CSPAN - Washington Journal 11/09/2025

All Episodes

Previous Next

Nov. 9, 2025 07:00-10:01 - CSPAN

03:00:56

Washington Journal 11/09/2025

Participants

Main

chris lehmann

nation 22:15

jim antle

29:36

kimberly adams

cspan 35:04

Appearances

brian lamb

cspan 01:24

chuck schumer

sen/d 03:10

dasha burns

politico 00:33

donald j trump

admin 01:50

jim marrs

01:10

josh shapiro

d 01:31

stuart mclaurin

01:01

Clips

bernie moreno

sen/r 00:11

david grann

00:12

david rubenstein

00:06

doug casey

00:10

martin caidin

00:29

michael flynn

r 00:21

rob maness

00:05

Callers

denise in florida

callers 00:05

mike in new mexico

callers 00:08

victoria in montana

callers 00:26

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Show episode speakers

Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Along with your calls and comments live, we'll talk with Washington Examiner Magazine executive editor James Antel on Democratic victories in recent elections and what it could mean for them, Republicans, and the Trump administration in the future.
		And then the nation's D.C. Bureau Chief Chris Lehman discusses this week's elections, the progressive agenda, and campaign 2026.
		Washington Journal is next.
		Join the conversation.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
		It's Sunday, November 9th, 2025.
		The Senate is set to be back in session later today on this 40th day of the federal government shutdown.
		Democrats were buoyed this past week in their ongoing push to extend Obamacare subsidies before reopening the government due to a series of wins in elections across the country where the cost of living was a key issue for voters.
		Keeping with that theme, our question this morning, how is the cost of living affecting you?
		We're going to do regional phone lines for this morning.
		202-748-8000 if you're in the Eastern or Central time zones.
		202-748-8001 if you're in the mountain or Pacific time zones.
		If you'd like to text us, that number is 202-748-8003.
		Please be sure to include your name and where you're writing in from.
		And if you'd like to reach us on social media, we're at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
		A key part of the cost of living that many Americans are concerned about is the cost of food, particularly of issue for those who are on benefits.
		There has been a lot of news related to the SNAP benefits.
		So for the latest on that, here's a story from this morning's New York Times that families are in limbo after the Supreme Court order interrupts food stamp funds.
		Millions of low-income families around the country confronted new delays and disruptions to their food stamp benefits on Saturday after a late-night Supreme Court order allowed the Trump administration to continue withholding some funding for the nation's largest anti-hunger program.
		Only one day earlier, states including Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Oregon had started sending full benefits to the roughly one in eight Americans who receive aid each month, seeking to put an end to weeks of uncertainty and spare the poorest Americans from severe financial hardship.
		But the process appeared to grind to a halt.
		On Friday night, the Supreme Court granted an emergency request by the Trump administration to pause an order issued by a federal judge who had required the White House to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
		And as more coverage about the cost of living issues that motivated many voters this past week, here in the Washington Post, there's some polling.
		From groceries to gas, Americans say they're spending more under President Trump.
		The Post-ABC News Ipsos survey found two-thirds of independents and 92% of Democrats blame the president, but only 20% of Republicans do.
		A bit more on that polling here.
		A majority of Americans say they're spending more on groceries and utilities than they were a year ago, and they blame President Trump for the rising prices.
		About 7 in 10 Americans say their grocery costs have risen in the past year, while about 6 in 10 say their utility costs have edged higher, according to the poll conducted in late October.
		Roughly 4 in 10 say the same about health care, gas, and housing.
		The findings reflect angst about the cost of living, which has emerged as a key issue in the off-year elections across the country on Tuesday.
		A bit more detail about how people see their prices broken down by a party.
		Yes, a majority of Americans do say they're spending more on groceries and utilities than they did last year.
		But if you break that down by party, overall for U.S. adults, that's 7 in 10 who think they're spending more on groceries.
		That number jumps to 89 percent for Democrats, 73 percent for independents, but just 52 percent for Republicans.
		And then if you go down to another, there's more polling actually in terms of who Americans blame for this, and that is for many, President Trump.
		Overall, all adults, 59 percent, say that President Trump is either a great deal or a fair amount to blame for the current inflation.
		When that goes to Democrats particularly, that goes up to 92 percent.
		Independents or others blame the president at 66 percent, and Republicans, just 20 percent of them think that President Trump is to blame for the current rate of inflation.
		Now then, there's more polling here from an AP Nork poll, finding that most say their financial situation is holding steady, but it's tenuous.
		Most say their family's financial situation is holding steady rather than falling or behind or getting ahead.
		But about half of Americans say the cost of groceries is a major source of stress.
		Fewer confident they could find a good job, pay an unexpected medical expense, have enough savings for retirement, or buy a new home if they wanted to.
		And if you break that down in particular, lower income adults are more likely to say that they're falling behind.
		And here's a chart showing that.
		People making less than $50,000, just 5% think that they're getting ahead.
		51% say they're holding steady, but 43% say that they're falling behind.
		And that's compared to those making $50,000 to $100,000 a year, where just 23% say that they're falling behind.
		Among folks making $100,000 or more, just 16% say that they're falling behind.
		As I mentioned earlier, cost of living issues were a big motivating factor for many voters in the elections this past week.
		But President Trump spoke out against this idea on Friday, pushing back on Democrats' claims that they won because of affordability issues.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		So we are the victors on affordability.
		But if I watch that election, which I was not much involved in, I didn't support Virginia, the candidate.
		Didn't do a lot of support for the other candidates.
		They asked me about Cuomo, and I said, well, it's a question.
		Do you want a thug or do you want a communist?
		I mean, that was my response.
		So I wasn't involved in that stuff too much.
		But I will say this.
		If you look at affordability, which they campaigned on, they lied because they talked about, oh, prices are up.
		No, no.
		Prices are down under the Trump administration, and they're down substantially.
		Energy prices are down by 30, 35, 40 percent.
		Gasoline is way down.
		And the other big thing is we started, inflation is way down.
		The biggest thing is inflation.
		The second biggest thing is energy.
		Energy is way down.
		And what's also down?
		Gasoline.
		Also, the biggest thing is inflation.
		And it's way down.
		We took over a mess, the highest inflation in recorded history.
		Some people would say 48 years.
		I'll take either one of them.
		But I believe it's the highest inflation in recorded history.
		That alone makes it impossible for them to have done a good job affordability.
		So one other thing.
		When I came into office, Victor, two days into office, they were screaming at me about the cost of eggs.
		I was there for two days.
		Eggs had quadrupled.
		And I said, listen, I just got here.
		Let me check it out.
		And they were right.
		Eggs had gone up by three, four times.
		Within a period of a few months, we had eggs down to a normal cost.
		We did a great job on groceries and affordability.
		The only problem is the fake news.
		You people don't want to report it.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		And we're back to our question: how is the cost of living affecting you?
		We have regional phone lines again this morning.
		And we'll start with Crystal in Wilkesbar, Pennsylvania.
		Good morning, Crystal.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		The cost of living has affected me.
		It's affected my food prices.
		Of course, I'm paying double now.
		The electricity, it's affected everything across the board.
		And Trump can say this every day: it's not going to change the price of food.
		And yes, the cost of eggs has gone down, but the cost of everything else has gone up.
		So it doesn't make a difference.
		And I mean, double and not just beef, everything.
		And so I mean, it's hurt our pockets.
		I mean, I can sustain myself.
		It doesn't bother me as much as it might bother someone else.
		Another thing I want to say: I could never vote for anybody who's keeping food stamps away from people who can't afford to eat.
		I could never vote for someone like that.
		Never in my life.
		And this is a man who wanted to get a Nobel Peace Prize.
		How dare him?
		So thank you very much for listening to me.
		I appreciate you guys.
		Have a good day.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Next up is Joe in Pensacola, Florida.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Joe.
unidentified		Good morning.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		How is the cost of living affecting you, Joe?
unidentified		Well, everything's gone up.
		It's a matter of just greed because all these companies are taking advantage.
		You know, everybody's raising their price because somebody else can get away with it.
		So I'm going to do mine.
		I'm going to raise my price.
		That's all it is.
		It's the ingredients hadn't went up or anything.
		It's just everybody just doing it just so they can make a buck.
		That's just the way it goes.
		And, you know, Trump can't fix that.
		He's looking into the meat because the farmers raise the meat.
		They're not getting that much more.
		And it's the packing companies are taking advantage of it.
		You know, we hired Trump to fix the border, and he's done that.
		Everything else is just politics.
		And, you know, it's just we're going to have to deal with it.
		The Democrats don't want to give in.
		And Republicans don't want to give in.
		So it's just politics.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Now, Joe, how much do you think the tariffs are impacting the higher cost of living that you're experiencing?
unidentified		How much is what?
unidentified		Sorry.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		How much do you think the tariffs are impacting that?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		And I'm asking because part of the.
unidentified		I think the only thing I see affecting is the price of coffee went up.
		I imagine they got tariffs on that because it's coming from different countries, but as far as food goes, but everything else is just, like I say, people taking advantage of it because they can do it.
		And it's a shame.
		You know, 50 years ago, 60 years ago, people weren't like that.
		Companies are like that.
		That's why things were so inexpensive back in the 60s and 50s and 60s because companies cared about the people that they made products for.
		The companies today, they don't care about people.
		They all want to make money.
		There's no way that a pickup truck that costs $26,000 in 2018 could cost $80,000 a day.
		That's stupid.
		There's no way.
		There's no more.
		And the way they have automation doing all the work is they're not paying people to do any work.
		Automation's building the things.
		They're just greedy.
		Everybody just got, you know, everybody's trying to make a billion dollars.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Next up is Michelle in Montgomery, Alabama.
		Good morning, Michelle.
unidentified		Hi.
		Good morning, Kim.
		Your hair is beautiful.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		How is the cost of living affecting you?
unidentified		Now, here in Alabama, we are impacted.
		Only thing that I can actually say is that the gas, it's steady.
		It's low.
		We're at probably $260 here in Montgomery for premium gas.
		The cheaper gas stations are at like $244.
		It fluctuates, but it's still relatively low.
		Everything else is high, though.
		Everything else is extremely high.
		Eggs are fluctuating.
		I buy a premium egg because I stay up on current events.
victoria in montana ▲ ● ▼		I know that many of these eggs are coming in from other countries, the ones that he has selective no tariff with, for lack of a better word.
unidentified		But Kim, the reason why I really called in this morning is because last night I was doom scrolling social media because of this SNAP situation.
		It's diabolical that he doesn't want to feed kids, children, low income, the widower, people who are losing their jobs.
		We don't even get a jobs report.
		So, you know, we don't know how many people are actually falling down the poverty ladder.
victoria in montana ▲ ● ▼		But last night, Kim, if you can find it, and I don't know if you can put it on your show, the president of Argentina, the gentleman that Trump gave $40 billion to for no reason.
unidentified		We don't have any ties with China, Argentina.
		But for that beef he's buying, he was dancing at his part.
		I don't know if it was at the party, but it was somewhere, CPAC, something.
		But he was doing the dance.
		He was doing the Trump dance because he got $40 billion from Trump.
		And the children can't eat the snap.
		Can't get SNAP benefits, and we won't be able to feed our people.
		Well, we will.
		We can.
		We'll come together as a community.
		But this is horrific.
		This is horrific, Kim.
		This is horrific, America.
		And, you know, that's one last thing, Kim.
		Your callers talk about the Democrats not negotiating with the Republicans on the shutdown.
		We asked for a year subsidy on the health care market for ACA, and they will not allow us to have lower premiums on our health care, lower subsidies.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		So Michelle, I want to actually follow up on that point you were making about the SNAP benefits because Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Joe Shapiro, excuse me, Josh Shapiro, last week talked about some of the hurdles that his state was going through as the administration is refusing to fully fund the SNAP benefits.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		This was obviously before the Supreme Court made its decision.
josh shapiro ▲ ● ▼		The courts ruled in our favor and said that the Trump administration must use that contingency fund that it has to distribute at least partial payments to SNAP recipients.
		But now the United States Department of Agriculture is actually telling states that we have to jump through a whole bunch of bureaucratic hoops that by their own admission will delay SNAP payments for more than one month.
		That's their own admission.
		They're also giving us unclear and conflicting guidance that confuses the process even more.
		We have a better way and a faster way that ironically the Trump administration had previously approved where we could get these payments out within 10 days.
		My Secretary of Department of Human Services, Secretary Val Arcus, outlined this plan in a letter earlier this week to USDA that simply said, we sued you, we won.
		The court ruled that you have to release the money.
		And instead of doing it your way, USDA, that's going to take more than a month, we can do it in less than 10 days.
		Just let us do that.
		And USDA has failed to respond.
		We haven't heard back.
		Look, I think we should be doing everything in our power right now to feed hungry Pennsylvanians, not to make it harder like the federal government is doing.
		The Trump administration has made it harder every single step of the way.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Back to your calls on how the cost of living is affecting you.
		We'll now hear from Donald in Lodi, California.
		Good morning, Donald.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		The cost of living here is just brutal.
		Gasoline is still over $4 a gallon here.
		Groceries are just, I only eat maybe one and a half meals a day.
		You got truck growth at $8 a pound.
		Just a few years ago, eggs were like $1.20 a dozen.
		Now they're over $2.20.
		And I don't know where this is going, but it doesn't look good.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Well, Donald, what you're discussing there, it showed up in the Consumer Price Index data that we got not this past Friday, but the Friday before, even though that data was delayed.
		And that showed that gas prices nationwide jumped 4.1% just in September from the previous month.
		This is reporting in the Associated Press here.
		That was a major driver of inflation.
		Grocery prices were up 0.3% less than in August, but were 2.7% higher than a year ago.
		And Trump's duties, the tariffs, are pushing up the price of many goods.
		Furniture costs jumped 0.9% last month and are 3.8% more expensive than a year ago.
		Appliance costs rose 0.8% just in September, though they are up only 1.3% from a year earlier.
		Clothing prices increased 0.7% last month, and shoes 0.9%, though neither have risen much from last year.
		So as you were saying, Donald, those gas prices are really making a difference.
		How else has that affected the way that you're living?
unidentified		Well, it just makes it harder to pay your other bills.
		Utilities are going through the roof here.
		And as far as those figures go, I don't know if I really trust them or not because I don't see how they can say that inflation only went up 22% whatever year it was when I've gone to the grocery store and rotisserie chickens that used to cost $225 are now $7.
		How that translates into 22% is beyond me.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		You mean 2.7%?
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		If I'd have turned in that at school when I was a kid and said it was only a 22% hike, I'd have got it.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		I don't trust those figures.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		So the inflation way low.
		The inflation number, the CPI in particular, calculates the rate of the increase of prices.
		So it's not just that prices are up that much overall, but it's sort of how much it's increasing month to month and then year over year.
		So it kind of stacks on top of each other as prices go up over time.
unidentified		Yeah.
		I remember getting back to the gasoline.
		I remember back in 2021, January 6th, when I buried my wife, I got gas was $2.13 a gallon.
		And when Biden got in, gasoline prices began to skyrocket.
		They had got within a year, they were like $5.56 a gallon.
		Sure, it's come down a little bit, but not enough to make any real meaningful difference.
		When you figure it all in, all I know is I'm getting poorer and poorer.
		And my Social Security check, I'm going to get a 2.5 raise.
		And they're going to jack my rent up.
		My health insurance, they're going to jack that up.
		I don't know what I'm going to do.
		I guess I'm going to be turned 80 years old and be staring homelessness in the face.
		Thanks a lot, both parties.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Mark is in Berlin, Maryland.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Mark.
unidentified		Well, I think the last caller needs to be worried about Gavin Newsom because he's part of the reason for the gas prices being so high in California.
		But I think a lot of your callers basically said nothing when the inflation was so high under Joe Biden, and now they're coming out of the woodwork and complaining because Trump is president.
		I mean, we had what's happening now is just the aftermath of a government and economic reset because of the Joe Biden administration.
		I mean, she's paying, you had a caller a few minutes ago saying she is paying double.
		She's paying double from the Joe Biden administration.
		I mean, the Green New Steel trying to finance electric vehicles, and now we have Ford and many other companies stopping electric vehicle production.
		It's because of failure of government keeps interfering in our economy.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		So, Mark, how is the cost of living affecting you?
unidentified		Well, it affected me because when I moved in 2000 and I sold a house from one state and moved to another state in 2018, right before COVID, I decided to rent for a while.
		And now it's too expensive to buy a house after COVID because prices have gone up double.
		But my rent has gone up from $1,300 to over $2,000.
		And that's over a four-year period.
		And that's $700 I don't have to save for my retirement.
		My wife just got her new.
		I have employer-based health care, so my monthly premiums are pretty well fixed.
		I don't know how much my employer is paying, but my wife just received her premiums that she's buying off the, you know, just independently because she doesn't have to do that.
		Yeah, but I mean, just independently through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maryland, she doesn't get any subsidies.
		And 18% increase for next year.
		She's going to be paying from $94 to $585 next year.
		And I mean, this is not Donald Trump's fault.
		This is the Unaffordable Care Act's fault.
		Why has government allowed insurance companies to continue to escalate costs?
		And you had a caller a few minutes ago saying that the Republicans are trying to get rid of subsidies.
		I'm not receiving, my wife is not receiving a subsidy.
		My rent has gone up $700.
		And I blame the Democrats for this because they want to continue to fund tax money from people into government for their own little play, their little play games.
		And that's the reality here.
		How am I going to pay $1,200 more in insurance next year?
		My wife doesn't even going to the doctor very much, but we have to have it in case of emergency.
		But everyone else is out here calling into your program for the last couple months, yelling about Republicans, how they're stealing food from children, how they're trying to make their insurance rates go up, and just the regular Americans out here that are busting their rear ends.
		And I want to have a safety net, but we're the ones that's taking the brunt of it because of over-government reach, too much government, and too much government spending.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Many of these points that Mark raised about higher costs in individual categories are reflected in the polling that I referenced earlier, that ABC News, Washington Post Ipsos poll.
		Mark talked about groceries getting more expensive.
		71% of Americans say they're spending more on groceries, gas getting more expensive.
		37% say that they're spending more on gas.
		He talked about health care costs going up.
		43% agree they're spending more on health care.
		He also talked about his housing getting more expensive.
		Four out of 10 Americans say that their housing is more expensive.
		Mark also mentioned the debate that's ongoing related to the government shutdown on whether to expend those affordable, extend those Affordable Care Act subsidies.
		Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Bernie Moreno, who's a Republican from Ohio, had an extended back and forth on the Senate floor on Saturday, just yesterday, over the Democrats' proposal to open the government that includes a one-year extension for those enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.
		Let's listen.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		Look, if Republicans want to talk about long-term fixes to ACA affordability, Democrats are ready.
		We said so yesterday.
		But in the meantime, doing nothing is derelict because people will go bankrupt, people will lose insurance, people will get sicker.
		And that's what will happen if this Congress fails to act.
		Republicans must act.
		I yield to my colleague from Ohio.
unidentified		Thank you to the Democrat leader for yielding to a question.
bernie moreno ▲ ● ▼		Have you put forward a proposal that we can read that you reference in your speech where it says a clean continuing resolution with the extension of the ACA Biden COVID credits?
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		Yes, as we spoke yesterday.
		So there is a.
		I will not be interrupting.
unidentified		No, no, my question is, is there a proposal in writing that we can read?
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		There is a proposal that is very simple.
		First, you haven't put your Proposed fix to the ACA, the new one, which Leader Soon has spoken about on the floor.
		So we can't give you a counter in writing.
		But it's very simple because we have two sentences we would add to any proposal, which would extend the ACA benefits for one year.
		That's all.
		Plain and simple.
		And the leader can put that in his proposal on opening up the government.
		So it doesn't need a vote.
		It can't be blocked by anybody.
		It's the right thing to do.
unidentified		It does still have no income caps.
unidentified		So people who make a million, two, three million dollars.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		As we said, if he would have listened to my speech yesterday, once we passed the one-year fix, so people right now aren't in difficulty, we would sit and negotiate that.
		The leader has said he won't negotiate before.
		We're willing to negotiate once the credits are extended, plain and simple.
		And we made that in our proposal yesterday.
unidentified		So for one year, people making millions of dollars would still receive these COVID-era subsidies.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		The bottom line is the senator from Ohio ignores that 99% of people.
		You want to hurt people making $10,000, $50,000, $90,000, and hold this up.
		We can fix what the gentleman said in a negotiation, but don't have people who are every day being hurt, hurt, by paying thousands of dollars more that they can't afford.
		I know that the senator from Ohio cares about the billionaires.
		We care about average working people.
		I yield the floor.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Our question again: How is the cost of living affecting you?
		David is in Wilmington, South Carolina.
		Good morning, David.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
		I hope you try not to cut me off.
		Let me go as long as some of the others have.
		A lot of good points made by previous callers.
		I try to combat oversimplification.
		And it seems like with all the ills that people are suffering, they want to make a very simple cause.
		You just say Trump or Biden, but you have to look at what's actually happening.
		So the reason people are, the reason SNAP is suspended is because the government is closed.
		The reason the government is closed is because of H.R. 1319 of the 117th Congress.
		And you can pull it up there and read the simple one-sentence description of the law.
		It is many, many faceted relief act.
		It's called the American American Care Relief Act.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		David, I want to give you your full time to make your point, but our topic this hour is the cost of living more so than the shutdown.
unidentified		All right.
		Well, one of my biggest expenses is gasoline because I remarried late.
		I got houses in two states and I have to drive back and forth a lot.
		So I'm better off since last year for sure.
		The price of gas has gone down.
		I'm in a relatively low gas price state, South Carolina, North Carolina.
		And let's see.
		Oh, I'm on Social Security.
		I'm on fixed income.
		So what it means to me is I just have to cut back a little.
		I changed my phone plan, internet plan.
		I got to have internet.
		I got that way down to about half.
		I eat pretty cheap.
		So really, the cost hasn't affected me that much.
		You know, utility prices are, gas or electricity is up a little bit, but it has been doing that for a long time since cap and trade and other factors.
		But about simplification, I want to give people hope because the word inflation has also simplified it.
		We always talk about price inflation, but there's monetary inflation, which is a driver of price inflation.
		And it's monetary inflation is when there's more money in the money supply than is needed, and that comes largely from deficit spending.
		So that's another reason that I ask you to just quickly look up the Affordable Care or the American Rescue Plan Act.
		It has a one-sentence description and it has many, many, many sections to help all kinds of things during the COVID shutdowns.
		And with extra supplements for Medicare, Medicaid, and ACA, that's just a part of it.
		There are many other things, mental health and also SNAP and agriculture, businesses, individuals.
		So when Schumer was challenged about, do you have a bill that we can look at?
		He says, no, just keep ACA benefits going.
		Well, ACA is not being touched.
		This is only the enhanced part from the 2021 bill for COVID-19 that's being challenged by Democrats or by Republicans.
		Oh, no, it's set to expire.
		And they're saying, oh, no, we have to keep it going another year.
		But to tear that bill apart and to add it to continuing resolution, it's complicated.
		And one last thing, if you let me.
		Trump, he can't just turn on SNAP payments overnight.
		There are provisions for using the contingency funds, but it's complicated.
		And that's why, you know, he's a big mover shaker guy.
		So he says, let's just open the government and we can do it in a day.
		Whereas using the contingency funds is complicated, and that's by law.
		But to say, oh, no, it's just Trump, Trump, Trump.
		You have to look at what's actually happening.
		And I wish C-SPAN was better about clarifying specifics rather than looking for, oh, how's it hurt who?
		Who can be blamed?
		You know what I'm talking about.
		I appreciate the time very much.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		David and several other folks mentioned the higher cost of utilities.
		And there was in the polling that we were looking at earlier, this is actually pulled from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
		And Fred, utility prices have risen nearly 12% in the past year.
		This is a chart looking at just how much they've gone up, especially in comparison to overall inflation.
		So utilities there up almost 12%, overall inflation at roughly 3%, and grocery inflation at 2.7%.
		It's been a noticeable increase in the cost of people's utilities.
		Mike is in Youngstown, Ohio.
		Good morning, Mike.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		How are you doing today?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good, thank you.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		How is the cost of living affecting you?
unidentified		Well, I mean, everything costs more here in Ohio.
		Everything.
		The price of groceries, just everything.
		And I mean, this guy, this president we have, wants to cut people on Medicaid to give rich people who don't need money more money.
mike in new mexico ▲ ● ▼		You know, when he's done, the Republican Party will not exist because after the midterms, they're going to get slaughtered.
unidentified		And then what's he going to do?
		Start throwing fits on TV or what?
		I mean, you can't believe anything he says.
		He is totally out of line.
		He is very rude and arrogant.
		There's never been a president like him.
		I have never seen a president act like him.
		And I'll be 72 years old this month.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Mike, you mentioned that the prices for many things are higher in Ohio.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		How is that changing sort of how you're living?
unidentified		Well, I mean, I'm on pension.
		My pension hasn't went up very little.
		Everything is higher here.
		I mean, everything.
		Food, groceries, uh, gas, clothing, uh, tires for the uh, for my vehicle, everything.
		And what does our wonderful leader, what does he say?
		Everything is Joe Biden's fault.
		Joe Biden has cancer.
		Why doesn't he get off his back?
		He's the one in charge now.
		Why doesn't he do something to help the American people?
		I mean, the average guy, because he has no concern for the average guy, he's only concerned about his billionaire friends.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Anthony is in Cape Coral, Florida.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Anthony.
unidentified		Good morning.
unidentified		How are you, honey?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Hine, thank you.
unidentified		Yeah, it was good.
		I was calling because I was watching the show.
		You know, I really never watched the show, but I actually love it now.
		So, everyone's called because I think the prices that are going up is because when they, you know how when you get paid, the minimum wage went up big time.
		So, people don't realize that no one brings up the minimum wage.
		So, when you're paying someone $8 an hour or $9 an hour, you know how we were younger, six bucks, seven bucks was minimum wage.
		You go to that job, you stay there for a little bit, and then you got better, you got a better job, so on, and you up the scale.
		But now they're over here, these people are pushing carts getting $20 an hour.
		So, when you got seven people outside pushing carts, you got 30 people in a grocery store doing all the food stuff, no one realized all that money we're paying for.
		So, if you went back down to where we were, all these prices would be way down.
		Because my gas prices here are 250, it's 250 right up here, it's 250, and then you go to another gas station, you'll see 309.
		You know, I used to work in a gas industry, it's all the same stuff, it's just APIs are different, like the same gas is the same gas.
		You buy Nikes or you buy Bobos.
		So, they put whatever price they want on it, and then you got a lot of price gouging, too.
		So, that's why this has nothing to do with anything.
		You know, once again, when diesel's down, everything's down because I used to drive a truck.
		So, when you drive and you bring all the product to the store, you know, everything goes down once the diesel goes down.
		So, I think that's what a big part of this is when they raise the minimum wage, even though people need it.
		And then the states, the states, all they do, like this year, they just raise the property taxes.
		And the cops get paid, the tab gets paid.
		I was paying $3,800, now I went from $3,800 to $4,800.
		So, when that goes up, everything goes up and everything goes up, but your money don't go up.
		That's what people don't understand.
		So, I think that's a big part of this is the minimum wage thing.
		You got to go back down because you're not supposed to be in that job for your whole life.
		Okay.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Ronald is in Louisiana.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Ronald.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
		I've been listening to everybody.
		So, my parents were depressing parents.
		So, they always told us that you better learn to grow a garden and you learn to have chickens and pigs and cattle and all that.
		Well, I live in the city, so the only thing I got is a garden, and then my city will be permitted to have chickens.
		So, that's I get eggs, meat, chicken, and I get vegetables, fruits, or whatever.
		Okay.
		Now, I don't know where these people are shopping at.
		A year ago, I was paying a dollar for a canned goods.
		I went shopping Friday.
		I was able to get two cans for a dollar.
		So, it's a 50% drop on just vegetables.
		Okay?
		Turn around.
		I live in a circle about 20 people that live in Audio.
		We all get together and we go buy a cow and we bring it to the butcher.
		They cut it up.
		They fix it all up with packets and everything.
		You know how much that beef costs us a pound?
		About $6.
		And we get the whole beef now.
		Okay.
		It costs us about $6.50 a pound to get it all done back to our house.
		Okay?
		Like I said, people learn to need to see on how to get things done to themselves.
		The government is not going to help you.
		All right.
		And now, let me tell you something about SNAP and all that stuff that's going on.
		Remember, people, that's a state-run entity, not a government-run entity, state-run entity.
		But the funding is causing the problem.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		But the funding comes from the federal government.
unidentified		The money comes from the half of the money comes from the federal government.
		Not all of it.
		Look, right here.
		Look, look.
		Tennessee, Florida, and Louisiana are paying their SNAP people.
		They're paying everything for them.
		Okay?
		Because you know why?
		They have a range, they fund all of that money and they're able to help the people.
		California can't do it because they're too busy giving everybody else that's illegal.
		Illinois, New York.
		We got to suffer.
		People who lose.
		And I'll tell you something else, I think.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		So it's a little bit challenging to hear you now, Ronald.
		But usually the federal government does cover 100% of SNAP benefits, but some states are stepping in to provide SNAP benefits to their residents during the shutdown while the SNAP funding is suspended.
		Let's hear from Camille in Cumberland, Maine.
		Good morning, Camille.
unidentified		Hi, good morning.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		How is the cost of living affecting you, Camille?
unidentified		Well, my health insurance has hit the roof.
		And it's gone from $1,971.16 to $1,287.63.
		Now, this is a private plan.
		This is the fact that I've always had a private plan because I owned my own business.
		And when Obamacare kicked in, that was, you know, I lived in a different state then.
		And so my plan was grandfathered in, but due to COVID and the rest of it, I moved back to Maine and made that my residence and had difficulty getting private insurance as far as having a plan.
		Excuse me.
		And then a couple years later, I was able to get private insurance through Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
		And I just, I mean, the plan, it just has skyrocketed every year.
		And I blame, I blame both parties.
		I blame the Democrats for putting Obamacare in in the first place, especially since they don't have it.
		And then I blame the Republicans for not getting rid of it and going back to what we used to have.
		And perhaps you make some fixes regarding what's, you know, anyone that has a pre-existing condition.
		I understand that.
		But otherwise, this is an overreach, but it's become a situation where no one can afford it, no matter what plan you're on.
		As far as the subsidies, I know people that make a lot of money and rework their, you know, their income so it looks like they don't have as much money as they actually have, and they get a subsidy.
		I'm paying out of my pocket.
		I'm not paying.
		I mean, I am paying out of my pocket without a subsidy.
		So I think they could end the subsidies because they were supposed to end anyway after COVID, correct?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		They were said to expire, yes.
unidentified		So I just, I think that, you know, what I don't understand is what I don't understand what Congress is doing.
		Number one, I don't think they're doing anything.
		Number two is that no matter, you know, it's not about the American people.
		It's about them.
		It's about getting in.
		It's about, it's no longer about us.
		I'm sorry if I sound like I'm all over the place, but I'm just so upset about the cost of, I could go on about energy, but I just wanted to stick to one.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, the data backs up what you're seeing, obviously, Camille.
		This is a story from KFF, the health policy research and news site, that ACA insurers are raising premiums by an estimated 26%, but most enrollees could see sharper increases in what they pay.
		This is a little bit more on that.
		In states that run their own marketplaces, the average benchmark, second-lowest cost silver premium on which tax credit calculation is based is rising 17%.
		In the states that use healthcare.gov, these premiums are rising an average of 30%.
		Most enrollees would face even sharper increases in what they pay if the ACA's enhanced premium tax credits expire.
		This 26% is the increase in the amount insurers are charging, which in most cases is not what enrollees pay.
		Back to your calls on how the cost of living is affecting you.
		John is in Franklin, North Carolina.
		Good morning, John.
unidentified		Hello.
martin caidin ▲ ● ▼		I was just called to say I'm on a fixed income social security, you know, and naturally it isn't enough money because everything costs so much.
martin caidin ▲ ● ▼		And the last week of pretty much every month, I sit around starving because I don't have any more money.
unidentified		So we need to think about people who are on fixed incomes that can't and aren't able to make money anymore.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		John, if you don't mind me asking, do you use SNAP benefits?
unidentified		No, I can't qualify for them.
		I get too much Social Security.
		Well, actually, that's not true.
martin caidin ▲ ● ▼		$12 a month isn't enough for me to, you know, $12 a month don't do anything.
unidentified		That's what I could have gotten.
unidentified		So I just told them they could keep it.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		I see.
unidentified		All right.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Let's hear from William in Cleveland, Ohio.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, William.
unidentified		Good morning.
		The purpose of my call, we were talking about the costs of living and how it is affecting everything.
		Well, with regard to health care, let me address that first.
		Initially, when President Obama began with that extended health care plan, they called it the Obamacare.
		You know, it was that expended Medicaid, Medicare plan, whatever.
		And the format, the platform they put it on, when people would enroll for that online, because that's how they would have to do it, it would automatically put the people right into the market.
		And even my son, Christopher, he only made $7,800 that year.
		And they had him paying $180 a month for health care.
		The poverty income line back at that time, I believe, might have been around $10,000.
		It was either $9,500 or $10,500.
		And now, below that would be the poverty line, one of those two.
		So he shouldn't have been paying anything.
		And originally, my understanding is that it was, if you paid, if you made less than $50,000 a year, then you wouldn't pay anything.
		If you made more than $50,000 a year, you would pay a reduced amount.
		It would increase only based on your income.
		Now, how it stands today, I don't know.
		But with regards to the cost of living as it is now, gasoline is way down.
		I'm in Cleveland, Ohio.
		Last time I filled up my buddy Sank, he drives me around every month because I'm disabled.
		It was $2429, $2.429.
		And that was in Cleveland, Ohio.
		Now, prior to that, under Biden, it went as high as $389, $392, and it would bounce right in there all the time.
		So it's come down quite a bit with regard to gasoline prices.
		Although, fuel for heating homes and things of that nature, I don't believe have been relatively affected.
		I think they've continued to go up.
		But I believe that if we go back to processing our own petroleum, refueling our own oil holdings, things of that nature, we can maintain a level gasoline property cost effectiveness.
		With regard to groceries and things of that nature, yes, some have gone up, but you also have to understand at the same time they had that bird flu thing and the eggs were affected and things of that nature.
		So there was more demand, but fewer product.
		And yes, I guess you could call it price gouging.
		Now, things have turned to relatively normal fee or close to it.
		As far as the President Trump doing his job, I think he's doing the very best he can at this time to try to bring things to a manageable level since they went through the roof under the previous administration.
		Now we're gradually coming back down to a realistic ability of living.
		Furthermore, there was a gentleman who called earlier and he was talking about.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		I want to get to a couple more folks before the end of this hour.
		I have some comments that we received on social media.
		Gary Wood, in response to how the cost of living is affecting them, well, considering the cost of living is down compared to the last three years, I'm doing far better than I was.
		Lance Dixon says, as a shopper, groceries are noticeably high across the board.
		As a small business owner, my vendors have been adding line items for tariffs on my invoices for months now.
		And then Shelly Crosby says, I am doing well.
		I live within my budget.
		Melissa is in Appleton, Wisconsin.
		Good morning, Melissa.
unidentified		Good morning.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		How is the cost of living affecting you, Melissa?
unidentified		I'm currently on a fixed income, and I have been for just shy of a year.
		And I am $33 shy a month on my Social Security to even qualify for an income-based housing without a voucher.
		So I am on a long waiting list.
		I do not get SNAP benefits because I live in and out of hotels.
		And therefore, the government believes that I live outside of my means because I either have to be in my car or a hotel.
		And because of living in hotels, they just think that if I can afford hotels, even though I have a car that is an 09, groceries are just too expensive.
		I just have no other choice because on the Social Security plan that I'm on, obviously being disabled, I am unable to work.
		So I just have to wait my turn in line to get into a place to live.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry about that experience, Melissa.
		Next up is Richie in Nashville, Tennessee.
		Good morning, Richie.
jim marrs ▲ ● ▼		So once again, I wake up to a mess every day.
unidentified		As I told your operator, I work for Kroger Company.
		And I have to be careful about what I say because they'd fire me in a heartbeat.
		But I run the back door at a Kroger store.
		I receive all the trucks that come in from around the country.
		Our main warehouse in Nashville comes out of Louisville, Kentucky.
		That's 165 miles away from Nashville.
		Every night, we get three trucks that come in our direction.
		They have our produce.
		They have our canned goods on another truck.
		And then we have other trucks that come do their day, which are daytime vendors.
		That's Frito-Leg, that's Coke, that's Pepsi, that's Budweiser.
		That's all these different vendors.
rob maness ▲ ● ▼		And the reason your prices have gone through the roof is because of electric vehicles.
unidentified		Do you know where Central Valley, California is?
unidentified		That's where all a lot of your watermelons, your produce comes.
jim marrs ▲ ● ▼		When I was a young man, and I'm 70 years old getting ready to retire, that's why I don't mind speaking my mind.
unidentified		Kroger is a good company.
		Walmart is a good company.
		They're trying to bring prices at a level that most Americans can afford.
jim marrs ▲ ● ▼		But when you have regulations like electric vehicles that California seems to impose on everyone, and then you have a situation where when these trucks pull up, these drivers of these trucks make anywhere between 30, like if you're a daytime truck driver for Pepsi or Coke, you make $30 an hour.
unidentified		And if you're driving long haul for a company like for Kroger, and they have illegal drivers as well as all of them do.
jim marrs ▲ ● ▼		I've seen them and I've talked to them.
unidentified		And they come in the back door and they receive.
		And we get an 18-wheeler for Kroger will carry anywhere between 18 to 20 pallets of merchandise that comes in a store.
		And this is a small store that I work at.
jim marrs ▲ ● ▼		And there are larger stores like your supermarks and all those people that are bigger stores.
unidentified		When they come in, that gasoline costs a lot of money.
jim marrs ▲ ● ▼		But when you subsidize electric vehicles and you try to close down refineries and you try to close down and you raise the cost, and then you get in some liberal cities where they just tax you to death, they can't do business.
unidentified		So they're forced to raise the prices.
jim marrs ▲ ● ▼		Every morning when I open up my store at 4 o'clock in the morning, I go in and I take a little computerized gun and I go shoot all the out-of-stocks in the store.
unidentified		And I see which vendors.
		We don't have a problem getting the merchandise.
		Problem is, we have a problem in controlling the cost because fuel prices, fuel prices, if you will take and let this drill baby drill, as our president says, and I'm not advocating for left or right here.
		I'm just saying that when the cost of fuel comes down, everyone will be able to survive.
		Now, let me throw something at you.
		My brother and I are dealing with a mother right now.
		It's 88 years old.
jim marrs ▲ ● ▼		She just got diagnosed with a rare lung cancer.
unidentified		She's never smoked.
		She's always ate properly.
		Most of the people in her family live to be in their 90s.
		She has been given four to six weeks to live.
		She was in ICU when this hit for three days.
		They moved her to the sixth floor, and she's got perfect health care because she can afford it.
		They moved her there to die.
		And now, so my brother and I did the other thing.
jim marrs ▲ ● ▼		So we went to an oncology doctor, and he can, and now she's going through chemo.
unidentified		And now, because what she saved for the last 70 years, she makes too much money.
		So they basically put her on death row again because she can't afford it.
		They're trying to break her.
		In our town in Nashville, Tennessee, we have a liberal mayor, Freddie the Freeloader, I call it.
		He has put up bike lanes everywhere in this town.
jim marrs ▲ ● ▼		And all of them are state highways, but in the city here, he's put up bike lanes.
unidentified		I've lived here for 35 years in my neighborhood, and I'm live right off a main road.
		It runs from Chicago to Miami, Florida, Highway 41.
		These bike lanes, nobody's using them.
		Now they've hired extra.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		A couple more people in.
		Let's hear from Kenny in Wilson, North Carolina.
		Good morning, Kenny.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		C-SPAN, I was just sitting here listening to your call, especially the last guy.
		And I'm ashamed of you, C-SPAN.
		I like you because you let people call in and voice their opinion.
		But y'all has driven as far from the days of Bride and Lamb.
		I don't know whether Trump is making calls down there and telling you what to have on.
		But, you know, for example, Elon Musk is making $1 trillion.
		That was not too long ago the entire budget of America, what we spend a year.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		So, Kenny, the topic for the hour, though, is the cost of living and how it's affecting you.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Do you have thoughts on that?
unidentified		Yes, it's affected me mentally, and I'm telling you why, if you'll let me say it, because you guys don't want people to tell you the truth.
		Now, please let me say something, ma'am, like you did the other guy.
		It might be good for y'all to hear this.
		But Elon Musk has made $1 trillion.
		Now, that's what's affecting us because we can't get no money.
		You only got one pie, and the pie is only so big.
		Hello?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Ma'am.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Still here.
unidentified		Are you still there?
unidentified		Hello?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Kenny.
unidentified		Okay, then.
		Now, the pie is so big.
		It's only so big.
		Now, when you got one person taking one big piece of the pie, there's less left for everyone else.
		Now, this is happening over and over again.
		Now, if you're concerned about people getting enough and being affected by this, you will have a show on that.
		Why don't you have a show?
		You haven't had a show on nothing by the Epstein Files, the Gaza Strip, the $40 billion they're giving to other countries.
		Oh, this is affecting us.
		But you won't have those shows.
		You call in an hour talking about something that we can't, and it's not you, ma'am.
		It's the people that are bringing up the stuff on the shows, and people need to complain about it.
		I like you, C-SPAN, because you can call in to voice your opinion.
		But it seems like you said a force up there that's telling y'all something because this is not the days of Bride Lamb.
		It's really not.
		And that should have shipped every that should have blew your head off when they said one person.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Ellen is in Ohio.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		And good morning, Ellen.
unidentified		Hello.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		How is the cost of living affecting you, Ellen?
unidentified		Terrible, terrible, honey.
		I'm starting, I'm going on 94 years old, and I can just barely make it.
		And I mean, I had to, you know, get the cheapest stuff that there is and everything.
		I really have big breath, and I have a very bad heart.
		And I just wondered what they can do for me.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		I'm so sorry, Ellen.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		And are you getting any services to support you?
unidentified		Pardon me.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Are you getting any services to support you from either your state or even the federal government?
unidentified		I get a Social Security check.
		That's the only thing I have.
		I've worked all my life.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		What do you think is the cause of things getting more expensive?
unidentified		Pardon?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Why do you think things are getting so much more expensive?
unidentified		Why my what, honey?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Well, I was just wondering what you think is the cause of prices going up that you're experiencing.
unidentified		Trump, President Trump.
		I mean, you can tell that he's senile and everything.
		He helps all the foreigners, but he don't help the people in the United States.
		I think it's awful that they leaving him in there and letting him do us like he's doing.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Jerry is in New York, New York.
		Good morning, Jerry.
unidentified		Yeah, you know, I just want to say that the groceries are just too expensive right now.
		And now, the new mayor, Mom Donnie, he has proposed an idea to have city-owned grocery stores, at least one in each borough, which would make things a little cheaper, which would be great.
		And, you know, I mean, everything's expensive.
		Cereal, for example, is expensive.
		I like to usually keep about six or seven boxes of cereal at a time.
		And they're like five or six bucks, you know, each box.
		And we just, which is, you know, puts me back about $40 every time I want to, you know, because I want to have a variety.
		And it's bad enough because I have a neighbor that comes over and is always eating my food all the time, always mooching off of me.
		And, you know, I think Mom Donnie might be the best mayor ever since Deacons, even though Deacons had that idea a while back of having people wearing name tags.
		But anyway, and, you know, I just, you know, I want to say one last thing is, you know, I go to the grocery store and I'll buy a big bag of pretzels and I'll eat them, you know, but they're always making me thirsty.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, thank you to everyone who called in this hour.
		Later on on Washington Journal, the nation's D.C. Bureau Chief Chris Lehman is going to join us to discuss this past week's elections, the progressive agenda, as well as campaign 2026.
		But up next, Washington Examiner Magazine executive editor Jim Antle will join us to discuss Democratic victories in recent elections and what it could mean for Democrats, Republicans, and the Trump administration in the future.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, White House Historical Association President Stuart McLaurin, author of The People's House Miscellany, on the history of the White House and White House-related trivia.
unidentified		He'll also talk about the changes that presidents and first ladies have made to the White House's interior and exterior going back to President Thomas Jefferson.
stuart mclaurin ▲ ● ▼		The president never and his family never had a place to go outside and enjoy like we have a deck or a patio.
		And so Truman broke up that colonnade of the South Portico and right in the middle, put a balcony off the residence level of the White House so the family could go out there and enjoy fresh air.
		And very controversial.
		People thought it ruined the look of the White House.
		Congress was not going to fund it.
		Truman said, I'll find the money and do it anyway.
		And he built it.
		And in this book, there are quotes by a number of presidents who said, thank you, Harry Truman.
unidentified		White House Historical Association President Stuart McLaurin.
unidentified		Tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA, you can listen to QA and all our podcasts wherever you get your podcast or on our free C-SPAN Now app.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		Retired George Mason University history professor Peter Henriquez starts off his author's note writing, quote, If anyone had told me in the summer of 2023 that I would be writing one more book on George Washington, I would have expressed extreme skepticism.
		In episode six of this Book Notes Plus podcast series in 2021, Professor Enrique told us the same thing.
		But at 88 years old, he's back with another book on our first president, George Washington, his quest for honor and fame.
		In the afterword chapter at the end of the book, Peter Henriquez puts a special emphasis on George Washington and slavery.
unidentified		Author Peter Henriquez with his book, George Washington, His Quest for Honor and Fame, 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.
		Washington Journal continues.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back.
		We're joined now by Jim Antle, excuse me, who's the executive editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.
		Welcome back to Washington Journal.
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for having me.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		So can you first give us an update?
		We're on day 40 of this federal government shutdown.
		What's the state of play?
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think things are mostly still as they have been.
		You have Republicans saying that they would like the passage of the clean continuing resolution, which has passed the House and which they've had on offer.
		Democrats would like to see some movement on the extension of Obamacare subsidies or some other concessions that would justify reopening the government in their minds at this time.
		I think where there's been some degree of movement is we've had elections.
		Democrats did well in them, to put it mildly.
		And I think for some Democrats, that means, well, we've shown our base that we will hold firm, that we stood up to President Trump on this.
		We reaped the electoral benefits of that.
		So it may be time to look at an off-ramp from the government shutdown.
		But I think for other Democrats, it's sort of a bit emboldening.
		It's like, well, why stop now?
		We've shown this has sort of validated the polls that suggest that perhaps Republicans are still being blamed for the shutdown, despite it really hinging on a Democratic procedural vote in the Senate.
		Why not see what we can get in terms of concessions from Republicans, particularly on health care, which is an issue where Democrats do tend to poll better than Republicans?
		So I think there seemed to be some movement towards an end to the shutdown with maybe up to 10 Democrats being willing to vote for a continuing resolution.
		But that sort of seemed to have fallen apart and based on the view that there weren't really enough concessions being wrung from Republicans.
		now, even though I do think as travel and the impending holidays and things of that nature are going to put some pressure on both sides to get a deal done.
		I think for right now, things are, while there are talks that I think are more serious than what has happened in the past, things are still remaining in a bit of a holding pattern.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		The Senate is having a session today.
		They were in yesterday, but the House is still out.
		What can actually get done this weekend or even in the coming week?
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		Well, obviously, if you have a breakthrough in the Senate, then this whole matter can be resolved.
		So if you know that you have the 60 votes to advance a continuing resolution, then I think House can come back.
		Things can get resolved fairly quickly.
		The likelihood is whatever does happen won't simply be the already House passed CR.
		So the House would have to, in all likelihood, vote again.
		But at that point, given that Rand Paul is the one Senate Republican who's been voting against this, you need a minimum of eight Democrats to get the cloture vote to really get things moving.
		And if that were to happen, if you were to have a Senate breakthrough, my view is things could happen fairly quickly.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		I want to turn to the elections of this past week that you mentioned, big successes for Democrats in many parts of the country.
		You have a piece in the Washington Examiner magazine, What Will and Won't Matter in the Midterm Elections from Tuesday's results.
		And you write that this was not a guarantee of a 2026 blue wave, as some Democrats are predicting and in many ways hoping.
		What leads you to that conclusion?
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, obviously, it makes it more likely that you will see that than if the elections had gone the other way, certainly.
		If Republicans had done well or held their own, you know, you might tend to think that the Democratic resistance to Trump is a non-starter.
		Clearly, in these elections, that posture resonated with enough people.
		But it is true that even though there was a smattering of negative results for Republicans in places like Mississippi, you know, there were some local elections, the Supreme Court races in Pennsylvania.
		It's still true that the biggest elections that happened on Tuesday were in areas that President Trump didn't win in 2024, where there might have been some rightward movement, but Trump wasn't the winner even at the peak of his sort of electoral success a year ago.
		So these are relatively Democratic areas, relatively blue states, and Democrats did well in them, better in many cases than even the polls were predicting.
		But in the midterms, you're going to have a somewhat different map.
		So the House Republicans are defending fewer swing districts and far fewer districts that voted Democratic at the presidential level than they were in 2018.
		And so there's going to be a narrower set of districts that are going to be competitive, at least in the House races.
		Now, it's a very small House majority that Republicans have.
		So it doesn't necessarily take some massive blue wave for them to take, for Democrats to flip control of that chamber.
		You may only need a net gain of two or three seats, depending on how the various redistricting fights go and what the final numbers composition-wise are by the time the elections roll around.
		But And it's not necessarily the case that being able to win in New York City, being able to win in New Jersey, being able to win in Virginia tells us what you'd be able to do in some of the swinger house districts and also some of those Senate races, though obviously Democrats have to feel a lot better about next year's elections after Tuesday than they would if those races had gone differently.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had some takeaways from Tuesday's elections, and I want to listen to his comments that he made on the Senate floor and then get your assessment.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
chuck schumer ▲ ● ▼		So, Mr. President, Americans plagued by high costs fired a political torpedo this week at Donald Trump and Republicans.
		They spoke loudly and clearly.
		We are fed up with the high cost of living.
		We're fed up with attacks on health care.
		We're fed up with your broken promises.
		And the question now is, will Donald Trump and Republicans listen to the American people?
		Will Republicans finally work with Democrats to reopen the federal government and negotiate a fix to the ACA premium crisis?
		Will Donald Trump finally take a break from his lavish ballrooms to help families who can't afford the rent, can't afford health care?
		The American people are waiting, and Democrats are ready.
		We want to have negotiations.
		It's been long enough.
		Look, if Republicans were smart, they would get the message after Tuesday that their do-nothing strategy isn't working.
		Even Donald Trump knows Americans hold Republicans responsible for this mess.
		Here's what he said.
		The shutdown was a big factor.
		He was talking about why did Julio lose the election.
		He said the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		What do you think of Senator Schumer's assessment there?
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		Obviously, Senator Schumer has the best interests of the Republican Party in mind when he's giving this advice.
		But certainly he has a point on the cost of living.
		And I think that is one of the two areas from Tuesday night's election that I think Republicans ought to be very concerned about is that whereas President Biden, Vice President Harris, once bore the blame and faced the political liability of inflation and the high cost of living, now as the incumbent party, Republicans have that issue as a real liability.
		And the economy is not currently in a set of conditions where that is to the net benefit of Trump and the Republican Party.
		And so that is something that they're going to have to try to address over the next year if they want the midterm elections to go significantly differently than Tuesday night's elections did.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		In terms of the different assessments and reasons that people are giving for why the elections went the way they did, President Trump did very little campaigning for these Republicans this cycle.
		And then after the election, said that that was probably the reason, because he wasn't on the ballot with them and didn't necessarily get so involved.
		Do you think that's a good assessment?
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		Well, there are a couple of different factors here.
		I think certainly one of the reasons President Trump wasn't super involved in these races is that his poll numbers being down is a big part of what created the national conditions that shifted things a bit to the left of where they were in 2024.
		And while the breadth and conditions under which Trump won the 2024 elections was impressive in many respects, you know, it still wasn't such a huge margin that you can have much of a shift in the leftward direction and have that not translate into Democratic victory.
		I think one of the reasons Trump wasn't very active, aside from the fact that he, at least in the case of the Virginia candidate for governor, he wasn't a huge fan of, but I think mainly he wasn't involved because he knew to some extent he would be a liability in these races, that he would be used against the Republican candidates.
		But I think it is also true that there are a lot of low-propensity Republican-leaning voters who turn out for Trump and who do not necessarily reliably turn out for down-ballot Republicans.
		And there's also some question, and this is going to be a very important thing for Republicans not just next year, but also obviously in 2028 and beyond.
		There are questions about whether Trump's appeal, particularly to certain groups, will transfer to Republicans when he's not on the ballot and then perhaps when he's finally gone from the political scene.
		So I think it's a little bit of both.
		People who are very motivated to protest against Trump and to hand an electoral rebuke to Republicans over Trump will vote regardless of whether it's an off-year election, a special election, an election for dog catcher.
		A lot of very Trump-friendly voters are more likely to take a pass if the president isn't on the ballot himself.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Even in local races like the New York City mayoral race, it was effectively Trump on the ballot in many ways.
		Although Zoram Mamdani, the mayor-elect, campaigned mainly on affordability issues.
		What do you think he faces in terms of keeping some of those campaign promises?
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		Well, obviously, one of the big things that Andrew Cuomo, the former governor and his main opponent in that race, one of the main arguments he tried to make was that a lot of Momdani's promises can't really be kept, that they're unrealistic.
		And Mandani in his victory speech really set a high standard for himself.
		He essentially said that there's no problem too small for government to care about and no problem that government can't effectively manage.
		And that should really be how Democrats judge their success going forward.
		I think the thing with local government is it's much more results-oriented than how things might be judged at, say, a federal level.
		Whereas there are certain bills that one side may like and may satisfy certain ideological or policy goals that that side has had for a long time.
		Other side might not like it.
		But there simply will be certain metrics in terms of is crime under control, is crime up or down, are the streets being taken care of, infrastructure in general, how if you're doing free buses, is that working?
		Are the buses showing up on time?
		Are people using them, finding them clean, finding them safe?
		The business climate in the city.
		Does he actually deliver things in terms of lowering the cost of living?
		New York City has been a very expensive place to live even before we had inflation running at a 41-year high a couple years ago.
		So even before inflation emerged as an issue, again, for the first time in decades, New York City has always been known as kind of a tough place for, you know, you could be affluent living in another city and really feel a lot of financial strain living in New York.
		So I think some of those things are really tangible, and he's either going to be able to deliver on them or he's not.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's interesting because President Trump also campaigned on affordability and promising to lower prices for Americans.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		So how do you think he's delivered on that particular campaign promise so far?
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		Well, obviously not to the satisfaction of a lot of voters, both those who turned out on Tuesday and what we can assess from public opinion polls.
		I think they've made some progress in terms of accelerating energy production.
		I think they've done some things on the deregulatory front.
		But he's also sort of battled with the Federal Reserve.
		The Fed continues to regard the rate of inflation as being higher than what it would prefer, the 2% that it would prefer.
		The challenge with inflation is that when you have a recession and the recession ends, the economy starts to grow again, unemployment goes down, people go back to work, assuming they're able to get jobs that pay comparably to what they were being paid before, life sort of returns somewhat to normal, no matter how bad the recession might have been at the time.
		With inflation, prices go up.
		You may be able to then get inflation under control and you're lowering the rate of inflation, but prices don't necessarily go back down to what they were before you had this big spade of inflation.
		So a lot of people, I think, voted for Trump hoping that the economic conditions of, say, 2019 could be quickly or immediately restored.
		And the reality is the cumulative price increases that began when the inflation started to heat up are remaining in place even as the rate of inflation lowers.
		So I think that a lot of what you can do with inflation is simply try not to make it worse, but there is a certain amount of managing of expectations, and that's a very difficult sell.
		And I think President Biden and Vice President Harris found that a tough sell, and I think Trump is now.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		We're going to be taking your questions for Jim Antel, who's the executive editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.
		Democrats can call in at 202-748-8000.
		Republicans at 202-748-8001.
		And Independents at 202-748-8002.
		Before we go to callers, I want to ask you about a bit of an internal fight within the Republican Party, and this has to do with what's going on at the Heritage Foundation.
		There's coverage here in the Wall Street Journal, and I'll just read a bit of it for context.
		The crackup at the Heritage Foundation is a warning sign from MAGA World.
		By defending a controversial Tucker Carlson interview, think tank President Kevin Roberts unleashed a flood of discontent in the conservative establishment.
		And it goes on to say, the Heritage Foundation is no ordinary think tank.
		Since the days of Ronald Reagan, it has been the conservative movement on the march, delivering ready-made policies and battle-hardened pundits to Republican presidents.
		Heritage spoke proudly with one voice, insisting that its scholars take a unified stand on key issues.
		Today, that almost military discipline has collapsed, and many current and former staffers blame Kevin Roberts, who took over as the foundation's president in 2021.
		They joke that the group's operating principle is now more of a one-man policy, with Roberts moving aggressively to align the think tank with the Make America Great Again movement.
		As Democrats revel in their electoral success this week, the divisions at Heritage highlight the growing fractures facing President Trump's winning 2024 coalition.
		I know this seems very DC inside baseball, but talk a little bit about what's happening at the Heritage Foundation and why that matters more broadly for the conservative movement and American politics.
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		I mean, there's an element of it that is entirely DC inside baseball.
		And there's an aspect to it, though, as well that has broader implications for the Republican electoral coalition going forward.
		So I think when Kevin Roberts took over the Heritage Foundation, part of what he's been trying to do is keep that venerable conservative institution that has had a lot of its identity and a lot of its policy positioning defined in the Reagan era,
		which is obviously a very important period of time for the conservative movement, but also at this point a very long time ago in a grand scheme of things, at least certainly within an electoral timeframe.
		I think Roberts has been trying to keep heritage abreast of changes going on to the conservative movement, whether that's changes to the Republican Electoral Coalition, whether that's changes in leadership from Bush-era figures to President Donald Trump,
		whether that is changes in attitudes and viewpoints among younger conservatives, and then attempting sort of to figure out really where things are headed.
		And I think Roberts has been trying to adapt heritage to that without really making a clean break from the Reaganite consensus that came before.
		And I think even before the current controversy, he was at times finding that that is not always very easy to do and that not everybody internally is necessarily going to, A, want to do that at all, but two,
		people will have different interpretations of what that would mean and what that would really look like if you were to try to adapt it to certain things and what things are sort of timeless principles that can't be altered or can't be broken with or violated and what things are really more a matter of prudential judgment.
		And so I think when the current controversy...
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		And just to be clear, the current controversy is that Roberts was defending Tucker Carlson, for doing an interview with Nick Fuentes, which many people said was a bad idea.
unidentified		Right.
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		And Nick Fuentes has trafficked in genuine anti-Semitism, in my view, certainly in Holocaust denial.
		And he leaves sort of ambiguous as to what he's saying seriously and what is sort of a subversive joke and things like that.
		But that's sort of why Nick Fuentes in particular is a controversial figure.
		So in my view, not being entirely privy to all of the inner workings, but just as an informed observer looking on the outside in, you know, it looks to me that there was some pressure to maybe distance Heritage from Tucker Carlson, which Kevin Roberts did not want to do.
		And he received advice from younger staffers to forcefully push back on these efforts and to publicly push back on these efforts.
		And then in the process of doing that, got drawn into a debate over Nick Fuentes that he wasn't really ready to have and committed himself and his institution to a position he wasn't really ready to defend.
		And he's been trying to extricate himself from that ever since.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		It kind of reflects the larger issues within the Republican Party about sort of which factions they're going to choose to uplift, you know, especially when you consider what this movement looks like after President Trump.
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think that's right.
		And there are ways in which the Republican coalition under Trump is less internally coherent than it was as the Reagan coalition.
		Now, to people from outside the coalition, it has never looked perfectly coherent.
		It's like, well, why do we not like government when it comes to the economy, but we like it on social issues and foreign policy?
		But to people who are conservatives and are long-standing Republicans, it had a logic to it that did make sense.
		You know, it wasn't like that necessarily pre-Reagan, the Republican Party.
		And it's becoming a bit less like that under Trump.
		So you have a lot of working class voters who've been added to the coalition, which has certainly put the Republicans at a stronger position in the Electoral College.
		But you retain a lot of evangelical and religious conservative voters who became an important part of the coalition under Reagan, still important part under Trump.
		So there's some tensions on economics, on foreign policy, increasingly over Israel, which is sort of the proximate cause of the heritage crackup.
		So how do political leaders manage this?
		And still, there are large parts of red areas of the country where you could still win as a Republican campaigning as if it's 2004.
		And so a lot of those political leaders are hesitant to make any of these types of shifts.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		All right, let's get to your calls for Jim Antel of the Washington Examiner.
		Deanna is in Kentucky on our line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Deanna.
unidentified		My question is to ask him who is in control of both houses of Virginia and New Jersey.
		And I also like to ask him, it wasn't mentioned that Democrats won down ballot offices in red states.
		And I'd like to also say that they're condemning Mamdani about him saying that he can do something they can't.
		And the gentleman said, you know, talking about Biden, but Trump said that he would get rid of the high prices on the first day.
		I'd just like to hear his comment.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Well, I know, Jim, you already commented on whether the president has kept up with his promises on lowering prices.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		But what about what you were saying about the down ballot races?
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I did mention the Mississippi in particular, was one I mentioned.
		But there weren't very many of these types of races.
		And in the midterm elections, you're going to see a lot more races.
		But it's certainly the case that high-propensity voters lean Democratic at this point.
		And that means you're going to see a lot of special election wins.
		You're going to see a lot of off-year election wins.
		And if Republicans don't find a way to counteract that, that bodes well for Democrats in the midterm elections.
		Doesn't necessarily translate in the same way in a presidential election year.
		I mean, if you look back when Democrats had the issue with their coalition involving a lot of lower propensity voters, Democrats had worse midterm elections under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama than Donald Trump did in 2018.
		But those midterm elections ultimately didn't say anything about the subsequent presidential elections.
		Bill Clinton was reelected quite easily.
		Barack Obama was re-elected in a more competitive race, but fairly easily.
		And I suspect that if the pandemic hadn't happened, Trump would have been narrowly re-elected.
		Obviously, that's something that can always be debated now.
		So that, I think, is a part of it.
		In terms of whether people could keep their promises, that's something at every campaign that you're going to be evaluated on the basis of your promise keeping.
		I mean, I think a thing that's going to be debated heading into 2028 about the Trump administration, depending on where things stand at that point, is clearly President Trump decided to prioritize certain things after getting elected in terms of his broader economic agenda, using tariffs to try to rebalance trade,
		try to reassure certain American jobs, try to extract certain concessions from foreign governments that sat potentially sat uneasily alongside some of the promises that he was making about prices.
		Tariffs certainly opened the door.
		You know, there's a dispute as to how much tariffs have affected consumer prices up to this point.
		But they, at a minimum, open the door to give you a plausible way of blaming Trump for the high prices.
		Tariffs are certainly something that will make certain goods more expensive, although the importers can eat the costs.
		There are other ways to shift them.
		But should Trump have prioritized cost of living issues versus this wider economic agenda that would take potentially a longer time to implement?
		We'll have to see.
		A lot of it also, too, is Trump pursued a more modest tariffs agenda in his first term, and that was able to coincide with fairly low inflation.
		Inflation didn't really become an issue until the pandemic and still wasn't really much of an issue when he left office.
		But this has been a much broader tariffs agenda that's coming after several years of inflation already being in effect.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Jim is in Dubuque, Iowa, on our line for independence.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Jim.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I think the information that the public has provided about inflation is not very useful.
		If you look at the Chapwood Index, which reports the unadjusted actual cost and price fluctuation, the top 150 items of which Americans spend there after tax dollars in the 50 largest cities in the nation, the average is well over 10% right now.
		If you look at the site of John Williams, the economist who has a website called shadowgovernmentstatistics.com, who uses the techniques we use to calculate these numbers like GDP and inflation up until the early 80s when they began to manipulate them for political reasons.
		Inflation is somewhere around 8%, and unemployment, when you actually count people who gave up looking for work and things like that, is presently around 25%, which is Great Depression levels.
		Rodolph and Reinhardt, economists.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Jim, I understand that you're raising the issue about whether or not the data we're getting actually reflects what's happening in America.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		But what's your question for Jim?
unidentified		I wonder if he agrees with Rohoff and Reinhardt, economists from Harvard and Stanford, who observed, who published a book and showed that a country that has a debt-to-GDP ratio of 90% is on an irreversible doom.
unidentified		We're presently at about 120%.
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think our debt-to-GDP ratio is unsustainable, but I also don't see a viable political solution.
		Neither political party seems interested in the debt anymore, if they ever really were.
		And the voting public largely seems disinterested in that as an issue.
		In the 90s, you had candidates like Ross Perot, whatever you thought of the viability of some of his proposals, he was at least running on the issue of the national debt.
		Millions of people were voting for him.
		There were some people pushing back on the debt within the Republican Party.
		You had figures like Paul Sagas running as Democrats who were concerned about the debt.
		You even had a brief period of bipartisan budget surpluses in the late 90s.
		There's really no incentive, however, to reform entitlement programs.
		There may be a little bit of a desire to reform Pentagon spending, but even there, not much of a desire to shrink American commitments abroad, despite Trump successfully campaigning on that issue.
		Obviously, taxes remain a very controversial issue.
		So all of these things have to be dealt with and paid for in some way, and there doesn't really seem to be any constituency for making the math add up.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Ruben is in Morgan City, Louisiana, on our line for Republicans.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Ruben.
unidentified		Good morning.
		Yeah, I am born as born, by political birth was in Republican Reaganism as a Republican.
		And, you know, we were big for free trade.
		We wanted to get products into this country as cheap as possible.
		I remember arguing with my Democratic friends about why we're anti-tariff.
		That had to do with the unions and protectionism.
		And we wanted to make sure that the Japanese did not take over our car markets, automobile markets, and our electronics, that TV sets would no longer be made in America.
		Cars would no longer be made in America.
		And the other thing was abortion.
		As a conservative, very much for a national abortion ban.
		Yeah, we wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade, but we don't believe it's okay to have abortion in any state.
		So, you know, I just would like to get some response to what does it mean to be a Republican today or conservative today if you don't have Donald Trump at the top of the ticket?
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		Well, a lot of that will depend on who is at the top of the ticket, right?
		So, you know, at the moment, I think that the person best positioned to succeed him would be Vice President JD Vance, who I think would be more socially conservative than the president, but also probably more willing to experiment with different things that he might think would benefit the working class economically.
		So that could certainly signal a shift from what we've seen in the past.
		Secretary of State Marco Rubio, I don't think, would run, but he's also somebody who would be well positioned if circumstances allowed.
		And, you know, he had traditionally bid more in the Reaganite mold, maybe even a bit of a neoconservative, but he's moved much more, even economically, in the populist direction over the past decade of Trump.
		You know, so I think there would be, at a minimum, subtle but perhaps significant differences just between those two gentlemen, although I do still think that certain Trumpian innovations of the Republican brand would remain in effect.
		And then if we're not talking either of them, it becomes a bit more difficult to see who it might be.
		You know, there's obviously by then former Florida governor Ron DeSantis, he's the governor.
		He's still the governor right now, but by 2028, he'll be out of office.
		Nikki Haley is obviously somebody who still might harbor some ambition in that area, but it's a little harder to see how she could win, given that Trump just won.
		And Ted Cruz, I think, is somebody who still would like to be president.
		But a lot really rides on who wins the 2028 primaries.
		And I think at the moment, Vance really has the inside track for that.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		It's interesting.
		In response to the Tuesday electoral results, JD Vance had several comments about it on X, mentioning, I think it's idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states, but a few thoughts.
		And he talks here about voter turnout.
		Our coalition is lower propensity, and that means we have to do better at turning out voters than we have in the past.
		We need to focus on the home front.
		The president has done a lot that has already paid off and lower interest rates and lower inflation, but we inherited a disaster from Joe Biden, and Rome wasn't built in a day.
		We're going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country.
		And that's the metric by which we'll be ultimately judged in 2026 and beyond.
		And then says the infighting is stupid.
		I care about my fellow citizens, particularly young Americans, being able to afford a decent life.
		I care about immigration and our sovereignty.
		And I care about establishing peace overseas so our resources can be focused at home.
		If you care about those things too, let's work together.
		Hitting on a lot of those points that you raised about what the future of the party might look like.
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And, you know, and I think a lot of those points are valid.
		And, you know, I do think they will to some extent be judged on how they perform on the cost of living metric.
		But I also think, given that Donald Trump will not be on the ballot in 2028, and I'm fairly confident in making that assertion, that 2028 will in some ways be a whole different campaign.
		You'll be facing the binary choice between a Democratic nominee, maybe Gavin Newsom, maybe the former vice president.
		We'll have to see, maybe somebody we're not even thinking about or talking about right now, and the vice president.
		Now, Vance will face some of the challenges that Harris faced in that he's going to be tied to an existing Cuban administration.
		And so he'll get all of the benefits associated with that, but he'll also get any of the criticisms that are still being made of Trump at that time.
		But it'll have a person in Trump, I think, who is even less eager than Biden to see his successor potentially showing daylight between the two of them.
		So that's going to be a very challenging thing, I think, to manage.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Greg is in Wisconsin on our line for independence.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Greg.
unidentified		Hello, good morning.
		James, it sounds like you have a cold.
		I hope everything's okay.
		A couple of things I do want to comment and a question.
		The comment being that when we associate the results in the recent election, the White House press corps asks questions, and when Trump gives an answer, he's stating things of metrics that aren't really accurate.
		Now, what those metrics might be back and forth, okay.
		But for presidents over the course of Biden, over the course of Trump, a question is asked at a press conference, and it sometimes is just equally dismissed, saying it's fake news or whatever it might be.
		But it seems to me there is never any follow-ups.
		And is it that important?
		My question is, is access that important to where you give up your ability to do actual journalism and questions to have access to a president?
		My concern is that the more and more we see these press conferences, it's turning into someone interpreting the president, interpreting the question, calling it fake news, dismissing it, and not putting a cohesive statement of at least even three minutes on a policy like health care.
		For example, health care, I'm going to give you great health care.
		That's what Trump has stated.
		But we have yet to see any plan of health care at all from this administration.
		And they have control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency.
		So why is the press not asking those types of questions in that type of situation?
		Just like in Biden's.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Let's allow Jim to respond here.
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think there's a lot that goes into that.
		So, you know, I think that in terms of access to the president, I think that press conferences are good, and I think it's desirable for the president and for cabinet officials and for the press secretary to be regularly made available to reporters.
		And I think it's been a positive that Trump has been more available in that way than Biden was.
		But I don't think that's the sum total of how journalism has to be conducted.
		And I don't necessarily think even these public press appearances are the most important thing in terms of reporting on what's going on within an administration.
		And so whether the president is introducing a health care plan or whether Congress is close to passing one or is there any important committee that is coming up with one?
		I mean, you can know the answers to those things without needing the president or needing the speaker or needing the Senate majority leader to tell you in a press conference.
		Is it useful to, once you know the answer to those questions, to regularly ask why there isn't a plan or what your plan would be or when are you going to have a plan?
		Sure, absolutely.
		But you don't necessarily have to just ask a question at a press conference to know Whether Trump care is about to be signed into law, there's a lot of publicly available information that media outlets can certainly suss out that answer those questions in a way that's more reliable than what a politician's answer to that question might be.
		So there's the question of optics, there's the question of political pressure, which is obviously there's a sub-level of controversy of whether that should be properly the media's role.
		And then there is just the discovery and reporting of accurate information.
		And those are not necessarily in conflict with each other, but they are different.
		And I would say that the information aspect of it is what's most important.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you very much for your time, Jim Antel, who's the executive editor of Washington Examiner magazine.
		Thank you so much for coming back to Washington Journal.
		Thanks for having me.
		All right, later on on Washington Journal, we're going to take more of your calls and comments in open forum.
		But joining us next will be the nation's DC Bureau Chief, Chris Lehman, who's going to discuss this week's elections, including Democratic Socialist Zoram Mamdani's win as the first Muslim mayor of New York City, the progressive agenda, as well as campaign 2026.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold new original series, today with our guest, the Chronicler of Adventures, award-winning, best-selling author David Graham, whose books include The Lost City of Z, Killers of the Flower Moon, and...
		and The Wager.
		He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
david rubenstein ▲ ● ▼		So what about this fact, about this occurrence, made you think this could be something worth your time?
david grann ▲ ● ▼		And I started to realize that this odd little old manuscript contained, you know, the seeds of one of the most extraordinary stories of survival and mayhem I had ever come across.
unidentified		Watch America's Book Club with David Graham today at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
jim antle ▲ ● ▼		And past precedent nominal.
unidentified		Why are you doing this?
josh shapiro ▲ ● ▼		This is outrageous.
david grann ▲ ● ▼		This is a kangaroo corpse.
unidentified		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.
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		Retired George Mason University history professor Peter Henriquez starts off his author's note writing, quote, if anyone had told me in the summer of 2023 that I would be writing one more book on George Washington, I would have expressed extreme skepticism.
		In episode six of this Book Notes Plus podcast series in 2021, Professor Enrique told us the same thing.
		But at 88 years old, he's back with another book on our first president, George Washington, his quest for honor and fame.
		In the afterword chapter at the end of the book, Peter Henriquez puts a special emphasis on George Washington and slavery.
unidentified		Author Peter Henriquez with his book, George Washington, His Quest for Honor and Fame.
		On this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
		BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
		Washington Journal continues.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back.
		We're joined now by Chris Lehman, who's the D.C. Bureau Chief of The Nation magazine.
		Welcome back to Washington Journal.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Thanks, Kimberly.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Always a pleasure to be here.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Can I get your assessment of the state of play of the shutdown negotiations right now?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		I know the Senate is supposed to be in today, but what are the actual prospects for negotiations?
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		They remain in a quagmire.
		The most effective description.
		Democrats had an offer, Republican Spurn, on the basis that Republicans are saying that you end the shutdown first before you negotiate on the ACA Obamacare premiums, which is at the center of this fight.
		And Democrats are saying no, you know, we need assurances.
		And so now some Republican senators are coming up with sort of Hail Mary sort of plans.
		Like Senator Kennedy in Louisiana had a flexible savings account plan that is not that serious.
		So yeah, you'll see a lot more of this back and forth.
		And the underlying dynamic is Democrats have a very popular issue at the center of this.
		I think it pulls 80 to 20 support for extending the ACA premiums.
		So they feel like they have the upper hands politically in these negotiations, whereas Republicans are sort of digging in.
		And President Trump, meanwhile, is pressuring Republicans to nuke the filibuster, which would be a precedent that would upset a lot of people in the Senate.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		And the Democrats got quite a bit of wind in their sales this past week with the outcome of some of these off-year elections.
		Let's look at some of the results you had.
		You had in New Jersey win a 56 to 43 percent with governor-elect Mikey Sherrill, governor-elect Abigail Spanberger, Democrat in Virginia won 57 to 43, plus 14 points there.
		Obviously, the New York City mayoral election with Mom Donnie getting ahead there by a pretty significant margin.
		And then in California, the voters chose yes on Proposition 50, redistricting 64 to 36 percent with a 0.28 spread there.
		And even though going back to that New York City mayoral election, he broke 50 percent.
		It was a three-way race, so that was a pretty decent margin there.
		Why do you think Democrats did so well last Tuesday at both the state level as well as in some of these local elections?
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, there's an obvious disclaimer that this is, these are off-year elections in very disparate settings.
		It's very easy to overinterpret.
		But I do think it is clear that President Trump is, even though he says he's not on the ballot, he is for Democrats.
		They are very disenchanted with the direction of the country, the state of the economy.
		And you're seeing that reflected, you know, there were polls showing before the election, the New Jersey race, you know, sort of being a toss-up and it was a blowout.
		Not the same in Virginia, but similar results.
		These margins are sort of eye-opening.
		And the Mom Donny election is also interesting because it's a rebuke to both Trump and the Democratic establishment, which poses a lot of interesting questions going into 2026.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Your publication, The Nation, was pretty prominent in the New York campaign because you all endorsed Mamdani back in May, quite early in the primary, before his upset win over the three other main contenders.
		Why did you all endorse him back then?
		How was he different?
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Well, he is, you know, I think a change candidate, and The Nation is a change magazine, by and large.
		And he, I think, represents a way out of a lot of the, you know, ever since the 2024 debacle for Democrats, there's been a lot of navel-gazing, a lot of post-mortems about how messaging should be tweaked.
		You've seen, it seems, centrist group after centrist group in the Democratic side comes up with a report saying, don't use certain words or don't, you know, stay focused on, quote, kitchen table issues.
		And what's interesting is Mom Dhani is laser focused on kitchen table issues.
		Affordability is the corner, you know, pretty much the entirety of his campaign.
		And he has very concrete measures to address this crisis, and that's clearly appealing.
		And what's striking is a lot of national Democratic leaders are pretending like he doesn't exist.
		Hakeem Jeffries very grudgingly offered an endorsement the week of the election.
		Schumer wouldn't even say who he voted for in the New York election, which I think is a pretty clear tell he voted for Cuomo.
		But so it's interesting, the Democratic leadership cast doesn't like this moment, whereas I think a lot of people in the Democratic base are really energized by Mamdani's win.
		It suggests, among other things, that there's been this intra-party debate about cutting loose support for trans rights or LBGQT rights.
		And I think Momdami sort of threaded the needle there by just saying, let's look at what unites us.
		Let's look at the epic struggle to just keep your head above water in a city like New York.
		Let's address those issues.
		It's a universal appeal, and I think that it's proved pretty effective.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Washington Journal has an exclusive look at the cover of the nation's upcoming issue that's going to be out this Tuesday, looking on the Mom Dhani victory.
		It shows a smiling Mom Dhani and reads, extra, extra, Mamdani beats Trump and the billionaire class and the Democratic naysayers.
		Can you elaborate?
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Well, I will largely end up saying what I just said.
		But yeah, I think, you know, the billionaire class part is a reflection of there are all these sort of finance titans in New York, like David Sachs famously, who's been out there attacking Mamdani.
		They've been saying they're going to leave the city under his election already.
		They're walking back a lot of those threats.
		If you're working in finance, you're in New York at that sort of level of operation anyway.
		But I think, you know, again, I think we're trying to address this debate within the Democratic Party of how best to move forward.
		And Mamdani definitely represents this very inclusive, very popular sort of appeal.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		What are some of the challenges he's going to face in terms of actually delivering on those promises?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned he's got concrete strategies ahead, but what's in the way of actually delivering them?
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, politics.
		And he will have to get these measures, which include free and faster buses, a freeze on rents, potentially publicly owned grocery stores, things like that.
		So, yeah, it's going to be a big challenge to go from a campaign that has immense momentum behind it to broker deals and make the New York City Council go along, make Kathy Hochell, the governor of New York, go along.
unidentified		So who knows?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Mamdani opponents are framing his victory in a variety of ways.
		Here's a New York Post front page, a cover showing a picture of Mom Dhani holding a hammer and sickle, and it says, on your marks, spelled like Karl Marx, get set, Zoe, socialist Mom Dhani runs the race for mayor, the red apple, making sort of all these allusions to communism.
		This is a common theme that Republicans are using talking about Mom Dhani.
		Do you think that this strategy is actually going to make a difference?
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		No, I think it largely appeals to people who are already ill-disposed towards Mom Dhani's candidate.
		I will say, I find the New York Post's headlines and tabloid coverage quite entertaining.
		And I think it's certainly successful in those terms.
		But yeah, I think sort of red baiting more than 30 years after the collapse of the Cold War, I don't think is going to really engage the general electorate.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Zooming out, who are the leaders of the Democratic Party right now?
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		That's a very good and very open question.
		There are a lot of people positioning themselves for a potential 2028 run.
		Gavin Newsom is an obvious figure, and I think the win in the California redistricting vote is going to certainly be a shot in the arm for his prospects.
		I think J.B. Pritzker in Illinois is also emerged as a very eloquent anti-Trump voice, and he's doing important work, especially in the disgraceful broad view detention facility where there are so many protests.
		He's really drawn attention to that.
		It's interesting that there aren't a whole lot of figures in Congress.
		And I guess we should also mention Kamala Harris, who I think was flirting with the idea of succeeding Newsom as governor of California, but I think has pushed that aside, which could be a sign that she wants to take another run of the presidency.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		We're going to be taking your questions for Chris Lehman, who is the D.C. Bureau Chief of the Nation magazine, Democrats Can Call In at 202-748-8000, Republicans at 202-748-8001.
		And Independents at 202-748-8002.
		While folks are calling in, I wonder what you think the wins, especially of progressive candidates like Mom Dhani, is going to mean for the broader field of candidates in the midterm elections in 2026, as well as, as you just mentioned, what it means for even the party platform heading into 2028.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's interesting because shortly after Mamdani's victory, Josh Shapiro, who's a pretty moderate governor of Pennsylvania, kind of came out swinging against JD Vance over the shutdown fights and said a lot of sort of It was a striking departure from his usual rhetoric,
		saying JD Vance got rich writing this memoir about his hard-scrabble Appalachian childhood and coming of age, and he's now showing his true colors by taking away, you know, insurance premiums, trying to stop SNAP benefits from food benefits from going to America.
		And so I think politicians are not terribly original people.
		So when they see something that works, they try it out.
		They emulate it.
		So I think this direction, you know, could, I've always sort of argued economic populism is the best way to counter what I view as phony populism on the right that offers sort of identity-based anti-immigrant hatreds and anti-Muslim and now increasingly anti-Jewish hatreds in lieu of a concrete universalist program that can benefit everyone.
		So we'll see.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Even though Mamdani, Democratic Socialist, very, very progressive, won his race, you also had the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey won by moderate Democrats.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Which is appropriate.
		Like, you know, it's a big country.
		There are many different, you know, in both New Jersey and Virginia, independent voters or, you know, moderates on either side of the partisan divide or key constituencies.
		So you have to reach out to them.
		And I think, you know, the party found candidates who did well in meeting that challenge.
		You know, the Democrats do need a Big Ten, as any, you know, anyone doing mass politics in a country this size needs to accommodate many positions and points of view.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Speaking of one of those governor's races in New Jersey, we've got Jerry, who's in Sewell, New Jersey, on our line for Democrats.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Jerry.
unidentified		Yeah, good morning.
		I have a comment and a question for you.
		With the elections of these Democrats, there was a break between Trump's first election and the second.
		And it was run by Democrats.
		And resoundingly, Trump won the election.
		Now, my fear factor for the Democrats is they got a progressive agenda again, back to where they lost the election in the middle here between Trump's two terms.
		Now, the question I have for you is, if Mamdani and the Democrats do not succeed at what they ran on, like especially Mandani in New York, he's got a lot of young people that voted for him.
		Is he going to piss them off or turn them off?
		And they'll vote against him, and it'll be back, and the Republican may have a chance to win New York because of it.
		If he gets his agenda through, New York is done.
		It's doomed.
		People are going to be moving, especially the wealthy.
		So my question to you is, I think they're kind of like between a rock and a hard place here.
		Everybody's applauding that they won, but they're kind of like if they do what they say they're going to do, they could lose the election again.
		And if they don't say what they're going to do, what's going to happen then?
		And thank you.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for your comment and question.
		Yeah, it's very high stakes for Mondambi.
		And as we were saying earlier, it's going to be a big level of difficulty.
		But I think Mamadani often echoes back to Fiore LaGuardia and Who I think he somewhat misleadingly calls a Democratic socialist.
		He was a Republican, actually, at a very different time.
		But, you know, I think local elections, as James Antel was saying earlier, are all about results and delivery.
		And I think I don't think the threat of an Ayn Rand-type capital strike in New York is a serious thing.
		I don't think, you know.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Can you elaborate what you mean?
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Wow, that's an Atlas shrugged.
		It's a novel where all the wealthy quote creators leave and sort of try to start their own hyper-capitalist utopia.
		I think everyone, you know, Mamdani himself sort of quoted Andrew Cuomo's dad in his election night speech saying, you know, you govern in prose, you campaign in poetry.
		And that's absolutely true.
		And I think, you know, a lot of people will be looking to the results, you know, whether he's able to deliver on this platform in New York.
		I guess I'm not as sure that it would translate onto a shift in the national state of the party.
		But you do reference, you know, what is this ongoing debate, whether the party should tack to the center, shouldn't moderate its positions, or be more progressive.
		Kamala Harris actually did not run a notably progressive campaign.
		And the issue of the Gaza War in particular was a big albatross.
		And what's one striking thing about Mamdani's win is she was very forceful in denouncing what is a very unpopular and brutal occupation war.
		And, you know, pundits predicted that would, you know, there's a big Jewish vote in New York, it would go badly.
		It didn't so much.
		So that's, you know, these things are complicated.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Joe is in Tampa, Florida on our line for Republicans.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Joe.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I guess my thoughts run this way as I am thinking about the topics you all are mentioning.
		It's just very interesting to me to think about the fact that the Democratic Party looks like it's really centering on hating Trump.
		And at the same time, while they're doing that, they are focusing very, very clearly on socialism.
		And, you know, it's clear, I think, to anyone who thinks about it for more than a minute that socialism only concentrates power in the government.
		So, I mean, you know, you're seeing Trump as such a hated figure, but yet you're setting our country up for another, whether it's on the Democratic side, another leader in a government that has the same type of power.
		So, I mean, it's very contrary.
		And I think anyone that thinks about it understands the Democratic Party has become really a flashpoint for everything people's parents have told them not to be in their life.
		That is, you know, lawlessness at the border, lawlessness in the country.
		It's a shame that people in our country really have fallen for these type of things that have happened before, concepts, whether it's from the Castros of the world or whether it's the mouse atongs of the world.
		It's a shame that people have even begun to continue to trifle in this.
		And that's my thoughts.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Joe was talking there about Democrats' opposition to Trump motivating everything, but Trump's approval ratings are down pretty consistently, especially in some of these areas that just held elections.
		This is from NBC News, their exit poll in some of these elections.
		In New Jersey, Trump's disapproval rating was 55% in Virginia, 56%.
		In New York City, where Mamdani's win, 69%.
		In California, where that proposition related to redistricting passed, 63%.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the Trump hit-in part of it is, I think, a reflection of that polling.
		Again, politicians are opportunists, and right now, Trump is registering a historic low in his polling, even surpassing the end of his first term.
		So, you know, politics is about creating enemies, and it's not the most attractive part of it.
		But negative partisanship is sort of the direction that our politics has been headed well before Trump.
		As to socialism as a sort of Maoist monolith, there's actually a robust and healthy socialist tradition in this country.
		Milwaukee had a socialist mayor, Victor Berger, who was very successful, coined the term sewer socialism, which is to say you deliver on basic municipal services, as Berger did, and people care less about this high-octane ideological labeling.
		I don't think as Mayor of New York, Mamdani is going to be focused on nationalizing the means of production.
		I think he's going to be focused on continuing rents and rebust service and things like that.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Julius is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on our line for independence.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Julius.
unidentified		Yeah, very refreshing.
		Your guest, he speaks with some sanity and some insight.
		Typically, we get the think tanks that, you know, just sort of parrot the billionaire class talking points.
		So this is very refreshing.
		I'm glad that he's doing a little history on socialism.
		We all love the military, right?
		The military would be socialism.
		I wanted to say about Mamdani.
		I fell in love with him when they asked him on the debate stage whether he was going to Israel.
		And he said, no, I'll be right here working with the New Yorkers and trying to make it more affordable.
		So for your guest, I think one issue that's coming up and kind of the question is, is, you know, I'm really worried about the country.
		The callers that call in, the level of ignorance, the animosity toward the sides.
		I don't stand with Democrats or Republicans.
		I think they're both pretty awful, the parties.
		I do like Mamdani.
		So the question is, is affordability?
		Trump ran on it, right?
		Now the Democratic Party's running on it.
		Mamdani ran on it.
		I'm really interested to know what the guest sees as what's happening and sort of draw some conclusions from that.
		The thing that I believe that's happening is there's something called income inequality.
		It's worse than probably any time, even worse than like the Gilded Age.
		And so you have this very concentrated wealth, and it's impacting everything, the media, our governments, their level of power and control.
		And I wonder if that, if the guest shares that view, and then how do we push back?
		How do we get an FDR again?
		How do we even get reasonable tax policy, maybe like a Eisenhower, as solutions?
		But I'll hang up now and let the guests respond.
		Thank you.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you for your comment and question.
		Yeah, I think income inequality is sort of the story of the last political generation in America.
		And I think it's been very telling.
		I think most polls, speaking of polling, show that Bernie Sanders is still one of the most popular politicians in the country who sort of pioneered the path that Mamdani has taken in this election.
		And I think it's certainly eloquent that a figure that influential in terms of popularity is still largely regarded as an interloper in the Democratic Party.
		So I think there's going to be, at some point, my view, there will have to be a very serious reckoning with this issue.
		The Ballyhood, quote, big, beautiful bill that was Trump's signature tax and spending legislation represents the largest upward distribution of wealth achieved by any piece of legislation in our history.
		We're also seeing this sort of Versailles turn in the Trump White House where he demolished the East Wing to build this vanity ballroom.
		He had this great Gatsby-themed Halloween party that was just sort of grotesque in my view to see the photographs of.
		It reeks of kind of contempt from on high, and I think people really respond.
		I think the demolition of the East Wing resonated with a lot of just ordinary voters who see that sort of thing for what it is.
		And when Trump tries out of the other side of his mouth to say he's going to create a new economic golden age with tariffs, which, by the way, are taxes, it falls flat.
		And that's a huge opportunity for, you know, and I'm like the collar.
		I'm sort of party agnostic.
		But I do think a reform movement and to the question of how do we get back to a New Deal, you know, sadly the New Deal was, of course, occasioned by the Great Depression, which was a crippling economic calamity.
		I hope we don't face anything like that again.
		But we do need people to think differently in fundamental terms about these issues.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Stephen is in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on our line for Democrats.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Stephen.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		I was going to initially make a comment more or less about the new elected mayor of New York, Ben Dami.
		And I think the Republicans are just going to use him to beat up the Democrats as if we were bringing communism into this country.
		He's only a mayor of a city in New York, and he's a new mayor, and there are constraints of things that he can do and can't do.
		Unfortunately, there are constraints in Washington, D.C. that are supposed to keep Donald Trump in order, but he's just bulldozing right through them.
		That's why our democracy is in such peril, and everybody knows it.
		That's why the elections that just went on just went into Democrat favor.
		People are just so afraid of what Donald Trump is doing in every aspect of our politics, including our culture.
		I mean, he's a hate monger.
		And I just want to end this call by saying I agree with Nancy Pelosi 100%.
		Donald Trump is the most vile creature that has ever walked this earth.
		And he will, if allowed, destroy this nation and probably the world too.
		He's already started with destroying the world order.
		And I'll take your comments off there.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I do think, you know, to your point about the mayor of New York being new and untested, and that's all very true.
		And, you know, again, he's a local figure.
		But I think you're right.
		There will be tremendous effort expended from the right to make him the face of the Democratic Party.
		But, you know, this isn't especially new.
		The Republicans have been calling Democrats socialists for my entire political lifetime.
		And I think one lesson of Mamdani's when he avowed his socialist beliefs did not lock them back.
		And voters were not persuaded by the red baiting any more than they were persuaded by Cuima's desperate and ugly anti-Islam efforts on the home stretch.
		I do think there is an appetite, as I was saying earlier, just for thinking differently and thinking creatively about how we get out of what is an oligarchy that has maldistristributed our resources and put basic social goods like health care and education beyond the reach of the middle class.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Richard is in Rockland, California on our line for Republicans.
unidentified		Good morning, Richard.
		Yeah, hello.
		Yeah, I was everybody's talking about President Trump as a dictator, and I grew up in California.
		And the way the Democrats have run California into the ground, I don't think that our youth can achieve the American dream here of owning a house.
		The mortgage rates, which have increased so much, I don't know, 8, 9%, but that's on all the Democrats the previous four years where they continue to spend $2 trillion more than what's brought in.
		And that's why people can't afford to buy houses now.
		You can't lay that on President Trump.
		And then you're going to have Newsom, I guess, who hasn't accomplished anything in California.
		I don't know what he's going to run on, but he's the one that said, you know, McDonald's or the fast food workers, they all get $20 an hour.
		That was a couple years ago.
		Nobody can afford to go.
		You think twice about going to a fast food place or McDonald's.
		So I think that's just a touch of what Mandami's going to do.
		So if I just can't see going with the way our country's going and this, I just think we're just losing the American way of people pulling up their bootstraps and making it on their own without worrying about what government's going to do for you.
		If you do that, you put yourself in a real bad position.
		And I think you can educate yourself and make better decisions about your health.
		You'll be a lot better off.
		So that's kind of what I'm, my two cents on this thing.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		But thank you for your comments.
		I do think just addressing the interest rate issue, you know, interest rates are largely set by the Federal Reserve.
		And even though President Trump doesn't like to be reminded of this, he appointed Jerome Powell.
		So I definitely agree that inflation was a big issue under Biden, and a lot of that was driven by the COVID recovery.
		But, you know, the Democrats paid for it at the voting booth.
		And I think, you know, turnabout is fair play.
		I think right now people are seeing the cost of Libyan really escalate under a Republican regime that is enacting tariffs, that is not addressing these core issues.
		We're seeing right now the Trump White House desperately went to the Supreme Court to get a release to stop snap food benefits for that 42 million people take because they want to use those people as sort of pawns in the shutdown fight, which I think is another thing that is not helping the image of Trump and the Republican Party.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		We had a comment that we received via text message from Renee in Marietta, Georgia, who says, when the government takes a stake in private business, that's socialism, and that's what Trump has been doing.
		He's the socialist, not the Democrats.
		What do you think of that as a socialist?
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Well, the viewer is right.
		He's taken stake in the state.
		Yes, and the chip company, whose name I'm not remembering, NVIDIA, yes.
		So, yeah, I mean, David Brooks, who is not my favorite commentator, but he had a somewhat amusing column a couple weeks back where he said, you know, Trump is stealing all the socialist left's ideas.
		I don't think that's true, but I do think, you know, what you're witnessing under Trump is something that is more of a corporatist or, you know, a sort of private takeover of government.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Fred is in Admore, Pennsylvania on our line for independence.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Fred.
unidentified		Yes, good morning, Mr. Leland.
		Good morning.
		My question is this.
		I was following Mamdani when he first ran for the mayor of New York, and he seems like he's very interesting, just like President Obama when he first started out.
		President Obama said he would like to transform this country.
		That's a different story for a different day.
		Mr. Mamdani, when he's talking, I've never or have so far haven't heard him say anything about making the country, helping to make the country stronger.
		Now, let me go back for me.
		I go back as far as President Eisenhower.
		And we start in civics when I start out in school, and we learn how to, not learn, I'm sorry, but talking about keeping the country strong and keeping the country what the great generation had fought for.
		Now, moving forward for me, you as a journalist, I hope that you, when you get an opportunity to ask Mr. Obama, I'm sorry, Mamdani, I have to give it credit for him.
		He did come out and say he's what he is, a Democratic socialist.
		Socialist has been around, the Democratic Socialist Party has been around since, I think, the 70s and everything.
		And I've been around and I listen to people, and I listen to how they talk about their views on different things.
		One thing I've been doing for a lot of years is that the Democratic Party is, back then, they had diplomats that actually talk to both sides.
		I'm not going to go through all the things I've seen and try to follow my life there.
		But I would like, if you had, you as a journalist, when you get an opportunity, just to see how he feels about this country.
		And that's all I have to say right for now.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, thank you for your comment.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		I'm based in D.C., so I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to interview Mom Donnie, but I would love to, and I would happily raise a question like that.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Wanda is in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on our line for Democrats.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Wanda.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I was just sitting here listening, and it seemed like I am watching the movie The Fight Club, where people were just fighting one another, and they were doing it because they were like stressed at it, their jobs, and everything.
		And I really do remember that man that was portraying Brad Pitt was subconscious to one of the workers that was frustrated, and they ended up robbing the businesses.
		And if I'm not mistaken, the government.
		Wanda, sorry, what's your question for our guest?
		Should we be concerned?
		Because, see, I was thinking that a clip, I heard, I saw a clip where they were saying that they need to put chips inside of the EBT cards.
		And I was just wondering, are we, is our cards in jeopardy of what you know?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		So I understand what you're talking about.
		There has been some effort to add additional security measures to the EBT cards, but that's something that hasn't been rolled out yet.
		But there's been some research showing, arguing that if there were chips similar to the ones that are in credit cards, EBT cards would be more secure for the people using it.
		I'm guessing that's what you're referencing, Wanda.
unidentified		Yes, I appreciate that.
		Yes, thank you.
		And do you say my question to him would be: do he see any similarities if he even watched the movie to what I'm speaking about?
		And I answer offline.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I saw Fight Club in the theater, which is a long time ago now.
		So, but I do remember broadly.
		And, you know, I gather your point is that, you know, the hostility these, they're all men expressed toward each other eventually gets routed towards government and business.
		You know, they blow up things, as I recall.
		I don't see much of a parallel there.
		I do think, you know, there certainly is a lot.
		You know, we saw it in the last election.
		What's interesting is young men were sort of one of the big constituencies that broke for the MAGA coalition in 2024.
		And at least in New York, the Mama Donnie results show men 18 to 29 were a huge constituency that broke form.
		So I would just say, like, the reports of a permanent new MAGA coalition in America, I think, were premature.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		And I misspoke a bit about the SNAP EBT cards.
		That initiative actually has started rolling out here on the USDA's website about the SNAP EBT modernization.
		The issue is that the EBT fraud, including the use of card skimming to steal benefits, is on the rise.
		Modernizing EBT, including the introduction of chip cards for SNAP EBT, is an important step to ensure that SNAP benefits are protected.
		As of August 28th, 2024, that new standard to add those chips in is officially published, and states are beginning to add chips to their EBT cards.
		And that initiative is going to be rolling out over time.
		It looks like chip cards have already been rolled out in California.
		Other states are working on it, and some other states have it in progress.
		Rick is in Los Angeles, California, on our line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Rick.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
		You had another Rick from Los Angeles.
		I just want to touch on what he said about the $20 hour workers for SAS Fuse in Los Angeles.
		Yeah, everyone you go to, they're all Hispanic.
		They have to be able to speak English and Spanish.
		The only blacks they hire at McDonald's, Burger King, wherever you go, is black security of guards.
		You've got to be a security guard.
		The only black that they hire at the same time.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		We're about out of time.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Rick, do you have a question for our guest?
unidentified		Yeah, the question is, California lost over $24 billion if they don't know what happened to.
		Where did Gavin Newsom get his $100 million for the 50 proposal number 50?
		I heard he got it from FEMA, which was also going to go to repair the La Cedina fires last January.
		He took it from that.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		I'm not really sure what he's referencing.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm not.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		And let's just hear from Ron in North Carolina on our line for independence.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, Ron.
unidentified		Hey, good morning.
		Good show today.
		I come from a school that I kind of look at, I try to look at a macro picture, and I feel that Wall Street has privatized so much in America.
		And the factor of squeezing profits out of one thing after another is part of the problem.
		It seems like since deregulation, the wealth divide in America has grown a lot, and it feels like politicians, so many are courted by lobbyists that the system's skewed.
		So people in the middle, like myself, who I work very hard, I'm going to ought to see my health care for my family go from $670 subsidized per month to $2,500 per month.
		So I think there's like 22 million of us that are caught in the middle that are working hard.
		And it just seems like we need to push this down another year as far as the subsidies, even though it's going to cost.
		But I feel like there are too many people that work too hard, that have too much on their back, that are going to be hurt if this isn't extended another year.
		We need to bring health care costs down in America.
		It's obviously something that's being talked about and worked on, but the wealth divide is a sign of we've lost our bearings some.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		So Ron, just because we're about out of time, I'm going to let Chris go ahead and respond.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and I'm really sorry to hear of your premium increase.
		It's devastating.
		And the reason that this issue is so charged right now is so many people are facing that sort of increase, which is a flaw in the original design of Obamacare.
		But yeah, I definitely agree.
		I think eight years after we deregulated investment banking, we had the worst economic collapse since the Great Recession.
		And wealth inequality has continued, as we've discussed earlier, to be a huge, though unacknowledged issue in a lot of mainstream political discourse.
		And I think the caller is right.
		You know, both major parties, you know, it's expensive to run campaigns and win elections.
		And they are heavily reliant on a donor class, which is very forthright about what it does and does not want.
		And we're seeing the fallout from that.
		Now, the one factoid I would throw in is that I believe keeping the premium benefits on the ACA is supposed to run around $38 billion for a year.
		And Trump just sent $40 billion to the leader of Argentina, who is a crony.
		So there is a very straightforward issue before us of what are the priorities of our government.
		Is it to look after the common good or is it to punish your enemies and reward your friends?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you very much, Chris Lehman, who is the DC Bureau Chief for The Nation magazine.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Really appreciate your time this morning.
chris lehmann ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Kimberly.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Thanks to all of our callers this hour, but we have a little bit more time of our show today.
		And coming up, we're going to be in open forum.
		You can start calling in now.
		Our line for Democrats is 202-748-8000.
		For Republicans, 202-748-8001.
		And for Independents, 202-748-8002.
		We'll be right back.
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.
		Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, White House Historical Association President Stuart McLaurin, author of The People's House Miscellany on the History of the White House and White House Related Trivia.
		He'll also talk about the changes that presidents and first ladies have made to the White House's interior and exterior, going back to President Thomas Jefferson.
stuart mclaurin ▲ ● ▼		The president never and his family never had a place to go outside and enjoy like we have a deck or a patio.
		And so Truman broke up that colonnade of the South Portico and right in the middle, put a balcony off the residence level of the White House so the family could go out there and enjoy fresh air.
		And very controversial.
		People thought it ruined the look of the White House.
		Congress was not going to fund it.
		Truman said, I'll find the money and do it anyway.
		And he built it.
		And in this book, there are quotes by a number of presidents who said, thank you, Harry Truman.
unidentified		White House Historical Association President Stuart McLaurin.
		Tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A, you can listen to Q ⁇ A and all our podcasts wherever you get your podcast or on our free C-SPAN Now app.
		C-SPANShop.org is C-SPAN's online store.
		Browse through our latest collection of C-SPAN products, apparel, books, home decor, and accessories.
		There's something for every C-SPAN fan, and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations.
		Shop now or anytime at c-span shop.org.
		Washington Journal continues.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back.
		We're in an open forum, ready to take your calls with comments about public affairs or whatever news is on your mind.
		Before we get to those calls, just an update with President Trump making comments over the weekend about those ACA subsidies that are at the heart of the government shutdown debate.
		Here's a headline from the Washington Post.
		Trump says, give ACA subsidies to people.
		He urges a pivot from paying insurers and aims to press Democrats on ending the shutdown.
		President Donald Trump on Saturday urged Senate Republicans to redirect funding for Affordable Care Act subsidies away from health insurers and towards average Americans.
		His latest gambit to pressure Democrats as the government shutdown snarls air traffic, leaves food stamp benefits in limbo, and furloughs roughly 650,000 federal workers.
		The Senate remained at an impasse on Saturday, a day after Republicans rejected a Democratic proposal that would have extended soon-to-expire ACA subsidies, a key sticking point in negotiations, for a year while reopening the government.
		Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican of South Dakota, said he would keep the chamber in session until there is an agreement to reopen the government.
		He continued to insist that any action to address health care costs, including Trump's proposal, would have to be after the Senate resumes funding.
		Now, to your calls in open forum, we'll start with Perry in Warren, Michigan on our line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Perry.
unidentified		Good morning, Kimberly.
unidentified		Can you hear me?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I can.
unidentified		How are you doing today?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Fine, thank you.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		What's your comment?
unidentified		Well, I just pray and hope and wish that in our midterm elections, everyone just vote Democrat and we can get the House and the Senate and impeach this person that's sitting in the White House so we can get something normal going again.
		I mean, this guy just up in there, him and his family and his buddies are just ripping this country off.
		And that's my comment.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Tim is in Rocharan, Texas, on our line for independence.
		Good morning, Tim.
unidentified		Good morning.
		First of all, thank you for taking my call.
		I would just like to, my comment is simply this: I would like to remind everyone that the Democratic system that we have, the two-party system that we have, is the minority and the majority, not Republicans and Democrats.
		The Republican Party, the Democrat Party, those are both two of many privately held political parties.
		We've got to stop, even in the media, of giving free advertising to these two parties because what we've wound up with is a bunch of representatives who represent their party agendas blindly and have stopped talking to each other.
		Once we get to the place where we are no longer actually looking at the issues and we're just looking at what my party says is best, we've stopped having representative government.
		And I urge Mike Johnson to bring the House back into session and stop depriving people of their representatives' abilities to vote on the issue.
		Thank you.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Bob is in Silver Spring, Maryland, on our line for Republicans.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Bob.
unidentified		Yes, I'd just like to remind everyone that communism first failed in this country with the impact of the just make sure to turn down the volume on your TV, Bob, and then go ahead.
		Oh, okay.
		Okay, let me, that communism first failed in this country with a Mayflower Compact.
		The Mayflower Compact said everything would be held in common and everybody would be provided for their needs.
		It failed the first year.
		Everyone starved to death.
		They figured out a simple solution.
		They gave everybody a portion of the land and said, do what you can with it.
doug casey ▲ ● ▼		So people then began to develop more than they needed so that there was access to provide for those in need.
unidentified		Communism fails because there is no incentive.
unidentified		Thank you very much.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Jeffrey is in Brooklyn, New York on our line for Democrats.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Jeffrey.
unidentified		Oh, hello.
		Yeah, I'm a Democrat.
		Listen, Trump did some good things, but he's got to come to the table.
		He's the one that can open up the government.
		The Republicans aren't going to do a thing until he says.
		They don't do nothing unless he says.
		So he's the one that can open up the government.
		I mean, we got to get off of this Democrat Republic thing.
		We all Americans.
		We all got to act like that, man, and get off Republicans, Democrats.
		I mean, there's a lot of people out here.
		Like, I'm eating, man, my family eating.
		A lot of people out here ain't eating.
		That's not right.
		Both parties, they families eating.
		They're not missing no meals.
		And you got people out here struggling, and they ain't going to open up the government because they're getting their paycheck.
		So why should they care?
		They can't pay their families eating.
		They live in good.
		You got people that's living paycheck to paycheck.
		This open up the government.
		I mean, like, listen.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		So, Jeffrey, what do you think of the Democrats' demands that the health care subsidies be extended for a year as a condition for reopening government?
unidentified		Yeah.
		That's a market.
		Maybe you can help me.
		I can't understand.
		If, say, if the Democrats didn't close down the government, the enrollment was going to still go into effect, even if they wouldn't have closed down the government, right?
		I'm not really sure.
		Is that how that works?
		It still would have gone through, even if they didn't close down the government, the premiums is going to go up anyway, right?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		The premiums were going to go up anyway, but the actual out-of-pocket cost that people will pay, those people who were receiving the subsidies, will be significantly higher if those subsidies go away.
unidentified		Yeah, I understand that part, but the government's still, I mean, the premiums is going to go up if they close down the government or not, right?
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but not to the same extent.
unidentified		It's closed on the government, Warden.
		It still was going to go up anyway.
		They could have maybe could have talked it out down the line, but that don't even make no sense.
		The Democrats that closed the government in the premium, they wasn't going to stop it anyway.
		They still was going to go up anyhow.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		So if you bear with me for a second, Jeffrey, I'm going to read from KFF, which is a health policy research institute, because they kind of describe the core of the issue here.
		And it says, the amount health insurers charge for coverage on the ACA marketplace, that's Obamacare or those exchanges, is rising 26% on average in 2026.
		In states that run their own marketplaces, the average benchmark silver premium plan on which the tax credit calculation is based is rising 17% next year.
		In states that use healthcare.gov, those premiums are rising an average of 30%.
		So that's what you're talking about, that premiums are going up anyway.
		And then it goes on to say, most enrollees would face even sharper increases in what they pay if the ACA's enhanced premium tax credits expire.
		This 26% is the increase in the amount the insurers are charging, which is not in most cases what enrollees pay.
		22 million out of 24 million marketplace enrollees currently receive a tax credit.
		The amount subsidized enrollees pay is not what the insurers charge, but rather a sliding scale share of their household income based on a formula set by Congress.
		If Congress extends the enhanced tax credits, the amount subsidized enrollees pay each month will remain about the same, even though the amount insurers are charging is increasing sharply.
		Does that make more sense now, Jeffrey?
unidentified		Yeah, I understand what you just read and everything like that.
		Only thing I'm not understanding is by the Democrats closing down the government, is that going to stop that from rising right now?
		Or do they have to speak about it and get it to stop it from rising?
		What I'm trying to say, maybe I'm not saying tonight, by them closing, shutting down the government, is that going to stop the premiums from going into effect anyway while the government no, you're being clear, Jeffrey.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		The premiums are set to expire, regardless of whether the government is open or closed.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Democrats are arguing that in order for them to vote to reopen the government, they need a promise that these subsidies will be extended.
unidentified		Hi, bud.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		We're going to go on to Betty in Blacksburg, South Carolina on our line for Republicans.
		Good morning, Betty.
unidentified		Yes.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Betty, it sounds like you're pretty far from your phone.
		We can't hear you well.
		Can you move a little bit closer and make sure your volume is down on your TV?
unidentified		My volume's down off TV all the way down.
		Okay.
		Anyhow, he ain't the one that shut the government down.
		It was the Democrats.
		The Democrats ain't opening it up because of the fact that they want money for the illegals for insurance.
		It ain't the Republicans doing this.
		It is the Democrats.
		I know all these people sees all this stuff.
		It goes on.
denise in florida ▲ ● ▼		What I've seen has been all Democrats, not Republicans.
unidentified		The Republicans is not doing this.
		And they're not going to do nothing unless they get what they want.
		Once they get what they want, and they ain't doing it to their own people, Democrats, the Democrats that's not far.
		And they're still doing it to the ones that ain't.
		So they're making them suffer too.
		So, you know, until they, and he, I don't blame him for not opening Trump or doing anything.
		I hope he stands his ground because I don't think we ought to be paying the illegals when they don't give, they don't pay the American people.
		The American people don't, they the taxpayers, the ones that pays, and the Democrats, they want everything free from the Democrats, not the American people.
		To me, it sounds like they hate the American people for my son.
		Because everything you know was my district.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Let's hear from Reggie in Pennsylvania, sorry, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on our line for independence.
		Good morning, Reggie.
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		It's not different.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Can you turn down the volume on your TV, please, Reggie, and then go ahead with your comment?
unidentified		The comment I wanted to make was about it's appalling that Trump wants the stadium named after him when he's done so much to gut the DMV from its projects, its employment, and taking the FBI away from Greenbelt, Maryland.
		And I think the stadium should be named after Mary and Barry, and that's all I want to call and say.
		Thank you.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		So the story that Reggie's referring to has been reported in multiple places.
		Here's a story from ESPN that, according to sources, Trump wants the commander's new DC stadium named for him.
		This is according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation, told ESPN that President Donald Trump wants the Washington commanders to name their planned $3.7 billion stadium after him.
		A senior White House source said there have been back-channel communications with a member of the commander's ownership group led by Josh Harris to express Trump's desire to have the domed stadium in the nation's capital bear his name.
		The new stadium is being built on the old RFK Stadium site that served as a team's home from 1961 to 1996.
		Maria is in Silver Spring, Maryland on our line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Maria.
unidentified		Good morning.
		It's so frustrating when some facts are not corrected in time.
		Everybody knows undocumented immigrants are not eligible for the only receive care and emergencies.
		But anyway, this is definitely a Republican shutdown.
		Why are they so set on a clean CR?
		By October, there should have been a whole new 25-26 budget in place.
		They only have a clean CR so they don't have to commit to anything and they can just go back on whatever they're promising in a month.
		So this is ridiculous.
		This is ridiculous.
		And they have not even why are Democrats demand to at least extend the credit for one year so that they could come up with maybe that plan that they say they have in a year because they don't have anything.
		So it's great that Democrats are holding the line because this is a Republican shutdown.
		And one more thing.
		The question that a caller asked earlier to the examiner person about access versus useful information was excellent, and the guy's reply was pathetic.
		What good is more access to the president if the information he provides out of mouth is useless?
		He has nothing useful to say and they won't even correct or follow up or hold him accountable.
		While at Biden, they would be screaming all the time their questions and he would only, of course, give them access when he has something useful to say.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		So Maria, your line is cutting in and out, but I think we have your point.
		Let's hear from Richard in Ohio on our line for independence.
		Good morning, Richard.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I think the Democrats should let the public know, let the people know more about why they're giving $40 billion to Venezuela, Argentina.
		And I don't think the Democrats express themselves too clearly.
		President Trump is expressing himself very clear why he's giving the money, but it seems like both parties are hypocrites, and it's the good cop and the bad cop.
		And the Democrats are going to eventually lose this battle because they're scared to actually talk about the $40 billion that they're giving to Argentina and talking about why they're giving so much money to Israel.
		And Trump is going to win this battle.
		And the Democrats are going to be looking stupid at the end because they're not getting the word out to the people enough.
		Thank you.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Tim is in Syracuse, New York on our line for Republicans.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Tim.
unidentified		Hi, love your show, and I love the form.
michael flynn ▲ ● ▼		I think the biggest challenge when the caller before was talking about health care, I've worked in, I'm a Republican in a completely 100% Democrat state, the largest tax state in the country.
michael flynn ▲ ● ▼		And the thing is, my health insurance for my family is $36,000 a year.
unidentified		That's $3,000 a month to pay for health care.
		And at the end of the day, I think all Americans need to pay their fair share.
		I think when my friend is a school bus driver, his health insurance is $181 a month.
		And the part is, is that right now, we're not treating all Americans fairly.
		And I think right now we need to work and focus on joining the parties together.
		I think both parties are accountable for the failure and the demise of everyone that's been calling in that's upset about their health insurance, that's upset that they don't have a job, they're upset that they're talking about Medicare or Medicare being taken away or Social Security taken away.
		1940, Social Security had 16 or 19 people for every recipient.
		Today we have only three.
		If we keep losing jobs and people that cannot have a job that makes a living wage, that's a big problem.
		And I just think at the end of the day, you know what?
		As far as I'm concerned, a lot of people are only worried about themselves.
		They're worried about their pension from their school district or fire department.
		There's abuse in all facets of our government.
		We need to come together as a whole.
		I believe that personally, 435 congressmen, 100 senators, even the president and vice president need to be replaced.
		The only way we're going to fix it for Americans.
		One last thing.
		All these people talk about immigrants are illegals.
		I know why there's one thing of people saying that I don't want immigrants in this country, but I also know why people do want immigrants in this country.
		New York State is losing population.
		We need the immigrants to maintain our position in the House of Representatives.
		When the census comes out in four and a half years, we're going to recount the ballots and the votes.
		That's why I think we've opened up the borders through Biden, because we know that New York State's going to lose another two seats.
		Countries or states like New York and California, all the major Democrat cities are going to struggle with this.
		And that's just my thought on it.
		I don't know.
		My goal today was really to bring America together.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Ann is in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on our line for Democrats.
		Good morning, Ann.
unidentified		Good morning.
		My comment is about the Supreme Court and President Trump.
		Why would President Trump do anything that's positive, run a rough shot over the lower courts when it's ruled against him when he knows the Supreme Court, nine times out of ten, going to rule in his favor?
		I think that the voters, the American people, also, instead of marching on Washington, need to focus their attention on the Supreme Court.
		President Trump reminds me of the child that misbehaved in school and uh, and runs to his mother, even though he misbehaved, and the mother, instead of talking to the child about his misbehave, would side with the child regardless against the teachers.
		I don't see any right in any of this.
		That's my comment.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Michael is in Washington Dc on our line for Independence.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning Michael.
unidentified		Good morning I. Uh, I just wanted to say that uh, we all need to remember that we have the government we deserve.
		When we argue about crumbs, you know, about snap, and about um uh Medicaid and and and and and uh, social Security, when the government, our elected leaders, are given um, the largest, the lion's share actually, of socialism, uh and um subsidies go to uh, the wealthiest corporations in this country.
		Some of them are the wealthiest in the world.
		So why are we always pulling out each other and attacking one another for um, things that uh, we make appear to be big issues, when the people who are robbing us blind are the people at the top these, these corporate leaders, these executives, these corporations?
		So I just want to reiterate again, you know we have the government we deserve.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Gene is in Illinois on our line for Republicans.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning Gene.
unidentified		Good morning great program.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		Yes, I'm a retired first responder who earned his pension the hard way and also a United States Marine Vietnam combat veteran.
		I think, with all this negotiations that's going on with foreign countries, we should be able to come back down to our level and form a special negotiating team for both sides and sit down and hammer this out, because what makes me sick is to see uniformed personnel standing in the child lines.
		That's unacceptable.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Anthony is in Calhoun Georgia, on our line for Democrats.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Good morning Anthony.
unidentified		Hello uh.
		Thanks for taking my call, uh.
		My comment uh relates to the position of money in politics.
		Since the UH Supreme Court allowed unlimited input of money, it makes it, in my opinion, impossible for to have a functioning government that serves the general public.
		Money allows a few individuals to skew the situation so that we don't address the things that are important to the general public.
		So I think the way to improve our government, the way to improve the country as a whole, is to remove money from the politics through some process.
		If we can achieve that, I think we can move on to turn limitations and improve the quality of our political system.
		Thank you.
kimberly adams ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you to everyone who called in for Open Forum and the other segments of our show.
		That's it today for Washington Journal.
		But coming up right after this, we are going to have another edition of the Ceasefire Show.
		We have Washington Journal coming back tomorrow for another edition at 7 a.m. Eastern.
		But coming up next, we're going to have Ceasefire.
		Thank you.
dasha burns ▲ ● ▼		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.
		Former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazil and former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel.
		Thank you both for joining me.
		It is the Ronna and Donna show today.
		Appreciate you being here, ladies.
		Let's start with something you can both relate to.
		These jobs, your former titles.

▲