| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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That's followed by ProPublica investigative journalist Andy Kroll, who will talk about White House Budget Director Russell Vogt and his role in advancing the Trump agenda. | |
| And later, National Infertility Association Government Affairs Director Elise Powell weighs in on the recent Trump administration announcement aimed at expanding IVF and fertility care. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| This is Washington Journal for Saturday, October 25th. | ||
| This week, hundreds of thousands of federal workers missed their first full paychecks as the government shutdown, now the second longest in history, continues. | ||
| Also this week, the Pentagon announced it's sending an aircraft carrier group to the Caribbean as the Trump administration continues to conduct strikes on alleged drug-carrying boats. | ||
| And construction crews demolished the east wing of the White House as work started on President Trump's 90,000 square foot ballroom. | ||
| Those are just a few stories making headlines this week. | ||
| And to start today's program, we're asking you, what's your top news story of the week? | ||
| Here are the lines. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text your comments to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Be sure to include your name and city. | ||
| You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Good morning, and thank you for being with us. | ||
| We will get to your calls and comments in just a few moments. | ||
| But first, as you are dialing in this latest from Axios, it says about 658,000 civilian employees at the Department of Defense, Health and Human Services, and Veterans Affairs missed their first full paycheck on Friday, marking the latest grim milestone of the government shutdown that has no end in sight. | ||
| It says the executive office of the president and a few other agencies, civilian employees, also missed Friday paychecks. | ||
| According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, on Tuesday, about 686,000 civilian employees at most other agencies will miss an entire paycheck. | ||
| It also notes on Thursday, 37,000 employees at the Department of State and Education will miss entire checks. | ||
| Notes that if the shutdown lasts through the end of October, nearly 1.8 million paychecks will be withheld from civilian employees of federal agencies. | ||
| That is per the Bipartisan Policy Institute. | ||
| Paying federal workers was one of the topics that the Senate tried to address this week. | ||
| The headline from USA Today, Government Shutdown, latest Senate rejects Democratic and GOP efforts on federal pay. | ||
| The article says that the Senate on Thursday rejected Republican, a Republican-backed bill to pay some federal employees who are working through the government shutdown as the funding fight rolls into day 23. | ||
| The bill known as the Shutdown Fairness Act, sponsored by Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, would have paid federal employees such as air traffic controllers, military members, Border Patrol agents, and other so-called essential workers forced to work during the shutdown. | ||
| Three Democrats crossed the aisle to support the measure: Senators Raphael Warnock and John Osoff of Georgia and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. | ||
| It says that the bill created a tough spot for Senate Democrats as Americans called for an end to the shutdown, but Democratic leaders have argued the Trump administration should get to decide, shouldn't get to decide which employees are essentials and which are paid. | ||
| Democrats pushed a countermeasure to try to pay all federal employees, but the Republican-controlled Senate did not take up the proposal. | ||
| It also notes that for the 12th time on Wednesday, Senate Democrats blocked Republicans' short-term funding bill to reopen the governments. | ||
| Again, Democrats have demanded that extending expiring subsidies in the Affordable Care Act and reversing Republicans' Medicare cuts to be included in legislation to end the shutdown. | ||
| Members of the Senate spoke on the Senate floor about those bills before the vote on Thursday. | ||
| Here is Senator Angela Olsselberg, Democrat of Maryland, speaking in favor of the Democratic bill. | ||
| Now, thanks to Republicans in this body who have chosen to follow this president's order and shut down the government, many of our federal workers are working without pay, still in service to our country. | ||
| The rest have been furloughed to no fault of their own. | ||
| Our ask today is simple. | ||
| Pay them for the jobs that they were hired to do. | ||
| We are now in day 23 of this Republican shutdown. | ||
| And let us not mince words. | ||
| Republicans hold the keys to the kingdom. | ||
| They have control over the White House. | ||
| They have majorities in this chamber and in the House. | ||
| And what have they done with that power? | ||
| Has the cost of your groceries gone down? | ||
| No. | ||
| Has the cost of housing gone down? | ||
| No. | ||
| Has our economy gotten stronger? | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| What have they done? | ||
| Shut down the government. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| This shutdown is on them. | ||
| We know it, they know it, and the American people know it. | ||
| It's been 23 days of this administration refusing to come to the table in good faith and negotiate a plan to keep the government open and make sure that health care is affordable and accessible for millions of Americans. | ||
| It's been 23 days of this administration using the shutdown as an excuse to further target federal workers who are my constituents. | ||
| My state is home to 494,000 federal workers and contractors. | ||
| All of them are feeling the pain from this president's refusal to do what he supposedly loves to do best. | ||
| Make a deal. | ||
| The government shut down one of the stories C-SPAN has been following. | ||
| We're asking you for this first hour, what's your top news story of the week? | ||
| We'll start with Nell, who's calling from Jamestown, New York, on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Nell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I still think what took place last Saturday with no kings is an interesting subject to talk about. | ||
| In that, no kings would reference at times 1776. | ||
| Do they not know that during 1776, there was also a slogan that said, no kings except King Jesus? | ||
| There seemed to be no interest in that. | ||
| I feel like our nation certainly is divided. | ||
| And you see it with this aspect of what is happening in the government right now. | ||
| The Republicans have put forth a plan, the continuing resolution. | ||
| They would have kept government functioning, a clean CR without the political agenda that the Democrats want to associate it with. | ||
| Meaning, we don't need these COVID subsidies, these COVID enhancements that were put into what the Democrats want because it's demonstrating that the Affordable Care Act is really the unaffordable care act. | ||
| Ted Cruz reminded the nation as this was being debated 10 years ago that the premiums would go up. | ||
| And sure enough, what do the Democrats want to do? | ||
| Continuing to add these COVID enhancements in order to make health care affordable when they told us it would be affordable 10 years ago. | ||
| And that was Nell in New York. | ||
| Ray is calling from Ithaca, New York. | ||
| Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Ray. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My top story is the New York City mayor's race. | ||
| I saw both of the debates on C-SPAN, and I'm pleading to all my fellow Republicans, to common sense Democrats, independents, please don't waste your vote on Curtis. | ||
| He's a nice man, but he has zero chance to win. | ||
| Everyone needs to vote for Andy Como, and we need to stop Mondowning. | ||
| I think he is a danger. | ||
| And God forbid there was another 9-11. | ||
| We can't have somebody on the job training. | ||
| Governor, Andy Como was a governor, a halfway decent governor. | ||
| He was a Secretary of Hard with Bill Clinton. | ||
| He's a common sense Democrat. | ||
| Please vote for him. | ||
| Please don't, my fellow Republicans, please don't waste your vote on Curtis. | ||
| Vote for Andy Como. | ||
| Stop Mondowning. | ||
| And that was Ray in Ithaca, New York. | ||
| Ray mentioning the New York City mayor's race, this headline from Politico, after a lengthy wait, Jeffries to endorse Mamdani. | ||
| And it says that the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, will endorse Zorhan Mamdani for Mamdani for New York City mayor on Friday. | ||
| That's according to two people familiar with the situation. | ||
| The nod is coming after months of pressure. | ||
| And just before early voting begins Saturday, that is Tu Day. | ||
| Let's hear from Carlton, who's calling from Louisville, Kentucky on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Carlton. | ||
| What's your top news story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My top of my story is the demolition of the East Wing at the White House. | |
| And Carlton, why is that important to you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He just tore down history, and he wanted to make it in the image of himself, which is cheap. | |
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| Thank you for accepting my call. | ||
| Goodbye. | ||
| And that was Carlton in Kentucky. | ||
| Angela is calling from St. Louis, Missouri. | ||
| Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Angela. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How you doing today? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, well, I'm calling because we had a NASA disaster in May. | |
| And FEMA came. | ||
| And this woman named, and I'm not going to say her name on the air, but she knows who she is. | ||
| She extorted all of our money, and she put Trump behind it. | ||
| And President Trump, I've never seen him place any money into our state. | ||
| We had to ram settlement money to come in where I live in the central part of Missouri in the city where my house was demolished. | ||
| I cannot live in my house because my roof is totally took out. | ||
| They flooded my home as well as burned it up. | ||
| So I have not had any money allocated to me and my family, which is all surrounded around the state right now. | ||
| And I am devastated behind this act because I have applied for FEMA. | ||
| Ten times I have applied for the national disaster. | ||
| Ten times I am a brigadier in the United States Army. | ||
| I take top rank and I have not had anybody to help me. | ||
| Veterans administration have denied me. | ||
| I got out of the military in 2019 and I have had no pension check. | ||
| Y'all talking about it shut down. | ||
| How is it shut down when everything is still up and operating? | ||
| To me, this is a filibuster. | ||
| And you're letting people like Cheryl William Bowie on this excellent choice. | ||
| Our latest government Tanisha Jones that's planned, acting just went out the air. | ||
| That is another body. | ||
| This woman was supposed to be our mayor has taken and stolen and put Trump in all his allegation stuff. | ||
| And if Trump was president, which he's not, and I've been talking, you talk about Trump is president. | ||
| Why did he have to steal my car? | ||
| That was Angela in Missouri. | ||
| Let's hear from Pat, who's calling from Brick, New Jersey, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Pat, what's your top news story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right, good morning. | |
| My top news story is today is today, the 25th day of the government shutdown. | ||
| And I don't understand why the Democrats will not, they need five more votes in order to open up the government, but instead they would like to keep it shut down and hold the American people hostage. | ||
| I think they should be ashamed of themselves, and it's a total disgrace. | ||
| And as far as Jeffrey, you know, supporting Mondani, that's another disgrace. | ||
| How can anybody want to put this man in? | ||
| And as far as Andrew Cuomo, you have to remember the COVID, how he shut down all these nursing homes. | ||
| He should answer for that. | ||
| How come these people are not held accountable? | ||
| It's a total disgrace. | ||
| So hopefully we'll get the government open soon. | ||
| And the Republicans already have the votes. | ||
| It's the Democrats who are holding the people hostage. | ||
| And they need to open it up now, the Democrats, because this is so shameful. | ||
| So I'll just continue to pray that this will happen soon. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Pat in New Jersey. | ||
| Sandra is calling from Texas on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Sandra. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just have a comment. | ||
| I understand that the Affordable Care Act doesn't work for everyone. | ||
| And a question. | ||
| I have a question as to where. | ||
| Do the Republicans have anything better for the American people when it comes to their health insurance? | ||
| You know, President Trump is spending all this money on the ballroom. | ||
| He's bailing out Argentina. | ||
| People need to understand the Democrats are holding out because these people have nothing better, nothing better for the American plan. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Sandra, are you still there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, can you hear me? | |
| Yes, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| I just had a question. | ||
| Do the Republicans have anything better on the health care plan for the American people? | ||
| And I think they are holding out due to the fact that the Republicans have nothing better. | ||
| That was Sandra in Texas. | ||
| Kevin is calling from Windsor, Connecticut, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Kevin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I agree with the last caller because the Democrats are showing that people are getting premiums double, and the Republicans are saying about this fraud and abuse. | ||
| Where are all these court cases then? | ||
| All this fraud. | ||
| Where are they? | ||
| I know that Pam Bondi, she's too busy chasing down Trump's enemies, but truthfully, I don't think we even have a country no more. | ||
| Republicans are enabling Trump to do whatever he wants. | ||
| There's no Department of Justice no more. | ||
| That's obvious. | ||
| Trump's billionaires are going to pay for soldiers for their pay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, the billionaires are running this country now. | |
| You know, Trump's running the country. | ||
| We have a king now. | ||
| With a king, you don't have no government. | ||
| You don't have no Republican Party. | ||
| You don't have no Democrat Party. | ||
| This is King America. | ||
| I mean, Trump America now. | ||
| I'm serious. | ||
| I think we lost our country. | ||
| And a lot of people are so far behind. | ||
| Trump's throwing all his pieces in place before they use that nuclear option in the Senate. | ||
| Trump's going to get his way. | ||
| You know, I'm just saying, we lost our country. | ||
| That was Kevin in Connecticut. | ||
| Beba is calling from Memphis, Tennessee. | ||
| Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Bebba. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I keep on hearing the Democrats say that it's a Republican shutdown. | ||
| Well, that's a complete lie. | ||
| The Republicans are voting for the bill that needs to be passed, all except one or maybe two. | ||
| No Democrat, maybe one or two Democrats voted for it, but back in December, all of them voted for the same very bill. | ||
| The only thing that's different is we got a different president, and they hate Trump so much that they don't care about their citizens. | ||
| They care more about illegal aliens, thugs, criminals, than they do the citizens they represent. | ||
| And bless their heart, their representatives think it's Republicans because they believe what their Democrat people are telling them. | ||
| But it's the same bill that they passed back in December. | ||
| The White House thing, Trump getting a new ballroom, it's not costing people a damn. | ||
| All he is doing is improving something that's going to be there for a long time. | ||
| If you remember, Biden had big tents out there for his meals, had outhouses for these representatives to go to. | ||
| Oh, that's going to be cut out. | ||
| It's going to be a nice ballroom for years to come. | ||
| And I can't understand why people are complaining about something that's getting improved. | ||
| I mean, they hate Trump so much that they would just soon the country to go to hell. | ||
| Yesterday, stock market hit all-time high. | ||
| I mean, what do these people really want? | ||
| And you had one lady that called in a while ago that said Trump wasn't even president. | ||
| You need to correct these people and say, yes, Trump is the president, and he's actually doing a great job. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That was Bebba in Tennessee. | ||
| Another story from this week, the headline in the Hill Pentagon sends largest aircraft carrier to Caribbean amid boat strikes. | ||
| It says that the Pentagon is sending the world's largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, and its carrier Air Wing to the Caribbean as the Trump administration conducts strikes against boats, it says, are smuggling illegal drugs in the region. | ||
| Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Friday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy's most advanced aircraft carrier, which was deployed in the Mediterranean, to the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility to help, quote, dismantle transnational criminal organizations and counter narco-terrorism in defense of the homeland. | ||
| It was Fox News also reporting on additional strikes happening this week. | ||
| The headline, U.S. kills six suspected narco-terrorists in overnight strike on alleged drug smuggling boat, Hegseth said. | ||
| The article notes that the strike marks the 10th strike targeting suspected drug trafficking boats since Trump returned to office. | ||
| The president has made combating the nation's drug crisis a central policy focus. | ||
| The first strike took place on September 2nd, and since then, 42 suspected drug traffickers have been killed and two have survived. | ||
| Officials said the pace of the strikes has increased from one every few weeks in September to three so far this week. | ||
| Article goes on to say that when reporters asked Trump on Thursday whether he would request that Congress issue a declaration of war against the cartels, he said that wasn't the plan. | ||
| From Thursday, here are those remarks from President Trump. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. President. | ||
| A moment ago, you said that if Secretary Hegseth went to Congress and briefed them on the operation of the United States, you will go. | ||
| And we will go for them to object. | ||
| I don't see any laws in going. | ||
| No reason not to. | ||
| You know, they'll always complain, oh, we should have gone. | ||
| So we're going to definitely, I'd like to just tell you, let's go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll go. | |
| And Mr. President, we're going to tell them what we're going to do, and I think they're going to probably like it, except for the radical left lunatics. | ||
| And, Mr. President, if you are declaring war against these cartels and Congress is likely to approve of that process, why not just ask for a declaration of war? | ||
| Well, I don't think we're going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. | ||
| I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| We're going to kill them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, they're going to be like dead. | |
| For this first hour, we are asking you for your top news story of the week. | ||
| Let's hear from John in Temple Hills, Maryland, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I think that both Democrats and Republicans agree that America is the greatest country on earth. | ||
| And if that is indeed the case, it is the American people that have made it so. | ||
| So when Donald Trump says that his tariffs have brought in $17 trillion into the American economy, let's just say we believe that. | ||
| That would mean that in a nation of 365 million people, I could afford to give $25,000 as a national income to each citizen. | ||
| Now, we know that it's less than $365 million, and that would add up to $9 trillion, leaving another $8 trillion left over for the government. | ||
| And with $8 billion, that means that there could be free medical care for every American. | ||
| I mean, according to if we believe that the president's tariffs have brought in $17 trillion. | ||
| And one other point I'd like to make is just that the reason why the Epstein files haven't come out is because both Republicans and Democrats and some of their rich friends would be implicated. | ||
| So there was no reason for them to want to expose any of that. | ||
| And one final thing that I would like to say is there was a president who was assassinated a long time ago named Amwar Sadat. | ||
| And he made the claim that how is it that when the original Jews left the promised land, they were black, but when they returned, they were all white. | ||
| Thank you and have a nice that was John in Maryland. | ||
| Emma is calling from North Carolina on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Emma. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My take on the week is everybody trying to blame the Democrats, everybody trying to blame the Republic. | ||
| Come on, we all is in this together. | ||
| Not one party, but both parties. | ||
| If, like I heard on the news yesterday, if Trump come in and sit down with the Republic and the Democrat, we could get something going. | ||
| They could get something going. | ||
| But my daughter, she's on it. | ||
| She's led off and everything. | ||
| But like I say, God will. | ||
| It all will come to the face, and we know who did it. | ||
| We cannot blame Democrats. | ||
| We cannot blame the Republic. | ||
| But we know who did it. | ||
| So everybody needs to get on this ship together. | ||
| Emma, you said that your daughter is a furloughed government employee? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, yes. | |
| Yes, and it hurts. | ||
| It hurts. | ||
| Is she working or is she exempted? | ||
|
unidentified
|
She's not. | |
| No, they ain't been back to work. | ||
| They ain't been back to work. | ||
| She ain't got no letter now, but she's home. | ||
| She's been home for a month. | ||
| Photo got paid yesterday, but she didn't get paid. | ||
| But like I say, all of this is going to come to the light. | ||
| Whereas Trump is running around the earth trying to make progress. | ||
| And here we go. | ||
| Got mothers, fathers, got children, got to try to send them to school. | ||
| That was Emma in North Carolina. | ||
| Alex is calling from Florida on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Alex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I'm seeing, and I'm hearing all this stuff going on. | ||
| And there's colors that have valid reasons from both sides of the aisle. | ||
| And as human beings, which is a race in its entirety, whether you're black, white, or whatever you are. | ||
| If the dollar has a God we trust, but yet you don't have any of the politicians carrying a Bible, not speaking from the Bible, not inviting the Holy Spirit into the White House to shun out everything that was satanic from its foundations. | ||
| Everything that was sown that was satanic is transcending across the nation. | ||
| And when you have Satanists running the nation, they're bringing up a lot of conflict with that was Alex in Florida. | ||
| George is calling from Michigan on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, George. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, hi there. | |
| How are you this morning? | ||
| Doing well, George. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Excellent. | |
| I'd like to make a theme of Republican incompetence and Democratic weakness. | ||
| We saw it with Bush Cheney, how incompetent they were in Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| We see the megalomania with Donald Trump and his policies and programs. | ||
| He's killing his own voters. | ||
| The big, beautiful bill has been an absolute debacle. | ||
| And here, the Democrats are so weak, they can't even argue against this nonsense. | ||
| They're not able to mount a campaign to dislodge his base sitting there at 41 to 44 percent. | ||
| So the Democrats have a chance to play ball. | ||
| Okay, they have the power to open up the government, get the snap benefits rolling again. | ||
| The damn government's just going to be shut down again on November 21st. | ||
| So if the Democrats, and Whitler, God bless her, I'm a Michigan man through and through, in Ann Arbor for seven years, born in Detroit. | ||
| I represent the capital city. | ||
| If the Democrats cannot figure out how to outthink this buffoon, then we are seriously up a crick without much of a paddle. | ||
| And so the extrajudicial killings, I mean, the big, beautiful bill is absolutely a boon for the insurance companies as they're going to be able to double and triple people's premiums. | ||
| You're hearing seniors call in all week in regards to their costs going up and his own voters. | ||
| God bless the South. | ||
| But, you know, as a Yankee, as a proud Yankee, I'm sick of supporting the Southerners and everything they need to do in order to survive as the federal government continues to fund southern states and their poverty. | ||
| And these people and their Bibles, they just can't seem to get over the reality of what is going on. | ||
| This year is 2026 almost. | ||
| This is not 1955. | ||
| It's not 1985. | ||
| This is not 2005. | ||
| This is going to be a complicated situation that's going to require intelligent people to sit down, make compromises, and do some smart things. | ||
| That was George in Michigan. | ||
| This another story from this week, CNBC headline. | ||
| Social Security Administration announces 2026 COLA benefit increase of 2.8%. | ||
| And it notes that the cost of living adjustment will be 2.8% next year. | ||
| The Social Security retirement benefit will increase by about $56 per month on average starting in January. | ||
| It also notes that over the last 20 years, the Social Security COLA has averaged 2.6%. | ||
| That's according to the Senior Citizens League, a nonprofit senior group. | ||
| Another headline from this week that is, or from CNBC this week, that was the inflation report. | ||
| The numbers released yesterday. | ||
| The headline saying the inflation rate hit 3% in September, lower than expected. | ||
| A long-awaited CPI report. | ||
| It says that excluding food and energy, core CPI showed a 0.2% monthly gain and an annual rate also at 3%. | ||
| That, again, less than forecasted. | ||
| It says the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the data specifically because the Social Security Administration uses it as a benchmark for cost of living adjustment and benefit checks. | ||
| Otherwise, the federal government has suspended all data compilation during the shutdown. | ||
| After that inflation report was released, Senate Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries addressed it. | ||
| Here are his comments. | ||
| Today's inflation numbers of 3% year over year confirm what hardworking American taxpayers already know. | ||
| That Donald Trump and Republican policies are making life too expensive in the United States of America. | ||
| Donald Trump and Republicans promise that costs will go down on day one. | ||
| But costs haven't gone down in the United States of America. | ||
| Costs are going up. | ||
| Inflation is up the highest number since January of this year. | ||
| Housing costs are too high. | ||
| Grocery costs are too high. | ||
| Electricity bills are through the roof. | ||
| And now, because of the Republican refusal to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, tens of millions of Americans are receiving notices right now that the health care premiums are about to skyrocket. | ||
| In some instances, everyday Americans are going to pay $1,000 or $2,000 more per month. | ||
| That is unsustainable in an environment where people are already struggling to live paycheck to paycheck, can't thrive, and can barely survive. | ||
| We need House Republicans to come back to Washington, D.C. End your four-week vacation enough already. | ||
| We are about halfway through this first hour. | ||
| Today's Washington Journal asking you, what's your top news story of the week? | ||
| Let's hear from Roger, who's calling from Fort Wayne, Indiana, on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Roger. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| I got a couple of comments. | ||
| One, I want to comment about the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| My recollection, when Obama was in office and the Democrats had control of the government and they were trying to pass the Affordable Care Act, the conservative Republicans, they made a big fuss. | ||
| They came all out on the camera, on the news, social media, and all that, talking about the Democrats ain't letting us in. | ||
| They're not making us a part of it. | ||
| So the Democrats made them a part of it. | ||
| And they started working with the Republicans. | ||
| And the Republicans, conservative Republicans, they put forth their things that they wanted in the Affordable Care Act, like the subsidies and helping the insurance companies and stuff like that. | ||
| And so when the Democrats worked with the Republicans on the Affordable Care Act and they ended up passing it, the Republicans, even though they put what they wanted in the Affordable Care Act, they didn't even vote for it. | ||
| So now they're talking about, yeah, it's all Democrats. | ||
| Of course it was all Democrats because you guys refused to vote on the stuff that you put in the bill. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's ludicrous. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| And before the Affordable Care Act, folks like with pre-existing conditions couldn't have difficulty get insurance. | ||
| It was a mess. | ||
| Now, the Affordable Care Act did not make the health care better for everyone, but it did make it better for people. | ||
| That was Roger in Indiana. | ||
| Gerald is calling from Alliance, Ohio, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Gerald. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did not make it healthcare? | |
| Yes. | ||
| I want to say something about that Social Security that you just had on there. | ||
| Everybody's not getting that full amount, the $56. | ||
| Ohio. | ||
| $56 a month first of the year. | ||
| Half of that, we're only going to get $25 a month because that goes, the other half goes to Medicare and for what you shouldn't, it shouldn't be. | ||
| $56. | ||
| Gerald, are you on Social Security? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I am. | |
| And when Biden was in office, when Biden was in office, we got half of the. | ||
| So he gave us two raises, and we got half of those two raises, raises from which we should get every penny of it. | ||
| Yes, I am. | ||
| And that was Gerald in Ohio. | ||
| Stan is calling from Florida, the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Stan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, how are you doing? | |
| I guess he must really like Argentina because he's given him $40 billion. | ||
| And now he's going to buy all the beef from Argentina. | ||
| Because in this wonderful bill that you're talking about, in that bill, they cut Medicare and Medicaid. | ||
| That's why Jeffreys would not sign it. | ||
| And Mike Johnson hasn't been back for five weeks. | ||
| And how are you going to negotiate with a guy that's not there? | ||
| He's not there. | ||
| And Donald Trump's not taking any credit. | ||
| He's building this big ballroom and he wants $230 million out of the Treasury for Cousin. | ||
| He wants $230 million because he got investigated for the taking of documents. | ||
| And he's weaponizing the Justice Department. | ||
| And Pam Bondi is like his personal attorney, supposed to be the attorney for the United States. | ||
| He must have like, it's a Republican turned out. | ||
| Affordable Care Act, that guy is right. | ||
| You can keep your daughter on the plane or son till he's 26. | ||
| And it also helps on pre-existing dishes. | ||
| If you get something that cancer, it has to pay all the way to the top. | ||
| Before it stopped at whatever, $50,000, $100,000. | ||
| Now, it's completely paid. | ||
| Trump doesn't want to do nothing for the American people. | ||
| He just wants to do stuff for his rich buddies. | ||
| That was Stan in Florida. | ||
| Cliff is calling from Jefferson City, Tennessee, on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Cliff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning, C-SPAN. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well, Cliff. | ||
| I'm calling in reference to the guy that called from Tennessee earlier. | ||
| These are the same people that vote, people like Tim Burchett, Marsha Blackburn, Hagerty. | ||
| They'll vote them right back in office because their name's on the ballot and they recognize it. | ||
| The people in Tennessee, their minimum wage is like $7.15 an hour. | ||
| And they just keep voting idiots back in office. | ||
| And you got this crony, Trump, up here demolishing the White House. | ||
| He's taking away every bit of the rights that the people in this country have. | ||
| And they don't even see it. | ||
| They go on and on and on about the Democrats being radical this and radical bet. | ||
| Well, I got news for them. | ||
| Come next November, somebody's going to pay, and they're going to pay big time. | ||
| The people in this country are sick of this. | ||
| I got some Spanish-speaking friends here in Jefferson City that I love dearly. | ||
| They work hard for their money. | ||
| And these people that ridicule them all the time, the Republicans have always had to have somebody to beat them. | ||
| They beat on the black people like they were nothing. | ||
| In Tennessee, it is the worst of the worst. | ||
| That was Cliff in Tennessee. | ||
| Paul is calling from the UK, in England, on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Paul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| My top story is JD Vance on the 25th of Division of the Navy. | ||
| He came in the 50. | ||
| I just want to say congratulations for Paul and saluting the name you say, one of them from a good, good story that is one of them. | ||
| That was Paul from the UK. | ||
| Sherry is calling from Iowa on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Sherry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just wanted to say in 1999, my husband and I married for 28 years. | ||
| My children had graduated moving out, and I got notice from SSI in Iowa. | ||
| I was on disability. | ||
| We ended up not being able to financially afford anything because my children were not deductible anymore to receive services. | ||
| I have many, many medical problems. | ||
| I needed that SSI, which I was losing. | ||
| It was absolutely incredible. | ||
| But because of financial reasons, we had to divorce. | ||
| I have been living alone now for 25 years. | ||
| It's not right. | ||
| Social Security needs to be adjusted. | ||
| There have got to be some changes in that. | ||
| People who are ill should not be having to fight like this. | ||
| The other thing is, hate's a hard word that the gentleman earlier had said that everyone hates him. | ||
| Well, I think we have a reason to hate him, if you want to call it that. | ||
| He has lied to us. | ||
| We can't trust him. | ||
| We don't want to disrespect him as our president, but he's made it possible for us to do that. | ||
| The other thing, the last thing I wanted to say is I don't understand why they cannot sit down before the government is opened up and have a discussion as to how to change the health care system. | ||
| I cannot get that in my head as why do we have to wait, open the government, and then talk. | ||
| Why can't we talk now? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Sherry in Iowa. | ||
| Robert is calling from Hudson, Florida, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My top news story is not as important as some of the other ones we have, but it's the Reagan commercial against tariffs that Ontario is putting on television, and it's going to air here on the Super Bowl, where they have this whole dialogue of Ronald Reagan talking about how bad tariffs are, but they don't identify them to the end. | ||
| I think it's a fantastic commercial that shows, I think, the real spirit of people. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Robert in Florida. | ||
| Annie is calling from Tampa, Florida, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Annie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, and thank you, Robert, for being a really nice, decent Republican. | |
| If we can just have Republicans grab a pen and just write down just this one point, and it's really important. | ||
| Trump killed the goodbyes and border security bill well over two years ago. | ||
| Remember, Trump said he was going to use this chaos for his campaign. | ||
| Remember, all migrants entering in the past two plus years were under Trump's direction. | ||
| Now, Trump is charging us billions to deport the same freaking people. | ||
| Wake up, MAGA. | ||
| Just one more point about the blowing up the boats. | ||
| If it's not the guns, it's the user. | ||
| And then if it's not the fentanyl, it's the user, right? | ||
| So why not help the user? | ||
| And most migrants are workers. | ||
| Get more immigration judges and solve it. | ||
| That was Annie in Florida, Annie mentioning President Trump. | ||
| He is en route to Asia this morning. | ||
| This is from the Associated Press. | ||
| It says President Donald Trump headed for Asia Friday night for the first time this term, a trip where he's expected to work on investment deals and peace efforts before meeting face to face with Chinese President Xi Jinping to try to de-escalate a trade war. | ||
| President Trump traveling aboard Air Force One earlier this morning was asked about that meeting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here are his comments: the various trade deals that have been made in the past, and some broken, some not broken, but we've got many, many things. | |
| I think it's going to turn out to be a very good meeting. | ||
| Do they need to make concessions to get a deal? | ||
| Are you willing to pause there? | ||
| They have to make concessions. | ||
| I guess we would too. | ||
| And we're at a 157% tariff for them. | ||
| I don't think that's sustainable for them. | ||
| And they want to get that down. | ||
| And we want certain things from them. | ||
| I think it'll be very good. | ||
| What do you think the odds are? | ||
| You go ahead. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| What do you think the odds are? | ||
| You go ahead with that 100% tariff on November 1st. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I have no odds. | ||
| I don't want to predict odds. | ||
| I just, I don't think they would want that. | ||
| That would not be good for them. | ||
| And I would like to see. | ||
| President Trump will be in Asia for much of next week. | ||
| Here's a look at his schedule. | ||
| Sunday, he will arrive in Malaysia where he will meet with the Prime Minister. | ||
| On Monday, he'll travel to Tokyo and will meet with the Japanese Prime Minister on Tuesday. | ||
| On Wednesday, he will fly to Busan, South Korea, and meet with the president there. | ||
| And on Thursday in South Korea, he will meet, he will also meet the Chinese president on the sidelines of the APEC summit. | ||
| That's the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit before President returns home to Washington, D.C. About 15 minutes left asking for your top news story of the week. | ||
| John is calling from Alabama on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Hi, John. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Well, the shutdown, in my opinion, will be a long shutdown. | ||
| And the reason for the shutdown is because Donald Trump has told Mike Johnson not to bring the Republicans back to the House because this woman, a Democrat, was elected. | ||
| I can't remember her name, but Mike Johnson hasn't sworn her in yet. | ||
| If Mike Johnson comes back to the House with the Republicans, he would have to swear her in. | ||
| And the reason Trump doesn't want her sworn in is because her vote will release the Epstein files. | ||
| So this is not, people don't look at it that way. | ||
| But this is why Mike Johnson was told by Donald Trump: don't come back to have a vote on the on the on the keep the government open because that that will open the Epstein file. | ||
| This is what Donald Trump fears the most. | ||
| So the government may be shut down for quite a while because they're hoping that the Democrats will give in, will fold, and go along with Discontinuing resolution that is a disaster. | ||
| But I hope the Democrats hold out and Mike Johnson will have to come back and swear this lady in. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was John in Alabama. | ||
| And just a programming note for next week, the Senate will gavel back in Monday at 3 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| The lawmakers will be voting later in the week for the 13th time to advance a short-term government funding legislation by Republicans to reopen the government. | ||
| As our caller noted, the House will be out next week. | ||
| Speaker Mike Johnson canceled votes for the sixth week. | ||
| This from CBS News noting that the House has now been out of session for over a month with the last votes occurring September 19th. | ||
| House Democrats will return to Washington next meeting next week. | ||
| Members will hold an in-person caucus meeting Tuesday at 6 p.m. | ||
| Notes that Johnson continues to delay the swearing in of rep elect Adelita Grajalva, who won a special election to fill her late father's seat in Arizona last month. | ||
| During Friday's pro-formist session, Maryland Democratic Representative April McLean Delaney tried to seek recognition to demand Grajalva be sworn in. | ||
| GOP Representative Adrian Smith of Nebraska, who presided, didn't recognize the congresswoman and adjourned the House. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Let's hear from Ann, who's calling from Bloomville, Ohio, on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Ann. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm calling about the shutdown. | ||
| The Republicans continue to lie about illegals receiving free health care. | ||
| I am a retired teacher from Ohio on a state pension. | ||
| When my husband signed up for Social Security, the agent pointed at me point blank and declared that I will never receive any of my husband's Social Security. | ||
| When I signed up for Medicare, it was very difficult. | ||
| The only way I qualified was through my husband. | ||
| So no one is getting free health care. | ||
| It is very difficult. | ||
| I also am a soybean farmer. | ||
| I have written and called my elected officials, Bernie Moreno and John Hugh Stad in Ohio, about what farmers should do for next year. | ||
| We buy our seeds and fertilizers now. | ||
| Should we grow soy again? | ||
| I have not heard anything from them but crickets. | ||
| My nephew is training at the FAA Academy to become an air traffic controller. | ||
| Why would the government close the academy when we are so in need of air traffic controllers? | ||
| He also will lose his insurance. | ||
| These were my concerns. | ||
| Thank you for taking my call today. | ||
| That was Ann in Ohio. | ||
| Rose is calling from Tennessee on the line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Rose. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, good morning. | |
| My issue is the top story is persistence, not of either party, but for the American people who seek truth. | ||
| Never stop. | ||
| Number one, never stop charging Congress, Obama, Biden, and Donald J. Trump with crimes against humanity for funding gain-of-function bioweaponry and two deadly mRNA gene-altering pseudo-vaccines. | ||
| Number two, never stop asking for the Epstein files and an investigation of his island retreat along with that Zoro ranch. | ||
| For there you will find the intersection of all of the major crime syndicates who trade in human flesh. | ||
| Number three, never stop refusing to fund wars of aggression to steal resources and lands from other countries under the guise of spreading democracy. | ||
| Number four, never stop refusing to train artificial intelligence and paying for the Five Eyes spy program. | ||
| They are both Big Brother plus 1984 on steroids to destroy your liberties. | ||
| Number five, never stop refusing to be chipped like an animal and put into a digital ID system that tracks your every move and is designed to control your thoughts as well. | ||
| And lastly, never stop refuting the golden age narrative. | ||
| Look up the old world is in the catacombs, parts one, two, and three. | ||
| Note that blue triangle that's been built, the new world order Illuminati symbols, and the bone-lined walls intended for you on or before the year 2030. | ||
| This is not. | ||
| That was Rose in Tennessee. | ||
| Kevin is calling from San Antonio, Texas, on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Kevin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I think the number one job, well, one of the most important jobs of Congress is to pass a budget, okay? | ||
| Whatever priorities you have, as Americans, we owe a lot of money. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And then so what's going on right now is like Mike Johnson, whatever, they done did their job. | ||
| No, they don't do their job. | ||
| The Congress is to decide how we as Americans spend our money. | ||
| And we have to do negotiate or whatever. | ||
| But the thing is, like they, you know, Mike Johnson's there, oh, I did my job. | ||
| You at home? | ||
| No, you're not home. | ||
| They've been in, they've been in, they've been at work like 18 days. | ||
| Their job is to pass the budget. | ||
| Pass the budget, you know, and that is your job. | ||
| That was Kevin in Texas. | ||
| Will is calling from Kentucky on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Will. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, ma'am. | |
| I'd like to bring up something I think everybody's overlooking. | ||
| Congress controls the purse strings. | ||
| So why is Chuck Schumer trying to spend $1.5 trillion new dollars? | ||
| That is not the Senate's job. | ||
| And one more thing on Hakeem Jeffries. | ||
| I always knew that he was one of these socialist communists by backing the guy in New York. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Will in Kentucky. | ||
| Mike is calling from Horseshoe, North Carolina on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Detective, Mike Hall. | |
| Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea. | ||
| Three quick topics. | ||
| This ballroom that everybody's having a fit about. | ||
| I think it's not that big a deal. | ||
| It should change with the times. | ||
| Nothing against the Obama administration, but they did hold a state dinner there, and they did it in a tent. | ||
| And, you know, these world state leaders had to use portable toilets that you see at concerts. | ||
| Anyway, change with the times. | ||
| I'm sure future administrations will change the name of the ballroom, though. | ||
| This naval strike force in the Caribbean now, I think that's a little over the top. | ||
| I'm a Navy veteran. | ||
| That is a lot of artillery. | ||
| Are we going to take out continents next? | ||
| And, you know, they make a show at blowing up these boats. | ||
| You know, I'm just surprised that the smoke from the explosion is in red, white, and blue. | ||
| Why would the intelligence we have are we not capturing these boats and putting these people on trial and putting them in prison for the rest of their life where we have the evidence of what they have on the boat instead of just exploding them out of the water and making a big deal of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've voted both Democrat and Republican in the past. | |
| My last topic is Democrats. | ||
| I'm a little worried right now. | ||
| They're not showing up with a decent leader. | ||
| They need a good, moderate leader, not these far-left extreme wild people in their party that seem to be taking charge. | ||
| I am dying to hear a new message from the Democrats, but right now I'm not hearing it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, you know, they need to change their message. | |
| You know, stop sticking up for illegal aliens. | ||
| Stop sticking up for criminal illegal aliens. | ||
| Stop sticking up for domestic criminals. | ||
| Stop fighting law enforcement. | ||
| My gosh, what are you doing, guys? | ||
| That is just unbelievable. | ||
| And stop pushing biological men and female sports. | ||
| You know, history is going to look back on us in a not too distant future and say, what the heck were they smoking? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Or was there something in the water? | |
| I mean, it's just ridiculous. | ||
| That was Mike in North Carolina. | ||
| Caller earlier bringing up an anti-tariff ad that Ontario played that upset trade negotiation talks between the U.S. and Canada. | ||
| The Associated Press noting that the leader of Canada's most populous province said Friday he'll pull the anti-tariff ad that prompted U.S. President Donald Trump to end those trade talks with Canada. | ||
| Ontario Premier Doug Ford said after talking with Prime Minister Mark Carney, he's decided to pause the advertising campaign effective Monday so that trade talks can resume. | ||
| Here is that ad when someone says let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. | ||
| And sometimes for a short while it works, but only for a short time. | ||
| But over the long run, such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer. | ||
| High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. | ||
| Then the worst happens. | ||
| Markets shrink and collapse, businesses and industries shut down, and millions of people lose their jobs. | ||
| Throughout the world, there's a growing realization that the way to prosperity for all nations is rejecting protectionist legislation and promoting fair and free competition. | ||
| America's jobs and growth are at stake. | ||
| That was the ad in its entirety. | ||
| USA Today breaking down why it was a concern. | ||
| It says everything Reagan is heard saying in the ad accurately reflects the remarks he made in the address. | ||
| However, the ad selects and splices certain lines from the five-minute address rather than playing the remarks in the order they were delivered or reproducing this speech in its entirety. | ||
| It says that the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute said the ad, quote, misrepresents the address and that the Ontario government did not receive permission to use it and edit Reagan's remark. | ||
| The White House objected because the ad omitted one particular line in Reagan's address, quote, as I've often said, the former president said in the original remarks, our commitment to free trade is also a commitment to fair trade. | ||
| Just a few minutes left in this first hour. | ||
| Let's talk with Miles from San Antonio, Texas, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Miles. | ||
| What's your top story this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my top story of the week is this: well, there's a bunch of them, but I think the, and I'm from San Angelo, by the way, which is another town that is. | |
| Oh, I'm sorry. | ||
| You're correct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's okay. | |
| No, it's okay. | ||
| We got a lot of rain last night and almost washed us away. | ||
| But anyways, I was just going to say this Epstein ballroom, I'm really looking forward to it because maybe they'll have the possibility of shutting down the Epstein shutdown. | ||
| Because, I mean, this is all this is obviously, I mean, Mike Johnson needs to put himself in a drug-induced coma. | ||
| That would really help him get through this next couple of weeks because the American people, as far as I can see, are finally realizing that tariffs don't work when two out of three rural farms are closing down. | ||
| And what happens is these you put billionaires in charge of everything and they have the money to buy everything, especially when it's for sale because you can't pay for it anymore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that means you got to sell it for a loss, and you're going to be living in a van down by the river. | |
| So the Epstein ballroom, I wish we could get an Epstein ballroom down here in Texas because everything's bigger in Texas and we could have a hundred thousand square foot ballroom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what I'm saying? | |
| And they could have their chandeliers and champagne and down here in Texas because we're almost as bad as Washington, D.C. for fascist dictatorship support. | ||
| Anyways, I hope you guys have a great day and remember, vote Democrat if you want to be free. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Miles in Texas, our last caller in the first hour of today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Later this morning on the program, we'll talk with ProPublica investigative journalist Andy Kroll about his reporting on White House Budget Director Russ Vogt and his role in advising the Trump agenda. | ||
| But next, after the break, Reuters Agriculture and Commodities and Farm Economy reporter P.J. Hepstetter joins us to discuss the impact of President Trump's administration policies and the government shutdown are having on the U.S. agriculture industry. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | |
| This weekend, as the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, join American History TV for our series, America 250, and discover the ideas and defining moments of the American story. | ||
| This week, U.S. Navy and Marine Corps mark their 250th anniversary. | ||
| First, retired Marine Corps General Jason Bohm, author of Washington's Marines, explores the creation of the U.S. Marine Corps. | ||
| Then the Marines demonstrate an amphibious assault at Camp Pendleton in celebration of their birthday. | ||
| Speakers include Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and others. | ||
| On Lectures in History, University of North Carolina professor Marcus Gadson discusses a successful campaign to overthrow the South Carolina government, triggering a constitutional crisis during Reconstruction. | ||
| On the presidency, it's a study of presidential leadership, with scholars looking at George W. Bush's 2003 President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and Barack Obama's 2011 raid, which ended in the death of 9-11 terrorist Osama bin Laden. | ||
| Exploring the American story. | ||
| Watch American History TV every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/slash history. | ||
| 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. | ||
|
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. | |
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss the impact Trump administration policies and the government shutdown are having on the U.S. agriculture industry is PJ Hufstetter. | ||
| She is an agricultural commodities and farm economy reporter for Reuters. | ||
| PJ, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| We appreciate you being with us this morning. | ||
| We'll start with issues related to the government shutdown. | ||
| We are now in day 25 of the shutdown and this week about half of U.S. states warned that SNAP and WIC benefits may not be issued next month. | ||
| Food benefits aren't typically impacted when we see funding lapses like government shutdowns. | ||
| What's happening this time? | ||
|
unidentified
|
France this time is that as we reported, actually my coworker at our DC office, Leah Douglas, actually reported yesterday that USDA is saying that it is not going to be using contingency funds to be able to cover food aid benefits if in fact the government continues to shut down past November 1. | |
| And all of this is happening at a time when food banks and a lot of food assistance programs had already been struggling with funding cuts from earlier this year as part of President Trump's efforts to be able to shrink the size of the government. | ||
| And at the same time, we are also facing multi-year rises in hunger in the U.S. | ||
| A lot of this is coming out of COVID, but also because cost of living has been rising. | ||
| So right now, there's kind of this intersection and crux that's happening between the government shutdown and enough funding to be able to keep food assistance programs going. | ||
| How many people are we looking at being impacted by this? | ||
| And I know you mentioned food banks, but what's being done to help bridge the gap and help people who are going to be affected? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's, you know, the issue is, so for SNAP benefits in the United States, it's more than 41 million Americans. | |
| You're also talking about the shutdown is threatening the nearly 7 million participants in a program called WIC, or the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. | ||
| A lot of this is, I mean, this is funding that is tied in, you know, through the government that end up getting passed through to different states in order to be able to feed folks. | ||
| A lot of people have misconceptions of who is actually receiving these funds. | ||
| And one of the largest growing populations is in fact people who are working, people who have one job or two jobs, but the jobs that they have don't make enough to be able to cover all of their expenses, including food. | ||
| The shutdown also impacts the Department of Agriculture itself. | ||
| It has paused non-mandatory data collection. | ||
| That may not seem like a big deal, but explain what it is, what data is collected, who uses it for what, and explain to people why it's important. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it is, at least in our world in the ag and commodity world, USDA is known as really kind of the global gold standard when it comes to gathering data and information about a whole host of issues related to food, whether it is reports dealing with the number of people who are hungry in the United States to the volume of exports of soybeans and how many metric tons are being exported to which countries. | |
| A lot of this information is used both by Congress to be able to figure out how much they need to be able to spend on support programs, whether it's subsidies and supports for farmers or funding for different educational programs dealing with food or agriculture, or how much money to be able to spend with regards to supporting food assistance, | ||
| and whether that's church pantries or that is large food banks. | ||
| It also ends up impacting a lot of the commodity markets. | ||
| So the futures markets of soybeans, corn, wheat, livestock, things like that. | ||
| And how that actually ripples down is changes in the futures market have a direct impact on what's known as the cash market or what farmers themselves can go ahead and sell their crops for, whether it's their soybeans or their wheat or their cattle going to a cash market. | ||
| But it's not just even commodities, right? | ||
| So the U.S. Department of Agriculture gathers all sorts of information about what are known as specialty crops, you know, delicious treats that we all eat, such as cherries and apples, seafood, fish. | ||
| I mean, it's kind of everything. | ||
| They are just the hub of information. | ||
| So it tracks so much. | ||
| And frankly, food is a fundamental element like everybody eats. | ||
| And so that information and that data is intertwined in so much of American society and even beyond. | ||
| Our guest, PJ Hefsteder, she is an agriculture commodities and farm economy reporter for Reuters. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for her, you can give us a call the lines Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| If you are an agricultural worker, there's a special line for you. | ||
| You can give us a call at 202-748-8003. | ||
| And PJ, we have that line set aside for agricultural workers. | ||
| We did hear from one earlier today, a soybean farmer in Ohio. | ||
| That's something that you've mentioned a couple times. | ||
| China has historically been the largest purchaser of U.S. soybeans, but they have stopped. | ||
| Explain why. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They have stopped Importing U.S. soybeans completely. | |
| They are by far the world's largest importer of soybeans. | ||
| And from our reporting, both in myself and our Chicago commodities team, as well as our commodity reporters that are in Asia and as well as Europe, what our sources are telling us is that that decision to do so is in direct response to the current trade tensions that have been going on between Washington as well as Beijing. | ||
| You have to understand that a lot of the trade policies that are in place right now and that are expanding under the current president's administration, it really started under President Trump's first term and then pretty much were held in, for the most part, were held in place by the Biden administration with some exception and then have expanded now. | ||
| So last year, China bought 45% of all U.S. soybean exports. | ||
| So the question has been, how exactly, like how exactly is the U.S. going to make that up and who is buying? | ||
| So the USDA data blackout with the government shutdown is leaving a lot of people kind of scrambling in the dark to try to figure out what is actually happening. | ||
| Now, I will say that I was, we look at all of these trends all the time for export patterns. | ||
| And what you have to understand is that the most recent data from U.S. customs data only goes through July. | ||
| And soybean exports to China were already down at that point 51%. | ||
| Mexico was the next number two importer, and that was down 11%. | ||
| And Indonesia was down 32%. | ||
| So the biggest question right now in a lot of both traders as well as farmers who right now, many of them have harvested their soybeans and are just storing them is how, like, where are soybeans going to go? | ||
| A certain amount obviously is going to be used in the domestic market, but they need export markets in order to be able to maintain prices that make it so that they can actually pay their bills and be in the black. | ||
| We have callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We'll start with Ricardo, who's calling from Texas on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Ricardo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Tammy. | |
| How are you? | ||
| I hope you're doing fine. | ||
| And thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Thank you for the guest in advance for answering some of my questions. | ||
| Have to do with the fact that I believe that we're a republic and we used to, I believe, like teach righteousness to other nations because as a group, like a republic, we're like one body, indivisible rights. | ||
| And if we will produce cotton and soybeans or whatever as a nation, we would export it to another nation and we would say, wait, the payments come in here to this channel, so this pipelines that go straight into the treasury, and then those funds were used to educate and continue to cultivate the people and the nation, right? | ||
| And maybe the tariffs, a new deal is like a new covenant, and maybe raising the tariffs high to bring people to the table so that they could make a new deal. | ||
| Does this have to do with like maybe now channeling the funds away from the treasury from the common commonwealth and into some different channels? | ||
| And what exactly is going on? | ||
| Sorry, so just to clarify, you're asking about kind of the flow of the tariff funds and kind of where they're going. | ||
| It sounded like that's what he was asking. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Well, you know, what we focus on in our reporting team is mostly on what's happening with regards to tariffs that are impacting and being charged on the goods that are being exported or on consumer goods that are being, you know, either imported or the ripple effects on what's happening here. | ||
| So I will say this: the tariffs, The trade policies and tariffs have been increasing costs for farmers on imports for things like fertilizer and machinery, as well as obviously it's been raising consumer prices for some goods. | ||
| The flow of, you know, the flow of those funds and where that would go to impact either, you know, consumer, you know, for consumer goods and for farmers, that is an area that, you know, our team doesn't necessarily cover. | ||
| And PJ, related to that, this was a tweet or a post on X by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rowlands earlier this week. | ||
| It says, while Democrats play politics, POTIS is standing up for our farmers. | ||
| This Thursday, USDA will resume farm service agency core operations, including critical services for farm loan processing, ARC slash PLC payments, and other programs. | ||
| Over $3 billion in assistance farmers have counted on in business planning on in their business planning decisions. | ||
| Explain what we know about these loans. | ||
| What are they used for? | ||
| Who will receive them? | ||
| And how are they going to help those impacted by tariff policy and the shutdown? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the shutdown of the FSA or what are known as the USDA's field offices, the Farm Service Agency manages a lot of programs that directly impact farmers. | |
| They also have a slew of government loans, whether they're direct loans, meaning the government is actually directly loaning money to a farmer, or they're what's known as a guaranteed loan, where a farmer will go to a banker. | ||
| The bank thinks that the farmer is too high of a risk, and then will go to the federal government. | ||
| And the federal government will guarantee that loan, meaning that if the farmer fails or files for bankruptcy, the bank is going to be made whole. | ||
| A lot of these folks who are getting these loans, they do tend to be younger farmers. | ||
| They do tend to be more at-risk farmers. | ||
| These are people who are growing crops or raising livestock that may not own a lot of land. | ||
| They may not be the biggest farms, right? | ||
| That they need the help. | ||
| It tends to be a very, you know, in the past, it has in other, under different administrations, it's tended to be a very successful program. | ||
| When the government shut down, a lot of those, you know, the government shut down in the height of harvest season, and it came to a screeching halt for processing a lot of those loan programs. | ||
| So the reopening of the offices is going to be a boon for farmers who are trying, you know, desperately to be able to get the loan paperwork shoved through so that they can get the money to be able to pay their bills, you know, whether it's pre-paying for seeds or fertilizer chemicals, you know, paying for their rent that's due to their landlord, things like that. | ||
| One of the things that a lot of people don't understand in the loan program is that lenders, whether they're banks or the farm credit system or other creditors, they'll actually use those government, you know, so the emergency payments they're talking about or the additional payments of the $3 billion from USDA. | ||
| A lot of times in the loan documents, what it'll say is that any either indemnities from the government or any of these subsidy payments, that's actually collateral, meaning that it doesn't actually directly go to the farmer itself, himself or herself. | ||
| It will actually go directly to or will pass through the farmer and go to make the bank or a creditor whole. | ||
| So having those office, you know, the offices reopen is definitely a good thing for farmers right now. | ||
| It's also something that's really important because what happens is, particularly for like cattle operators, cattle guys will go and sell their cattle at what's known as a cash barn, right? | ||
| Big barn, cattle go in, they get sold. | ||
| But the problem is, if a farmer has a loan with the federal government, they actually can't cash the check for selling their cattle. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because the government is actually also on the check and has to sign off in order to be able to have the check clear. | ||
| So for weeks, there's been cattle guys and women who have been trying to be able to cash checks for cattle that have been sold, and they're just kind of stuck. | ||
| We will talk more about cattle here in just a few minutes, but I wanted to bring Joe in. | ||
| He's calling from Seebeck, Washington, on the line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Some of my questions were answered in the last comment she made. | ||
| So do you, or does Reuters or yourself, do you guys keep statistics on the smaller green farmers who may go to FSA, but most of the time they're just kind of working out of pocket and locally? | ||
| So do you keep the statistical records of the loans and crop yields and so on that we could look at and refer to as a resource? | ||
| Are you talking about like what we would call like a specialty crop? | ||
| So like a lettuce farmer or like a vegetable farmer like a fruit farmer things like that. | ||
| Or are you talking about a farm that does more like sustainable farming, organic farming? | ||
| Could you help me clarify? | ||
| Actually both because the crop is what we grow as you described it and our efforts are regenerative and sustainable in our year-round growing processes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| We at Reuters live in data. | ||
| We live in data. | ||
| But I will say we do, like I do track, I focus a lot on farm debt and farm lending practices. | ||
| And so I've been doing a lot of research on private debt, whether it's like a seed seller or like a farmer's co-op that's issuing out a loan, right? | ||
| Organic, you know, organic practices and things like that. | ||
| USDA actually has a ton of information, all of which, of course, is frozen right now. | ||
| And a number of these reports, USDA, Secretary Rollins has told us and has told me that they're reviewing a lot of those surveys and a lot of those reports to see whether or not they're considered to still be viable or economically important enough and impactful enough to keep. | ||
| That's a big question mark going forward of how some of those smaller, you know, smaller reports and that data collection is going to be affected. | ||
| There's also a lot of data that is collected usually by state departments of agriculture that we look at and different industry groups. | ||
| You know, you start getting into questions about, you know, well, industry groups, are they, you know, are they biased and are they slanting the data to carry one narrative or not? | ||
| And that's actually been the thing that's been so, you know, why so many people look to USDA data as being important is because it's been seen as the government's data collection. | ||
| I mean, it's massive. | ||
| So I guess the answer is yes, some, but it's compiled by, you know, from drawing from a number of data resources. | ||
| Jason is on the line from Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Jason. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My question to your guest is: when you go around to these farmers, overwhelming Pelasia on the reports, and maybe you can validate it, is that they vote for Republicans and these same people want handouts and they don't want it for other people. | ||
| So, for instance, the USAAID, I'm pretty sure they were all against, they were for eliminating that without realizing it benefits them because the food they grow goes to them. | ||
| And also, if you could touch base on the reported investment firm, they just call it AcreTrader that the vice president has staked in to buy these same farms, distressed farms from these people. | ||
| You know, how he attests to that because every time you see articles on TV, they said they'll vote for Trump third term, even though his policies are clearly hurting them. | ||
| But they want the bailout that they don't want or the socialism that they don't want others to have. | ||
| Can you report? | ||
| So, those are excellent questions. | ||
| So, thank you for asking them. | ||
| The acre trader story, I can't comment on that right now because, to be honest, I'm working on a story about that. | ||
| And the idea of fractionalized land investment, which goes down into a rabbit hole of economic geekery that this session is not probably set up long enough to go into. | ||
| But I will agree with you on this. | ||
| The support for President Trump grew actually in this last election in America's top farming counties, despite all of the first term trade war. | ||
| So, I was digging into some of this data, and farming-dependent counties really have rallied behind the president. | ||
| In 2024, it was an average of nearly 78% support, which was up from the previous election of 73.1% and in 2016 and 76.1% in 2020. | ||
| So, even now, and there is definitely, particularly with the president's recent post with regards to Argentina and purchasing more beef and quadrupling the quota of beef coming in from Argentina, which was not well received online within the livestock sector, cattlemen and cattlewomen and ranchers and cow-calf operators and feedlots. | ||
| Like it did not, it did not land well. | ||
| So, but I will say this: there is, I'm seeing, you know, some stories out there about rural America turning its back on the president. | ||
| And I have to tell you, like, my reporting is not finding that. | ||
| Neither is my co-workers' reporting. | ||
| Well, it's a much more nuanced thing. | ||
| There are people that obviously are afraid. | ||
| There are people that are surprised. | ||
| There are people that are worried. | ||
| But there is even now still strong support among the farming community for the president. | ||
| And there's lots of reasons why, you know, whether it is because they do feel that soybean farmers feel like they're going to be able to get some sort of support because they are kind of the focus of a lot of what's happening with the trade, you know, the trade war and the trade fight with China. | ||
| It depends on which farmer you talk to, right? | ||
| So it's really difficult to make these kind of gross generalities about why farmers are doing what farmers do. | ||
| PJ, you mentioned President Trump's announcement that the U.S. will buy more beef from Argentina. | ||
| That, he said, is in an effort to bring down prices. | ||
| Explain why prices are high and how this action will affect the prices consumers see. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| So prices are high for a variety of reasons. | ||
| The U.S. has a cattle herd that is the smallest in almost 75 years. | ||
| It's that small largely because there were droughts that were devastating grazing lands. | ||
| You had higher feed prices. | ||
| Even, you know, more recently, avian influenza spread and the dairy herd was impacting beef that was going, you know, animals that were going to packers because dairy cows, when they are at the end of their life span or their productive span of producing milk, oftentimes are sold to beef packers to be used for making ground beef, right? | ||
| And the United States imports, and let me be clear, the United States imports quite a bit of beef. | ||
| What it does is it's known as beef trim, or it's to be able, a lot of times it's to be able to make types of beef to be able to make ground beef, right? | ||
| So the top countries we actually import beef and beef products from are Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. | ||
| The reason why this all flew in the face of the cattlemen is the idea that tariffs, or I'm sorry, that imports are seen as a threat to the cattle industry. | ||
| And the cattle industry inevitably goes through these very big swings where they will have a few years where prices are high and they're able to pay down debt and times are okay. | ||
| And then they will go through incredibly long stretches where prices are terrible. | ||
| They're taking on enormous debt and people are losing their operations. | ||
| So the idea that Washington would be opening the door for what they see as a competitor to be able to bring in more beef and therefore, you know, in turn, in theory, you know, drive down prices, they saw that as a bit of a slap in the face. | ||
| Economists warn that imports, they doubt that they're actually going to lower beef prices, particularly not in the short term, because it takes a while to be able to do this. | ||
| The other concern that economists have actually told us is that it actually may in turn discourage U.S. herd expansion. | ||
| So the idea being that high prices are what cattle guys need in order to be able to be incentivized to keep growing their herd. | ||
| The other issue that I don't think a lot of people really understand is that there's a lot of these stories that are out talking about how cow calf operators or ranchers are just making money hand over fist because beef prices in the store are so high and everything's great. | ||
| But what you have to understand is that even replacement herds, replacement animals, they're replacing and buying a calf or a heifer or something like that. | ||
| Those animals are at record highs. | ||
| And so everything is really elevated right now. | ||
| So it's just, it's really complicated. | ||
| And the idea of being able to bring in a bunch of beef to bring down prices, it's just not that black and white. | ||
| James is calling from Banning, California, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, James. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Yes, I am a small-time trader, three or four contracts. | ||
| And with no selling of soybeans to China, there is hardly any trade, at least for little guys like me, that I can't even make any money. | ||
| Like soybeans went up four cents for the whole week, and I've seen Soybeans go up 70, 80 cents during a time. | ||
| So I think Trump, President Trump, ought to get him a little respect there. | ||
| He overtalked himself talking to China all rough and tough and raggedy. | ||
| And China showed him: look, we're not buying a doggone soybean corn or any wheat. | ||
| So I think when you go over there next week, Trump, I hope you kind of calm down, Sonny Boy, and realize that you not only heard farmers, you heard us traders because we back farmers by buying their corn and all. | ||
| So I'll let you talk and help me out on this conversation. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You raised an excellent point. | ||
| You know, volatility in the trading markets and the commodity markets absolutely is where traders, whether they're big or small, can actually, you know, they can make their profits, right? | ||
| And in the gap of USDA data, you know, for the WASDE report, I mean, there's a lot of question about whether the November WASDI is even going to come out, depending on how long the government shutdown goes. | ||
| From what our sources are telling us, particularly larger funds and larger traders, a lot of them are kind of sitting on their powder, meaning that they're kind of holding back a little bit because they're trying to be able to wait and see what actually is going to come out, what is happening, you know, particularly what is going to come out of this, you know, this meeting that's happening between the president and Xi Jinping. | ||
| So, yeah, it's you're raising an excellent point. | ||
| It's really difficult for small traders to be able to capitalize on commodity market trading when there isn't a ton of volatility in the market to capitalize on. | ||
| PJ Hepstetter is an agricultural commodities and farm economy reporter for Reuters. | ||
| Her and her colleagues have had a busy week. | ||
| You can find their reporting online at Reuters.com. | ||
| PJ, thank you so much for being with us this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much for having me. | |
| Later this morning on Washington Journal, Elise Powell, Government Affairs Director for Resolve, the National Infertility Association, will join us to talk about recent Trump administration announcements aimed at expanding access to IVF and fertility care. | ||
| But next, after the break, we'll talk with ProPublica investigative journalist Andy Kroll about his reporting on White House Budget Director Russ Boat and his role in advancing the Trump agenda. | ||
| I'll be right back. | ||
| The book is called Breakneck, China's Quest to Engineer the Future. | ||
| Author Dan Wong was born in China in 1992. | ||
| His parents moved to Canada when he was seven. | ||
| In 2014, he graduated from the University of Rochester in New York. | ||
| Then in 2018, Dan Wong went to live in China until he returned to the U.S. in 2023. | ||
| He then went to the offices of the Yale Law School and wrote about his comparison of China and the United States. | ||
| He writes in his intro: A strain of materialism, often crass, runs through both countries, sometimes producing variations of successful entrepreneurs, sometimes creating displays of extraordinary tastelessness, but overall contributing to a spirit of vigorous competition. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Author Dan Wong with his book Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb. | |
| BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Media mogul and studio executive Barry Diller will be our guest Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A. | ||
| In his memoir, Who Knew, Mr. Diller speaks about his career in Hollywood and his longtime relationship with fashion designer Dion von Furstenberg. | ||
| He is also responsible for creating the movie of the week and television miniseries, including Roots. | ||
| For 11 nights, 100 million people watched Roots and almost the entire U.S. population. | ||
| And that's binding. | ||
| Values get inculcated there. | ||
| All sorts of shared experience takes place. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Barry Diller, with his memoir, Who Knew? | |
| Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | ||
| You can listen to Q&A and all our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Why are you doing this? | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a kangaroo quarrel. | |
| Fridays, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Politico Playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns is host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue. | ||
| Ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides. | ||
| Fridays at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss his new reporting on White House budget director Russ Vogt and his role in advancing the Trump agenda is Andy Kroll, an investigative reporter for ProPublica. | ||
| Andy, welcome back to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great to be here. | |
| Showing our audience the headline. | ||
| It says, This shadow president. | ||
| Explain what you mean when you use this name for Russ Vote. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a name, in all honesty, that drew out of the reporting that I did for this story over a span of about five months. | |
| Spoke to dozens of people, including a lot of government insiders. | ||
| And to be completely honest, it was people who work in the federal government, especially people who work at different agencies that have interacted with Russ Vogt at the Office of Management and Budget or his colleagues at the Office of Management and Budget, | ||
| who said to me that this one person, Mr. Vogt, has exerted such amount of influence across the federal government in the nine months of this administration that there are times where it feels like he is the commander-in-chief even more than Donald Trump is the commander-in-chief. | ||
| How would you describe his views of executive power and the role of the federal government? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Russ Vogt wants the president to wield a disproportionate amount of power, as much power as perhaps we have seen in the modern American era, in a way that just has not been the case before. | |
| And we can go through a few examples of what that would look like. | ||
| He believes that the president, for instance, has the power to freeze funding that Congress has already appropriated by law if it doesn't comport with the president's agenda, if it runs afoul of some kind of ideological test, you know, that it's too quote-unquote woke, for instance. | ||
| He also believes that the president should play a far greater role dictating what independent or traditionally independent agencies like the Justice Department or the Federal Reserve should be doing on a day-to-day basis. | ||
| And then I think he believes the president has, and he said that the president should have the power to say invoke the Insurrection Act, use the military to go into American cities or go to the American border, the U.S.-Mexican border, and carry out operations there. | ||
| Again, in a way that presidents traditionally do not do for a variety of reasons and to try to avoid things that have happened in our past. | ||
| But these are all sort of key tenets of, I think, a very expansive view of executive power that Russ Vogt holds. | ||
| President Trump referred to Russ Vote earlier this week as Darth Vader. | ||
| We want to play this clip and then we'll talk about it on the other side. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| We'll 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 him 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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So really a great job. | |
| In your story, you describe Russ Vogt as, quote, bookish, a bookish technocrat and unusual figure in Trump's inner circle of Fox News House and right-wing influencers. | ||
| Explain how he met President Trump and how he became part of his inner circle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, you have to go back here to the 2015-2016 period. | |
| Russ Vogt worked then for an organization called Heritage Action, was an outside activist group. | ||
| It was really focused on trying to pressure Republicans to be more conservative. | ||
| This outsider candidate in Donald Trump comes along. | ||
| We all remember the Golden Escalator and all that in 2015 and then the 2016 campaign. | ||
| But Donald Trump captures this populist wave in 2016. | ||
| He dispatches the Republican field and he chooses as his vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, who is a very close friend, boss, and mentor to Russ Vogt. | ||
| When Trump wins, shocks the world. | ||
| He needs to fill his administration and he, and Mike Pence really turned to Russ Vogt to go in and work at this agency, the Office of Management and Budget, which is little known, kind of obscure, really wonky, but to people who know it and understand it, it's one of the most powerful jobs in Washington. | ||
| And Russ Vogt had been around Washington long enough at that point to know how powerful it was. | ||
| And really, it was his dream job, which kind of tells you everything you need to know about what he thinks, how he thinks, and his understanding of Washington. | ||
| Andy Kroll, an investigative reporter for ProPublica, is our guest. | ||
| We are discussing his recent reporting on White House Budget Director Russ Vogt and his role in the Trump administration. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for him, you can start giving us a call now. | ||
| The lines, Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Andy, this actually isn't the first time that Vogt has been part of the Trump administration. | ||
| He worked also was in the first administration. | ||
| Explain what the Office of OMB does on a day-to-day basis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The key thing that the OMB does is that it is basically this go-between or this middleman between when Congress appropriates money to fund the workings of the federal government and that money actually going to, say, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the EPA and on and on and on. | |
| It is a place that, like I think I've described it before, is like a loving parent. | ||
| It allots the money that Congress appropriates to the executive branches, but does it in a way to make sure that these agencies aren't spending their allowance too quickly. | ||
| You know, don't spend it all at once, and so we're going to portion it out. | ||
| But really, it's not a place traditionally to hold that money, to take that hose and put a kink in it. | ||
| It's really a place just to parcel it out and make sure that agencies are being responsible. | ||
| But it is a choke point in this administration in a way that it hasn't been before. | ||
| But there's no other really spot in the federal government where you could do this. | ||
| And so what Russ Vote has done with this office now is he has, again, used it as a place to freeze money, to halt programs, and say, we're reviewing this program, or we're just flat out freezing this money because the president doesn't agree with it. | ||
| OMB doesn't really traditionally do that, but it kind of always had the power to, and Russ Vote has exercised that power in a very aggressive way in this second Trump administration. | ||
| Harold is calling from Melbourne, Florida, on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Harold. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Andy, I just wanted to ask you, why is it that the Office of Budget and all the government agencies encourage these agencies to spend all their budgeted money every year in a use it or lose it formula? | ||
| In other words, at the end of the year, if they have money left over in their budget, if they don't spend it on a big Christmas party or oak desk or something like that, the next year they're punished by having their budgets cut, | ||
| why don't they provide an incentive for saving the money if they don't need it and much like corporations do and give some sort of a partial bonus to the workers in the office that were able to work efficiently and manage the money more judiciously. | ||
| Harold, that's a good question. | ||
| And you honestly sound like someone who's steeped in this stuff in a really impressive way. | ||
| I think there are a couple of things going on. | ||
| There are situations, as you rightly point out, where agencies are basically rushing to spend money in that last month or two before the fiscal year ends because they want to show that they need the money and that the money that was appropriated to them, they're actually putting to good use. | ||
| There are instances, obviously, where there's multi-year funding and the money is spread across a couple of years. | ||
| Sometimes there's no year funding where it doesn't have an expiration date. | ||
| But the thing I would say is, having talked to a bunch of people inside these agencies, what I often hear is that they, you know, sometimes a program will come in under budget. | ||
| Sometimes a program will come in over budget. | ||
| And they want the flexibility to be able to say, you know, this really important essential thing that Congress appropriated to us, we need to spend down before the year is over. | ||
| This other thing came in under budget, but leave us the flexibility to do that. | ||
| All that being said, now, there are absolutely ways to save money with these agencies not rushing to spend money at the end. | ||
| And there could be ways for Congress to look at how they could better try to capture some of that money at the end of the year if, again, we're talking about trying to tackle issues like the debt and the deficit. | ||
| President Trump obviously likes Russ Vote. | ||
| We heard that clip earlier. | ||
| Melody in Pratt, Kansas sent us this question. | ||
| Mr. Kroll, how is Vogt viewed by other Republicans on the Hill or within the administration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good question. | |
| Very differently between the administration and the Hill. | ||
| I think in the administration, he is seen as one of the one or two most influential AIDS advisors to Donald Trump in this administration, to President Trump. | ||
| He is seen as the go-to sort of expert leader strategist on all things budget, agencies. | ||
| Right now, the shutdown, very much in a leadership role there. | ||
| So in the administration, he's looked up to, revered, respected. | ||
| The Hill is a very different situation, and that applies to Hill Democrats and Republicans. | ||
| Members of Congress don't want to see the executive branch trampling on their core responsibilities. | ||
| And there's nothing more core, Article I constitutional role for Congress than the power of the purse. | ||
| So there's a lot of frustration, a lot of animus on Capitol Hill that this leader in the executive branch is, again, sort of trampling on their power through impoundment, these funding freezes, through this idea of a pocket rescission, temporarily freezing money at the end of the fiscal year so that it just kind of goes away after a certain period of time. | ||
| So very different stories depending on what end of Pennsylvania Avenue we're talking about. | ||
| John is calling from California, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, America, and thank you, Mr. Kroll, for taking my call. | |
| How long has Russ Volt been involved in Project 2025? | ||
| And did Donald Trump was aware of Russ Vote or know Russ Volt during his first tent as president? | ||
| He said that Russ Volt wants to expand the role of the executive to administer the legislative and judicial branches. | ||
| So my question is, in your opinion, did Trump tell us the truth, yes or no, that he was not aware of Project 2025 in his most recent role as president? | ||
| Go ahead, sir. | ||
| Yeah, good questions, John. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Russ Vote was an instrumental figure in Project 2025. | ||
| He wrote one of the most important chapters about the executive office of the president, laying out this aggressive view for what you might call a unitary executive theory or the unitary executive powers. | ||
| Two fellows at his think tank wrote other chapters, key chapters on immigration and trade. | ||
| And then even more crucially, Russ Vote, as we report in the story, led the transition portion where he basically, he and his colleagues helped write some 350 executive orders, regulations, and other kind of legal memos, authorities, so that when President Trump or when Donald Trump got reelected, if he got reelected, there would not be the chaos and confusion of the first term. | ||
| The moment Trump got into office, these executive orders, regulations, and other documents would be ready for him. | ||
| I don't think it withstands scrutiny to say that Donald Trump didn't know what Project 2025 was. | ||
| He spoke frequently with Russ Vogt during the 2021 to 2024 period, including the period that had Project 2025 in the works. | ||
| He was well aware of what Russ Vote was doing. | ||
| Even more recently during the shutdown, Donald Trump put a post on Truth Social where he said, I'm going to be meeting with Russ Vogt, quote-unquote, he of Project 2025 fame, to discuss which quote-unquote Democrat agencies we're going to cut in the shutdown. | ||
| So I think that probably tells you, John, everything that you need to know about Trump and Vogt and Project 2025. | ||
| Mike is calling from North Carolina, line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Do you think America understands just how dangerous this $38 trillion of debt that the country has is and what a national security risk it is? | ||
| Calvin Coolidge was a big advocate for the federal government only taking in or costing 8% of GDP. | ||
| We're three to four times that right now, and a lot of that debt is held by China. | ||
| And to fix this is not going to be a painless situation. | ||
| So the question I have is, do you think America's ready to take on the medicine that it takes? | ||
| In which case, then, God bless Russ Volt? | ||
| Yeah, good question, Mike. | ||
| I don't think based on all of the reporting, the conversations I have traveling around the country that people fully grasp the seriousness and the risks of $38 trillion in debt and climbing. | ||
| I don't think that the impacts of that debt are being felt in the way that they could in, say, financial markets or in, say, economic growth. | ||
| Is the American people, are the American people ready to take the medicine for this to deal with this? | ||
| It doesn't really seem like it, because if we look at what it will take to actually put a dent in reducing that debt, much of which, as you rightly point out, held overseas, you have to look at programs like Social Security and Medicare, which are huge drivers, health care programs, huge drivers of the federal debt. | ||
| You're not going to really tackle the debt problem cutting clean energy programs that cost a few billion dollars here and there. | ||
| Obviously, everything counts. | ||
| Russ Vogt would tell you that. | ||
| But the real drivers, if you look at the work, say, of the Peterson Institute, are coming from healthcare, are coming from these so-called entitlement programs. | ||
| You either have to tackle those or you have to raise taxes and bring in more revenue, and that doesn't seem like something the American people want right now either. | ||
| Gary is calling from Baltimore, line for Democrats. | ||
| Hi, Gary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thanks for taking my call. | |
| A lot of people don't know what's going on. | ||
| Could you please talk about the fact that he's a Christian nationalist and the Seven Mountain mandate and his connection to that and the relationship between those two things and this NSPM-7 that no one's talking about? | ||
| This is important stuff people are oblivious. | ||
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| Thanks, Gary. | ||
| I can tackle a few of those. | ||
| As we report in the story, Russ Vogt is very clear about the fact that he identifies as a Christian nationalist. | ||
| He says it in the story, I'm a Christian, I'm a nationalist. | ||
| The term is too accurate to run away from. | ||
| To hear him describe it, what that means is that the country, in his view, is founded on a Judeo-Christian worldview, and that if the country moves away from that Judeo-Christian worldview, influencing or informing policy, politics, culture, education, and so on, that we're losing a sort of inherent American-ness to what this country is, what it means, what it stands for. | ||
| That obviously is a very contested view, but it is something that he believes and that he's open about. | ||
| I don't know of any connection between him and the Seven Mountains mandate I've written about, reported on the Seven Mountains mandate. | ||
| That's obviously sort of a different theory of the case, theory of change about how you try to shift the course of American culture. | ||
| I think what the believers of the mandate and what Russ Vote believe is that there is a sort of existential crisis, again in their view, in the country right now, that merits this sort of aggressive policies and rhetoric that they use that they believe they need to deploy to save the country. | ||
| You talked with a lot of people about Russ Vogt for the story on Russ Vote. | ||
| Did you try to talk with the man himself? | ||
| And the story's been out now for just a little over a week. | ||
| Have you gotten any reaction or response from him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sadly, no to all of those, but not for a lack of trying. | |
| I think I first reached out to Vogt and his team in May, had conversations then, had conversations over the summer, had conversations again in the fall, right before the story was coming out. | ||
| At ProPublica, we have this little mantra. | ||
| We call it no surprises journalism. | ||
| When we are preparing to publish a story, we send them a very long list, basically everything that we report and say, tell us where we're wrong. | ||
| Tell us what's missing context. | ||
| Tell us where you'd like to add comment. | ||
| We did that whole process with them. | ||
| There was some modest amount of participation. | ||
| The reaction since the story, I haven't heard anything from him. | ||
| He's doing events where he's being called Darth Vader because he's too busy. | ||
| But we have heard a lot of reaction from people in the government, people who are happy that this person, who, again, is so influential, but maybe is like the most important person you might not have heard of in the Trump administration, is getting a little more scrutiny. | ||
| And the things that he says, the things that he wants to do, we lean really heavily on his own words in this story, are getting a little more, again, sort of a little more sunlight right now. | ||
| John is calling from New York line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thanks for taking the call. | |
| I'm listening to this gentleman here. | ||
| He works for ProPublica. | ||
| Now I can make a note of this publication. | ||
| And he says he's an investigative journalist. | ||
| He's running on speculation. | ||
| He has nobody challenging his findings. | ||
| And he spent his entire, what, how many years did he put into this investigating Donald Trump? | ||
| Obviously hates Donald Trump. | ||
| He's a far left. | ||
| He's being paid by somebody to come up with all this nonsense. | ||
| And if he was a real journalist, he would sit across the table with somebody that would challenge his speculations that he's coming out with. | ||
| And I'll tell you what, why would Washington Journal put this guy on here that's such a, I mean, I can't believe I'm an independent. | ||
| I'd like to hear Republicans' comments, Democrats' comments, but this guy is, this guy's been paid so much. | ||
| He's not a good idea. | ||
| John, we'll get a response from Andy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
John, yeah, thanks for the comment. | |
| I would just say read the story. | ||
| Or there's a mini documentary video we published on YouTube. | ||
| I think what you'll find is, one, most of what we report in the story are things that Mr. Vogt himself has said. | ||
| In some cases, you can hear his own voice talking about what he believes, what he wants to do, why it matters, why it's important, especially in the documentary. | ||
| You can find it on YouTube called The Shadow President. | ||
| I think that says as much, you're not getting the commentary from me. | ||
| There's no commentary in the story. | ||
| You can hear him talking about it himself, and you can reach your own judgment from that. | ||
| And again, just to repeat, we tried to interview him, try to talk to his people in his office, gave him a bunch of chance to comment on everything that we reported. | ||
| So that's just us doing our job. | ||
| The caller also saying that somebody is paying you, you obviously get paid for your work. | ||
| It's your job. | ||
| But ProPublica itself, explain how your organization is funded. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, we're funded. | |
| We're a 501c3 nonprofit. | ||
| We are not corporate media. | ||
| We don't have a profit motive driving our work. | ||
| We're a nonprofit, and we get funded by foundations that support journalism across the country. | ||
| And we get supported in a kind of NPR, public radio-style way by small dollar donors who support our work. | ||
| They give a monthly contribution. | ||
| So it's a populist model in a lot of ways where people who care about the work want to see us do more of it, chip in 20 bucks a month to help us continue do what we're doing. | ||
| Ron is calling from Nashville, Tennessee, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Ron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I wanted to echo a couple of previous calls, a gentleman from North Carolina, and then also this past caller who, you know, I saw investigative reporter, and I really expected to hear some more details when the caller asked about the expenditures at the end of the fiscal year. | ||
| I've read stories about the absolute insanity of spending that goes on in Washington in the month of August and September. | ||
| That they're overnight. | ||
| They work 24 hours a day trying to get everything purchased so they don't lose their budget dollars for the next year. | ||
| I visited Washington, D.C. myself and went into the underground tunnels from the Congressional Office buildings over to the Capitol and saw literally thousands and thousands of computers and monitors one year in the month of October because they had been on their previous spending spree in September. | ||
| I also heard this, that in the military, they fax orders out to Hawaii, which will be the last state getting under the midnight deadline of September 30th. | ||
| That orders are being faxed from the East Coast to the West Coast and then out to Hawaii so they can spend every last dollar that they're allotted. | ||
| And I just would like to have seen an answer that indicated that our government is absolutely unbridled with their spending. | ||
| You know, I would say that government spending is obviously an issue that Rustfolk cares a lot about and is an issue that clearly is contributing to the $38 trillion in federal debt that the previous caller, I think from North Carolina, mentioned as well. | ||
| You know, again, the key thing here, if you look at what goes into that federal debt, that $38 trillion, if that's what you're really concerned about, is healthcare, the entitlement programs, the aging population, buying computers, monitors, new equipment, is there, I mean, to be honest, I've spent enough time in government buildings. | ||
| You'd be shocked at how antiquated a lot of the technology is in Washington, which is its own problem. | ||
| Rushing to buy a bunch of new stuff right before the fiscal year is probably not a responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars. | ||
| But the question is, are you more concerned about that, or are you concerned about this kind of macro question around the debt and how sustainable that is or unsustainable that is? | ||
| And if you are concerned about the latter, then you've really got to sort of look at these major programs, which at this point both parties are loath to touch. | ||
| We have one more caller for you. | ||
| It's Jim in Sparks, Glencove, Maryland, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Jim. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, P.O., and thank you for taking my call. | |
| The first part that I have to ask is in regard to USAID. | ||
| What we saw was a de facto shuttering of the agency. | ||
| In other words, Russell and the president choked off all money by way of rescission, and part of that was upheld by Congress voting under the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. | ||
| So Congress did approve part of that. | ||
| But then there was that pocket rescission that was the death annal or the cre de current of the USAID. | ||
| And so my question is: first, in regards to USAID, is Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution has a take care clause that says the President and the Executive Branch inherit all law statutes and regulations that came before them. | ||
| They can go through the regular order, which would be to pass a bill in the House to reverse the USAID's undergirding statutes and laws, and then it would have to have a 60-vote threshold in the Senate, and then the President could sign it into law to do away with USAID. | ||
| They did not do that. | ||
| They de facto shuttered it by just choking off all the money. | ||
| And so my question to you would be: is Russ Vote open to an impeachable offense if the Democrats took the House in 26 because he's violated the take care clause of Article 2, Section 3? | ||
| So that's my first question. | ||
| Do I have time to ask one other very quick question? | ||
| Because it has to do with something you said yesterday. | ||
| No, it's fine. | ||
| Sure, yeah. | ||
| Okay, part two would be this. | ||
| You'd spoken directly to responsible stewardship of federal dollars. | ||
| I'm a far-loaded federal employee, and I work in a division where part of my responsibilities are dealing with the OIG and also the GAO. | ||
| So that's in my wheelhouse of responsibility. | ||
| I'm currently not at work. | ||
| So when the cuts have been made through the OMB, how were they informed? | ||
| In other words, did Russ Vogt look at GAO and can he cite OIG reports? | ||
| My understanding is the Defense Department never passed a GAO audit. | ||
| Or instead, were Russ Vote's decisions whom or what agencies, what departments were going to have money rescinded, impounded, deferred, diverted, was that decision informed by grievances of the presidency? | ||
| Okay, Jim, we need to get a response. | ||
| Mandy, we're short on time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jim, I'll move quickly. | |
| So to your first point about impeachable offenses, impoundment, pocket rescues, I'll just remember the first Trump administration, the freezing of Ukraine security funds at the same time the president was pressuring the leader of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, to investigate Joe Biden, did lead to the first Trump impeachment in 2019. | ||
| Russ Vogt was named in one of the articles for not complying with that investigation. | ||
| I think if Democrats, especially in the House, would take the majority, I would not be surprised, though this is speculation, if they pursued some really aggressive oversight of what Rust Vote has done. | ||
| And then the second question, in terms of OIGs in GAO, I think what's important here is that based on my reporting, a lot of the decisions coming out of OMB are being made at the very top by a group of political appointees. | ||
| Rust Vote at the top of that. | ||
| At the same time, Rust Vote has said he doesn't think GAO, really the kind of only independent watchdog in the legislative branch, should exist. | ||
| He has said that openly. | ||
| And so there is a direct attempt to try to undermine the role of watchdogs and oversight as it relates to these impoundments, pocket recisions, and other budgetary maneuvers. | ||
| I think that we are potentially headed for some kind of court battle or some other conflict there over whether those watchdogs will be allowed to do their job. | ||
| Andy Kroll is an investigative reporter for ProPublica. | ||
| His most recent reporting, The Shadow President, you can find that online at ProPublica.org. | ||
| Andy, thank you so much for being with us this week. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's always a pleasure. | |
| Thanks. | ||
| Next on Washington Journal, we'll talk with Elise Powell, Government Affairs Director for Resolve, the National Infertility Association, about the recent Trump administration announcement aimed at expanding access to IVF and fertility care. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pass precedent nominal. | |
| Why are you doing this? | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a kangaroo clause. | ||
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| 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. | ||
| Have been watching C-SPAN Washington Journal for over 10 years now. | ||
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| I think C-SPAN should be required viewing for all three branches of coverboard. | ||
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| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss recent Trump administration announcements aimed at expanding access to fertility care is Elise Powell. | ||
| She's the Government Affairs Director at Resolve, which is the National Infertility Association. | ||
| Elise, thank you for being with us this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me, Tammy. | |
| We will start by having you explain the mission of Resolve. | ||
| Who do you work with? | ||
| How are you funded? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So for more than 40 years, Resolve has been on the front lines fighting for access to fertility care, including IVF and all family building options. | ||
| We're here to support, educate, and empower anyone facing infertility, which affects about one in six people worldwide. | ||
| And we want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to build their family, whether it's through IVF treatments, adoption, or surrogacy. | ||
| The Trump administration recently announcing some actions that are aimed at expanding access to fertility care. | ||
| You just gave a number. | ||
| Put that into context. | ||
| How many people and who have fertility issues? | ||
| It's not just women. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's not just women, that's correct. | |
| Infertility affects one in six people, so it's a very common medical issue. | ||
| It's important to remember that it's not just a women's issue. | ||
| About a third of infertility cases are related to male factor infertility. | ||
| About a third are related to female factor infertility. | ||
| And about a third of infertility is unexplained. | ||
| And infertility is a disease that can affect anyone. | ||
| And we hear IVF, we hear fertility treatment. | ||
| Explain what that means, what it typically entails. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, when people talk about IVF, they're talking about a medical procedure where eggs are retrieved, fertilized in a lab, and then the embryo is transferred back into the uterus. | |
| And it's an incredibly safe and well-established procedure that's been helping families for more than 40 years. | ||
| But IVF isn't the only option for people who need medical intervention to build their families. | ||
| Fertility treatments also include diagnostic hormone testing, medications to help stimulate ovulation, and other procedures like intrauterine insemination. | ||
| We are going to jump in to those Trump administration actions, but wanted to let our audience know how they can call in. | ||
| You can start doing that right now. | ||
| The lines for this segment are broken down regionally. | ||
| If you are in the eastern or central time zone, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you are mountain or Pacific, it is 202-748-8001. | ||
| And wanted to let you know that if you are, if you have experience with infertility, there's a special line for you, and that is 202-748-8002. | ||
| Getting into these recent Trump administration actions, a couple different parts to it. | ||
| Let's start with the announcement and an agreement to reduce the cost of some IVF-associated drugs. | ||
| How common are fertility drugs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So in February, the administration announced an executive order intended to expand access and make IVF more affordable for American families. | ||
| And they did this by making two important progress areas. | ||
| One is reducing the cost of IVF drugs that you mentioned, which can be up to 20% of the cost of a fertility care treatment. | ||
| And we know that fertility care drugs can run from about $3,000 to $6,000 per cycle, and many families often need more than one cycle to achieve a live birth. | ||
| How much do, and you mentioned the cost for drugs, but when it comes to the overall cost of an IVF cycle, how much is that? | ||
| And how will reducing the cost of the associated drugs impact the overall cost? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, an average cycle of IVF can cost about $20,000. | |
| And every day we're hearing about people who are going through extraordinary lengths to pay for IVF. | ||
| We're hearing that folks are taking on second jobs, part-time jobs where their employer will cover their fertility care benefits. | ||
| They're taking out second mortgages in order to grow their family. | ||
| And while the president's actions won't eliminate the cost barrier that many families faced, lowering the cost of fertility medications will increase affordability for some families. | ||
| The other action the Trump administration announcing recently is issuing new federal guidance to encourage private employers to include fertility treatments in their insurance coverage. | ||
| How common is it for insurance companies to currently cover it and or how many private insurance plans currently have it as an option? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So right now there are about 15 states that have private insurance mandates for IVF and within those states we are seeing a wide-ranging variation in coverage. | ||
| So it's kind of a patchwork system at the moment and it is definitely something that we think that could be solved at the federal level with a federal insurance mandate so that everyone can have the access to the care that they need to build their families. | ||
| President Trump talked a lot about IVF on the campaign trail. | ||
| This was an issue that he has been pushing and working on. | ||
| You mentioned that bringing down the cost of drugs won't fix everything, but it's a start. | ||
| What is your organization's overall reaction to these announcements? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| So we think that it is a start. | ||
| We're still learning about how this will be implemented and how this will impact families going through infertility. | ||
| We don't feel that this fulfilled the campaign promise, but it is a step forward and there's absolutely more work to be done and RESOLVE will continue to fight for anyone that needs access to fertility care treatments and it's also been signaled that the White House is planning to do more and so Resolve will be there every step of the way to help inform patients about that. | ||
| When we look at other barriers to fertility treatments and not just the cost, what actions, what other actions would you like to see the Trump administration take? | ||
| What else would benefit individuals who are struggling with infertility? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, I think first I would say a federal mandate requiring private insurers to cover infertility care benefits. | |
| I also think the high out-of-pocket cost is the biggest barrier and so that would be the best way to address it for the most amount of people. | ||
| And there are also other geographic and social and cultural barriers. | ||
| Many fertility clinics are located in major cities leaving rural patients without the access to care that they need and having to travel long distances. | ||
| And for some, the stigma or lack of information keeps them from seeking care as well. | ||
| Elise Powell is Government Affairs Director at Resolve. | ||
| She has joined us for a conversation on discussing the recent Trump administration actions aimed at increasing access to fertility care. | ||
| You can go ahead and give us a call. | ||
| The lines for the segment are regional. | ||
| If you're in the eastern or mountain time zone, it's 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you are mountain or Pacific, it's 202-748-8001. | ||
| And if you have experience with infertility, you can go ahead and give us a call at 202-748-8002. | ||
| Elise, want to go back to insurance. | ||
| Open enrollment for those who use the ACA is going to open on November 1st. | ||
| President Trump's actions aimed at private insurance. | ||
| What about those who use the Obama marketplace? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's a great question, and that's something that Resolve is working on. | |
| We would love to see fertility care benefits added to essential health care benefit benchmark plans. | ||
| And a couple of states are considering this, and so we're working very closely with them and encouraging them to take that up so that more people can have access to the care they need to build their families. | ||
| This is a question coming in on X. | ||
| It says it's crazy that USA is even considering IVF when access to good prenatal care or even basic medical care is fractured. | ||
| What if a woman travels to a state on vacation that has closing hospitals? | ||
| Any reaction? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I think that's an interesting question. | |
| I think I want to reiterate the fact that access to IVF care is still such a patchwork system, and folks in different states have access to different care. | ||
| And I think that that's an equity issue. | ||
| And we at Resolve are fighting for everyone to have access to the care that they need. | ||
| And, you know, I think it is fractured at the moment, but I think that this is a good step with this White House announcement in the right direction. | ||
| And so we're excited to be on the ground and working with the folks who are facing infertility to make sure that we're translating their needs to policymakers. | ||
| Another question coming in on X. How does the lack of termination care play into the risk when implementing IVF? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So I think that, you know, IVF is medical treatment just like any other health care treatment. | ||
| And so that's our focus at Resolve: getting people access to the care that they need. | ||
| Infertility is a disease, and it should be covered by insurance just like any other disease. | ||
| Nelson is calling from Florida. | ||
| Good morning, Nelson. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| The reason I called is I'm in my 70s now, but in the 1970s, my wife underwent fertility treatment in order to become pregnant, of course. | ||
| And she did, and we had a lovely daughter, but her daughter was disabled and is disabled to this point, mentally handicapped disabled. | ||
| However, our son, who came about a year and a half later, was not disabled, but my wife did not undergo any kind of fertility treatment for him. | ||
| So my question is, is there any evidence or some kind of study regarding the fertility treatment of wives and mothers and whether or not there is any connection between fertility treatment and the disability of children who may be born disabled? | ||
| Is there any kind of a connection? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thanks for that question. | ||
| There is not any connection between infertility care and disability. | ||
| I think infertility has been around, or IVF has been around for more than 40 years, and it's a very safe and well-regulated industry. | ||
| And there's been millions of babies born to Americans in the U.S. via IVF, and it's the best way for folks that need medical intervention to be able to build their families. | ||
| Diane is calling from Kansas on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Diane. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yes, I am a Republican, a Trump supporter. | ||
| And I appreciate people wanting this IVF treatment and assistance. | ||
| But Trump, of all people, did realize the word mandate is not an acceptable term or look at the COVID quote unquote mandate, the shot mandate. | ||
| This didn't go over. | ||
| This will not work on Trump's agenda and get my support at least. | ||
| There's too many other pressing needs in healthcare in this country. | ||
| Like I said, I'm glad people have an option like this, but mandate, absolutely not. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thanks for that. | ||
| I think that the president has been very supportive of IVF, and it's historic in our infertility space. | ||
| We've never had a president speak out about this issue in this way. | ||
| And so folks that have infertility are incredibly glad to see that this issue is being brought to the forefront and it's part of mainstream conversation. | ||
| And so we plan at Resolve to take that momentum and make sure that we can enforce policy and educate lawmakers to make sure that everybody has access to the care that they need in order to build their families. | ||
| The caller bringing up a point of requiring insurances to cover the cost. | ||
| That's not what the Trump administration is doing. | ||
| They are encouraging private employers to add this type of coverage. | ||
| Do we know what that could do to the overall cost of insurance plans for individuals or how that could work? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So we've seen in a few states that have state mandates that the cost to employers has been anywhere from cents to a couple of dollars. | ||
| We like to say it resolve maybe a cup of coffee in terms of increasing premiums. | ||
| So the cost actually is really not that significant. | ||
| And the benefit for employers and their ability to retain and support and encourage people to stay at their places of work has been really beneficial. | ||
| Elise Powell is the Government Affairs Director at Resolve. | ||
| That is the National Infertility Association. | ||
| You can find the organization online at resolve.org. | ||
| Elise, thank you so much for your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| We are wrapping up today's Washington Journal with open form. | ||
| You can start calling in now. | ||
| The lines there on your screens, Republicans 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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. | ||
| Join us for remarkable coast-to-coast coverage, celebrating our nation's journey like no other network can. | ||
| America 250. | ||
| Over a year of historic moments, only on the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| And past precedent. | ||
| Why are you doing this? | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
| This is a kangaroo court. | ||
| Fridays, C-SPAN presents a rare moment of unity. | ||
| Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Politico Playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns is host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue. | ||
| Ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides. | ||
| Fridays at 7 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. | ||
| 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. | ||
|
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. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We are in open form for the duration. | ||
| Today's Washington Journal. | ||
| We will start with LaShauna. | ||
| He's calling from Arlington, Texas, on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, LaShauna. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how you doing? | |
| Oh, LaShawn, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How you doing? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, I mean, what I tell them about what I'm going through. | |
| LaShawn, go ahead. | ||
| We lost LaShawn. | ||
| We'll go to Deborah, who's calling from Aberdeen, Maryland, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Deborah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, my comment is that the reason why I think that the president has been able to make decisions is the Supreme Court. | |
| I might be wrong, but it seemed like he has a license to make all types of decisions, whereas it was restrictions per regulations. | ||
| And that is my comment. | ||
| You really don't know what goes behind the scenes. | ||
| And I'm not a learned person about rules and regulation, but my comment is the fact that the reason why the president hasn't been able to make decisions is because of the Supreme Court. | ||
| And that's all I have to say. | ||
| That was Deborah in Maryland. | ||
| Tom is calling from San Jose, California. | ||
| Line from Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| You know, what cracks me up is that these people, Republicans call in, or loyalists, Trump loyalists call in, and they're all upset because we won't give Trump a break. | ||
| We have a Trump syndrome or whatever. | ||
| But, you know, you really have to look at the situation. | ||
| We saw the Epstein, we see Epstein videos on TV where he's partying with two child molesters. | ||
| Explain that. | ||
| He asked Russia to find all these emails. | ||
| He's doing all these backroom deals. | ||
| When Obama was president, he constantly harped on the idea that Obama wasn't born here and that he was a Muslim. | ||
| And I remember people sending me emails. | ||
| Don't vote for Obama. | ||
| He's going to, he's a Muslim. | ||
| He's going to turn our country into a Muslim country. | ||
| He's getting rich off of the presidency. | ||
| He lies constantly. | ||
| The East Room, he said he wasn't going to even touch the East Room. | ||
| And he demolished the whole thing. | ||
| I'm getting emails where people are saying, oh, don't worry about it. | ||
| He's not going to touch the East wing of the White House. | ||
| Well, he did. | ||
| You know, he takes away aid from people that need it. | ||
| He's cutting Medicaid. | ||
| People are going to lose their health insurance, and it's going to go sky high. | ||
| I mean, he's doing a lot of things that, you know, we're not supposed to believe that he took documents from the White House when we saw him in his bathroom and we saw all these things. | ||
| You know, they think that we're ignorant, that we don't see all these things. | ||
| You know, the problem is they don't see the reality of who Trump is. | ||
| Ask yourself, what would Jesus do? | ||
| And I'm sure that if you would answer that and say, okay, I'm sure that Trump would treat others like he would like to be treated himself. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| That was Tom in California. | ||
| Lewis is calling from Columbus, Georgia, on the line for Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Lewis. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| And I'm a disabled veteran from the Air Force. | ||
| And my question is this. | ||
| Why here in this country they say in one voice that nobody is above the law? | ||
| That it says no one is above the law. | ||
| So apparently this president is above the law because he's been convicted of 34 felonies and he's sitting in the White House. | ||
| He's been convicted of people, his own peers, and convicted of 34 felonies. | ||
| And where is the courts? | ||
| What are the judges in this country? | ||
| Are they afraid to step up in a plate and do the just thing? | ||
| This president needs to be impeached. | ||
| And Eli Musk said it once before, that this president needs to be impeached. | ||
| And people are not talking about that. | ||
| He needs to be impeached. | ||
| That was Lewis in Georgia. | ||
| This headline, this morning's Washington Post, a defiant James pleads not guilty. | ||
| The article saying that New York Attorney General Letitia James pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of mortgage fraud brought by the Justice Department amid President Donald Trump's push to prosecute those who have investigated him. | ||
| James, the highest-ranking Democrat to be indicted as part of Trump's efforts, entered her plea during a brief arraignment in Norfolk federal court. | ||
| U.S. District Judge Jamar K. Walker set a trial date for January 26, saying he expected the matter to take about five days. | ||
| During it, notes that James' family, James turned to face family members and supporters seated in the courtroom gallery as the hearing concluded, smiling and touching her hand to her chest. | ||
| She emerged from the courthouse afterward, greeted by cheers from dozens of demonstrators who had gathered outside, some carried signs reading, defend democracy and suppression of opposition as a speaker blasted public enemies fight the power. | ||
| Letitia James addressed those supporters outside the courthouse. | ||
| Here is a clip of what she had to say. | ||
| This is not about me. | ||
| This is about all of us. | ||
| And about a justice system which has been weaponized. | ||
| A justice system which has been used as a tool of revenge. | ||
| This justice system which has been used as a tool of revenge and a weapon against those individuals who simply did their job and who stood up for the rule of law. | ||
| And a justice system, which unfortunately is nothing being used as a vehicle of retribution. | ||
| But my faith is strong. | ||
| And my faith is: I have this belief in the justice system and the rule of law and I have a belief in America and all of its individuals who have stood with me not only in New York but all across this nation. | ||
| I've heard from just about every jurisdiction in this nation who have said stand up and be tall and never ever cow down or back down or break or bend. | ||
| So there's no fear today. | ||
| No fear. | ||
| Faye is calling from Ithaca, New York, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Faye. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I have a number of things I want to say. | ||
| I'll try to say them very quickly. | ||
| First, I want to thank the guy. | ||
| His name was Tom from California a couple calls ago. | ||
| Everything that he said, I agree with all those points. | ||
| I am so worried about what's happening to our country. | ||
| I'm glued to the news constantly. | ||
| This administration is so dangerous to our country. | ||
| Let me just say a couple things. | ||
| Everything that we need to know is right in front of our eyes, okay? | ||
| President Trump is a pathological liar, and I think he has a lot of mental health issues that are very destructive. | ||
| His body language, you could see a lot through his body language, the way he looks at the camera, the way he shakes hands with certain people like Putin or Netanyahu. | ||
| The other thing is the meanness and the vengeness that he gives towards the media. | ||
| Do you ever see him come on C-SPAN? | ||
| Do you see him on CNN? | ||
| No, they all, his administration, they all run to Fox News. | ||
| There's a reason why they do that because that news organization will allow him to lie. | ||
| The other thing is the Elaine Maxwell Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| I am so incensed about this because this man should have never been president because he is culpable. | ||
| He was his best friend. | ||
| What else does America need to see? | ||
| That was Faye in New York. | ||
| Kinte is calling from Sacramento, California. | ||
| Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Kinte. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, what's going on? | |
| Yeah, this is reminiscent of Dr. Martin Luther King saying that the parallels of America and the Roman Empire is frightening because this country is falling just like he said. | ||
| And people, you know, don't want to listen to the prophets that sent them. | ||
| And Rome fell from within. | ||
| And that's exactly what you see happening in America. | ||
| Especially the reason why is because it hasn't treated indigenous people right. | ||
| Black people has been mistreating, and they're the chief cornerstone to building anything. | ||
| So you're in trouble. | ||
| That was Kinte in California. | ||
| I wanted to share this programming note for you on this week's ceasefire. | ||
| Delaware Democratic Senator Chris Coons and Oklahoma Republican Senator James Langford sit down with Dasha Burns for a bipartisan dialogue on the top issues facing the country, including the government shutdown and foreign policy changes, challenges facing the Trump administration. | ||
| We'll also talk about top political news of the week with Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha. | ||
| He's a former Senate advice, senior advisor to Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign, and Republican strategist Ron Bonjeen, who served as communications director to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert and press secretary to former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. | ||
| All that is on this week's ceasefire. | ||
| You can catch it on Friday nights at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern, and it re-airs Saturday and Sunday mornings here at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| That's coming up after today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| We are in open form. | ||
| Let's hear from Deb, who's calling from Virginia, Line for Republicans. | ||
| Hi, Deb. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I have a few things to say. | ||
| Right now, it's the Democrat Party's fault. | ||
| The reason why the government is shut down. | ||
| Our government has taken so much from the American people. | ||
| And black with what comes with the health care and stuff, they should have left it alone. | ||
| Don't you remember when the Obamacare first came out? | ||
| It was open. | ||
| You could hear them say that the American people were stupid. | ||
| That's us. | ||
| They were saying that about us for voting for the Obamacare. | ||
| The Democrat Party is to blame for our vagabonds. | ||
| Leaving the states. | ||
| I can go back as far as Jimmy Carter. | ||
| Giving everything back after our boys fill their blood. | ||
| What is the stuff? | ||
| And Alyssa James, she is guilty. | ||
| And that's all I have to say, honey. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| And that was Deb in Virginia. | ||
| Karen is calling from Silver Spring, Maryland, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Karen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I think the biggest concern I have today is the lies that are going not only between the Republicans, but the Democrats. | ||
| I am a Democrat, and I don't believe the shutdown is due to the Democrats. | ||
| I would like to see the bill that is proposed by the Democrats that gives the immigrants Medicaid and Medicare. | ||
| That is not true. | ||
| And Johnson, the Speaker of the House, keeps coming up with that idea that the reason that the government is shut down is because we need a bill to pay health care for immigrants, which is not true. | ||
| And I wish we had some sort of documentation that would show the American public what the bill is that they're reaching for for health care for immigrants. | ||
| And I just wish the United States was in better order, but it's like a ship sinking. | ||
| Anyway, that is my comment for today. | ||
| But I really would like to know the percentage of immigrants that are paid health care. | ||
| Anyway, have a good day. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Karen in Maryland. | ||
| Susan is calling from Wooster, Massachusetts, on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Susan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just want to say, I listen to these Democrats. | |
| Robert Kennedy, please get some medication done for these derangement people. | ||
| Trump derangement is really something. | ||
| They're funnier than Saturday Night Live. | ||
| But to get to the point, James went after Trump. | ||
| That was her when she was running for in New York. | ||
| We're going to get this guy and everything else. | ||
| Now we're going to get you. | ||
| We're going to get Bragg. | ||
| We're going to get Obama. | ||
| We're going to get Biden. | ||
| You know, Tim, you should be telling the people how many investigations are going on. | ||
| Now we've got Nancy Pelosi, too. | ||
| Would you have the Gatewood pundit speak for what they say instead of Washington Post and the New York Times there, the record of toilet paper? | ||
| Let's get Gateway pundit. | ||
| Then you'll know what's going on, and they're going to know what's going on. | ||
| There are so many investigations all around the country to get these Democrats. | ||
| And if we don't do our job, the next time they're going to do the same thing to another Republican. | ||
| And for me, I want this to happen, Trump. | ||
| It should have happened. | ||
| In the first administration, they talked you out of it, not indoctrinating Hillary Clinton, this woman. | ||
| And Chelsea Clinton, she was yapping about the ballroom. | ||
| Bill Clinton soiled that White House for two years. | ||
| But Clyde, Hillary Clinton, took all the furniture. | ||
| They had nothing. | ||
| They came in as partners and they went out as partners. | ||
| It's unbelievable. | ||
| And they should call the new ballroom the Lewitsky Ballroom. | ||
| And all you lip tags wear the blue dresses, okay? | ||
| And that was Susan in Massachusetts. | ||
| And we know there's a lot of strong feelings out there, but I think we can all agree that name-calling is not the answer. | ||
| Let's hear from Ken in Grand Junction, Colorado, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Ken. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| I'm calling about the Major Riches Star bill that was recently blocked in the Senate by the Republicans. | ||
| It was one of the most bipartisan bills that was not passed that supported combat retired veterans that were injured in combat that would give them their full retirement and their VA benefits. | ||
| It failed in the Senate due to the Republicans did not want to pass it because they said it was double dipping and both benefits, which it is not because VA benefits compensation is for injuries that you received in combat and your retirement through the DOD is for your time and service. | ||
| But the Republicans failed to recognize that. | ||
| And I just wanted to put that out there. | ||
| And the media has failed to report on that. | ||
| And it's been a myth that Republicans support veterans. | ||
| And so I just wanted to put that out that I hope the media or C-SPAN may do a report on that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Ken, how would that legislation have impacted you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a combat injured Army veteran, served 12 years in the Army. | |
| And I was injured on Iraq. | ||
| And I would have received my full retirement benefits also. | ||
| And it would have had a big economical effect on my family. | ||
| But it failed. | ||
| The senator from, I believe, Mississippi, failed to pass it. | ||
| But it was the most bipartisan bill with most sponsors. | ||
| And it failed to pass this year. | ||
| They've been trying to pass it for four or five years, and it failed to pass this year. | ||
| That was Ken in Colorado. | ||
| David is calling from Washington, D.C., on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, David. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I've been listening for about 40 years, and our last call was, oh, five or six years ago. | ||
| Anyway, I want to point out a great article in the New Yorker on August 18th. | ||
| I don't think you can get it in store, but maybe at the library. | ||
| And the article is the number. | ||
| And I hope you would invite him. | ||
| It's David Kirkpatrick. | ||
| He did a great job showing how Trump and his family have made almost $3 billion since he became president the second time. | ||
| And as far as Trump, he wasn't the only person to play with little girls. | ||
| Of course, Thomas Jefferson did the same thing when he was 58. | ||
| And it's pretty clear now that he has. | ||
| That was David in Washington, D.C. Don is calling from Bakersfield, California, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Don. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| My comment is that I am a big advocate of following the money. | ||
| And I believe that we as Americans, all of us, should be independents in our thinking. | ||
| And that Trump is all about 50% for him and his Trump organization, and 50% for America. | ||
| He's made more money quadrupled if we could look at it more than ever being the president. | ||
| And that's why he is the president, because he has bamboozled the American people. | ||
| Don, are you still there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| What exactly do you follow when you say you're following the money and where do you get your information? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Most of it is I do use Google and search, but one of the initial ones I started with was Rupert Murdoch and where he came from and how he was given citizenship by Ronald Reagan in our country. | |
| There's deals that are made that are all about money. | ||
| That was Don in California. | ||
| Al is calling from Cumberland, Maryland, on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Al. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking my phone call. | |
| This may not seem like a big deal in the scheme of things, but this past May, the two far western Maryland counties were devastated by a flood. | ||
| And I'm not pointing fingers, but twice now we appealed to FEMA for funding. | ||
| It's estimated about $30 million worth of damage, three times the threshold for FEMA funding. | ||
| First time we were denied, and the appeal was denied. | ||
| And I guess I'm just calling out a frustration. | ||
| I'm not affected personally, but I know a lot of people who don't have furnaces. | ||
| There is state assistance. | ||
| The county's spending everything they can. | ||
| But I just don't understand how a devastation like this, and many states are getting FEMA funding, but these two areas of Maryland were denied. | ||
| These two counties are Republican. | ||
| The state is Democratic. | ||
| But one would like to think that politics wouldn't enter into this. | ||
| And like I said, the community's raising money. | ||
| A lot of elderly folks are without furnaces, or they get furnaces. | ||
| There's no money for installation. | ||
| And I guess maybe I just want to raise this concern in terms of public policy and how FEMA funds are being directed. | ||
| And the people who should get consideration aren't. | ||
| And I thank you very much. | ||
| That was Al in Maryland. | ||
| George is calling from South Carolina on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, George. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm getting kind of sick and tired of everybody, especially the Democrats, who are using the American people as leverage to get their agenda across the table when they could just simply just sign a clean CR bill and come in, negotiate. | ||
| People get paid. | ||
| Nobody, you know, people get their food stamps and everything else. | ||
| But this is a leverage point that the Democrats seem to be using quite a bit now. | ||
| And it's really kind of bothering me. | ||
| So I'm an independent, but right now I'm leaning Republican. | ||
| It's just at least I'm seeing stuff getting done by the Republicans now. | ||
| Nothing's been done in the last four years. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was George. | ||
| Gary is calling from Maryland. | ||
| Line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Gary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I like the open form here. | ||
| Gary. | ||
| Gary, are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I am. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Oh, now I can. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So, can you still hear me? | ||
| Yes, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I'm a baby boomer and grew up in this country. | ||
| I didn't go into the military, but I watched as an adolescent all the rolling names of my older friends and teenagers that passed away daily in Vietnam. | ||
| And I watched the news, and I was like a sixth grader thinking, I'm too young to understand, but it sounds like double talk. | ||
| And even the newscasters, nothing made sense. | ||
| And I watched as all the people went to Vietnam young and died. | ||
| And I won't trust all of any government since. | ||
| But what I've watched with Trump is to me, he speaks the truth. | ||
| And I think what has happened is that it's taken a whole lifetime for me to see all of this: is that large banking that feeds our banks from another country has just put us in a snow globe. | ||
| And we've thought we were the greatest. | ||
| We are the greatest with the resources and our people and our young heritage. | ||
| But with all that said, we've been following puppet masters that have taken from the top-level banks and created narratives. | ||
| I used to, the racism in our country, I was taught that to fear someone that didn't look like myself. | ||
| Between then and now, I have shared apartments and rooms and coached basketball and done things. | ||
| I realize everybody is the same. | ||
| And then to see the narrative switch, that because I think Trump is using common sense and he's fighting against these big banks, that I'm a racist, which I'm not. | ||
| I'm not. | ||
| I would like all my brothers and sisters of all colors to take a deep breath, chill and relax. | ||
| Watch this man. | ||
| Look at the global things he's doing. | ||
| I think he's got things and global banks in Checkmate. | ||
| That was Gary in Maryland. | ||
| This is a new headline from this morning from NBC News. | ||
| It says, Kamala Harris says she could, quote, possibly, she could, quote, possibly run for president again. | ||
| It says, former Vice President Kamala Harris has said she could run for the White House again in the future. | ||
| It says, quote, I'm not done. | ||
| Harris told the BBC on Saturday saying she could possibly still be president one day. | ||
| Her strongest suggestion yet, that she was considering a third bid for the White House, says, I have lived my entire career as a life of service, and it's in my bones. | ||
| Harris lost the 2024 election to Donald Trump after President Joe Biden withdraw from the race from the race just 107 days before Election Day. | ||
| In her memoir about her campaign titled 107 Days, Harris had signaled that she would not seek high office in the near future, suggesting that changing the system from within isn't possible. | ||
| Just a few minutes left in this morning's open forum. | ||
| R.W. is calling from Marshall, Arkansas on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, R.W. Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd just like to make a comment. | |
| I believe the devil's in the details. | ||
| Trump's a liar. | ||
| He always has been. | ||
| If people hadn't listened to what he said before he took office and got voted in, they wouldn't have voted for him. | ||
| But the American people didn't listen because he didn't lie. | ||
| He told everybody what he was going to do. | ||
| So he's doing it. | ||
| That's all I got to say. | ||
| That was R.W. calling from Arkansas. | ||
| John is on the line from Ohio is calling from Ohio on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I think people's minds in this country have been trapped into a binary trap between Republics and Demopublicans. | ||
| And all the more situation developed at this time. | ||
| And people calling in are really repeating what they've heard on 1,500 right-wing radio stations owned by right-wing billionaires and manned by right-wing multi-millionaire talk show hosts. | ||
| One of them called in to mention a certain publication that in Cleveland here, there are two huge 50,000 WASH stations with a national reach that are tied into a network of right-wing similar networks to relay and repeat and parrot that hammering of right-wing propaganda, | ||
| mainly Republican right-wing propaganda. | ||
| And we don't even have the non-choice, the no-choice of the Democrat right-wing propaganda. | ||
| Where do you get your news from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Where do I hear them from? | |
| Where do you get your news from? | ||
| What do you listen to as a news source? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there are really none in the radio television newspapers or magazines, and especially the right-wing Republican-oriented right-wing propaganda. | |
| But both the Dempsey. | ||
| I get my information mainly from Global Research, GlobalResearch.ca, and they've got an article among many that are written by former deep operatives within the deep state and the CIA and the Pentagon, | ||
| after they grew a conscience and decided to risk their career, their job, their lives, and the persecution of those sinister agencies. | ||
| And that is my test as to whether they tell the truth, not the self-serving CIA, Pentagon agents and assets in the media constantly shoved down our throat every time we turn the radio on. | ||
| That was John in Ohio. | ||
| Mike is calling from Virginia Beach, Virginia, on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Mike, are you there? | ||
| You're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm here. | |
| Can you hear me? | ||
| Yes, I can. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'd like to talk just for a minute about why Americans actually voted for Donald Trump, roughly 80 million of us. | |
| And I believe all of this probably, You know, there's a few reasons why, but there's many. | ||
| I'll just name off a few. | ||
| Open border policies by the Democrats have led this country into a rabbit hole that basically, if Kamala Harris was elected president, she was going to be willing to give every one of these unvetted, undocumented, unvaccinated immigrants amnesty across the board. | ||
| And that's just one of the larger things I think that people just became aggravated with watching this go on for four years with the open border policies. | ||
| Another one happened in Loudoun County, which is pretty close to where I live. | ||
| And the woke taught in our inner city schools along with CRT. | ||
| You know, when it comes down to biologically changing children's bodies without their parents' consent, in my opinion, is, you know, as far as a religious standpoint, is just ungodly. | ||
| You know, and this goes on and on about the disastrous pullout with Afghanistan. | ||
| The way Biden did that in his administration was deplorable. | ||
| There were nine service members, Golden Star service members that were killed there at Abbey Gates. | ||
| And I watched Biden look at his watch as these members were, you know, basically wheeled off a plane and wanting to get out of there, which I thought was incredibly, you know, horrible. | ||
| Now we have this Schumer government shutdown over health care. | ||
| You know, Mike, I apologize. | ||
| We are out of time. | ||
| We're going to have to leave it there. | ||
| That is it for this morning's program, but we'll be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern for another edition of Washington Journal. | ||
| Ceasefire is up next. | ||
| Welcome to Ceasefire, where we seek to bridge the divide in American politics. | ||
| I'm Dasha Burns, Politico White House Bureau Chief. | ||
| And joining me now on either side of the desk, two guests who have agreed to keep the conversation civil, even when they disagree. | ||
| You did agree to this. | ||
| Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford and Delaware Democratic Senator Chris Coons. |