would have been convicted if he was not the president of the United States.
He would have been convicted, but you could not, with the Russia thing, you could not convict a sitting president.
The picture you're seeing on your screen is the front page above the fold of the Washington Post today.
This is a picture looking from where the Treasury Department building is from east to west at what was the facade of the east wing of the White House, the demolition continuing there, and that demolition project getting some pushback, including from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Nonprofit created by Congress to help preserve historic buildings,
sending a letter to administration officials warning that the planned 90,000 square foot ballroom will, quote, overwhelm the White House itself, which is about just 55,000 square feet.
The letter from the trust saying we respectfully urge the administration and the National Park Service to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review process.
The White House pushing back on those arguments, saying that the expansion is necessary.
It's being privately funded.
And it will be, quote, a bold addition to the presidential ground.
For more than centuries, U.S. presidents have been renovating, expanding, and modernizing the White House to meet the needs of the present day is the statement that came from the White House.
That's the latest from the White House.
We're going to come back to this end of Pennsylvania Avenue now.
We continue to check in with members of Congress throughout the government shutdown.
Now, 22 days into this shutdown, we turn to Democratic Congressman Glenn Ivey of Maryland.
His fourth congressional district borders Washington, D.C. to the east.
It's home to nearly 50,000 federal employees.
Congressman Ivey, what are your constituents telling you as this shutdown stretches into a fourth week?
My guess is that the end game for this will come when Americans across the country all start getting these notices about their health care premiums going up $1,000, $2,000 a month, and that sort of thing, which has already started to happen.
But open enrollment, I think is November 1st for the kickoff.
But some of those notices have started going out.
And I think they've already started contacting their representatives, Republicans and Democrats, to complain about it.
Many of them don't understand for good reason why it's happening because it shouldn't be happening.
There's no reason the Republicans should not have extended these tax credits.
They certainly extended the tax cuts for the wealthy, and they did that permanently.
They ought to be able to extend these ACA tax credits for working Americans so they can have health care.
Right now, some of the polling on who the American public blames for the shutdown, it's fairly even between Democrats and Republicans.
You're saying that come November, come that open enrollment period, that that will shift dramatically to Republicans and then they will cave on this issue?
I don't know if the American people think so much about it in terms of whether they're blaming Republicans or Democrats.
I think they're going to see these notices and say, how do we fix this?
This is crazy.
I cannot afford it.
I'll have to drop my health care coverage.
Who's going to take care of this?
And if at that point the Republicans don't move forward with fixing it, because right now they aren't.
They're doing, you know, every excuse to not do it.
The House Republicans have only been in session here in Washington for 12 days since July 25th.
They passed this bill, I think it was on September 19th, sent it over to the Senate, even though they knew it was DOA, left town and have not been back.
And we're over a month now that they've been gone instead of being here and negotiating.
So I think ultimately, it could end up being a pox on both of your houses.
But the bottom line, from my perspective, let's reopen the government and let's get the health care extended so working class Americans can have health care coverage.
Come back to those 46,000 or so federal workers that live in your district, the 4th District, right on the border, the eastern border of Washington, D.C. There is new legislation from John Thune, Senator Thune, the majority leader, the Shutdown Fairness Act.
It would allow government funding to provide back pay and ongoing wages to military service members and essential federal workers who have been required to work during the shutdown.
Well, the way it looks is that they could end up striking down the last effective part of the Voting Rights Act, which has allowed African Americans and other minority groups to get elected to office and the numbers that we are.
So before the act was passed, Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act, Fair Housing Act, and the like in the mid-60s all passed together that helped African Americans become part of the American democracy fully.
But the rollbacks have been undermining that.
There was a case, I think it was about 10 years ago or so, that cut back on what's called pre-clearance that would have allowed the Department of Justice to make sure that laws that the states passed that might impact on voting rights negatively, especially against minority groups, would have to be cleared by the Department of Justice.
Supreme Court struck this down.
The last piece that's left is this provision that requires essentially opportunities for African Americans to have a chance to vote in districts where they can win.
So it's, I think, an important piece of legislation.
I think there's some estimates that depending on what they do, if they strike Section 2 down entirely, we could lose about 18 or 19 African American members of the House of Representatives.
And I think that would be devastating.
It's also sort of coupled with the redistricting effort that Donald Trump has pressed Texas and other states into doing to try and move seats away from Democrats to Republicans.
I think they're obviously worried and rightly so that they're in danger of losing majority control of the House.
And I think that the two of those efforts together are going to make it more uphill for us.
But if they stay where they are in this health care piece and continue to allow the extensions to expire and the $1 trillion cuts to Medicaid, we might be able to win it anyway.
Last time we had a big fight about health care, I think it was the midterm for Trump in this first term.
Democrats picked up 41 seats in the House.
So we want to fight for fairness.
We're hoping the Supreme Court gives a fair ruling here.
But if they don't, we're still going to fight to gain majority control of the House.
On those redistricting efforts, there's been push by some Democrats in response to efforts in Texas and Missouri to respond in places like Illinois and your state of Maryland.
Would you support a redistricting effort in Maryland?
This isn't the way I would have gone about it normally, but I think it's important to make sure that there's no unilateral disarmament here.
If the Republicans are going to gerrymander major states like Texas, I think we have to make sure we try and do things to keep up with that.
And keep in mind, the Democrats would be in the majority in the House right now if the Republicans had not gerrymandered North Carolina and moved three seats from Democrats who were sitting already.
Move those seats to the Republican column.
That's the margin that has kept them in power in the House of Representatives.
Well, we're doing a lot of meetings, you know, continue with the things that we would normally be working on.
I'm meeting with, for example, college officials to help them figure out how to respond to and navigate the cuts that have come from the Trump administration.
Government employees are really struggling.
We're trying to find ways to help them with assistance, working with the faith community so that they can get basic necessities that they may need.
And also there's issues with respect to funding that's going to impact research in our district, University of Maryland, NIH, and the other research institutions that are doing major work.
NASA is another one that have been hit very hard, and we're trying to help them figure out how to navigate that too.
It's going to be tough to get through it.
I think what the Trump administration has done is enormously damaging, especially to research and technology in the United States in competition with China.
But we're going to have to find a way to navigate that and rebuild after the ashes are cleared here.
Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about?
Laura's waiting in Cedar Creek, Texas, Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Yes, thank you for taking my call and good morning.
And I want to send a shout out to all the federal employees who are being victimized by this clown in the Oval Office.
Just hang in there.
We'll get this fixed.
And the things that I want to address is we're not talking about certain fundamental issues, such as preventing an elected president from trying to overthrow the American government and systems of American governance.
The Republicans, who I call a Republican cartel, not a party, are solely responsible for this shutdown.
These shutdowns started in Reagan's era.
He was the first one to do it.
And they've been weaponized by the Republican cartel ever since then.
I live in the state of Texas.
Texas is fully authoritarian.
If Trump wants to be a king, Greg Abbott wants to be his duke.
And that is something the American people, and particularly Texans, will not tolerate.
Our government, because of partisan politics, has become representative of the oligarchic class in this country.
So they benefit.
We don't.
We suffer.
We are made to pay their way for people who have obscene amounts of money and only want more.
I am disgusted with the Democratic cartel.
These are no longer political parties in that they do not call into question every single day the mental health of the president who was elected under the lie that he was sane.
Hey, oh, I tell you, that was hard to absorb all that much hate in one sitting here.
Listen, one of the, there's so many rabbit holes I could run down, but I'm going to try to stick with one or two.
Okay, I'm sorry, I was looking at myself or looking at you on the TV.
Listen, when all the people voting, including Congress, which was a week before the shutdown started, it was voted on.
And then it got to the Senate, and then Chuck Schumer and them decided.
And then everybody else on the Democrat side have decided that why vote for people we hate to get paid, which is the Border Patrol, ICE, all the different government things that the Democrats really truly showing how much they don't like.
Why would we vote for this to go through?
On top of that, $1.5 trillion, talk about a roadblock.
Put that roadbuck up.
That'll stop anything from happening when it only takes about $400 or $500 million just to cover the extend that Obamacare for one year.
You still got a trillion dollars out there.
That's to get all their projects to get them back because that's the only way that the crooked side of Congress is going to get their little side money.
All right, that's Robert, and this is Michael in Manassas, Virginia.
Last call here in Open Forum.
Go ahead, Michael.
unidentified
Hi, good morning, Sioux Pan.
Thank you for taking my call.
You know, I find it fascinating that Donald Trump loves to engage in his childish social media antics, such as the airplane dropping the, well, you know what, on No Kings protesters.
Well, I find it fascinating also that since he wants to import beef from Argentina, in addition to bailing them out, you know, to the tune of $40 billion, you would think that since the head of the Wyoming Cattle Ranchers Association has come out and said that Donald Trump has basically betrayed the state of Wyoming and cattle ranchers throughout the country,
perhaps Donald Trump should consider doing a meme in which he's dropping excrement all over the state of Wyoming.
In fact, he's pretty much dropping it all over the entire country.
Because here's the reality: Donald Trump does not care about the American people.
That's it.
He does not care.
He doesn't even care about him.
I mean, it's even debatable whether he even cares about himself.
So that's pretty much all I have to say.
But, you know, the thing is, the Democrats need to hold the line.
They're doing the right thing and don't get tangled up in this idiotic social media garbage that the Republicans are putting out.
In a time of sharp political divides, two senators from opposite sides of the aisle come together for a candid conversation.
Delaware Democrat Senator Chris Coons and Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford discuss cooperation on key foreign policy and the government shutdown.
They join host Dasha Burns to talk about what really matters.
Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold new original series.
Sunday, with our guest, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Only the fifth woman to serve on the high court and author of the book, Listening to the Law.
She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
I think what I want them to take away from the book is that they should be proud of the court.
And I want them to be able, I want them to understand the way the court grapples with the legal questions that matter to the country.
unidentified
Watch America's Book Club with Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
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Have been watching C-SPAN Washington Journal for over 10 years now.
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U.S. Deployments in South America00:15:32
unidentified
First of all, if you say hello, C-SPAN, and how you all covered the hearings.
Thank you, everyone at C-SPAN, for allowing this interaction with everyday citizens.
It's an amazing show to get real opinions from real people.
Appreciate you guys' non-biased coverage.
I love politics, and I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices.
A focus now on Venezuela, Colombia, the deployment of U.S. military assets in the Caribbean.
Ryan Berg joins us for the conversation from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he directs the Americas program.
And Ryan Berg, start with a 30,000-foot view here.
What are the Trump administration's strategic objectives in Latin America, and how did we get to this point where we're seeing a military asset build up in the Caribbean and now boat strikes happening nearly every few days?
unidentified
Well, John, I think you have to take a step back and understand that the Trump administration wants to reassert U.S. influence in the Americas.
I think there's an abiding sense within the administration that we've lost a lot of influence over the last two decades as we've been paying attention to other geographies of the world and that that absence has accrued to China's gain.
And we need to be back in the Americas.
And one of the most dramatic ways that we can signal that we intend to be back in the Americas is to literally move some of our most precious military, naval, air force assets into the region.
Now, on the specific mission itself, I think for now we're safe in saying that this is a counter-narcotics mission.
It is a changing paradigm that we're seeing before our eyes from a law enforcement paradigm that used to be used against suspected drug-laden vessels to one that is far more dominated by a military approach.
So taking it out of the hands of the U.S. Coast Guard, law enforcement agencies, putting more power into the hands of the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, and showing, lastly, John, that these FTO designations, these foreign terrorist organization designations on criminal organizations throughout Latin America, that that has consequences, right?
This is not just a rhetorical move by the administration, but this is actually the sign of a changing paradigm that we're seeing before our eyes with strikes on drug vessels.
A map from the New York Times takes a look at what we know, at least in the open source reporting about military assets, U.S. assets in the Southern Caribbean.
We can just move around the map, the combat ship USS Wichita, Reaper drones, surveillance aircraft, stealth fighters, replenishment ships, the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, three missile-guided destroyers, special forces ships, and a guided missile cruiser.
What does that mean?
How different is that from what our footprint was in the southern Caribbean 12 months ago?
unidentified
It's quite a list of assets, and it's not even a complete list of assets as well.
There's F-35B Lightnings out there, about 10 of them.
Just the other day, there were some B-52, what are called Strato Fortresses, some of our oldest bomber planes, flown out of Louisiana and did some runs near the Venezuelan flight identification region.
So there's a lot more out there as well.
And I think percentage-wise, John, it's about 10% of our deployable assets are currently in the Southcom area of responsibility.
That is a very unprecedented situation.
The last time we had a buildup of this kind, you have to go back to 1989, Operation Just Cause, when we overthrew the government of Manuel Noriega in Panama, or 1994 when we had a UN mandate to restore democracy in Haiti, and there were aircraft carriers back in the Southcom AOR.
But this is not a normal situation by any means in terms of the force posture that's out there right now.
So explain how Colombia plays into what we're doing down there.
unidentified
Well, Colombia is traditionally the U.S. best ally in Latin America.
It is a significant partner in the fight against drugs.
And at the moment, we have quite a testy relationship with Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia.
He sees things differently than Washington does in terms of our approach to counter-narcotics.
And there have been some frictions of late, including starting on Sunday of this week, when the president said that we may see an escalation with Colombia based on some comments that the Colombian president has made.
We've gotten some inklings from members of Congress who have spoken to the president that there could be tariffs coming against Colombia.
So things are getting a bit heated over this changing paradigm to counter narcotics.
What is Colombia's relationship to Venezuela today?
unidentified
Colombia is far closer to Venezuela today than it has been historically under the leftist president Gustavo Petro.
There's no doubt about that.
There are certainly plenty of claims that some of the organizations in Venezuela have funded his campaigns and he over the three plus years in office has been quite close to Maduro trying to play a kind of mediating role with the United States.
Historically, Colombian governments have not been particularly close to governments that are run by Chavismo in Venezuela.
In fact, it's a very rivalrous type of relationship, where in the past you've seen actually almost border skirmishes break out between the two countries.
In Venezuela, what is Maduro's relationship to drug cartels?
Is he essentially at the top of the food chain when it comes to the cartels or do they operate separately?
unidentified
Well, these are networks that are allowed to operate within Venezuela, and there are particular networks that are given favor by the state using the resources of the government and the state institutions to participate in illicit activity.
And it's not just drug trafficking.
It's illegal gold mining, it's human trafficking, it's a number of other illicit economies in which he is participating.
But there should be no mistake for viewers that Maduro is involved in quite a few illicit activities, and that's why we at CSIS started referring to his government, his regime, back in 2018, as a criminal regime, because it's involved in these criminal activities, but also it uses criminal organizations for power projection capabilities to destabilize other countries in the region.
It has a relationship with them such that it can use them in ways that they think to their strategic advantage.
Most recently, they've started to use criminal organizations in transnational repression against opposition figures in other countries, including a gruesome murder last year of an individual seeking asylum in Chile.
If you have questions about what's going on in South America, the Southern Caribbean, now would be a really good time to call.
Ryan Berg is with us from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the director of the Americas program.
They're taking your questions on phone lines, as usual.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
Ryan Berg, might be a good time to remind folks what CSIS does, what the Americas program is.
unidentified
CSIS is a premier national security think tank here in Washington.
We are very proudly bipartisan.
We're in favor of evidence-based policy.
And so if you like evidence-based policy, if you like logic and reason and U.S. leadership in your foreign policy, we want to work with you.
The Americas program is the only program in CSIS that has all of the 35 countries of the Western Hemisphere in its portfolio.
So we have every country from the tip of the Arctic to the Antarctic in our portfolio.
But the subject of today's interview is a very important one for us.
We have a program within the Americas program called the Future of Venezuela Initiative because we know that what happens in Venezuela hardly ever stays in Venezuela.
And I'm not just talking about the 8 million people who have been forced to flee that country to find livelihoods elsewhere.
It's the criminal networks that emanate from there.
It's the violence and the instability.
It's the geopolitics, right?
Russia, China, Iran, and other adversaries are finding ways to project power from Venezuela, beachheads, if you will, that Venezuela serves as a beachhead for those three countries.
So we think that the focus on Venezuela is very much warranted within the Western Hemisphere.
Well, one of the most interesting parts of this situation, John, is that there is identifiable leadership in Venezuela.
Just over a week ago, Maria Corina Machado was given the Nobel Peace Prize, I think very rightfully, so for her tireless efforts for democracy in Venezuela.
There was an election last year which was brazenly stolen by Maduro.
The brilliant part about all this is that the opposition was able to get the tally sheets from all of the municipalities and prove that in fact they had beaten Maduro by a ratio of at least two to one, and yet he has repressed his way out of this.
So one of the most interesting parts of this scenario, John, is that there is actually identifiable leadership.
My opinion, there won't be a leadership vacuum here, but there could be a transition to identifiable people who have a legitimate claim to run the country because they won an election last year.
And so they are waiting in the wings if a democratic transition were to happen in Venezuela.
Before we get to the calls, a caller in a previous segment wanted to talk about the $20 billion currency deal with Argentina.
Can you explain what's going on?
unidentified
Sure.
The Treasury has what's called the ESF, which is an exchange rate, an exchange stabilization fund, which the Secretary of the Treasury is allowed to use at his or her discretion.
In this case, Argentina, a very strategic ally of the United States, a government that's overtly aligned itself with Washington, is having a bit of difficulties in its currency markets, and the administration has decided to provide a kind of lifeline of $20 billion from the ESF.
Secretary Besson has said on multiple occasions that this is not a bailout.
This is not a loan.
This is not free money.
And so I do suspect that at some point in time, John, we will get a list of U.S. requests and U.S. demands on bringing Argentina further within the strategic friendship zone, let's call it, of the United States.
There are many different things that we could ask Argentina.
Argentina is rife with critical minerals.
It has a number of important ports.
There could be requests regarding reducing the relationship that exists there with China.
There are a number of different things that I think we can ask for in exchange as part of this extension, this loan that comes at such an important time for Argentina.
Midterm elections are coming up on Sunday.
And so this is really meant to stabilize Millay in a time of dire need for him.
You've written about U.S. bases as this major buildup has happened in the South Caribbean.
Would Argentina be a place in South America for U.S. bases?
What do we know about the needs of the massive amount of assets that are being moved in that direction of the globe?
unidentified
Well, for now, the focus seems to be on the Caribbean basin and particularly on the southern Caribbean.
And from that perspective, Puerto Rico plays a particularly important role for U.S. power projection.
We've seen the reopening of bases like Roosevelt Roads in La Ceiba in Puerto Rico for the first time since 2004 when they were decommissioned.
If we were to engage in further deployments further south in the region, Argentina could be a potential candidate if it were to allow the U.S. to open up some kind of base or station.
But one of the places, John, that we are most interested in putting a station or a base is in Ushuaia, which is very far in the south of Patagonia.
It's actually kind of the gateway to Antarctica in many ways.
I don't imagine Antarctica being militarized anytime soon and there being large-scale deployments.
So I think that is a base that's of interest to the United States more from the perspective, yes, of geopolitics and competition with China, but also from the scientific research perspective as well.
It's just easier to get to our bases in Antarctica if you've got a base, say, in Ushuaia and Argentina from which you can do logistics and supply runs.
On the first question, so as the director of the program, I'm in charge of much of our fundraising.
We have a wide base and a diverse set of funders.
CSIS is a very transparent organization.
You can go online and see a list of our funders every single fiscal year.
It's foundations, it's private sector companies.
When the U.S. government had a more robust funding scheme, sometimes we'd work with the U.S. government as well.
And so it's really a broad base of funders interested in evidence-based policy in our foreign policy.
On the second question, the caller asks about what evidence do we have.
There was a really interesting article I point the caller to yesterday in The Guardian giving very important details on the Central Intelligence Agency's role in a lot of the signals intelligence and imagery analysis that's going on here before any strike is made.
Sometimes the president refers to we have tapes, we have recordings, we have various photographs of these individuals.
That is all being provided, it's my understanding, by the Central Intelligence Agency before strikes are being taken to make sure that these are in fact boats that are suspected of being drug-laden and not, say, fishing vessels, as has been asserted by some analysts.
What is the rationale for blowing them up in the water as opposed to tracking these boats to where they're going and trying to dismantle them further up the chain and further down the chain?
unidentified
Well, if you listen to what the Secretary of State has said, he said that interdiction hasn't worked.
That past paradigm that I referred to where the law enforcement agencies were in the lead and they want to try a new paradigm.
Oil and Hezbollah's Residual Influence00:09:29
unidentified
And I think that they're most interested in having a deterrent effect.
They want dissuasion as the goal here.
And I think these videos being released.
Exactly.
Why they're being made public, John.
And I think that in the short term, the administration is probably right that they will have a highly dissasive or deterrent impact because those videos are very shocking when you watch them.
And I can imagine that they are circulating in every signal and WhatsApp group for some of these criminal organizations at the moment.
And those who thought about getting on a fast boat in the Southern Caribbean at this point in time are probably saying, you know what, I'll sit and wait this one out a little bit longer as opposed to making my journey.
Venezuela does have the largest proven oil reserves in the world.
I would note, however, that Venezuela's production has been in precipitous decline since Huachavez took over in the 1990s.
The apex of Venezuelan oil production was right before Huachavez took over in the late 1990s.
Venezuela was producing about 3.5 million barrels of oil per day.
Now it produces under a million.
And that's a mix of policy, that's a mix of corruption, that's a mix of a summary firing that happened of Pedevesa, the state-owned oil company, workers, and so the loss of human capital.
There are a number of reasons for it, but Venezuela simply doesn't produce the same level of oil that it used to, John.
And I would say in terms of the U.S. relationship with Venezuela's oil sector, this administration, through the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury Department, OFAC, has issued a license for Chevron to operate in Venezuela.
So from the oil perspective, the administration is getting oil from Venezuela.
That oil is being shipped as we speak and every day to Gulf Coast refineries for the U.S. market.
So if this was purely about oil, it seems that the administration has the license in place that it would like to be in place in order to engage with Venezuela's otherwise sanctioned oil sector.
Ocean County, New Jersey, Eric, Republican line, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Certainly this is an area of the world that doesn't get enough attention.
But if you could spend a minute or two talking about recent influence by Hezbollah and other terrorist groups in South America.
Great.
Thanks for the question.
This is something that is important and we see a residual level of influence, I would argue, from groups like Hezbollah in countries like Venezuela, especially during previous periods of time when individuals such as Tariq Al-Assami, a very important minister who played multiple functions in Venezuela, his ties to the Levant, giving Venezuelan passports to individuals in Syria, in Lebanon, to be able to travel throughout South America and participate in some of these networks.
What we think happens is that Hezbollah engages in criminal activity in South America, countries like Venezuela, also the tri-border region between Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil.
And a lot of that money from smuggling and drug trafficking is sent back to the Levant where it then funds other activities, terrorist activities that Hezbollah might participate in.
So there are plenty of concerns here, and there are certainly cells throughout the region.
U.S. intelligence assets have been on top of those cells.
I think it's safe to say for a while that this is not exactly a secret anymore that Hezbollah operates there.
The problem that I have is that in too many countries you still have a permissive operating environment for some of these groups.
And we need to work better with our partners in order to close up that environment to groups like Hezbollah.
Reinberg might help with starting what your role is again at CSIS.
unidentified
Well, thanks for the question, John.
Look, I'm a political analyst.
I'm a political scientist.
I've studied the region for a long time.
I speak Spanish and Portuguese, and I travel throughout the region a lot.
So I have a lot of contacts in the region to try to interpret and analyze what is going on.
The other thing that we do, John, is we use informed analysis, sometimes in a written form, sometimes in audio or visual form, to try to put good policy recommendations with sound evidence behind them out there for an administration of either party to pick up on and to consider as a set of policy options.
One quick comment on something that the caller said about these boats.
I think it's important to comment for a second, John, on the strategy here.
So these boats are what we call fast boats, right?
They are usually powered by three or four outboard motors of over 100 horsepower.
They can go very quickly.
And their strategy is to island hop.
So they go from one island to the next island to the next island.
There's basically a chain from the southern Caribbean, sometimes to the United States, sometimes to Europe, but it is an island-hopping chain as they move their way up towards the homeland.
You touched on this a little bit earlier, but can you talk a little bit more about Russia and China's influence in South America, where they focus their efforts, how they are focusing their efforts?
unidentified
So let's start with China.
China is a very difficult competitor of the United States.
The engagement in the region is much more wide-ranging than, say, with Russia.
Russia tends to stick to three very close allies, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua.
China tends to have relationships with just about every country in the region, save for the seven that still recognize Taiwan as the official China.
And China's engagement, as I mentioned, John, it's economic.
Sometimes it's military.
Sometimes it's educational exchange.
It's much more multifaceted.
With Russia, engagement tends to be more on the military side of things, and again, more limited to those three allies that I mentioned.
Both Russia and China are present here in Venezuela.
In Russia's case, it's been a regime guarantor, been very interested in helping to shore up regime security for Maduro.
Maduro has bought over $10 billion of Russian weapons over the years.
The state of maintenance of those weapon systems is unclear to us, but they've spent money on that, and they've been present in the oil industry.
Venezuela, for China, has been a much bigger partner.
Venezuela has been lent something like $64 billion over the last two decades by China.
By some accounts, that's about 50% of overall lending to the region, to one country.
And when Hugo Chavez was in power, he made more trips to China than any other president in the region.
Of late, it's important to note, John, that China has, I think, pulled back a little bit from its support of the Maduro regime.
I think they've realized, frankly, that they've gotten burned here a few times, and they haven't been able to recover a lot of that money that they've invested in Venezuela.
And the last two trips Maduro has made to Beijing have basically been empty-handed trips.
He's come back without much to show for it, because I think the Chinese have learned their lesson.
Investing in Venezuela, you rarely get your money back.
Want to ask Mr. Berg about the recent retirement or resignation of Admiral Housley, fourth Admiral, who apparently had disagreements.
There might have been tensions between him and the administration.
Can he give us some insight as to what those tensions were?
Great.
Indeed, the caller is right.
Admiral Holsey, the head of Southcom, recently retired.
He will finish his command, I think, in mid-December, if I'm not mistaken.
History Lessons on Drug War Failures00:04:48
unidentified
And as the caller correctly noted, early.
I don't have much information other than what has been speculated on and reported upon publicly, which is that there were disagreements on the approach.
And I think Admiral Holsey, being the honorable admiral that he is, decided that the best path for his future or for his career was to resign.
I can't say much more than that because I simply don't have the details other than what's been reported publicly.
And it's H-O-L-S-E-Y, not Halsey, like the famous World War II abuse.
Abstract.
We've got a minute left.
History lessons here when it comes to U.S. military actions in South America, specifically efforts to fight the drug war in South America.
What lessons should this administration keep in mind?
unidentified
Well, I think it's important for the administration, I think they know this already, but also for viewers to know that you don't win a drug war.
You manage flows, right?
And I think that's what the criticism has been of previous administrations, that we've given up on the fight to be able to manage this massive flow of drugs towards the United States.
And part of that is a supply control challenge, and then part of that is a demand control challenge.
And so there are issues on both sides outside of the border and also inside our borders that we have to deal with here.
But the goal, the strategic objective here, in my opinion, should absolutely be managing the flow, not necessarily winning the war.
It's the wrong way, I think, to look at counter-narcotics.
Coming up in our last half hour of our program today, more of your phone calls in open forum.
We'll also talk with Wisconsin Republican Congressman Glenn Grothman on this, the 22nd day of the federal government shutdown.
Go ahead and start calling in, and we will get to your calls right after the break.
unidentified
Delaware Democrat Senator Chris Coons and Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford discuss cooperation on key foreign policy and the government shutdown.
They join host Dasha Burns to talk about what really matters.
Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold new original series.
Sunday with our guest, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, only the fifth woman to serve on the high court and author of the book, Listening to the Law.
She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubenstein.
And what do you hope most people will take away from your book?
I think what I want them to take away from the book is that they should be proud of the court.
And I want them to be able, I want them to understand the way the court grapples with the legal questions that matter to the country.
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Watch America's Book Club with Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
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That may not happen because Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley is holding the Senate floor.
He has been there since about 6:20 p.m. Eastern yesterday and is continuing to speak.
He's had a few exchanges with fellow Democratic members of the Senate, but otherwise has carried the floor by himself, a marathon session that you can watch live over on C-SPAN too.
As you call in in this final 20 minutes of the Washington Journal, we are going to head up to Capitol Hill to the House side where we are joined by Congressman Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin.
Congressman Grothman, good morning to you, sir.
I know you're fresh off a telephone town hall with your constituents on this 22nd day of the federal government shutdown.
What are your constituents telling you about how long they can go and how long they think this should last?
So your listeners understand, under normal circumstances, the fiscal year for the federal budget starts on October 1st.
We have not got our budget done or what we call appropriation bills, the public would call the budget, since 1997.
Okay, so what we do is we pass what we call continuing resolution, just keeping spending going at last year's level.
It's uncontroversial to even make inflationary adjustments in there for some programs.
And the reason we're going through this is unlike every other time in the last 25 years, as far as I'm aware of, the Democrats will not vote to keep spending at last year's levels, which is such an easy vote.
I've taken it so many times myself.
We did it 13 times for President Obama.
We did it once earlier this year for President Trump.
But the Democrats, we believe, because they have an angry group of people, particularly in the New York area, are afraid to be seen as getting along with President Trump.
And it's just childish and it's beginning to hurt people.
But that's the way it is.
I think it will end when the public becomes a little more upset and when more people see the effect of not passing a continuing resolution.
Democratic Congressman Glenn Ivey, who we talked to earlier today, thinks it will end after the November open enrollment period starts for Americans looking at their health care for next year, that Republican members will begin to hear from their constituents about the importance of the ACA subsidies and that that will break this log jam, a deal will be made, and then the government will reopen.
Well, obviously that's going to be one of the things that's taken up when we do get back to the negotiating table.
You've got to remember, we're dealing with the entire federal budget, so there are literally thousands of programs out there.
We're right now borrowing 26% of our budget.
Think about that.
So when you borrow 26% of your budget, if one line in the budget goes up, another line in the budget should go down.
And we'll see if that happens.
I know that's apparently a priority for Glenn Ivey.
I do think when people get their premium notices, they'll say what's wrong here.
What's wrong is Obamacare is costing way more than people thought.
And if they're going to hold the premiums in line, it's going to take putting a lot more federal money in there.
But like I said, we're already borrowing 26% of our budget.
So I think the Republicans, if we have to spend another 24, I think it's $34 billion next year on Obamacare, they're going to want to see reductions somewhere else.
I'm very disappointed in our leadership in that we have not insisted on bigger reductions.
Right now, we have well over 700,000 non-uniformed employees in the Department of Defense.
Nobody thinks that we need those 700,000 people.
I do not know why our committees and our leadership is going with mild reductions there.
I think we could lay off 200 or 300,000 employees.
That's what Doge showed us.
And for whatever reason, Republican leadership in both houses and not insisting that happens.
But man, when you're borrowing 26% of your budget and when the Democrats, not just this, but in a variety of areas, are holding out for spending still more, we cannot have people working at under 100%.
And I surely hope that President Trump maybe will have to lead some of these congressmen by the nose a little bit and tell them we cannot afford all these employees.
It's going to take a lot of analysis of President Trump's new appointees to go through line by line and say, what is this person doing?
What is this person doing?
This happens in the private sector, but nowhere near like it does in the public sector, where you may have people going for years and years, not working near 100%.
Like I said, that's what Doge showed us.
That's what congressmen are hearing anecdotally from people who work in the bureaucracy.
Maybe they have relatives, people from their church, what have you.
And we know there are people doing very little work and should not being paid, getting paid.
We don't like to lay anybody off, but man, we're borrowing 26% of our budget.
To not lay off more people is scandalous.
And like I said, I think so far I've been disappointed in the Republicans not anticipating a lot less employees.
So I think President Trump may have to step up and try to shake up Congress a little bit.
Well, I'm trying to go through our budget to give leadership suggestions if they do cave in and spend more money in one place where other places are that they shouldn't spend much money.
I'll be talking to the Department of Defense about that as well.
Back to your phone calls now in our final 20 minutes, the Washington Journal Open Forum.
Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about, now is the time to call in.
202-748-8000 for Democrats.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
Independence 202-748-8002, and we have had that line open for federal workers during the shutdown.
202-748-8003 is that number.
We'll start on the line for Democrats out of Louisiana.
This is Teddy.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
My comment is concerning the health care.
I don't see any pressure or any responsibility put on the healthcare insurance carriers.
I'm watching the news, and I've been disappointed because I haven't seen any health care carrier CEOs or representatives on TV being questioned as to why health care is going up 30, 40, 50, 100% plus.
I find that outrageous and inconsistent with the inflation rate over the years.
So I'd like some explanation there.
And I don't see it anywhere on the news where these people are being held responsible as to the cost of health care.
And what are they doing to keep the premiums down and make it affordable for the American citizens?
And I know most of these companies are conglomerates where they have public information as to what kind of profits these companies are making.
So I'm looking at the news and I'm seeing the politicians pointing fingers, but I blame this on the news media that they're not going to hold these insurance companies accountable and put some pressure on them and see what's happening or what's the explanation for all these premium increases.
I understand that I've been working over 30 years and each year insurance premium has gone up more than inflation.
I haven't seen any time that it's going down or stayed constant.
And I do know that over the years there's been more managed care, so it's not that people are just abusing the insurance industry.
That's just my viewpoint.
But I've been disappointed that no one has reached out to the insurance conglomerates and say, well, you know, what are y'all doing?
I just wanted to say a couple things about the budget.
One is it irritates me to no end the fact that the Republicans, including the congressman you just had on, how they so conveniently skipped the Defense Department, which budget went up $150 billion, has never passed an audit.
And you've got Pete Hegseth shooting off live ammunition over Interstate 5 in California.
If they're so concerned about the budget, why is it each time under the Republicans, the deficit goes up?
And the military is not even audited at all.
Secondly, I wanted just to say that it's amazing to me that my fellow citizens are so anxious to blame illegal immigrants for every problem in the country.
The idea that illegal immigrants are the problem with our health care is ridiculous.
I've traveled the world fairly extensively, but in Western Europe in particular, the main question I got from residents was, is it really true that Americans have to pay all this money for health care?
They were incredulous.
And so this whole smokescreen about the budget while President Trump is having a military parade and they're flying all these generals for this ridiculous presentation, I just don't understand it.
This is Arnold out of Ravenswood, West Virginia, Republican.
Good morning to the Mountaineer State.
unidentified
Yeah.
Hey, I just got one thing to say.
The Democrats say it's the Republicans' fault because the government shut down.
Well, they need to think about this.
And when they vote again, and it says you're listening to you, Arnold, when they vote again.
Okay, when they vote again, say they vote the Republicans out and the Democrats take over the House, they ain't going to get the government opened back up because the Republicans ain't going to go for what the Democrats want.
Arnold, so under a law dating back to the Reagan administration, if you go to the emergency room to get treated, you are treated regardless of whether you have insurance or don't have insurance, whether you're legal or illegal.
If you need life-saving care and you show up at a hospital, you receive care.
unidentified
Right.
That's always been that way.
You know, that don't make sense that they say that the immigrants can't get health care because if they go to the emergency room, they're going to get treated if they're in bad shape, I believe.
That's Arnold in West Virginia to the Tar Hill State.
This is Intisar.
Democrat, good morning.
unidentified
Yes, I just have a question about I don't understand how all these other foreign countries can get help with our taxpayer money, but the American people can get help.
I don't understand how they think that is fair.
We get up and work every day.
We pay our taxes and our money is getting used for other foreign countries.
And I'm not saying these other countries don't need help.
So, Intisar, how did you feel about USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development that was dismantled very early in this second Trump administration?
We need to have a lot more transparency when it comes not just to Medicare, but to other issues in our country as well, because we're being dragged left, we're being dragged right out there.
And people are trying to read in between the lines and saying, well, what are they saying that's right?
It is just past 9.50 a.m. Eastern time, which by my calculation means that Senator Jeff Merkley, who is still on the Senate floor and has been speaking since 6.23 p.m. yesterday evening, that he just surpassed the amount of time he spent on the floor back in 2017 when he had that marathon speech in opposition to Supreme Court Justice nominee Neil Gorsuch.
It was 15 hours and 27 minutes back then, and I believe we are now up to 15 hours and 28 minutes, if my math is correct.
The sender showing no sign of stopping on this marathon speech, the Senate was expected to be in at 10 a.m. Eastern, but it would not come in for the day.
If Jeff Merkley is still holding the floor, he would still be allowed to speak.
He's been given a break by a few of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate in the form of questions that have been asked.
Last night, late last night, it was Andy Kim of New Jersey.
Earlier today, it was Chuck Schumer and Amy Klobuchar.
And just a few minutes ago, Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, was asking him questions and giving the senator a break from talking.
But otherwise, it has been about 15 hours and 30 minutes of Jeff Merkley on C-SPAN 2.
You could watch it all night long, and we will go on C-SPAN 2 as long as he's talking.
Whenever the Senate is in session, that's when we'll bring you what's happening on the floor of the Senate over on C-SPAN 2.
Back to your phone calls.
This is Terry in the Volunteer State.
Republican, good morning.
Terry, you with us?
Go ahead, sir.
unidentified
Yeah, I'd like to know, does all the Republicans and Democrats, Senators, do they get like Chuck Schumer and all them, do they still get paid?
My understanding, and I'm not a constitutional scholar, is that it goes to the requirement in the Constitution for elected members of the United States Congress to be paid for their work.
And so therefore, you can't keep them from being paid that it's a constitutional issue.
unidentified
Well, I would think, and that's my opinion, and I think that in the shutdown, the rest of the people that work shouldn't Terry, thanks for the call from Tennessee.
I would like to say that the guy who just got off, he's from Tennessee.
And this other set we had was a guy from Tennessee who was talking about all the money that he pays into subsidizing people who don't have pay taxes and stuff.
Well, the Doge also exposed that it's the red states that are getting all the subsidies and were getting health care through Medicaid and Medicare, which the cuts came.
That was mostly the red states that are getting these subsidies.
It's not the blue states.
And Donald Trump says he wants to cut blue programs, but it was Democrats that created these programs, Obamacare, things like that, that benefited all Americans.
It wasn't just for blue states when these laws were made.
So they're finding now, especially after they chased the doctors out of their states, calling them all abortionists, the only way they were getting paid anyway was through Medicaid and Medicare because red states don't produce as much.
The people there don't have much money.
So Obamacare was their savior, you know, but they railed against it.
And now they're still, they're finding out now that they cut their nose off to spike the states.
And the reason they're doing the holdout, the Democrats, is to show who actually is benefiting from the blue states bills that Donald Trump wants to cut that he says that are for Democrats.
But it's for everybody.
And everybody's finding out now that the Republicans are for the rich.
They rushed through the big, beautiful bill that gave them the tax cut, and they're cutting everything else for the Americans.
I mean, people got to wake up.
That's all it is.
Just wake up, smell the roses.
Democrats told you what this guy was about, and now y'all finding out.
That's Anthony in Washington, D.C. Just about five minutes left in the Washington Journal today.
Just so you know where we're going after this, we're expected to hear from Speaker Mike Johnson right around 10 a.m. Eastern.
We'll go there when he does come out to the podium.
So we'll stick around taking your phone calls until he does walk out.
That's here on C-SPAN 1.
On C-SPAN 2, we'll continue to cover the marathon floor speech by Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the Democrat from Oregon.
That's not Jeff Merkley.
That's Maria Cantwell.
She is asking Jeff Merkley a question, giving him a break from his now over 15 hours and 30 minutes of talking.
The Democrat from Washington has been speaking for a few minutes, addressing Jeff Merkley, her fellow Democratic sender from the West Coast.
Again, you can watch that live over on C-SPAN 2.
Here, we'll take your calls for just a few more minutes.
This is Chatham, New Jersey, Pete, Independent.
Good morning.
Thanks for waiting.
unidentified
Thank you for taking the call.
I guess my only thing is, is, you know, I'm a 55-year-old retired police officer, and at the end of the day, I feel like everybody just keeps laying to each side.
And it's not a Republican problem or Democrat problem.
It's an us problem.
And, you know, the fact that the president can't go unchecked is just, it's disheartening of where we are right now when they're allowed to do this.
And I guess my thing is, is I have friends and family members who are not getting paid right now.
I feel like the Congress and House and all these guys should have a bigger stake in losing their salaries as well during this time because all these people who are standing in line and getting food because they're not getting paid is where it is.
So, how is that making America great?
How is that making America good again?
You know, there's a lot of things I believe about what Trump does.
There's a lot of things I don't believe about what Trump does.
But morally for me, it's just who he is.
What he's doing right now is just going unchecked.
And because it's his last term, he's doing whatever he wants and getting away with it.
And I guess that's just my only take on it.
I just don't understand where our country's going right now.
I just wanted to reiterate what the last guy said.
unidentified
And I think until the military gets paid, Congress should not get paid.
I think that if the military's not getting paid, they should cut off all the congressional payments.
They're not doing anything.
I can't believe I'm a Republican, but the Republicans, they took time off.
They keep taking time off.
I don't know.
I do not, I feel that the immigrants should not get Medicare paid.
I pay $1,200 every three months for my Medicare supplemental insurance, where a lot of Medicare people get free Medicare because they have the Advantage plan.
I have a health issue that does, you know, I can't get that.
But I resent the fact that all these people are coming in and they're getting their money.
I think if the Democrats would say, okay, we're going to have Obamacare and leave it the way it is, but not pay the illegals, then I think we should go with that.
Did want to keep you updated about some of our offerings on C-SPAN later this evening.
Today, the three candidates from New York City's 2025 mayoral race are set to face off for a second time, including Independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, Republican candidate Curtis Silawa, and of course, Zorhan Mamdani, the Democratic nominee.
They will be answering questions from moderators as well as New York City voters.
It's being hosted by Spectrum News NY1, and we're airing that live at 7 p.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN.
You can also watch at c-span.org and the free C-SPAN Now mobile app.
So you can watch that later today.
Back to your phone calls as we continue to wait for House Speaker Mike Johnson's press conference this morning.
This is Kiana out of Cleveland, Ohio.
Democrat, good morning.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
It's Kyana.
Kyana.
No worries.
I just want to quickly say before I get cut off, because I know you guys are coming close to the end.
This is just so sad that Republicans, the same people who claim to follow Christ, the same Christ who advocated for the poor, for the sick, for the stranger, you know, these same Republicans who claim to follow Christ are insisting that poor and working class people lose their health care and food assistance.
unidentified
Also, rich people can keep their tax breaks and money.
And I just want to say if Republicans or Democrats really cared about cutting costs in Medicaid, they would be looking at cost controls for goods and services.
Because I regularly have to get quotes for medical equipment for Medicaid recipients and the contracted providers with Medicaid, I mean, why?
I'll give you some examples.
A walker on Amazon that costs $47 will cost $90 from a contracted Medicaid provider.
A cane, a walking cane, that costs $15 to $20.
A Medicaid contractor provider charging $50.
A hospital bed, $779 on Amazon.
These Medicaid contractor providers charging $900 to $1,000.
Again, if Democrats and Republicans really cared about cutting costs for Medicaid, they wouldn't be insisting on making poor people lose, Republicans anyway, wouldn't be insisting on poor people losing it.
They would be trying to actually cut the cost that these providers, whether they're doctors, medical providers, contractor providers for home modifications, they would be trying to control those costs.
Actually, Joanne, we'll get back to you another time.
We're going to take viewers up to the United States Capitol, Speaker Mike Johnson, beginning his press conference, day 22 of the federal government shutdown.