| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Commissioner Dr. Marty McCary will talk about the agency's decision to remove black box warnings from hormone replacement therapy treatments. | |
| And then CNN Senior Congressional Reporter Annie Greyer will talk about the past week in Congress, including the end of the longest federal shutdown in history and renewed efforts to release the Epstein files. | ||
| Washington Journal is next. | ||
| Join the conversation. | ||
| This is Washington Journal for Saturday, November 15th. | ||
| This week, House lawmakers voted to reopen the government, ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history. | ||
| Also, this week in the House, a discharge petition for a bill to release files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein got enough signatures, teeing up a full vote on the floor next week. | ||
| And the Trump administration announced the framework for a trade deal with four Latin America countries to lower or drop tariffs on certain goods not produced in the U.S., like coffee and beef. | ||
| Those are just a few of the stories C-SPAN has been following this week. | ||
| And to start today's program, we're asking you, what's your top news story of the week? | ||
| Here are the lines. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text your comments to 202-748-8003. | ||
| Be sure to include your name and city. | ||
| You can also post a question or comment on Facebook at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN or on X at C-SPANWJ. | ||
| Good morning, and thank you for being with us. | ||
| We'll get to your calls and comments in just a few moments. | ||
| But while you are dialing in, one of those top news stories, the government shutdown ending after 43 days of record in U.S. history, this is the headline from Politico Trump Signs Bill ending longest government shutdown in U.S. history. | ||
| It says President Donald Trump signed legislation late Wednesday to end the government shutdown. | ||
| This banned 43 days, punting the next funding deadline into late January. | ||
| It goes on to say that under the bill Trump signed Wednesday night, funding for most federal agencies will run out at midnight on January 30th. | ||
| The House passed the funding measure earlier in the evening after eight Senate Democrats broke with their party to advance the package Monday night. | ||
| Those eight Senate Democrats, full screen there on the screen showing who they are. | ||
| It included Catherine Cortez-Masto, Democrat of Nevada, Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Fetterman, Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassen of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Angus King, an independent out of Maine who typically caucuses with Democrats, Jackie Rosen of Nevada and Janine Shaheen of New Hampshire. | ||
| Those are the eight Democrats who voted to reopen the government. | ||
| The government now reopen, but parts of the country still trying to get back on track, including travel and also food benefits like SNAP. | ||
| This is the headline from The Hill Agriculture Secretary, full SNAP benefits to be restored Monday. | ||
| Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Thursday said that the benefits will be restored in full by Monday during an interview on CNN. | ||
| It says that SNAP payments for citizens were threatened as the Trump administration warned against using contingency funds to fuel the benefit program for states despite protests from Democratic lawmakers. | ||
| The Supreme Court ultimately weighed in by reinstating and then blocking full assistance benefits for the month of November. | ||
| Families and food banks across the country were preparing to grapple with the loss of critical support as members of Congress, as members of Congress, remained at an impasse. | ||
| Brooke Rollins made those comments on Thursday during a CNN interview. | ||
| Here is a clip. | ||
| First of all, when can all SNAP recipients across every state expect to receive their full benefits? | ||
| Well, I just left USDA to come join you. | ||
| It's great to be here. | ||
| We are immediately last night began moving out, making sure that the program continues unabated, starting once the government reopened. | ||
| And hopefully, by the end of this week, most will receive it at the very latest on Monday. | ||
| But keep in mind, the SNAP program is funded by the federal government, but it is the 50 states and 50 different infrastructures that move that money out, which is what made it so complicated, the patchwork. | ||
| But it's moving, it's coming. | ||
| And for those who really depend on it, good news is on the way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and as you know, the courts, this all worked its way through the courts as well. | |
| And they said part of the confusion was how USDA handled it with first saying that it wasn't going to give funds. | ||
| I believe we have a full screen, use the contingency funds, and then use up to 50% and then 65%, and that the partial funding made it confusing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to play a little bit of what we heard from Najee Kennard. | |
| She was a SNAP recipient. | ||
| She received her partial benefits, and she was on the show yesterday. | ||
| Let's listen to her. | ||
| It's been very difficult. | ||
| The uncertainty can really put you in a mental anguish. | ||
| I know I'm not going through this by myself. | ||
| It's unacceptable. | ||
| Food should not be a flawed bargain. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Everyone should have the right to eat. | |
| Do you take any accountability for the chaos that people like her experienced during? | ||
| Well, listen, I hear Najee, and we heard so many cases like that. | ||
| 15 different times, the Democrats voted not to fund SNAP. | ||
| 15. | ||
| And this effort to put the blame on President Trump or on USDA is, from my perspective, comical. | ||
| It is irrational. | ||
| It is unreasonable. | ||
| Again, it was a clean resolution. | ||
| I know we've all talked about this ad nauseum for 40 plus days now, but the idea that those Democrats over and over and over again, minus two in the Senate, voted no on fully funding and opening the government. | ||
| This is completely 100% basically the results of the radical left and AOC running the party. | ||
| I give great kudos to the seven senators in the House, I think eight or nine, I'm sorry, seven in the Senate, eight or nine in the House that eventually opened the government up. | ||
| The government reopening after a historic 43-day shutdown is one of the news stories we've been following this week here at C-SPAN. | ||
| But we want to know your top news story of the week for the first part of today's program. | ||
| We'll start with Bernard, who's calling from Dallas, Texas, on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Bernard. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Republicans that working clarify, Republicans think these benefits, Social Security, Medicare, came from Republicans. | ||
| Democrats created all these benefits. | ||
| Republicans don't give you anything. | ||
| They give cash back to rich people, but you keep voting for them. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Bernard in Texas. | ||
| Joe is calling from New Providence, New Jersey. | ||
| Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mark, good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| I just want to talk about this year. | ||
| They keep talking about the FC files. | ||
| And Republicans, you know, don't want to put it out. | ||
| The Democrats had it first, and they never put it out. | ||
| So what's the difference? | ||
| And then these people calling saying that the United States is the richest country in the world. | ||
| I mean, how can we be the richest country in the world when we got a, what is it, a $39 trillion debt? | ||
| How can we be the richest country in the world? | ||
| And let's see. | ||
| Now with the, what you call it, the shutdown, why did that have to last 40-some days? | ||
| The Democrats kept on saying no, no, no. | ||
| And then finally, we got some other Democrats that say yes, got their, they got their head stinking again. | ||
| But the Democrats don't think. | ||
| They just act. | ||
| And that's all I have to say about that. | ||
| I mean. | ||
| That was Joe in New Jersey. | ||
| Edward is calling from Kalamazoo, Michigan. | ||
| Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Edward. | ||
| What's your top news story of the week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I have to go back to the ICE arresting and kidnapping and detaining. | |
| And this is reminiscent or repeat of the first Trump administration when they were doing this horrible, cruel, I don't know, it's horrible, it's cruel, it's unjust. | ||
| They're separating families in the United States. | ||
| And the incident that I learned about was in Durango, Colorado, there were two kids going to school with their father, and they were arrested off the street by ICE. | ||
| And the two kids, I think one is 15 and one is 12, they were here seeking asylum. | ||
| I thought that the Trump administration had abandoned the family separation policy. | ||
| No, they haven't. | ||
| And by the way, these two kids have no criminal record. | ||
| Their father has no criminal record. | ||
| Their mother lives in, she's still in Colorado. | ||
| And this is how cruel, listen up, MAGA people. | ||
| This is how cruel Trump is. | ||
| He took the two kids, ICE took the two kids and flew them from Colorado to someplace in Texas, some detainment facility in Texas. | ||
| Now, the father went somewhere else. | ||
| I don't know where. | ||
| I think the father may be in Texas. | ||
| I mean, they took him and arrested him and they imprisoned him. | ||
| And the mother is back in. | ||
| And then people protested this. | ||
| And then this is what ICE did to the protesters. | ||
| They started shooting rubber bullets. | ||
| And this shooting of rubber bullets was kind of a thing in Trump's first administration because cruelty is the point. | ||
| I'd love to have one of the Trumpers come on and explain this family separation policy. | ||
| It's appalling. | ||
| They're not arresting high-value or high-threat criminals. | ||
| They're arresting families. | ||
| So that's sad that we have to do this again. | ||
| That was Edward in Michigan. | ||
| And Edward, I believe this is the article, in an article about what you were just talking about. | ||
| The headline, ICE says, father who was detained in Durango, Colorado, was, quote, mistaken for someone else. | ||
| The father detained with his two children by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in southwestern Colorado earlier this week was wrongfully identified by agents, a senior official with ICE Denver field office said on Friday. | ||
| This article, by the way, is from October 31st. | ||
| It says the official Gregory Davies testified in a federal court hearing on Friday that 45-year-old Fernando Jamilio Solano was mistaken for someone else. | ||
| Immigration agents were looking for Jamilio Solano was taking his 12-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son to school in Durango when they were stopped by ICE agents and taken into custody. | ||
| All three remained in ICE custody as of Friday. | ||
| Word of the family's detention, combined with now viral videos, prompted protests outside ICE's Durango facility. | ||
| It says the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said on Thursday that its investigation investigating the use of force by an anonymous masked agent against a woman at the protest, as well as any, quote, state criminal law violations during the incident. | ||
| That agent's actions could be seen in multiple videos. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Let's talk with Philip, who's calling from Springfield, Massachusetts, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Philip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, this is Philip. | |
| I want to say thank you for taking my call. | ||
| And I just think the top story is the $2,000 rebate check that the president offered for the American people. | ||
| And I hope he follows through with it because the people need help. | ||
| And I feel that the Democrats held out as long as they could for the health care. | ||
| And I just hope that everything works out fine for the people in this country because we're hurting. | ||
| And I just want to say thank you for taking my call and thank you again. | ||
| That was Philip in Massachusetts. | ||
| Robert is calling from Michigan, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Robert. | ||
| What's your top news story this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| This is Robert from Fashistown of Caspian, Michigan, which is related with Iron River, Michigan. | ||
| I believe my top story is this Epstein business. | ||
| And, you know, I mean, Trump is trying to push this stuff on Clinton and stuff. | ||
| He's the one that should be guilty by association. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, that's a criminal right there. | |
| I mean, if anything, he should be found guilty, criminal, you know, associating with this Epstein character. | ||
| And everybody knows that he's just as bad as Epstein. | ||
| You know, the guy's a pervert, you know, and he shouldn't even be in office. | ||
| That was Robert in Michigan. | ||
| Another story from this week, this coming out yesterday on CNBC: Trump cuts tariffs on goods like coffee, banana, and beef and bid to slash consumer prices. | ||
| The article says that President Donald Trump on Friday exempted key agricultural imports like coffee, cocoa, bananas, and certain beef products from his higher tariff rates. | ||
| It says the move comes as Trump faces political blowback for high prices at U.S. grocery stores. | ||
| Some distributors of beef, coffee, chocolate, and other common food items have raised prices as Trump's tariff took hold earlier this year, adding to pressures on household budgets created by decades-high inflation in recent years. | ||
| Trump actions Friday also exempted a range of fruits, including tomatoes, avocados, coconuts, oranges, and pineapple, along with coffee. | ||
| The tariff reductions extend to black and green tea and spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. | ||
| It says the move marks a reversal for Trump, who has insisted tariffs are necessary to protect U.S. businesses and workers. | ||
| He has contended U.S. consumers will not ultimately pay for the higher duties. | ||
| Those are some of the stories that we've been following this week. | ||
| We're asking you for your top news story this week. | ||
| You can go ahead and give us a call. | ||
| The lines Democrats 202-748-8000, Republicans 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can also text us at 202-748-8003. | ||
| Let's hear from Larry, who's calling from Georgia on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Larry. | ||
| What's your top news story? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Are you today? | ||
| I have two topic I would like to come in on. | ||
| One is the Epstein file. | ||
| You know, I know Trump is guilty of whatever he did. | ||
| He don't want to want them to release them. | ||
| If he didn't do anything innocent, and I mean innocent, he would let the old files go. | ||
| And another thing I would like to comment on is the government shutdown. | ||
| Everybody knows that Trump is behind this shutdown. | ||
| Okay, if he wants to negotiate it with Democrat, Trump should have got together and negotiated with them. | ||
| You know, if that wasn't going to be anything come out of it, at least he would have did that. | ||
| He didn't sit down and do anything. | ||
| So everybody know that this is a Trump shutdown, like it was before. | ||
| Okay, that's all I'd like to say this morning. | ||
| Thank you, and you have a great day. | ||
| That was Larry in Georgia. | ||
| John is calling from New York, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, thanks for technical. | |
| I was watching this thing with the BBC, and that just came on the news, but I don't watch the news like I used to. | ||
| And they edited the comments that President Trump made during, I think, January 6th thing, and they changed the whole narrative that he said to go down there and fight, fight, fight, and do this, that, and the other thing. | ||
| He says, go down there. | ||
| And he didn't say that. | ||
| They made it sound like he was trying to instigate a lot of problems. | ||
| But the other thing, a suggestion I'd like to make is I really like to hear, I'm an independent, I'd like to hear from all sides of the spectrum, but you have not taken seven or eight calls already, but you haven't had one Republican caller call in. | ||
| It'd be nice if you treated all your listeners with the same respect that you do. | ||
| You should allow some Republicans to get in. | ||
| And then the other thing I noticed on all your hosts, they always, especially Greta, if a Republican comes in and makes a comment, she reaches for a laptop, she reaches for the newspaper, she rebuts everything they say, and somebody can call up on the Democrat line and say, oh, he's a fascist, he's this, he did this, he did that, and she never interrupts that. | ||
| But I'm going to just say one thing. | ||
| You don't take my word for it, but you had about eight calls already, having one Republican could call her. | ||
| You should allow some Republican calls in. | ||
| Well, John, I will tell you, I have been waiting for a Republican caller to pop up on my screen. | ||
| I can see my phone lines right here, and nobody has been calling in. | ||
| I would be happy to take Republican calls, but I can't force anyone to call in. | ||
| So I have someone on the line right now. | ||
| So I'll go to Lyle, who is calling from South Dakota on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Get one in. | ||
| Good morning, Lyle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning. | |
| I would like to make a comment about the gentleman that called in about Trump and being a pervert and being a friend of Weinstein. | ||
| He's the one that kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago Club as membership. | ||
| And then there's FBI reports that he was an informer against him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that the news are that people that don't pay attention to all sides of the story only hear the side they want to hear. | |
| Lyle, where are you getting your news from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pardon? | |
| Where are you getting your news from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
When you are looking for both sides. | |
| Yeah, I get it about 10 places. | ||
| I watch CNN. | ||
| I watch Fox News. | ||
| I watch Newsmax. | ||
| I watch everything I can. | ||
| And you can get all sides of a story. | ||
| And then with a little common sense and curiosity, you can research and find out what's true quite easily. | ||
| That was Lyle in South Dakota. | ||
| Gene is calling from Miami, Florida on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Gene. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you today? | ||
| Doing well, Gene. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great. | |
| I'd like to make a couple of comments. | ||
| And first of all, thanks for examining some of these comments that do come in and making sure that the facts are correct. | ||
| I appreciate you sometimes, this organization doing that. | ||
| I'd like to talk about the funding for the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| Many Republicans are out there voting for this administration or have voted for this administration and have not come through with a policy that would change or amend the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| And today what we're arguing about, or what we're debating, I would say, is that the Affordable Care Act does fund the government, fund many people who can't afford to have insurance. | ||
| And when the costs go up in 2026, I think that there will be many Republicans, particularly in red states, that are seeing some of those subsidies go away, will find themselves not having insurance. | ||
| And I hope that they start to realize that the better arrangement is the subsidies that are aligned with the ACA. | ||
| The second thing I'd like to talk about is the importance of understanding what grifting means and that this current administration has financially gained substantial amounts of money over the last 10 or 11 months. | ||
| Whether it's the free plane that they receive from the foreign country in Qatar or Saudi Arabia, whether it is some of the meme coins that the president has aligned himself with, some of the real estate deals that his children are actually involved in. | ||
| I think that this country and the Republicans who are there have to at least have an open mind and a lens in looking at how many billions of dollars that this administration, particularly the Trump administration, has acquired over the last 10 or 11 months. | ||
| It's absolutely insane. | ||
| Thank you, and I appreciate your time. | ||
| That was Gene in Florida. | ||
| Gene talking about the ACA subsidies. | ||
| This from Politico earlier this week, House Dems to launch effort to force Obamacare subsidies extension. | ||
| It says House Democrats will take steps to force a vote on a three-year extension of expiring affordable care tax credits after Republicans refused to address the issue as part of a bipartisan Senate deal to reopen the federal government. | ||
| Excuse me, House Minority Whip Catherine Clark, Democrat of Massachusetts, announced in a closed-door caucus meeting Wednesday that leadership would pursue the extension through a procedural move known as a discharge petition, according to five people granted anonymity to share private party strategy. | ||
| Says this maneuver would allow rank and file members to bypass GOP leadership and compel a vote on the House floor on an underlying legislation. | ||
| If the discharge petition gets 218 signatures, while the tactic is rarely successful, Democrats hope to pressure swing district Republicans to lend their support. | ||
| It was House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Wednesday talking about this, talking about this effort. | ||
| Here is a clip. | ||
| Today, House Democrats will introduce legislation to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits for three years to make sure that tens of millions of Americans don't experience dramatically increased premiums, co-pays, and deductibles. | ||
| We believe that working class Americans, middle-class Americans, and everyday Americans deserve the same level of certainty that Republicans always provide to the wealthy, the well-off, and the well-connected. | ||
| The same level of certainty. | ||
| And so we're calling upon our Republican colleagues to join us and extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. | ||
| And we will be working hard today, tomorrow, and throughout the balance of this year to make sure that those Affordable Care Act tax credits are extended. | ||
| Now, Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. | ||
| They own the mess that has been created in the United States of America. | ||
| They own it. | ||
| In a few hours, we will convene on the House floor. | ||
| And our message to the American people is no matter what happens on the floor later on today, our promise to you remains the same. | ||
| House Democrats will continue to fight to make your life more affordable. | ||
| House Democrats will continue the fight to address the Republican health care crisis. | ||
| And House Democrats will fight to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. | ||
| This fight is not over. | ||
| We're just getting started. | ||
| The Politico story also noting, it says it's not clear whether a discharge petition could succeed in time to lower health care premiums set to increase next month. | ||
| Short of legislative action, 30 legislative days must pass after a bill is introduced before a petition can be filed to bring it to the floor for a vote. | ||
| Let's hear from Earl, who's calling from Indiana on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Earl. | ||
| What's your top news story this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, you finally got me through. | |
| Okay. | ||
| The Democrats will do anything to try and destroy this country. | ||
| You can see it. | ||
| If you can't see it, lady, I'll tell you, I've never, I'm 89 years old, and I have never heard such crap out of Democrats. | ||
| They have no idea what they're talking about. | ||
| Trump has taken so much for the last 10 years and tried to get this country freed now. | ||
| That's what they let in here in the four years of migrants in the office. | ||
| And Trump's trying to get this mess straightened out and the people won't get behind him. | ||
| All they want to do is call him an idiot or he don't know this and all that. | ||
| Well, get Mark Levin on there and let him tell you what's going on in this country. | ||
| So Earl, how's that your okay? | ||
| We're talking about top stories this morning. | ||
| Earl was close. | ||
| Let's go to Herb in High Point, North Carolina, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Herb. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Just want to say my top news story is those senators and congressmen or whoever they are was able to get a million dollar payday for themselves. | ||
| Working for the government and getting a check. | ||
| I guess that's just a bonus for being corrupt. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Herb, tell me a little bit more. | ||
| What's the million-dollar payday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
These guys legislated themselves a way to get a million dollars because on January 6th, they felt like someone was investigating this. | |
| They didn't ever go to court that I know of. | ||
| No jury says they can have it, but they get it because they legislated it in for themselves. | ||
| That's the top news story. | ||
| I don't get to say I want a million dollars and put it in the law. | ||
| Nobody gets to do that, but these guys did. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Herb in North Carolina, also in North Carolina. | ||
| It's Carolyn calling from Charlotte on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Carolyn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Ceasefin. | |
| I have a couple of issues going on with the top news stories. | ||
| I want to address a little guy that called in and said Trump was going to give them $2,000. | ||
| Trump got up and just said that there was no talking about it. | ||
| Nobody else knew about it. | ||
| Everybody else refuted the fact that he said that. | ||
| He gets up and says anything, and these people are gullible enough to believe it. | ||
| So sit back and wait for that $2,000 check if you want to. | ||
| One of my other issues I want to put in right quick was Elon Musk's father's quote on CNN, which is the basis of this whole Trump administration. | ||
| He was addressed to the fact that this country will be minority run in about 20 years, and he said that this country would probably go to the jungle. | ||
| And that was pretty much what this administration is trying to put all these minority people out and targeting the Democrats because the Democrats, a majority of black populations in these larger cities. | ||
| So it's all about race. | ||
| And this country will not address race. | ||
| It's a racist administration for sure. | ||
| And these old people are waiting, sitting back, waiting for this country to be quiet again. | ||
| And they need to stop this nonsense. | ||
| It is really, really crazy because if they started doing DNA, a lot of white people will end up being something else anyway. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Carolyn in North Carolina. | ||
| Deborah is calling from South Bend, Indiana, on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Deborah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Deborah, are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Deborah, go ahead and give us a call back. | ||
| It sounds like there's a bad connection. | ||
| Darryl is calling from North Dakota, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Daryl. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, America. | |
| God bless America, and Jesus is our Savior. | ||
| We got one thing as all Americans to do is we got to chill out on everything, everything, and just put Jesus as our number one person and stop blaming Trump for everything that's going on. | ||
| It's not just Trump doing everything. | ||
| He is the president. | ||
| He was elected as a president of the United States. | ||
| He had nothing to do with this shutdown. | ||
| That is all Congress. | ||
| You read your Constitution, your founding fathers, and everything. | ||
| He's been going by the law. | ||
| He's done everything he says he's been doing. | ||
| The fault of the shutdown and everything and all his problems is not the president, not the Congress, but the people of the United States. | ||
| They have half-truths, and basically they pick what they want to believe in and everything. | ||
| But they don't listen, wait for the entire thing to go through. | ||
| People in the United States are not patient at all. | ||
| I want to put a question to all you people in the United States. | ||
| Okay, say we all go to our own corners and say we all pick up our toys and go home. | ||
| Say the big people that you want to you're complaining about tax breaks to and everything that you don't get them. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Then can these big people that take the big companies that you're working for and do have benefits like health care or anything, pensions or whatever the big companies give the people if they were able to take that away because you didn't give them that money that their tax break that they're using to fund those things, | ||
| how would you be off there? | ||
| And basically what I'm saying is everybody just needs to chill down, worry about themselves. | ||
| The food stamps, it was brought in by the Democrats as a safety net, not as a lifestyle. | ||
| And there's a lot of people that do the lifestyle. | ||
| That was Daryl in North Dakota. | ||
| Let's hear from Pete in South Newbury, New Hampshire, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Pete. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning. | |
| Yes, I probably need my own show to go through all the things that I'd like to discuss, but I'll try to be quick here. | ||
| But a couple of things that stand out this week. | ||
| I think it's reprehensible that it took Mike Johnson 50 days to swear in the lady from Arizona. | ||
| But, you know, when you have a mafia leader that tells his soldier not to do it, that's what happens. | ||
| I think it's also reprehensible that we used to have three COVID branches of government, and now Pam Bondi works by tweet. | ||
| You know, I don't know if your callers know that the Attorney General is not supposed to be in contact with the White House as far as every time they want something done, that it's done. | ||
| You know, we have laws, and there is some kind of morals in this country. | ||
| And like I said, a COVID branch of government. | ||
| So that is not functioning at all. | ||
| And I just think it's really sad that he has sullied the reputation of this office so badly that his flock follows him. | ||
| But I think it's starting to break up. | ||
| And I think people are starting to see the light that this man is going to take us to economic collapse, moral collapse, and world collapse. | ||
| But he told us what he was going to do, Project 25, 2025. | ||
| And, you know, this blueprint was all out there for you. | ||
| So let's hope for the best. | ||
| That was Pete in New Hampshire. | ||
| Tony, calling from Buffalo, New York, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Tony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, man. | |
| And God bless America. | ||
| My topic of discussion is immigration. | ||
| I'm a Republican. | ||
| I'm all for getting violent criminals out of the country, repeat offenders. | ||
| Obviously, we can't have our women, children, and shop owners being robbed and mugged and raped and murdered, right? | ||
| I'm all for that. | ||
| The problem I have is they're painting all immigrants with the same brush because there are a lot of yes that came in illegal. | ||
| And what I recommend is a solution or one solution is let's call it the show me law. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Let's call it the show me law. | ||
| And what that is, is okay. | ||
| Um, for example, Yurandi Rodriguez, show me what you've done here. | ||
| How long have you been here? | ||
| I've been here three years. | ||
| Okay, what have you done? | ||
| Again, actions speak louder than words, right? | ||
| What have you done by facts, figures, numbers, dates, and times? | ||
| You know, not just what he says. | ||
| What have you done since you've been here for three years? | ||
| Well, I've worked for a you know tree and landscape company. | ||
| I've showed up every day. | ||
| I've never missed a day. | ||
| I pay taxes out of my paycheck. | ||
| He's a contributing member of society. | ||
| Okay, now, if we go to the same Yurani Rodriguez and he says, geez, I've been here three years and I've had a job for 10 minutes and then I've been in trouble several times. | ||
| Well, you know what? | ||
| Here's your ticket out of the country. | ||
| But the individual who's been working for those solid three years, paying taxes and helping and being a contributing member of society here in the United States, then we should give him no at this point. | ||
| You give him a five-year probation and then you expedite his citizenship. | ||
| You know, this country is all made up of immigrants. | ||
| And, you know, if we're going to bring all these factories back to the United States, all these companies back to the United States, who is going to build the factories? | ||
| Who's going to do the brick and mortar? | ||
| Who's going to pick all our lettuce and our fruits and vegetables in these fields that white Anglo-Saxon Americans don't want to do? | ||
| And, you know, I just think we should re-look at this immigration issue because there's going to be ICE agents. | ||
| And I have 32 years in law enforcement, and there's going to be ICE agents. | ||
| And unfortunately, I pray to the good Lord protect them. | ||
| But, you know, this is getting out of hand. | ||
| That was Tony in New York. | ||
| We are talking about your top news story of the week. | ||
| A previous caller bringing up a new member of the House being sworn in. | ||
| This is from the Associated Press. | ||
| Democrat Adelita Grajalva was sworn in as the newest member of Congress on Wednesday, more than seven weeks after she won a special election in Arizona to fill the House seat last held by her late father. | ||
| Grajalva was sworn in by House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday, shortly before the House returned to session to vote on a deal to fund the federal government. | ||
| After delivering a floor speech, Grajalva signed a discharge petition to eventually trigger a vote to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein, giving it the needed 218 signatures. | ||
| Grajalva's seating brings the partisan margin in the House to a narrow 219 to 214 Republican majority. | ||
| She vowed to continue her father's legacy, advocating for progressive policies on issues like environmentalism, labor rights, and tribal sovereignty. | ||
| From her floor speech on Wednesday after being sworn in, here is a clip of Adelita Gahalva. | ||
| It has been 50 days since the people of Arizona's 7th congressional district elected me to represent them. | ||
| 50 days that over 800,000 Arizonans have been left without access to the basic services that every constituent deserves. | ||
| This is an abuse of power. | ||
| One individual should not be able to unilaterally obstruct the swearing in of a duly elected member of Congress for political reasons. | ||
| Policy only works when everyone has a voice. | ||
| This includes the millions of people across the country who have experienced violence and exploitation, including Liz Stein and Jessica Michaels, both survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse. | ||
| They are here in the gallery with us this evening. | ||
| Thank you for being here. | ||
| Just this morning, House Democrats released more emails showing that Trump knew more about Epstein's abuses than he previously acknowledged. | ||
| It's past time for Congress to restore its role as a check and balance on this administration and fight for we, the American people. | ||
| We need to fight for our immigrant communities and veterans. | ||
| We need to stand up for our public schools, children, and educators. | ||
| We need to respect tribal sovereignty in our environment. | ||
| We need to stand up for LGBTQ plus rights because that's what the American people expect us to do. | ||
| Fight for them. | ||
| That is why I will sign the discharge petition right now to release the Epstein files. | ||
| We are taking your calls on your top news story this week. | ||
| Let's hear from William, who's calling from New York on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I just wanted to, I don't know, I woke up in a nightmare this morning. | ||
| I thought about July 4th, 2026, and what this country is going to look like with the excess authoritarianism that's going on here in the country. | ||
| I don't want to wake up on July 4th, 2026, and feel like I'm in Korea or China or anyplace else. | ||
| We've built this country over 249 years, and the Congress at this point has got to get their head out of the sand. | ||
| The president has the right to do certain things according to the Constitution, but Congress, Congress, and both sides of the aisle have got to stop this fighting. | ||
| Don't worry about where your money's coming from to get reelected, and don't worry about a primary, okay? | ||
| Just do the job that we pay you to do. | ||
| And I thank you, and I'm sorry for going off, but this is getting crazy. | ||
| They've just advocated every right and everything that they have to do, and they can control a lot of this. | ||
| They have the power of the purse. | ||
| Stop letting us go ahead and shoot boats out of the ocean. | ||
| They have power to take back, and it's time to do it. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was William in New York. | ||
| Michael is calling from New York as well, from Syracuse on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN. | |
| And God bless us all. | ||
| Let me start out with that. | ||
| I want to talk about the creepy dude Donald Trump and his beauty pageants. | ||
| I want everyone to look up Donald Trump and beauty pageant and see what they find out. | ||
| Michael, is this your top story this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It all has to do with the Epstein files. | |
| It all has to do with the Epstein files. | ||
| Just look it up and you'll see how creepy Donald Trump has been over the course of time. | ||
| Through the 90s, he went through modeling agencies and looking for young ladies to exploit. | ||
| And that was Michael in New York. | ||
| Chuck is calling from Pennsylvania on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Chuck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| The reason I'm going that when you showed Jeffries and he said he wanted to keep a bombing care for three more years, I was hoping that when they got back in, that on a bipartisan, if they were all going to get together and try to work out the health. | ||
| But it's obvious they're stuck on that three-year thing, and it's obvious we're going to end up closing the damn government again. | ||
| I'll just leave it at that. | ||
| And that was Chuck in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Kevin's calling from North Carolina, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Kevin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, how you doing? | |
| I'm glad that Ms. Gilhar got her way into session through Mike Johnson. | ||
| But I'm calling about the last person that called early from North Carolina. | ||
| He emphasized on what's happening now is for that bill to pass for them to get back in the house to open the government back up. | ||
| The main thing that happened was that now they slid in a provision where eight Republicans would be able to get $500,000 each phone they had that was tapped. | ||
| I mean, their home phone, phone at the office, and it's when we all not supported, but some of the people that work under them. | ||
| And that's $500,000 because they was in investigation. | ||
| Those are the ones that were in January 6th. | ||
| So it's eight Republicans, and the Republicans are already known. | ||
| So they never went to court for this or anything. | ||
| This is just a provision that's been in. | ||
| And once they signed and got this back into session, that's what they're looking for. | ||
| They're trying to repeal it now, but it's already in effect. | ||
| And I was just calling because that's what he was talking about. | ||
| And that is the news of the day. | ||
| That was Kevin in North Carolina. | ||
| Kathy is calling from Iowa, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Kathy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I guess my top news story is the Epstein files, but really related to the fact that now that this discharge petition has been signed and there were some additional emails and things released from the estate, I think it seems that there are maybe things are finally starting to turn where people are actually seeing the reality of the situation. | ||
| I know the first gentleman, Republican caller that you had this morning was talking about he wanted you to take more Republican calls and you didn't have any. | ||
| I think some people are finding it very hard to defend the indefensible and they've been had lots of excuses up until this point about locker room talk and women were lying and he's blowing up people on boats, but they're drug dealers and he's taking immigrants out of the country and it doesn't matter if they didn't commit a crime because their crime is being here illegally. | ||
| There's an excuse for everything. | ||
| But when it comes down to knowing that chill either knowing or actively participating in the abuse of children, there is no excuse for that. | ||
| And I think that's where we're finally seeing people start to stand up. | ||
| Marjorie Taylor Green, I'm no fan, but she's finally standing up. | ||
| John Thun would not go through with breaking the filibuster. | ||
| I feel like maybe there's some backbone growing in Congress in the Republicans. | ||
| They need to actually do their work. | ||
| They are a balance of power, not a rubber stamp. | ||
| So I feel like maybe we're finally starting to have some independent thinking going on and not just following blindly. | ||
| So that's my top news story. | ||
| That was Kathy in Iowa, Kathy, talking about the Epstein files. | ||
| This is a headline from Politico. | ||
| It says, House plans to vote Tuesday on releasing Epstein files. | ||
| It says House Republican leaders are planning to hold a vote Tuesday on legislation to force the release of federal files related to Jeffrey Epstein, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss internal plans ahead of a public announcement. | ||
| It says the tentative scheduling decision follows a successful effort by Thomas Massey of Kentucky and Rokana of California to sidestep Speaker Mike Johnson and force a floor vote on their bipartisan bill to compel the Justice Department to release all of its records related to the late convicted sex offender. | ||
| It says President Donald Trump has made repeated attempts to kill the effort, which continued in a series of Truth Social posts Friday. | ||
| But Johnson said Wednesday he intends to move quickly to hold a vote and put the matter to bed. | ||
| It says under current GOP plan, the House Rules Committee would approve a procedural measure Monday night to advance eight bills for floor consideration, including language to tee up the Epstein, language to tee up the Epstein legislation. | ||
| If that measure is approved on the floor, likely early Tuesday afternoon, debate and a final vote on the Epstein bill could immediately follow. | ||
| GOP leaders are considering whether to postpone the Epstein vote until Tuesday evening. | ||
| It also says scores of Republicans are expected to break ranks and support the bill, which would have been approved by the Senate and signed by, which would have to be approved by the Senate and signed by Trump to take effect. | ||
| Neither is likely, but the process could drag out for weeks, extending the controversy over Trump's ties to Epstein. | ||
| It was on Wednesday that House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt was asked about the release of other Epstein-related material earlier in the week. | ||
| Here is that clip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In the interest of transparency, why not just go ahead, release the full files on Epstein, get this all over with? | |
| We have, this administration has done more with respect to transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein than any administration ever. | ||
| In fact, this administration, the Department of Justice, has turned over tens of thousands of documents to the American people. | ||
| We are cooperating and showing support for the House Oversight Committee. | ||
| That's part of the reason you are seeing these documents that were released today because of the House Oversight Committees and Republicans' efforts to get these out to the public. | ||
| This administration also moved, the Department of Justice also moved to unseal grand jury testimony, which we know unfortunately a judge declined those requests. | ||
| So this administration has done more than any. | ||
| And it just shows how this is truly a manufactured hoax by the Democrat Party for now they're talking about it all of a sudden because President Trump is in the Oval Office. | ||
| But when Joe Biden was sitting in there, the Democrats never brought this up. | ||
| This wasn't an issue that they cared about because they actually don't care about the victims in these cases. | ||
| They care about trying to score political points against President Trump, as we, of course, seen with this government shutdown. | ||
| And this entire thing, again, it's not a coincidence to the American people at home. | ||
| There are no coincidences in Washington, D.C. | ||
| And it is not a coincidence that the Democrats leaked these emails to the fake news this morning ahead of Republicans reopening the government. | ||
| This is another distraction campaign by the Democrat and the liberal media, and it's why I'm being asked questions about Epstein instead of the government reopening because of Republicans and President Trump and transparency, Caroline. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why are White House officials then meeting with Representative Boebert in an effort to try and get her to not sign this petition calling for the release of the files? | |
| Doesn't it show transparency that members of the Trump administration are willing to brief members of Congress whenever they please? | ||
| Doesn't that show our level of transparency? | ||
| Doesn't that show the level of transparency when we are willing to sit down with members of Congress and address their concerns? | ||
| That is a defining factor of transparency. | ||
| Having discussions, having discussions with members of Congress about various issues, and I'm not going to detail conversations that took place in the Situation Room in the press briefing room. | ||
| This is a related headline also from Politico. | ||
| Trump breaks with quote wacky Marjorie Taylor Greene. | ||
| It says President Trump has broken with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a staunch, longtime ally and prominent mega figure who has been at sharp odds with the White House on economic issues, foreign affairs, and the case of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| It says Trump called Green a quote ranty lunatic and said he was withdrawing his support for her in a social media post late Friday. | ||
| That on Truth Social says all I see, all I see is quote wacky Marjorie do is complain complain, complain. | ||
| Trump wrote in the post. | ||
| The president continued to share several posts on basting Taylor Greene on TRUE Social Friday night, including reposting comments that called her representative, called the representative a quote, cheap political football and a sellout, and another that said her political future just ended, all in the span of a couple minutes. | ||
| The outburst marked a notable physique in the mega coalition that has vaulted Trump to office and has helped carry his agenda but has fractured in recent months, particularly over files related to Epstein. | ||
| Back to your calls asking for your top news story of the week. | ||
| Let's hear from Phil, who's calling from Minot, North Dakota, on the line for Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi Phil hey, how's it going? | |
| Yeah, I'm just having a ball here this morning listening to all this about Epstein. | ||
| You know it's just amazing to me that all you people in this country are worried about some stupid files, about an Epstein guy that's dead. | ||
| Everybody's complaining about us killing drug dealers, getting murderers and rapists out of our country. | ||
| What happened to our country? | ||
| Please somebody call in here and tell me what happened to our country when we stand behind rapists murderers, drug dealers, all from foreign countries, when an American citizen could get pulled over for driving on a suspended license, go to prison for two years, get a DUI, go to jail for five years, you know, but these drug dealers and all these trash, y'all are welcoming me, wealth welcoming into our country. | ||
| Can somebody please call in here and explain to me why you want the drugs, the rape, the murder, the killing? | ||
| Why do you all want this in our country? | ||
| What is wrong with you people? | ||
| That was Phil in North Dakota. | ||
| Frank is calling from Staten Island, New York, line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Frank. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you doing? | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Okay, there are a few things that got to me this week. | ||
| One was when John Fetterman was talking about how he was getting death threats from people because he voted to reopen the government. | ||
| But a sad thing that there are people that they're so worried about having their free health care that they want this man to die. | ||
| John Fetterman is a really good guy, and I'm glad he was able to make the decision. | ||
| Speaking of protesters, how about what happened in Berkeley College in California? | ||
| Antifa people and other types of protesters went out of control, rioting and causing property damage, hurting people because they're protesting the turning point to the TPUSA that was once under the leadership of the amazing Charlie Kirk. | ||
| They keep crying fascist, fascist. | ||
| It's a conservative group with conservative ideas that believes in free speech. | ||
| There's nothing fascist about them. | ||
| People don't understand what fascism is. | ||
| And here I am, and another story, look at where I live, New York, which is going to soon have a mayor, Mr. Mandani, who is an anti-Semite and a socialist as well, and Marxist and stuff like that. | ||
| These are the stories. | ||
| But I think the things with the protest is how people just get out of control with their emotions, and they just can't have a civil dialogue. | ||
| That was Frank in New York. | ||
| Greg is calling from Texas on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Greg. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| This is the top of the story. | ||
| Let me tell you, like those people out there protesting, it's out here now, and they talk about how the police beating them down. | ||
| Those people, this is just a reenactment. | ||
| This is where the movie scene is going to be in the documentary. | ||
| Those people out there doing the protests, and they're just trying to prove the fact that the police officers not discriminate against people of color. | ||
| Those people are not getting paper-sprayed. | ||
| They're not getting beat down out there in the street. | ||
| They are detecting the people. | ||
| They ain't making them or forcing them to get out of the street or running over like Donald Trump told them to do. | ||
| That's a different color of people. | ||
| This is what's going on. | ||
| And then with their steam file, let me tell you something. | ||
| That's just a bunch of tired women that went out there and hold their body out, and now they're mad because they don't nobody want them no more. | ||
| All the mixed. | ||
| That was Greg. | ||
| Let's hear from Mary in Florida, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Mary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, my major topics are a little bit old now, but they're still going on. | |
| As far as the illegal immigrants, we have two governors, one in Chicago, one in California. | ||
| The one in Chicago, Pritzker, he was born like so many hate Donald Trump. | ||
| He was born just as rich. | ||
| And this man, who is the governor of this state, knows how many people have been killed week after week after week. | ||
| And the mayor of this state, of this one town, is doing absolutely nothing about it. | ||
| They're provoking the anger. | ||
| They're provoking everything that's going on in that state. | ||
| As far as the governor in California, what has this man done for that state? | ||
| He's given driver's licenses to illegal drivers that can't even speak the language, they can't spell, they can't do anything, and they're killing Americans. | ||
| What is going on? | ||
| That was Mary in Florida. | ||
| Elaine is calling from Silver Spring, Maryland, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Elaine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My top news for this week is Hexit has ships in the Caribbean and is increasing the number or the level of ships to so-called stop drugs from coming into the United States. | |
| These drugs, I mean, there are more drugs grown in the Midwest, and this is no lie. | ||
| Or marijuana than comes from the Caribbean. | ||
| Now, the scary thing is these ships are putting passenger planes, cargo ships at risk that are taking products, people on vacation, and before you know it, some vacation plane will be shot down and there'll be a big disaster. | ||
| This is very scary. | ||
| And his understanding is, or his statement is that, oh, these countries, which have their own sovereignty, are in the backyard of America. | ||
| This is very wrong. | ||
| That is very dangerous. | ||
| And the other thing is, three eye athletes is a big news for me. | ||
| I hope it comes and clean off all these horrible people on this planet. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Elaine in Maryland. | ||
| Elaine talking about the actions in the Caribbean and related to Venezuela. | ||
| This is a headline in this morning's Washington Post on the front page. | ||
| Trump Wayne Strikes on Venezuela says President Donald Trump said Friday night that he has, quote, sort of made up his mind about how he will proceed with the possibility of military actions in Venezuela following a second consecutive day of deliberations at the White House. | ||
| That included top national security advisors. | ||
| It says Trump's vague remarks aboard Air Force One were delivered as he traveled for the weekend to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and included no additional new details. | ||
| The comments came as U.S. forces in the region awaited possible attack orders. | ||
| And after days of high-level discussions about whether and how to strike in Venezuela, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is highly sensitive. | ||
| Joining Trump in deliberations Friday, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Kane, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, these people said. | ||
| Just about 15 minutes left in this morning's first portion of Washington Journal asking you for your top news story of the week. | ||
| Let's hear from Mark, who's calling from Portland, Maine on the line for independence. | ||
| Hi, Mark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| I don't understand the confusion. | ||
| The president told everybody that he was going to do this on his next term. | ||
| He did everything that he said he was going to do. | ||
| He went after the generals. | ||
| He went after the news. | ||
| He went after everybody. | ||
| Then when he wanted some things that he wanted to push through, he took all the programs for the meeting. | ||
| He took a direct page from our state past governor LePage and put him up on the oxide, the cutting block, and forced his opinion by making the poor suffer as much as possible and kept it there as long as he possibly could, which was this little shutdown. | ||
| And he threatened to take away everything from the lower people. | ||
| It's not understandable if we did away with the electoral votes, we would have never had the man in office to begin with. | ||
| He had lost his first term to a woman, and he was all upset and wanted to take her to court. | ||
| And then he found out he passed because the electoral vote, where people that are in office have 10,000 votes per one. | ||
| I don't understand if we took the electoral vote away and did 50%, like we used to do, you know, require 50% of the vote. | ||
| And gee whiz, you know, if we had to do another vote, is that really such a bad thing? | ||
| That was Mark and Maine. | ||
| Sherry's calling from Harrison, Arkansas. | ||
| The line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Sherry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I agree with the last caller. | ||
| We need to take away, get rid of the Electoral College and go to the public votes. | ||
| But as far as Adolph Trump goes, he's dirty. | ||
| He's been dirty all along. | ||
| His go-to is to drag people in court and tie them up in court because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. | ||
| And as far as the Epstein files go, he is dirty. | ||
| Why else would most men are good people? | ||
| They're not perverts, child molesters. | ||
| He said, and I'm sorry, I don't remember the girl's name. | ||
| It was the one that committed suicide earlier in the year. | ||
| He was on TV and he said Epstein stole her from Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| So was he doing the same thing in Mar-a-Lago? | ||
| And I have another question for you. | ||
| I know two different people from two different parts of the world who said that Oprah Winfrey had Trump on years ago, years ago. | ||
| And she asked him if he would ever run for president. | ||
| And he humhoed around about it. | ||
| And she said, okay, if you ran, what would you run as, a Republican or a Democrat? | ||
| And he said, oh, it would be a Republican because the Democrats are too smart. | ||
| Can you look that up and see if that really happened? | ||
| And they insist that they heard it. | ||
| That was Sherry in Arkansas. | ||
| Debbie is calling from Missouri on the line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Debbie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
| Trump is lowering the price of groceries. | ||
| Thanksgiving dinner is down 25%. | ||
| He's lowering the tariffs of South America to bring down the price of coffee and chocolate and bananas. | ||
| And Democrats close the government to hurt snap recipients, their benefits, and control their voters. | ||
| Most Democrats are dependent on government freebies. | ||
| Republicans have to pay for the $42 million that collect food stamps. | ||
| Democrats want their voters dependent on the government or owned by the government plantation for control. | ||
| They don't want them to be working in the private sector so they can grow their own personal wealth and be free of the government. | ||
| And I'd just like to say that this morning you've had more Democrats call in than Republicans. | ||
| And I had to wait on the line for about 15 calls before this one got through. | ||
| So wish it could be a little more fair. | ||
| That was Debbie in Missouri, a couple callers this morning bringing up President Trump's proposal of $2,000 dividend refunds from tariffs. | ||
| Here is an article from CBS. | ||
| It says President Donald Trump on Sunday said he wants to give most Americans a $2,000 payment funded from tariffs as he defended what's become one of his administration's signature policies. | ||
| It says Mr. Trump touted his tariff policy as helping the U.S. raise new revenue, which he said has driven, quote, record investment in U.S. manufacturing. | ||
| It says, quote, a dividend of at least $2,000 a person, not including high-income people, will be paid to everyone. | ||
| Mr. Trump wrote Sunday in a Truth Social Post. | ||
| He didn't provide additional details of how such rebates would be dispersed to Americans. | ||
| On Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson told Fox News that the rebates would likely be given to families making less than $100,000. | ||
| That threshold is still in discussion, though Besson added, this was a topic that C-SPAN covered earlier this week. | ||
| We had Erica York on with the Tax Foundation. | ||
| If you would like to watch that segment, you can find it online at c-span.org. | ||
| Back to your calls. | ||
| Michaels calling from Connecticut, Line for Independence. | ||
| Good morning, Michael. | ||
| What's your top news story this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Corruption, period. | |
| It's a word, and it identifies the story of the week coming out of the White House, corruption. | ||
| So much of it. | ||
| Not just this week, the entire month. | ||
| It'll be the story of the year. | ||
| It'll be the legacy of the Trump administration. | ||
| The level of corruption makes Richard Nixon look like a lightweight. | ||
| And that's a reality. | ||
| Just the corruption, the killing of blowing up fishing boats off Venezuela without ever showing evidence of what they really are. | ||
| And when asked about it, they say the evidence is at the bottom of the ocean. | ||
| Corruption. | ||
| Do we really have to get into the Epstein report? | ||
| Why would anyone refuse to release a report that would help us to identify the many pedophiles that were viciously over decades attacking young girls? | ||
| Why would anyone not want that report released? | ||
| Donald Trump doesn't want it released. | ||
| Ask yourself why he wouldn't want that released. | ||
| Ripping down the White House when he said he wouldn't. | ||
| He's literally ripping down the largest segment of the White House after promising he would not do this. | ||
| We could go on and on and on and on. | ||
| I'm telling you, the level of corruption, and we all know it, we all know it, is staggering. | ||
| This is no longer the United States of America. | ||
| This is an authoritarian. | ||
| You now have a Justice Department that is his personal law firm. | ||
| You have the FBI, which is nothing more than a policing agent for the president now. | ||
| This is no longer the United States of America, and until you remove him, you're never going to get this country back. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That was Michael in Connecticut. | ||
| Mike is calling from Rest in Virginia on the line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Mike. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Regarding the Epstein file, whether they release it or not, I don't think Trump will ever be, they would ever convict him or sentence him. | ||
| The convict felon is in the White House, and nothing happened to him because our system has failed. | ||
| We should never have allowed a felon to run for the presidency. | ||
| The qualifications, the presidency could be very strict. | ||
| He is violating the laws. | ||
| He's violating the ethics. | ||
| For the Republican talking about immigration, let's see. | ||
| He had what? | ||
| 100 undocumented workers working for him before he became president. | ||
| And if we don't want immigrants to come, we have to stop messing and bombing their countries. | ||
| That's why they're running. | ||
| We're interfering in their business. | ||
| Do you think we bomb the boats next to Venezuela because of drugs? | ||
| No. | ||
| The oil companies want to control Venezuela. | ||
| They want to control it. | ||
| They don't want the people to benefit from it. | ||
| They want their company to benefit from it. | ||
| We go to war for companies. | ||
| This is not right. | ||
| The shutdown, the shutdown for the government. | ||
| Remember Project 25 for Baus? | ||
| He said we're going to cut the government to the bone. | ||
| They started firing people, parallel, buyout, forcing people out. | ||
| So don't blame the Democrat for it. | ||
| That was Mike in Virginia. | ||
| Brad is calling from Clackamas, Oregon, line for Republicans. | ||
| Good morning, Brad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thanks for taking my call. | |
| Yeah, I wanted to talk about all the people that were flown in from different countries into the United States, and we're having to give them food stamps and whatnot. | ||
| I think it's just a drain living here in Oregon with the liberal Democrats that are running parts of the state that we're all having to pay higher taxes on DMV and the food prices, gas prices are like up past $4 a gallon. | ||
| Trump says that they're under $2.15 or whatever in some states, but not here in Oregon. | ||
| It just amazes me that the people are just brainwashed to think that Trump's doing a bad job. | ||
| I think he's doing a great job. | ||
| It just amazes me to think that people just get brainwashed basically by CNN and those liberal stations, and it doesn't make any sense because we're all paying too much. | ||
| And if the Democrats would have been in the White House, we would be severely complaining about a lot of other things. | ||
| This Epstein deal, Trump kicked Epstein out. | ||
| And everybody knows that he was a pedophile or whatever, but Bill Clinton, he was there over a dozen times. | ||
| It just doesn't make sense. | ||
| I just think that a lot of people are involved that are still in the Senate, Republicans and Democrats. | ||
| That's probably why they're not releasing a lot of the information from the Epstein files or what. | ||
| But it's just, I think President Trump's doing a fantastic job, and we're paying too much taxes here. | ||
| That was Brad in Oregon. | ||
| Erin is calling from Marion, Michigan on the line for independence. | ||
| Good morning, Erin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing today, dear? | ||
| Doing well, Aaron. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's good. | |
| I'm glad to hear it. | ||
| I kind of wanted to start my thought or perspective on this whole ordeal with something my grandfather taught me a long time ago. | ||
| The true measure of a man and the true measure of a leader is someone who can pull people together and not tear them apart. | ||
| I feel kind of distraught about the fact that your last caller was totally wrong and totally misinformation on all kinds of things. | ||
| First of all, benefits aren't illegally allowed for immigrants coming into this country as far as food and health care. | ||
| So these are all sticking points and lies that the right has been spreading for years now. | ||
| And also with this Epstein list, I remember a time in this country where we wouldn't accept a thing like this. | ||
| And nowadays, it's been that he is involved with this Epstein cover-up, and he's the only one that doesn't want it withheld. | ||
| So I think the proof pretty much speaks in the pudding. | ||
| Thanks and have a great day. | ||
| That was Aaron in Michigan, and our last caller in this first portion of today's Washington Journal. | ||
| Later this morning, CNN Senior Congressional Reporter Annie Greyer will review the week in Congress, including the end of the longest shutdown in history and renewed efforts to release the Epstein files. | ||
| But next, after the break, we'll talk with Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty McCary about the agency's decision to remove black box warnings from hormone replacement therapy treatments. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll be right back on C-SPAN ceasefire at a time when finding common ground matters most. | |
| In Washington, Pennsylvania, Democratic Senator John Fetterman and Alabama Republican Senator Katie Britt come together for a bipartisan dialogue on the top issues facing the country. | ||
| They join host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Bridging the Divide in American Politics. | ||
| Watch Ceasefire Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series. | ||
| Sunday, best-selling biographer Walter Isaacson, who chronicles history's most remarkable lives. | ||
| His books include Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Einstein. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubenstein. | ||
| What attracted you to these people? | ||
| Was it because they were geniuses or you just happened to like them? | ||
| Smart people are a dime a dozen. | ||
| In order to be a genius, you have to be creative. | ||
| You have to think out of the box. | ||
| And one of the things that struck me when I wrote about Benjamin Franklin early on was what a great scientist and technologists he was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club with Walter Isaacson, Sundays at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | |
| Next week on the C-SPAN Networks, after the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, the House and Senate are back in session. | ||
| The House will vote on legislation for the Justice Department to release all of the files in its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. | ||
| The Senate will continue work on 2026 federal spending legislation, including a full year of funding for the defense and health and human services departments. | ||
| On Tuesday, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Philip Swagel, will testify before the House Budget Committee, conducting oversight on his agency. | ||
| And on Wednesday, a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee hearing on the effects of the government shutdown on the aviation system. | ||
| Watch live next week on the C-SPAN networks or on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app. | ||
| Also, head over to C-SPAN.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Joining us now to discuss the FDA's recent decision to remove the agency's black box warning from hormone replacement therapy is FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty McCary. | ||
| Dr. McCary, welcome back to the Commission. | ||
| Great to be with you. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Always a pleasure to have you on. | ||
| You became FDA Commissioner in April, just earlier this year. | ||
| Remind our audience of your background and your work in the medical profession. | ||
| So I was a surgeon at Johns Hopkins. | ||
| I did both GI and cancer surgery and also something called pancreas eyelid transplant surgery, but spent an increasing amount of time during my career doing research and public health research. | ||
| And that's my background from the Harvard School of Public Health. | ||
| I did a surgical residency, a fellowship in cancer surgery, but have always had that public health interest. | ||
| And that's what led me into so many of these cross-disciplinary areas of research like hormone replacement therapy for postmenopausal women, something we really don't talk about much in medical school or in the hospital, but so important to the health of women and on a population level, maybe one of the greatest public health interventions that the medical field can recommend, which is hormone replacement therapy within 10 years of the onset of menopause for women. | ||
| So let's dig into this announcement. | ||
| It was earlier this week. | ||
| The FDA is requesting that this black box warning be removed from hormone replacement therapy products. | ||
| Explain what HRT is, what it does, and what kind of products are we talking about. | ||
| Yeah, so hormone replacement therapy, or what we call HRT, is estrogen or estrogen plus progesterone. | ||
| Doctors recommend it for women when they go through menopause and experience the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause. | ||
| That is hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings, weight gain, and dozens of other symptoms. | ||
| Each woman experiences menopause and symptoms differently. | ||
| Hormone replacement therapy alleviates those symptoms of menopause, but it also has profound long-term health benefits of reducing the risk of bone fractures by 50 to 60 percent, reducing the rate of fatal heart attacks in a woman's future by up to 50 percent, and reduces cognitive decline. | ||
| And in one study, even reduced the risk of Alzheimer's. | ||
| So those are profound long-term health benefits that have been kind of lost because people see it more as a treatment for the immediate symptoms of perimenopause. | ||
| Now in medical school, I was taught in kind of that traditional paternalistic approach in medical school that, oh, you know, we don't talk about menopause. | ||
| It's just some women experience it, but it's usually just for a couple years. | ||
| The symptoms are mild. | ||
| Not true. | ||
| 80% of women experience symptoms of menopause. | ||
| The average duration is eight years. | ||
| And for many women, those symptoms are severe. | ||
| And tragically in America today, a woman is more likely to be prescribed an antidepressant for symptoms of menopause than they are estrogen to replace the body's estrogen that the body intrinsically produces. | ||
| So a warning decades ago was placed on these products, a black box warning. | ||
| When and why was it put in place? | ||
| What is a black box warning? | ||
| What does it mean? | ||
| So women, the context is women were feeling better and living longer using hormone replacement therapy. | ||
| But then in 2002, when one in four postmenopausal women were taking hormone replacement therapy, a study came out that scared women worldwide, and women stopped taking hormone replacement therapy. | ||
| And that was the 2002 Women's Health Initiative study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. | ||
| And the study was released to the public, tragically, before it was published. | ||
| It was released to the media a week before it was published. | ||
| And this headline was, this causes breast cancer, it created mass hysteria. | ||
| Doctors called their patients, said, get off this thing. | ||
| Women with a topic as sensitive as breast cancer flush their pills down the toilet. | ||
| Some women use an estrogen patch. | ||
| They would rip it off. | ||
| And so this was a massive moment that suddenly changed the prescribing patterns. | ||
| And so hormone replacement therapy was deemed a carcinogen, no longer as this incredible treatment with short and long-term benefits. | ||
| And the FDA jumped on the bandwagon by issuing the following year a black box warning the highest level of warning our agency, the FDA, can put on a product. | ||
| And so that created a lot of fear and the fear machine took on a life of its own. | ||
| The great irony was that when that study was published and the data were released after the media headlines, there was no statistically significant increase in breast cancer rates. | ||
| And no clinical trial has ever shown subsequently that hormone replacement therapy increases breast cancer mortality. | ||
| And in a weird twist of irony, the women who took estrogen alone, because doctors can recommend estrogen alone if a woman does not have a uterus, it's been removed for some reason, in that subgroup, they had a 25% lower rate of breast cancer with hormone replacement therapy. | ||
| This was something that you wrote about in your book, Blind Spots, is something that you've looked at for years. | ||
| This happened again over decades ago. | ||
| Why did it take so long for the FDA to come to this decision and make this announcement this week? | ||
| To be honest, I think it's medical groupthink. | ||
| I think there's bandwagon thinking and there's been groupthink in medicine. | ||
| It kind of gets broadcast from on high from the elites of, you know, the leadership circles of academia. | ||
| It gets taught in the textbooks and enforced on the exams and it just became synonymous. | ||
| Hormone replacement therapy causes breast cancer. | ||
| And nobody really would question it or look back at the original data set. | ||
| And so, look, we as a medical profession have done this before. | ||
| You get a lot of power concentrated in some medical elites. | ||
| That's why we got opioid prescription opioids being non-addictive wrong for 15 years, missing the entire igniting of the opioid crisis. | ||
| We got natural saturated fat causes heart disease wrong for 50 years. | ||
| And so there has been a history of these groupthink recommendations. | ||
| Probably the most consequential one that we still live with today is it was recommended that infants up till the age of three avoid peanut butter to try to prevent peanut allergies. | ||
| Turns out that increases the risk of getting a peanut allergy by sevenfold because a child needs to be exposed early in their life to peanut butter. | ||
| So that dogma lived for 15 years. | ||
| So it was medical dogma. | ||
| And when I did that research on this topic and went back to the original paper and talked to the co-authors of that study and said, how could you say this increases breast cancer when it wasn't statistically significant? | ||
| I learned they had a meeting just before the announcement. | ||
| And then that meeting, a shouting match erupted where one of the researchers said, you can't put something like this out there. | ||
| Quote unquote, you will never be able to put the genie back in the bottle with something as sensitive as breast cancer. | ||
| So that fear machine took on a life of its own. | ||
| Our guest is Dr. Marty McCary, FDA Commissioner. | ||
| And we are talking about the agency's recent decision to remove the black box warning from hormone replacement therapy treatments. | ||
| If you have a question or comment for Dr. McCarry, you can start calling in now the lines for this segment are broken down regionally. | ||
| If you are in the Eastern or Central time zone, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| If you are Mountain or Pacific, it's 202-748-8001. | ||
| You can also send us a text at 202-748-8003. | ||
| It's been a couple decades now, but it's now being removed. | ||
| Tens of million women have been denied or not offered HRT over the last two decades because of this warning. | ||
| What impact has that had on women? | ||
| You know, people have described, like Dr. Peter Otia, a lost generation. | ||
| 50 million women over the last 23 years denied this powerful, life-changing, life-saving therapy that has profound long-term health benefits. | ||
| You know, just to give you a sense of bone fractures alone, it dramatically reduces osteoporosis, that is, taking hormone replacement therapy starting within 10 years of menopause, by 50 to 60 percent. | ||
| So it reduces the rate of a hip fracture. | ||
| Well, hip fractures occur in one in three women who make it to age 80. | ||
| As many women die from hip fractures each year as women die from breast cancer each year. | ||
| Bone strength matters. | ||
| Preventing osteoporosis matters. | ||
| And the best way to prevent osteoporosis in a woman is to take hormone replacement therapy. | ||
| Take, for example, the heart benefits. | ||
| Lowering the rate of heart attacks by 50% if a woman starts hormone replacement therapy within 10 years of the onset of menopause. | ||
| Well, statins lower it by, say, 35%. | ||
| CPR lowers cardiac fatality rates by roughly 10%. | ||
| So I'm not saying we shouldn't be talking about those things and doing CPR classes in every place in America and putting an AED machine in every mall in America, but we never even talk about menopause and we never talk about hormone replacement therapy and the profound effects on a public health scale. | ||
| There may be no intervention in medicine that can improve the health of women at a population level more than hormone replacement therapy when started within 10 years of the onset of menopause, arguably with the exception of antibiotics or vaccines. | ||
| This is a powerful public health intervention. | ||
| The discussion has been dominated and distorted by the fear machine. | ||
| That ends this week. | ||
| We put out very powerful messaging to let people know we're setting the record straight and we have seen a tremendous response with an awareness now with the doctors who have been waving a flag in the air saying, hey, we got this wrong for 23 years. | ||
| Look at the evidence. | ||
| Patients that say, look, my life was changed. | ||
| My marriage was saved. | ||
| I live longer and feel better. | ||
| I don't deal with the debilitating symptoms because of hormone replacement therapy. | ||
| That discussion is now reignited and it's a beautiful thing to see. | ||
| And it's not to say that hormone replacement therapy will no longer have no warnings. | ||
| You're removing the black box warning. | ||
| You explained what that was. | ||
| What will it look like now? | ||
| Yeah, so the recommendation to take it is not a recommendation we as a government are making, but we want people to have the right information. | ||
| And the recommendation to take it is really nuanced. | ||
| For example, many doctors do not prescribe it and do not initiate hormone replacement therapy after age 60 or after that 10-year window after the onset of menopause because a feeling is that the risk-benefit ratio inverts if you start it after age 60. | ||
| And tragically, a woman who's 78 years old came up to me and said, I really want to start it. | ||
| Can I start it? | ||
| And I said, generally, doctors do not recommend it because that's when you see some of those complications. | ||
| But the reason why it's good for a woman's body to have continuous estrogen in the body without these big gaps is that estrogen increases nitric oxide that keeps a blood vessel wall soft and dilated. | ||
| And that is probably why we see this profound cardiac benefits. | ||
| And a century ago, researchers at the Mayo Clinic noticed in young women in their 20s who had their ovaries removed and therefore their estrogen levels reduced to zero, that they went on to have severe heart disease in their 30s and 40s. | ||
| Young women. | ||
| So that early data suggested a powerful cardioprotective effect of estrogen. | ||
| We have callers waiting to talk with you. | ||
| We'll start with William, who's calling from Georgia. | ||
| Good morning, William. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I hope you can hear me, especially you, Dr. Macri. | ||
| I don't know if you remember me. | ||
| And just before the election in 2024, I spoke to you when your book first came out. | ||
| And I spoke to you specifically about the American Academy of Pediatrics. | ||
| I myself, as a physician, I'm now retired, but I noticed that when I started recommending, according to the LEAP study, the introduction of peanut butter of all foods to young infants, that I saw a dramatic drop in asthma and eczema and all these allergy illnesses in children. | ||
| And in your book, I remember you spoke about the peanut butter business. | ||
| It's amazing how the American Academy of Pediatrics and many pediatricians still cling and provide advice to the patients, to their mothers, not to give peanut butter until the child is two or three years of age. | ||
| I wish the FDA would really push the fact that children or infants, excuse me, starting four or six months of age, depending if the mother is speeding or not, to start giving early foods like they do in many other countries where they don't see the scourges of eczema, asthma, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| It's just this country does stupid things based on studies, based on politics, based on corporations. | ||
| Yeah, so first of all, William, nice to hear your voice. | ||
| I honestly don't remember the last time you called in, but I love what you said. | ||
| We have to be willing to question everything in medicine. | ||
| And if you look at that incredible story of the American Academy of Pediatrics recommending against peanut butter exposure in young children, something they tragically got wrong for over 13 years, a lot of kids were hurt by that. | ||
| And tragically, the study, the LEAP study you referred to that showed, no, no, you want to expose young kids to peanut allergens, not whole peanuts because of the choking risk, but some little sprinkle of peanut butter in foods that they consume is as early as six months of age to reduce the risk of peanut allergies. | ||
| You know, that research was stalled, downplayed, and there was a general feeling in the field that, well, the American Academy of Pediatrics has decreed that you should avoid peanut butter until age three. | ||
| Why would you study it? | ||
| It's already sort of settled science. | ||
| And in science, we should be willing to question everything. | ||
| To the caller's point and something you mentioned earlier, the idea that putting a genie back in the bottle once something is out now 23 years later, there are possibly doctors and women who would still have concerns about hormone replacement therapy, even after this black box warning is being removed. | ||
| What is your message to them? | ||
| So the message is talk to your doctor and talk to a doctor who has experience prescribing hormone replacement therapy. | ||
| Because some doctors, you know, doctor has to know a million different things. | ||
| And if you're not in a field or have spent time doing a deep dive on the research, you may just simply know hormone replacement therapy for its broad association with breast cancer and just generally avoid it. | ||
| You know, I've talked to doctors, and tragically, half of primary care doctors in America up to last year would tell me when I'd say, hey, a woman comes in with perimenopausal symptoms. | ||
| What do you do? | ||
| They say, well, I don't do that hormone replacement therapy thing. | ||
| I just worry about that breast cancer thing. | ||
| We're not saying it absolutely does not cause an increase in breast cancer diagnoses. | ||
| We're saying that the long-term health benefits are profound and would eclipse any increased risk of breast cancer. | ||
| And that risk of breast cancer has never translated into a risk of dying of breast cancer in this large clinical trials in any clinical trial. | ||
| And the early observation of the slight increase in breast cancer diagnoses may have been a function of the fact they were getting frequent mammograms. | ||
| And the type of progesterone used called medroxyprogesterone acetate or MPA may have been associated with that slight increase in diagnoses. | ||
| That's not a type of progesterone in common use today for hormone replacement therapy. | ||
| There's some important contraindications. | ||
| If you have active breast cancer, it is contraindicated to start hormone replacement therapy. | ||
| And for some doctors, there are relative risks they talk to patients about to evaluate the risk-benefit ratio, such as an underlying risk of blood clots. | ||
| If you have an underlying risk of blood clots, a doctor may recommend a topical or vaginal form of estrogen, which does not increase the risk on top of that underlying risk. | ||
| Jeannie is calling from Austin, Texas. | ||
| Good morning, Jeannie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning to both of y'all. | |
| Hi, Dr. Macquerie. | ||
| I was going to definitely talk to my doctor, but I am in remission from stage three breast cancer, going on seven years. | ||
| And I am going to actually be getting in a couple of weeks my first bone density test. | ||
| But I was told I could not get on hormone therapy because, you know, I have HER2 positive, and that's hormonal. | ||
| And so thank you for just speaking right now. | ||
| I'm learning a lot just while I was holding on the phone. | ||
| But what is your opinion then if I am going to go, I actually am trying to make an appointment with my oncologist, gynecologist. | ||
| Thank you both for speaking about this. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| It's not spoken up about enough. | ||
| And this is women. | ||
| This is women's health that's so critical, whether I have breast cancer or not. | ||
| And so anyway, I just wanted to get your opinion on what you thought being in remission from stage three breast cancer. | ||
| And I know I'm going to talk to my doctor anyway, but I'll get off the phone and I want to listen to you and see what you're saying about it. | ||
| And like I said, I was told not to get on because of HER2 positive because it's hormonal. | ||
| So, anyway. | ||
| Yeah, so this is an area of controversy. | ||
| And the decision as to whether or not a physician might recommend hormone replacement therapy in somebody with a history of breast cancer would be based on the degree or the aggressive nature of the invasiveness of that breast cancer, how far out you are from the breast cancer, what the risk of recurrence is, and the receptor status-that is, whether or not it was HER2 or estrogen or progesterone positive. | ||
| And so, that is a nuanced discussion. | ||
| Some doctors have generally adopted a view that, well, any breast cancer in the past means you'll never be a candidate for hormone replacement therapy. | ||
| But there are a group of very smart physicians led by Dr. Avram Blooming, who's an oncologist, who has said, No, there are great candidates for hormone replacement therapy in women who have had breast cancer in the past. | ||
| It's a nuanced discussion, but he has written on this topic. | ||
| Arlene is calling from Mayfield, New York. | ||
| Good morning, Arlene. | ||
| Arlene, are you there? | ||
| Give you one more try. | ||
| There you are. | ||
| Hi, Arlene. | ||
| Go ahead, Yuran. | ||
| I think we're having some problems with your phone. | ||
| Arlene, give us a call back. | ||
| We'll go to Teresa in Bloomington, Illinois. | ||
| Hi, Teresa. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would like to understand these doctors. | |
| The hormones that we go through are horrible. | ||
| I've never had any female problems. | ||
| I had two natural births. | ||
| I still have everything, and they put me on the hormone. | ||
| They gave me too much. | ||
| They say I have anxiety. | ||
| They want to take an anxiety. | ||
| I get hot flashes so bad it'll make me sick to my stomach. | ||
| I've been told from doctors after doctors, it only lasts for 10 years. | ||
| The hot flashes, well, I am sorry. | ||
| Started at 41. | ||
| I am 61 with all my female parts. | ||
| I got scared. | ||
| They had me on PrimPro, and they scared us as a genie in the bottle. | ||
| And I'm tired of taking an anxiety. | ||
| I don't take any other medicines. | ||
| I don't take nothing. | ||
| I want to know: should I get a hold of my nurse practitioner to see if I should get back on hormone PrimPro? | ||
| Because hot flashes do not last 10 years, is what I've been told. | ||
| Everybody's been told they last only 10 years. | ||
| They don't. | ||
| I talked to a woman yesterday. | ||
| She's had them for 35 years. | ||
| Would we please understand what women are going through? | ||
| I mean, can you have a hot flash and be in the grocery store and get totally nauseous and going to throw up on the floor? | ||
| They say they don't understand women's hot flashes. | ||
| Yeah, so there's a good example, Tammy, of what we were just talking about: that every woman experiences the symptoms of perimenopause a little differently. | ||
| And for some women, it's not an eight-year duration of severe symptoms of perimenopause. | ||
| It may be longer. | ||
| And many physicians, if they can start the hormone replacement therapy within 10 years of the on-set menopause, will keep women on it as long as they'd like to stay on it for up to lifetime for life. | ||
| That is one practice pattern out there. | ||
| I will say that although that was a complicated clinical picture, and I'm often keen to point out that the government is not your doctor, and at the FDA, as the head of the FDA, I'm a regulator, and so I'm not making health recommendations, but we want people to have the right information. | ||
| We did have, we do have now two products that have been FDA approved for women who are not candidates for hormone replacement therapy to address the hot flashes or some of the other symptoms. | ||
| And it's a non-hormonal therapy. | ||
| So there are sometimes options for individuals like the woman who just called in. | ||
| Mickey is calling from Potomac, Maryland. | ||
| Good morning, Mickey. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I read a book by Dr. Avram Blooming on estrogen matters, and he said all of this years ago. | ||
| Why did it take so long for Dr. Blooming to be validated? | ||
| Yeah, so Dr. Blooming is one of the, and that book was co-authored by Carol Taveras, and it's an excellent book that outlines the issues. | ||
| I personally read that book after Dr. Peter Otia started talking about this, and he's a friend of mine, and told me, you know, this may be one of the greatest screw-ups of modern medicine, the demonization of hormone replacement therapy for women when started within 10 years of the onset of menopause. | ||
| Incredible long-term and short-term benefits. | ||
| And so a couple doctors like Dr. Blooming have been waving a flag in the air. | ||
| And women who have had the incredible benefits of hormone replacement therapy have been waving a flag in the air saying, hey, there's groupthink in medicine. | ||
| You guys are not looking at the actual evidence. | ||
| And they've been telling this story from a scientific perspective and from their experiences. | ||
| And so it's been a tremendous, there's been a tremendous calcification of the medical thinking on this topic. | ||
| And so Dr. Blooming and a couple other key leaders in the field have been basically saying, we have got to re-examine this. | ||
| And so the FDA is responding to a petition we have that has said, we have got to re-examine this and remove these very frightening black box warnings that are on estrogen products. | ||
| Explain the process behind making this decision to remove the warning. | ||
| What did it look like? | ||
| Who took part in it? | ||
| Yeah, so we have a citizens petition that has said we need to reevaluate these black box warnings. | ||
| They talked about how it was resulting in tens of millions of women not taking these products. | ||
| They come into their doctor and ask about it. | ||
| They've got symptoms of menopause and their doctors either do not offer hormone replacement therapy, never bring it up, talk them out of it, or get into a back and forth about how this is very dangerous if you take it and you should take as little as possible for as short a time as possible if you take it, sort of suggesting this sort of harm of these products. | ||
| And a lot of that was fueled and affirmed with these FDA black box warnings. | ||
| There are even cases where women have been prescribed hormone therapy. | ||
| They go home, open the package, and see this very frightening black box warning. | ||
| And up to 30% in one analysis have chosen not to take it because of that scary black box warning. | ||
| It just, the topic is nuanced and to fuel that fear machine with that background that we discussed earlier on the real story and the real evidence on the topic is something that we decided to hold an expert panel to discuss further at the FDA. | ||
| We did that a few months ago. | ||
| The overwhelming voice of the citizens petition, the expert panel, and so many others in America was for us to re-examine this. | ||
| So we then took the issue to our subject matter experts, physicians like Dr. Christine Wen, who are FDA subject matter experts, an OBGYN physician, very close to this topic, and her team. | ||
| And they came out with recommendations on the changes to the label. | ||
| presented that to me as FDA commissioner and I accepted those changes and those changes are now being made. | ||
| We are working with the companies to get those inserts reprinted and we're letting people know what we're doing very openly and honestly because they need good information. | ||
| Issues of women's health have not received the attention they deserve historically for many reasons. | ||
| Maybe it's a historic male-dominated paternalistic culture. | ||
| Maybe it's just the perpetual self-affirming effect of not teaching about menopause in medical school, not having the right information on this topic of hormone therapy that's been dominated by dogma, the sort of groupthink of medical leaders who have perpetuated the bad misinformation on this topic. | ||
| And so in this administration, we are committed to elevating issues of women's health that have not gotten the attention they deserve that desperately need to be front and center. | ||
| IVF treatments for women who want to have a baby. | ||
| That is a topic we discussed from the Oval Office a couple weeks ago. | ||
| Hormone replacement therapy and postmenopause of women were discussing today. | ||
| We are actively seeking these issues that have not gotten proper attention and trying to bring attention and awareness to them. | ||
| The decision to remove the black box warning, the process happening maybe quicker than other decisions would happen. | ||
| What do you say to people who may be concerned that the amount of time and the process wasn't thorough enough? | ||
| Yeah, so this has been a criticism that we've received is that we're moving too fast. | ||
| And I make no apologies for it. | ||
| We are not moving at government speed. | ||
| We are moving at the speed of normal people in business and we're going to get things done. | ||
| Now we're not going to cut any corners on our safety evaluation. | ||
| We had our subject matter experts take the time they needed to review this literature and make recommendations on changing the hormone replacement therapy labels. | ||
| That process was not rushed. | ||
| It was just done by cutting the idle time where we normally take six months or a year. | ||
| We are not messing around in this administration. | ||
| My agency, the FDA, we are getting things done. | ||
| For example, they've been talking about banning one artificial food dye for 35 years at the FDA. | ||
| Within weeks, I announced we're removing all nine petroleum-based food dyes from the U.S. food supply. | ||
| They've been talking for decades about making our drug rejection letters public information so the public can see why we chose not to accept a drug or why we chose to accept a drug. | ||
| They've been talking about that forever and the lawyers have said, well, you probably couldn't do this, but maybe, and they've just been debating it. | ||
| Well, within a couple months, we have now have all petroleum, we have all what we call CR letters or rejection letters that are now public information. | ||
| People can go look up the product. | ||
| And this has been the way we are working. | ||
| They've talked about using AI for a long time. | ||
| We got AI agency-wide. | ||
| So we are getting things done, and I'm very proud of our track record. | ||
| I've been in office about eight months, almost eight months. | ||
| And so we're going to keep moving at this pace. | ||
| We will not cut corners on safety. | ||
| But why does it take 10 to 12 years for a new cure to come to market? | ||
| We have to challenge these deeply held assumptions. | ||
| We have a program now to get an FDA decision out on a final product in weeks. | ||
| It's a new pilot program. | ||
| We're not going to cut corners on safety, but we can do much, much better. | ||
| Our goal is very simple. | ||
| More cures and meaningful treatments for the American public and healthier food for children. | ||
| And so we're going to keep delivering on that. | ||
| John is calling from Farmingdale, New York. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, hello, Doctor. | |
| Yes, hello. | ||
| Okay, well, I believe Robert Kennedy Jr. was the main leading guy in removing petroleum-based products. | ||
| He's been championing that. | ||
| Isn't that true? | ||
| He's been talking about this for a long time. | ||
| And so we work as a team. | ||
| He has shown tremendous leadership, not just with the action to remove petroleum-based food dyes, but with talking about the thousand-plus chemicals that appear in the U.S. food supply that do not appear in the food supply in Europe. | ||
| So we are evaluating everything. | ||
| We have to talk about school lunch programs, not just the price of insulin. | ||
| We've got to talk about the SNAP program. | ||
| In this administration, thanks to Brooke Rollins and Secretary Kennedy, we now have waivers for the SNAP program whereby states don't have to use taxpayer dollars for junk food and sugary drinks. | ||
| We have got to do something differently because the population is getting sicker and we keep spending more and more money and it's making the system unaffordable. | ||
| We are taking dramatic action to lower drug prices. | ||
| You saw from the Oval Office an announcement that a drug that goes for $1,300 is now going to be a $50 copay. | ||
| A drug for $243 for IVF is now going to be $10. | ||
| We're not interested in tiny little 1% or 2% reductions in drug pricing. | ||
| We want to make health care affordable dramatically different from how it is now. | ||
| And we're doing that. | ||
| So we've got a big agenda to make America healthy again. | ||
| And so that's really the focus of so much of what we do. | ||
| We've only been talking about playing whack-a-mole in healthcare, diagnosing, treating, and operating. | ||
| The prescription pad and the surgical knife have been the tools by which we have thought we're making the population healthier, but it's not working. | ||
| Sure, medicine's amazing. | ||
| It's some sophisticated operations, and we have new medicines and gene therapies that we're advancing that are truly remarkable. | ||
| And that's been a success. | ||
| That has been a modern-day success. | ||
| But when you look at the health of the population of children in this country, modern medicine has been a failure. | ||
| 40% of our nation's kids have a chronic disease. | ||
| It's not their fault. | ||
| This is not a willpower problem. | ||
| This is the highly processed, high-glycemic, low-fiber food. | ||
| I don't even know what you call it sometimes. | ||
| It's not even food. | ||
| It's like a food-like substance that we feed our nation's children. | ||
| We don't talk about natural light exposure, the importance of communities, cell phone addiction. | ||
| And so we have a generation of children that are sad and sick. | ||
| And what do we do? | ||
| Instead of talking about these issues, we drug our nation's kids at scale. | ||
| And it's not right. | ||
| So Secretary Kennedy has led this tremendous revival in America that's Republican, Democrat, Independent, people from any party. | ||
| Mom showed up to vote for President Trump over this issue that Secretary Kennedy championed. | ||
| And I'm proud to be a part of it. | ||
| Darlene is calling from Orlando, Florida. | ||
| Good morning, Darlene. | ||
| Darlene, are you there? | ||
| Still don't think we have Darlene. | ||
| We'll talk with Betty, who's calling from Verona, Virginia. | ||
| Good morning, Betty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I would like you to explain the difference between bio-identical hormones versus manufactured hormone replacement. | ||
| Yeah, so great question. | ||
| Thank you, Betty. | ||
| Good question. | ||
| And so a biodi-identical is more identical to the intrinsic estrogen that your body will naturally produce. | ||
| And so there is a bit of a trend now to prescribe more bio-identical forms. | ||
| The original form of estrogen that was used in that famous 2002 Women's Health Initiative study, I believe it was a horse estrogen, and the midroxy progesterone acetate used, or MPA, is not the type of progesterone in common use today. | ||
| As a matter of fact, some women get their progesterone from an IUD. | ||
| It is important, and I should say that since we're talking about hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women, that if you have a uterus, that is, if your uterus has not been removed, then you do need to take progesterone, a progesterone, progesterone, or progestin product in addition to the estrogen, because unopposed estrogen in a woman with a uterus can result in endometrial hyperplasia. | ||
| And that's an important point, and that is being retained in the boxed information on the products. | ||
| Roger is also calling from Florida. | ||
| Good morning, Roger. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Dr. Marty McCary, you are the best FDA commissioner by a mile this country has ever had. | ||
| Thank you for your service. | ||
| I'm a physician who also teaches medical students that rotate through our clinics. | ||
| And I have a quick two-part question. | ||
| What about women with a BRCA1 or 2 gene that have inherited a gene that increases their risk for breast cancer? | ||
| And secondly, because you are a distinguished graduate of Johns Hopkins, where a lot of the research for long COVID is being done, because COVID is associated with hypercoagulability that increases blood clot risk. | ||
| Would you address those two issues, please? | ||
| And I'll hang up and listen to your distinguished, well-sought-out answer to the questions. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, thank you for the comment. | ||
| And it means a lot to me, especially coming from a physician. | ||
| You know, we have a lot of collegiality in the medical community, and we've always had very civil conversations that you don't see outside of medicine where you've got the echo chambers of social media and that sort of toxic polarization we've seen in society. | ||
| We have to preserve that healthy dialogue. | ||
| Now, in those situations, I will tell you that some physicians will prescribe hormone replacement therapy to postmenopausal women if they have a BRCA1 or two gene mutation, if they engage in active surveillance of that breast cancer, that is, have sort of continual, close surveillance of the risk of breast cancer. | ||
| Now, I'm not recommending that, but that is one common practice pattern that is out there. | ||
| And on the issue of long COVID, it may be that a physician might prescribe a topical or vaginal estrogen for somebody with an underlying risk of blood clots instead of what we call the systemic estrogen form. | ||
| Elise is calling from Portland, Oregon. | ||
| Good morning, Elise. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, good morning, and thank you for C-SPAN. | |
| And thank you, Doctor, for your work. | ||
| I'm 70 years old. | ||
| I moved from Florida to Oregon for better medical care two and a half years ago. | ||
| I was on birth control pills back in the 70s. | ||
| And at that time, the estrogen levels were probably 50 times higher than what they are recommended today. | ||
| And I got that through Plan Parenthood. | ||
| And now that's being wiped out for young women. | ||
| And the doctors are not trained in women's health. | ||
| Women's health have taken a back seat for as soon as the entire period of our country. | ||
| And I'm also a survivor of domestic violence, and I had PTSD and severe TBIs. | ||
| Most women, 75% women who survived the domestic violence that I did, have traumatic brain injuries. | ||
| And I'm only being treated now 18 years later. | ||
| So, and even in Portland, my doctor did not know about PTSD and traumatic brain injury and again wanted to prescribe antidepressants. | ||
| Women make up 52% of the country and we're treated not better than animals. | ||
| Yeah, so first of all, on the traumatic brain injury or what we call TBI and by the way, this is a big issue, PTSD with our nation's veterans and others who have sustained trauma in the past. | ||
| This is a big issue and a big priority for this FDA. | ||
| There are some potentially promising treatments out there. | ||
| We are committed to reducing the idle time that we have had historically to review some of these applications. | ||
| We need to talk about treatment in a holistic fashion. | ||
| It is not as simple as somebody simply taking a medication. | ||
| But that is a big priority in this administration. | ||
| And you just heard Doug Collins, the secretary of the VA, discuss this topic very passionately. | ||
| On the topic of menopause in medical education, I remember Tammy in medical school, and it was mostly guys. | ||
| It's a lot of dudes there in medical school when I went. | ||
| And one woman, I still remember this moment, at the end of one of the courses, the professor said, is there anything, any feedback you have in the courses? | ||
| And she said, I wish we spent a little more time talking about menopause. | ||
| And a lot of the guys in the back are rolling their eyes thinking, I'm not even sure I knew what menopause was at the time. | ||
| But we thought, you know, we want like the hard diagnose treat kind of approach to medicine, give us a condition like appendicitis that we can go in there and do a surgical procedure. | ||
| Let's learn that, you know, all this sort of complex biochemistry. | ||
| But we had really sort of this bias about, you know, spending any time in menopause. | ||
| Now I've come full circle in my career. | ||
| You meet, I would see patients in my own surgical practice who were in that period, and I would have the conversation with them, ultimately referring them to someone else to prescribe hormone replacement therapy. | ||
| But you realize this is an integral part of health. | ||
| Half of the people in the world are women, and every woman that makes it to age 45 to 55 roughly is going to experience this change in their body's physiology that is 80% plus likely to actually change their mood or how they feel or how they have sexual activity, how they gain or lose weight. | ||
| It has such a diverse ranges. | ||
| Every cell on the human body has estrogen receptors. | ||
| And so it is part of brain health and heart health and bone health. | ||
| And these are things we talk about in medical school in terms of how to do a hip replacement or to hammer a rod down a woman's femur. | ||
| But we really never talked about this incredible opportunity to increase bone strength by 90 plus percent by replacing a woman's estrogen levels once a woman's estrogen levels naturally decline. | ||
| Our guest is Dr. Marty McCary, Commissioner of the FDA. | ||
| Dr. McCary, always a pleasure to talk with you. | ||
| Thank you so much for being with us. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Good to be with you, Tammy. | ||
| In about 30 minutes on Washington Journal, CNN congressional reporter Annie Greyer breaks down a consequential week in Congress with the end of the shutdown, but the beginning of a fight over the Epstein files. | ||
| But first, it's open form. | ||
| Your chance to weigh in on any political or public policy issue on your mind this morning. | ||
| You can start calling in now the lines there on your screen. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| And as we go to break, we wanted to show you a portion of an event earlier this week hosted by the Harvard University Institute of Politics with the TV show VEEP about the role and importance of political satire. | ||
| Here's a clip. | ||
| I would love to hear from you all on sort of the staying power of this series that went off the air several years ago, but yet has had this kind of resurgence, especially, and you all remember this when Biden said he wasn't going to run for reelection again and Kamala Harris and there was like, she was a meme and like zero shit went up on Netflix, like 350% on HBO. | ||
| So talk about that kind of staying power that this show has. | ||
| Tony, it's pretty incredible. | ||
| No, I was, one of the things that I've heard is, am I, is this me, my micros is a good idea. | ||
| Is when the news gets obviously so crazy and it's difficult to watch and it's a lot of hardship and you're like, I can't believe this is happening, people feel the freedom to laugh at Veep. | ||
| So it's the sense of when they feel bad laughing at the news, it almost gives them permission to get it out on VEEP. | ||
| And that was just a real comfort for people, I think. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I always think that like part of the timelessness isn't the show that like ever since the first person was like, I'm going to be a politician, that then the first person was born who was like, I'm going to make fun of that dude. | ||
| You know, like, so I feel like it's just been like a timeless thing that you can make fun of politicians. | ||
| So there is that part of it too. | ||
| And there is then also just like the, you know, we, the writers of the show tried to come up with the single dumbest thing any politician could ever do. | ||
| And then ultimately a politician would do it. | ||
| And then it was like, so there was like that part of it too, that we kept trying to be ahead of it. | ||
| And then ultimately we're kind of behind it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I think the show benefits because it never revealed her party. | ||
| I think they attacked like the classic tropes of politics issues that were going on in Veep, gun control, abortion. | ||
| We're still living with all of it. | ||
| So in a way, the way it was designed gave it some longevity. | ||
| And I think like Tim said, I think, you know, politicians are always doing something really stupid or screwing something up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your experiences with DC and the political world in your research for the show, did it make you admire politics more? | |
| Did it turn you off from politics, that kind of thing? | ||
| And do those experiences at all inform your view of politics today? | ||
| I felt like I earned tremendous respect for people in the trenches because that is a job I would never do. | ||
| I would never be a congressman. | ||
| I wouldn't be inside that because of so many reasons. | ||
| So I did earn a lot of respect for the people who are in office and those people who serve them. | ||
| So that's one thing I learned. | ||
| I think I just learned a lot about the process, I guess. | ||
| I mean, I went into it pretty, you know, knowing about politics on a very inch-deep, mile-wide way. | ||
| And I think I did learn a lot about process. | ||
| I remember like when we first went to the House floor, I was looking around, like, what the fuck is a quorum? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| And I do think it has colored my thought of how quickly things should happen, just of learning about how the actual processes of these things go. | ||
| Some of them could definitely move faster, but it's not the kind of thing. | ||
| And I don't think it's the kind of thing that we want to have turn on a dime. | ||
| I don't think we want government to change tomorrow and then change the next day and then change back the next day. | ||
| And so it maybe has taught me a little bit of patience with having just seen a little bit of the underlying process. | ||
| Not that much patience, but at least a little more than I had. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Washington Journal continues. | |
| Welcome back. | ||
| It's Open Forum, your chance to call in on any political or public policy topic on your mind. | ||
| Your lines are open. | ||
| Democrats, that line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| And before we get to the calls, I wanted to bring you up to date on the latest happenings from Washington, D.C. 43 days that shutdown lasted, a historic shutdown. | ||
| Life is getting back to over now. | ||
| Life is getting back to normal now that it is over. | ||
| One headline we have for you is exclusive from Semaphore: Trump administration lays out plan for federal workers back pay after the government reopens. | ||
| It's from Shelby Talcott, who was on the program last week. | ||
| It basically lays out agency by agency of when workers can expect to get their first paychecks. | ||
| It says that paychecks for employees at the Department of Energy, Health and Human Services and Veterans Affairs, as well as Army and non-Army civilian employees at the recently named Department of War, are projected to be processed on Sunday. | ||
| The document that this article cites notes that paychecks will include standard pay as well as payments for things like hazard pay. | ||
| Another article that we have for you is that the FAA eases flight steps to FAA takes first steps to restore flights after shutdown strain, but some limits remain from the Associated Press. | ||
| This says that the agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, says that airlines will only have to cancel 3% of flights beginning at 6 a.m. Saturday instead of 6%, citing safety concerns, the FAA first ordered flights reduced at the busy airports on November 9th as absences mounted at air traffic facilities and airport towers. | ||
| Controllers were among the federal employees who are required to work while going unpaid during the shutdown. | ||
| We actually heard from DHS Secretary Christy Noam, who oversees some of the airports and flight happenings in the country, where she actually gave checks to the TSA workers at the airports, those who continued to show up throughout those 43 days that the government was shut down. | ||
| Take a listen. | ||
| And for the last 43 days, we have been dealing with a government shutdown that has dramatically impacted the lives of the American people. | ||
| And people were not just convenienced, inconvenienced, but they were also damaged and harmed by what Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and the Democratic Party did to the American people. | ||
| What I'm so proud of, though, today, and what I'm here talking about today, is the outstanding patriotism and service of our TSA officers and officials that stepped up every single day to make sure that those individuals at our airports and at our transportation systems continued to be safe and secure while they went about their daily lives and limited the impact on those families that relied so much on getting to where they needed to be on time. | ||
| So, today we are announcing that we are going to be handing out bonus checks of $10,000 to TSOs, to agents who work for TSA who served with exemplary service. | ||
| And what that means is that we are going to not only continue their paychecks like they should have received all along, but also they're going to get a bonus check for stepping up, taking on extra shifts, for showing up each and every day, for serving the American people and taking seriously the mission that the Department of Homeland Security takes seriously and that they take seriously every single day. | ||
| And that's keeping the American people safe while they go and commute across the country and while they do their work and business and take care of their families. | ||
| All right, turning to those callers, Charlie from Washington, a Democrat, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Am I up now? | |
| You're up now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So here's my question. | |
| All right. | ||
| So I think it's the East Wing that is being demolished and rebuilt as a ballroom that did not go through the public process of vetting, all of the things that need to be done to actually do things in the public sector because it's all of ours, the citizens White House. | ||
| My question is, the thing I'd like to think about or thought is all of the public, like big donors that are providing money to take care of this because Trump's saying it's not public funded. | ||
| Well, since it didn't go through all the legal processes to do this the way we, you know, the National Historic of Registered Places and all the, you know, public vetting of the plans and spaghets and bidding and all that, well, the people providing that money, the big, huge corporations that have that kind of money are private people. | ||
| Are they not like, I guess in a legal perspective, culpable or assisting in doing illegal activities? | ||
| Is it not possible to bring a case against all of those donors to, you know, I guess charge them for not allowing the public to go through the appropriate process? | ||
| That's all I have. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, I'm not sure what legal options that people would have. | ||
| Obviously, this week, we saw J.P. Morgan Chase's head CEO Jamie Dimon come out and say that he did not want to give to the ballroom for various reasons. | ||
| But I just actually found an article from Roll Call with the title East Wing Demolition Highlights Loopholes in Preservation Law. | ||
| And it says that the Trump administration's decision to demolish the East Wing of the White House without consulting preservation agencies and organizations is a reflection in part of the unusual position the building has in historical preservation law. | ||
| Now, one thing that I know that the White House has said repeatedly is yes, that this is a privately funded renovation and that they've made a lot of those people who have given to that ballroom public. | ||
| A lot of them have actually been back to the White House for various dinners that the president has had. | ||
| And that some of the commissions that would necessarily oversee those constructions, the president has really remade a lot of those. | ||
| So I would invite you to look at this article and perhaps maybe one of our producers could look into whether or not there are legal openings or opportunities for people for some of the folks who are donating. | ||
| But I know from talking to officials at the White House, they believe that they are abiding by the laws and that this is a private donated renovation. | ||
| Andy from Georgetown, Kentucky, a Republican, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Just a couple of different topics, if I may, on those drug bolts. | ||
| People, I've seen many or heard of many of them. | ||
| I've seen a couple of people that will tell me about their children or friends that they knew dying in the floor at their feet from drug overdoses. | ||
| And they are thanking God for Donald Trump that he's getting rid of these drugs coming in here that killed their children, their wives, their husbands, their grandchildren. | ||
| How could anybody? | ||
| I know that you see this stuff floating on the ocean when he destroys them. | ||
| And they test them for the media and people out there just not have any clue of what's going on, and they'll take anybody else's side of, oh, he's doing this, he's doing that. | ||
| It's just crazy. | ||
| But anyway, on the Epstein charges, do you know that Jeffrey Epstein was never convicted at a trial of any of these charges? | ||
| He pleaded guilty in 2008 to state-level prostitution charges as part of a controversial plea deal. | ||
| And he served, I think, 13 months under a work lease program that let him out for jail for six days a week as a condition of that. | ||
| And he was not supposed to be federally charged. | ||
| But in 2019, Andy, may I jump in here and ask you whether or not, obviously, a huge conversation happening in Washington this morning is about the Epstein files. | ||
| Do you believe that the Trump administration should release the Epstein files in full? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, they've already been released. | |
| The only thing that's holding them up is that from what I've seen and read, and I know you want to change the subject on this, but from what I see and read, he can't do anything that the courts won't allow him to do, just like the oh, what is that? | ||
| You go to pretrial, or you have these where just one side presents evidence, and that's not supposed to ever be released. | ||
| Well, I'll jump in here, Andy. | ||
| The president actually can release the Epstein files that his administration has cited that they don't want to because they want to protect the victims and other issues, but they can release the full Epstein files. | ||
| What you are describing is a court case in which they petitioned the court to release some specific jury documents that the court then said that they couldn't. | ||
| Billy, up next in Anderson, Indiana, an independent? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| I'd like to talk a little bit about the deficit that we have. | ||
| Mainly, I think it was caused by COVID. | ||
| And we do know that the Democrats, Fauci, worked with the Democrats. | ||
| They give over in the Wuhan lab, we funded like $11 million over there for the funding of this. | ||
| And we do know it was a Democratic thing. | ||
| Billy, can I ask where you read that, one, that COVID caused the deficit, which of course is over a trillion dollars. | ||
| And first, let's just start with that. | ||
| Where did you read that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's just common sense. | |
| If people had a little bit of common sense, you can figure it out. | ||
| Look, it shut all our schools down. | ||
| It shuts. | ||
| Right, but how is that tied to the deficit? | ||
| Well, also, the funding, the funding for the COVID relief fund and the infrastructure bill that went through, the Democrats put in about $11 trillion. | ||
| Obama. | ||
| Okay, well, I'll just say that right now, the U.S. deficit for the fiscal year of 2025 was $1.78 trillion. | ||
| Steve in North Carolina, a Democrat? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I have a topic or two I want to talk about, but I want to go back to the man from Kentucky, if I may, and with some real life. | ||
| My son, my son's wife, called me several years ago and said, your son's in the hospital. | ||
| He's unconscious. | ||
| They don't think he's going to live. | ||
| And it was from a drug overdose. | ||
| So the next morning, my wife and I get up, drive to North Carolina. | ||
| We don't know if we're going to be identifying our son's body or seeing him alive. | ||
| Now, I will tell you this: if he had died, I would have shed a tear every day. | ||
| But I'm going to tell you what, he knew what he was doing. | ||
| All these people taking these drugs know what they're doing. | ||
| So you can blame anybody in the world you want to, but the fact is they're sticking it in their body. | ||
| No one else is making them do it. | ||
| The problem is they don't have jobs. | ||
| They don't have an education. | ||
| They don't have anything that they'll look forward to or live for. | ||
| So they're taking these drugs. | ||
| In Knox County, Tennessee, one person dies from a drug overdose every year. | ||
| So you can believe what you want to, but the fact is they're putting the drugs in their body. | ||
| They're killing themselves. | ||
| Steve, I'm glad that your son seems to be okay, but may I ask, since you do have some experience with this, are you supportive of the administration's efforts to stop the flow of fentanyl into this country? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, let me say this. | |
| And the answer is it needs to be an education issue. | ||
| Okay, but let me tell you this. | ||
| These drug cartel people are not stupid. | ||
| They'll pull somebody off the street and say, look, or somebody that owns a boat, a fishing boat, if you don't run these drugs up there, if you don't take this boat for us, we're going to kill everybody in your family. | ||
| So what are you going to do? | ||
| So the fact is, you may be killing a lot of innocent people doing this. | ||
| Why not catch them? | ||
| You've got enough people down there now to stop these boats. | ||
| So, you know what? | ||
| I feel sorry for these people, these parents. | ||
| I know what they're going through, but nobody made those kids put those drugs in their body. | ||
| Those kids or whoever decided to do it on their own. | ||
| Okay, thank you, Steve. | ||
| A relevant headline out today in the Washington Wall Street Journal, excuse me, headlined, Secret Memo Lays Out Case for Boat Strikes. | ||
| In there, it says that a lengthy document by the department's Office of Legal Counsel outlines the Trump administration's still secret legal justification for the military operation, which has sparked criticism from Democrats and some Republicans since the strikes began in September. | ||
| We're talking about those strikes, obviously, in the Caribbean that the administration says is targeting drug cartels running drugs to the U.S. | ||
| The mention of fentanyl is one of the many points in the draft in the brief drafted over the summer to justify the use of military force against drug traffickers. | ||
| It notes that fentanyl has been weaponized in the past. | ||
| Stephen from Dewey, Arizona, a Republican, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Yes, I called yesterday and I gave some information that I called when the guest you had was talking about the 50-year home loans. | ||
| And I talked about how I paid off my home and how I did that. | ||
| I had high credit, 30-year loan, and after five years, I got a lower loan. | ||
| So I went from 25 to 18. | ||
| And I was in loans for 30, 35 years in the automobile business. | ||
| And this can only happen with simple interest loans. | ||
| So if you pay half the loan, no matter what it is, if it's $3,000, if you pay $1,500 two weeks before the loan and the other $1,500, they can charge you the full interest. | ||
| So I went from, I paid off the home in 12 years. | ||
| So I saved another six years just by making the payment I was supposed to make, not making more payments. | ||
| And then they cut me, and the guest kind of said, oh, you shouldn't do that. | ||
| So I AI'd it. | ||
| And this is what AI said. | ||
| And this is going to help anybody that has a home loan or a car loan. | ||
| That's a simple interest loan. | ||
| You can look it up. | ||
| Yes, paying half the loan payment halfway through the month will reduce the amount of interest you pay because more of your payment will go toward the principal. | ||
| By making the first payment earlier, reduce the principal balance sooner, which lowers the amount of interest that occurs over the remaining period of the month. | ||
| Stephen, can I ask about the politics of this 50-year mortgage? | ||
| Are you, as somebody who has been able to successfully pay down their mortgage, and it seems like in a shorter amount of time than what your mortgage was for, are you in support of a 50-year mortgage? | ||
| Do you feel that that is going to incur too much interest on the borrowers? | ||
| Where do you stand on obviously this issue? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's up to the individual. | |
| I mean, the guest was saying that, you know, is making it a doomsday thing where, you know, everything was fixed interest loans. | ||
| Saying stuff like the average price of a home is a million dollars, where the average price of a home I just AI'd it is $400,000 in the $400,000 range. | ||
| But that's up to the individual. | ||
| When you go get a loan, that's going to be up to you to decide if you want to do 20, 30, 40, or 50 years. | ||
| So that's going to be an individual. | ||
| Okay, so you're not off the bat against that issue. | ||
| Okay, Stephen. | ||
| Sabrina from Asheville, North Carolina, an independent, you're up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, I'm calling because I was very concerned about what the man from the FDA had to say about hormone therapy. | |
| So the hormones just got took out of the vaccinations a while back. | ||
| So it makes sense that the FDA would be pushing to try to get the warning labels off of hormones off because they're most likely receiving payments for it. | ||
| But what he's proposing is extremely dangerous. | ||
| You don't want to go in and start taking those warning labels off those medications because it takes an act of Congress and almost an act of God to get those warning labels put on those medications in the first place. | ||
| So I just wanted to voice on that because what he's talking about doing is going to have a negative effect on a massive amount of people. | ||
| And that is not something that we should be doing. | ||
| We should not be discussing the Epstein files because those victims of that man most likely were underage. | ||
| There might not be underage now, but the trauma that those individuals received is going to be triggered every time we talk about it. | ||
| What we should be talking about is Dr. Fauci. | ||
| Where are the files on Dr. Fauci and the pharmaceutical companies that have been flopping on the market and getting themselves put onto the child vaccination list? | ||
| That's what we should be talking about. | ||
| Sabrina, let me go back to the Epstein files quickly, even though I said, I know that you said we shouldn't be talking about it. | ||
| The Epstein's victims that are still around have been actually very public about wanting these files to be released in full so that the country can understand what happened to them and what happened to the other victims. | ||
| I wonder if you disagree with their position. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, considering I am a rape victim, you know, like a serious rape victim where somebody literally bathed in my blood. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| What happens when you go through something traumatizing like that is anytime that you have to talk about it or anytime that you see something that is related to what happens to you, it triggers the memory of those incidents. | ||
| So you see, if a victim really, really had a traumatizing experience in that, every time you say that word, it's going to trigger a memory of what happened to them. | ||
| Like the doctor that did that to me, his name is actually in a song. | ||
| I can't even listen to the song without it triggering their memories. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| But the bigger issue is Epstein is old. | ||
| You know, that stuff has, I'm not saying it's not a big deal, but it's old. | ||
| Well, Sabrina, thank you for sharing your story. | ||
| I would just say, point to this Axios report filed about 19 hours ago that say Epstein survivors urge Congress to release all the files in quotations, no hiding. | ||
| It says a group of Jeffrey Epstein survivors is calling on Congress to release all the files and documents related to the investigation into the convicted sex offender. | ||
| What they're saying, quote, you have the ability to vote to release the Epstein files and with it, deliver a promise the American people have awaited for far too long. | ||
| We implore you to do so. | ||
| Reads the letter attributed to the family of Virginia Guffery and other survivors. | ||
| Karen from Chester, Pennsylvania, Democrat, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I've been sick for a while, so I haven't been listening, so I don't even know if you covered this. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I haven't seen all the coverage on it. | ||
| Well, Karen, you can actually talk about whichever public policy or political topic that you want since it's open forum. | ||
| So what's on your mind? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They should release the files, but what I want to talk about is health care. | |
| People have faulty memories. | ||
| They don't remember back in December of 2009 when the Republicans would not pass the affordable health care unless it ceased to be a single payer plan. | ||
| If they had let the plan go the way and work it the way it was designed, of course Obamacare is selling because you're not using it the way it was designed to be used. | ||
| If it had been passed the way it was designed, it would not be more expensive. | ||
| You'd be able to pick the doctor that you want any doctor. | ||
| You wouldn't have any of these stupid rules that the insurance companies have. | ||
| You wouldn't be able, they wouldn't be able to. | ||
| Sarah, can I ask, are you in favor of the Democrats' position that the subsidies should just be extended for another year or two years? | ||
| Or are you hoping that the administration comes up with the sort of replacement that could either put the money directly into the hands of the Americans to pay down some of those fees or a different version that would make Obamacare cheaper? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, to be frank with you, after seeing all these things, I'd like to see him extend the subsidies for now. | |
| But what I'd really like to see, I've been looking around at all the different healthcares, and, you know, not in other countries too much, but just around here. | ||
| And Bernie's idea is not too bad. | ||
| I think they should extend it. | ||
| Donald from Spokane, Washington, Republican, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| I just was hoping to talk to Dr. Marty. | ||
| I know he's gone now. | ||
| So my question for him, I'll just make as a comment, if that's okay. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| First off, thank you to C-SPAN. | ||
| I wanted to wait the full 30 days till today to call because it's a special day in my family. | ||
| It's my big brother's birthday. | ||
| I want to say happy birthday to him. | ||
| Happy birthday. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And I wanted to thank Dr. Marty and some of his, I guess it would be colleagues that I know from the John Hopskins, Dr. Fearon, and Dr. Thacco out of Dallas Medical City for the Cranio Facial Center. | ||
| They saved my son and many children's lives. | ||
| And what they do down there is just amazing. | ||
| We get to go see them in about a month for his final checkup. | ||
| So just wanted to thank all those people. | ||
| Wish my brother happy birthday. | ||
| And if I could go ahead and ask my question, and maybe one of his aides or him, if he's a good C-SPAN watcher here. | ||
| Okay, Donald, we've got ahead to break. | ||
| What's your question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My question is about the recent hemp ban or whatnot that came out in this last bill. | |
| And I'm hoping that President Trump and Dr. Marty and RFK Jr. can really look into this because we need to be there to support our veterans and our patients that have other medical issues that maybe modern medicine doesn't necessarily help or doesn't help at all. | ||
| And by pulling these okay, Donald, we'll take that question on the hemp band and hopefully you'll get an answer from the administration. | ||
| Up next, we have CNN Congressional Reporter Andy Greyer, who breaks down a consequential week in Congress with the end of the shutdown, but the beginning of the fight over the Epstein files. | ||
| That conversation, after the break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Friday on C-SPAN's Ceasefire. | |
| At a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman and Alabama Republican Senator Katie Britt come together for a bipartisan dialogue on the top issues facing the country. | ||
| They join host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Bridging the Divide in American Politics. | ||
| Watch C Spire, Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| American History TV, exploring the people and events that tell the American story. | ||
| This weekend, as the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, join American History TV for our new series, America 250, and discover the ideas and defining moments of the American story. | ||
| This week, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, author Rick Atkinson, and retired Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford examine Revolutionary War leadership at an event held at George Washington's Mount Vernon. | ||
| Watch documentary filmmakers Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein as they join C-SPAN's Washington Journal to discuss their upcoming PBS series, The American Revolution. | ||
| Take a tour of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., where we look at the lunar lander that touched down on the moon, Charles Lindbergh's plane that flew across the Atlantic, and the X-15 flown by Neil Armstrong. | ||
| On Lectures in History, a discussion on the U.S. and the Arab-Israel peace process with Trinity College professor James Stoker, looking at the history of the U.S. negotiating ends to Israeli-Arab conflicts, including the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the 2023 Israel-Hamas War. | ||
| Exploring the American story, watch American History TV every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series. | ||
| Sunday, best-selling biographer Walter Isaacson, who chronicles history's most remarkable lives. | ||
| His books include Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Einstein. | ||
| He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | ||
| What attracted you to these people? | ||
| Was it because they were geniuses or you just happened to like them? | ||
| Smart people are a dime a dozen. | ||
| In order to be a genius, you have to be creative. | ||
| You have to think out of the box. | ||
| And one of the things that struck me when I wrote about Benjamin Franklin early on was what a great scientist and technologist he was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club with Walter Isaacson, Sundays at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | |
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| Joining us to talk about the end of the government shutdown and other news of the week from Capitol Hill is Annie Greyer, Senior Congressional Reporter for CNN. | ||
| Annie, hello, thanks so much for joining us. | ||
| Thanks so much for having me. | ||
| All right, I want to jump right in. | ||
| We are just on the heels of the longest shutdown of all time, ending this week, 43 days. | ||
| You've done some great reporting on this. | ||
| What was the mood on Capitol Hill after the vote? | ||
| I think a lot of people on both sides of the aisle were asking, what did we get out of this? | ||
| Democrats went into the shutdown saying they wouldn't vote to reopen the government unless those expiring Obamacare subsidies were addressed because they were worried about people's health care prices going up. | ||
| Republicans said they weren't going to vote to reopen. | ||
| They wouldn't address any of those subsidies until the government was reopened, but they were getting more and more pressure to bring House members back into session to have some negotiation to maybe even bring the president in. | ||
| And there was pressures from all sides of the party at one point. | ||
| The president was asking for the filibuster to be abolished to sort of get the shutdown over with. | ||
| So 43 days, and I think both sides were really scratching their heads what was accomplished here. | ||
| But even more so, Democrats left that shutdown feeling extremely divided. | ||
| I mean, if there's been no change in policy, obviously Democrats were not able to get changes to health care, which is why they said that they were shutting down the government in the first place. | ||
| What did change? | ||
| Is it their messaging? | ||
| What was the actual change that Democrats and Republicans can point to after the shutdown? | ||
| So a few things. | ||
| First, what happened, addressing federal workers as a result of this shutdown. | ||
| There was a part of this deal that Democrats wedged in there that ensured that any federal worker who was fired during the shutdown will actually get rehired, that all federal workers, including furloughed workers, will receive back pay, which is something the administration was weighing whether or not that they were going to do. | ||
| So Democrats can really point to that as a win. | ||
| And then on the expiring Obamacare subsidies, no, Democrats did not get a solution, but they got a vote on the Senate floor, which a lot of Democrats saw as a win given Democrats are in the minority. | ||
| They don't control the floor. | ||
| So for the Republicans to give them that one vote, the Democrats say, you know, that is something tangible at least we can hold on to. | ||
| Of course, it is very unclear if that would pass in the Senate. | ||
| Even less likely that that would get taken up in the House. | ||
| So again, it's not a huge win, but it is something tangible that at least those eight Democrats are pointing to. | ||
| I want to invite our viewers who join in on this conversation shortly. | ||
| Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| And Independents, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| Obviously, we talked about Republicans putting, or Senate Republicans at least, deciding that they would give Democrats a vote on health care. | ||
| How over the course of the 43 days did Republicans' message change or did it not change at all? | ||
| It didn't really change that much, but there was not a lot of flexibility in that message where there maybe could have been. | ||
| I mean, Mike Johnson kept the House out of session the entire shutdown. | ||
| The House was completely not at the table for any of this. | ||
| And even Republicans were getting anxious. | ||
| They were getting frustrated about this because there were things that members could have been doing. | ||
| They could have been trying to make sure military workers get paid, make sure SNAP benefits go out. | ||
| Instead, those were things that the administration ended up getting involved in. | ||
| But Johnson made the calculation early that keeping the House out would, one, prevent sort of tempers from flaring in hallways because lawmakers wouldn't have much to do, so it could get pretty tense. | ||
| And two, continue to put pressure on Senate Democrats, which ultimately ended up working, you could argue. | ||
| But, you know, what did what the House is now so behind in its work as a result of it? | ||
| There was no hearings. | ||
| There was no committee meetings. | ||
| And now they are a very shortened timeline to try and come up with sort of bipartisan deal on those expiring health care subsidies. | ||
| And Johnson keeps saying that there's a ton of different ideas out there, but we haven't seen pen to paper yet. | ||
| We know that there is Republican interest in doing something here because a lot of Republicans represent districts where their constituents are deeply affected by this issue. | ||
| In fact, there's a bill that has at least 14 Republican co-signers on it that would extend these subsidies by a year. | ||
| So Johnson's going to have to now address all of these sort of competing factions in the Republican Party because he knows that there are Republicans who want to do this. | ||
| And then I think, you know, one more thing about just what Republicans sort of got out of this shutdown or learned is Tuesday's elections two weeks ago. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That was a moment where even the president acknowledged that people were blaming Republicans for this shutdown. | ||
| Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, the White House, obviously. | ||
| And Tuesday's elections, a lot of Republicans saw sort of a wake-up call that maybe their strategy wasn't working. | ||
| Democrats got even more dug in, that they should keep holding the line. | ||
| Then, of course, everything fell apart by the weekend, and now we're in reopened government. | ||
| And one thing that we saw after that falling apart, where eight moderate Democrats joined Republicans to reopen the government in the Senate, was divisions among House progressives and Democrats in the Senate. | ||
| Our notice reporters talked to Chris Murphy, a senator, where he said, quote, you cannot defend democracy effectively if you are not united as an opposition party. | ||
| And we are repeatedly showing that we are not united. | ||
| So my hope is that the caucus comes together and decides to stop breaking apart like this. | ||
| Can you talk about some of those divisions among Democrats after the shutdown? | ||
| Yeah, this is a really big moment for the Democratic Party for eight Democrats to vote for this government deal and reopen it. | ||
| And the majority of all House Democrats, I think it was only six House Democrats that ended up voting in the House for this, but that the top Democrat in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, said publicly he was fighting this deal, that he was going to work to convince his members not to vote for it. | ||
| I mean, you had, the Democrats had this moment where, I mean, let's go back a little bit to March, the last time the government funding issue came up. | ||
| We saw Chuck Schumer and a bunch of Democrats vote to reopen the vote to keep the government open. | ||
| There was no shutdown then, right? | ||
| And between March and September, there was a lot of soul searching in the party of how do we best use our position in the minority to stand up for what we believe in, to push back against Republicans. | ||
| And the decision was, let's make this about health care, these expiring subsidies that are causing 22 million people's health care prices to go up. | ||
| This is something that we can explain to people, that we can all be united behind, that Republicans are affected by too. | ||
| And the decision was to really fight. | ||
| And then the shutdown starts dragging on. | ||
| And all of a sudden, you have these eight or so moderate Democrats, a lot of whom are not up for reelection for many years. | ||
| Some are retiring. | ||
| You know, they have a different calculus than those like John Osoff, who's up and running for a tough reelection, or Democrats who have tough competitive races in the House. | ||
| So there was all these kind of political calculations swirling. | ||
| And those eight moderate Democrats, I learned, you know, didn't just decide on a whim to agree to a deal. | ||
| They had sort of been working behind the scenes the whole time of this shutdown and meeting with Soon and meeting with Republicans and having the sort of intermediary with the White House because they were never really on board with this shutdown strategy. | ||
| But Schumer wanted, Schumer wanted to fight. | ||
| He wanted to keep Democrats sort of together on this. | ||
| He couldn't keep those eight moderates, hold those eight moderates off any longer. | ||
| So now Democrats are back in this soul-searching period of, okay, in March, we voted to reopen the government. | ||
| The base was really pissed. | ||
| In September, we tried to stay united and fight and hold until we got what we wanted. | ||
| People caved early. | ||
| Now they have until January 30th is the next government funding deadline. | ||
| Are we going to see a different strategy here? | ||
| I mean, people, there's some Democrats, notably not in the Senate, really, but some Democrats in the House who say Schumer needs to resign or step aside. | ||
| He can no longer leave the Democratic Party. | ||
| That's a conversation they need to have. | ||
| Then there's, you know, just the broader question of what is our strategy here in this Trump, in fighting Republicans, this Trump administration. | ||
| One other relationship that you profiled during the shutdown was a relationship between Hakeem Jeffries and Mike Johnson, now the House Speaker. | ||
| Can you talk about how their relationship has evolved since basically Trump has been in office? | ||
| Your headline of this one piece was how Johnson and Jeffries' once collegial relationship has soured in the era of Trump and shut down politics. | ||
| Yeah, so rewind to when Mike Johnson gets sworn in October 2023. | ||
| The two of them are hugging on the House floor. | ||
| It was marking an end to a really bitter chapter in House politics. | ||
| You know, Johnson went through 15 rounds, or there were so many rounds for being who was going to be Speaker. | ||
| The Republican Party was in shambles. | ||
| And Mike Johnson and Hakeem Jeffries, starting in 2023, forged this new path of working together. | ||
| Now, we were in a totally different Washington then. | ||
| Joe Biden was in the White House. | ||
| Democrats controlled the Senate. | ||
| But Mike Johnson and Jeffries really found areas to work together. | ||
| They kept the government open. | ||
| Jeffries helped Johnson save his job when Republicans tried to oust him at one point. | ||
| They worked together on passing crucial foreign aid for Ukraine and other countries. | ||
| And compare that split screen to now, where they publicly have gotten very, you know, really started attacking each other in ways that I had not seen before. | ||
| So that's when I started talking to sources and asking sort of what was going on behind the scenes. | ||
| And turns out they were barely talking during this shutdown. | ||
| I mean, yes, there were check-ins here and there, but it was not like meaningful discussions. | ||
| And there is a feeling among Democrats that once Trump got elected, that Johnson could no longer be trusted as sort of an equal negotiating partner because he was always going to defer to the president on whatever issue it may be. | ||
| And Democrats saw this sort of start to happen once Trump got elected in November 24, that in December and January, slowly it started to creep to where it is now, where Johnson has to rely on Trump to pass any piece of major legislation. | ||
| We saw that over the summer with the Big Beautiful Bill where Trump was literally making those calls on the floor to lawmakers to try and switch them to yes at the last minute. | ||
| And so that lack of trust has really soured that relationship. | ||
| And just quickly that now that this kind of foundation is broken with the government reopening, the two of them really need to work together. | ||
| If there's ever going to be any sort of bipartisan health care deal, how are you going to do that when this shutdown has really soured the relationship? | ||
| And that's sort of what I learned. | ||
| Let's turn to our callers, Anne, Annie, and from Brian Wood, Wisconsin, a Democrat. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, thank you for having C-SPAN and for talking about the current issues. | |
| I guess for me, the shutdown, I was very disappointed as a Democrat that those Democrats gave in. | ||
| But I think the pressure is so great on everyone. | ||
| I can understand why they did. | ||
| And I think the issues, people are really tired of all of this. | ||
| Democrats, Republicans. | ||
| Everybody's just trying to make a living and pay their bills. | ||
| And it's getting harder and harder to do that. | ||
| And we just want a government that will solve our problems rather than just distract. | ||
| And I don't know how other we're trying to protest. | ||
| We're trying to talk to our representatives and they don't listen. | ||
| And I don't know what else can we do to get this government to start working for the people. | ||
| Annie, why don't you take that? | ||
| I think one thing that came out of this shutdown was if you were to rewind to September 30th, I don't think anyone in the public really knew what these expiring health care subsidies were and the impact it was going to have and how big of an impact it was going to have on people. | ||
| And now, fast forward to today, and this is an issue that's front and center. | ||
| People really do know about it. | ||
| And that came from people sharing their personal stories, you know, posting their bills online, which is a very personal decision to make, but to show, look at how much my costs are going to go up if these subsidies go away. | ||
| And I think that that sort of personal stories creates a lot of public pressure, probably more than you realize. | ||
| And there are a lot of Republicans who understand this issue deeply. | ||
| And I think people continuing to talk about how their cost of living is going up, but specifically on the health care issue, how their health care prices are going up, is only going to keep the pressure ratcheting up, which is, you know, if you want your voice heard, I think that's the best way to do that. | ||
| Kate from St. Louis, Missouri, an independent, your line is up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you for taking my call. | |
| I've got two things. | ||
| Essentially, in my opinion, the government is truly broken and maybe we need to do a clean sweep. | ||
| Mike Johnson is so dug in to his principles, he's not willing to cross the line. | ||
| That also goes for the Democrats. | ||
| Some of them are like that as well. | ||
| And on a side topic, I just want to know, what is the government afraid of that they refuse to open and release all of the Epstein files? | ||
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Annie, Epstein files. | ||
| So starting with the Epstein files. | ||
| I mean, the administration, the way that the president and his allies have handled this, I think have made this, continue to make this more of a firestorm by withholding information. | ||
| I think if the Department of Justice and the White House said today, release all the files, I think people would appreciate that transparency and it would be, you know, a horrible moment for the victims, but hopefully that, you know, they would finally get the sort of recognition and validation that they so desperately need and deserve. | ||
| And that people can sort of start to potentially move on from this. | ||
| But the fact that this has continued to be this cat and mouse game where the administration keeps changing its position here or changing its changing how it's going to respond to all of this. | ||
| And it's just continued, by continuing to sort of hide the ball here, it's made people more suspicious. | ||
| And it's created all of these, this uproar that we've seen. | ||
| And we're going through the 20,000 emails that the Oversight Committee put out earlier this week. | ||
| The president's name is mentioned in there. | ||
| So that raises all kinds of concerns. | ||
| But of course, just because he's mentioned doesn't mean that there's wrongdoing. | ||
| And so I think the White House is, of course, trying to avoid, it seems, some embarrassment if more, you know, more mention of the president comes up. | ||
| But if there's truly no wrongdoing there, I think releasing all this information is truly kind of the only path forward here. | ||
| And the House is going to take a big step towards that this week. | ||
| I was going to say, for Republicans signed on that discharge petition just this week, they are on the screen here. | ||
| Representative Massey, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, Lauren Bobert, after some pressure from the White House, Johnson says that he's putting the vote on the floor on Friday. | ||
| Can you talk about why he has shifted his position potentially away from the White House to hold a vote and to hold it immediately? | ||
| Yeah, I think the Speaker has made the calculus that, look, a lot of Republicans want to vote for this. | ||
| Let's just vote for it, move on, send it over to the Senate. | ||
| Because it's still a long way for this to actually see all these files to see the light of day because it would have to pass the Republican-controlled Senate and then be signed by the president into law. | ||
| Now, given his position on all this, there's a lot of questions. | ||
| Would he sign something like that? | ||
| But this is going to be a big moment in the House this week. | ||
| We think as soon as Tuesday, because this House Republican conference has really been in lockstep with the president every step of the way of his second term. | ||
| And I'm hearing from sources that it could be 40, 50, 60 Republicans who vote for this on Tuesday. | ||
| That is a major rebuke of the president and his position here. | ||
| But that's how strongly people across both parties feel about this issue. | ||
| So what I hear from sources close to the speaker is he understood all this and just said like delaying this any longer because there was sort of a procedural mechanism he could have used to delay this vote, decided let's not delay, let's just do it, kick it to the Senate. | ||
| John from Long Beach, California, Republican, your line is open. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I really appreciate it. | |
| Thank you very much for having me today. | ||
| I really appreciate C-SPAN. | ||
| I feel like our government is like a bad Hollywood divorce. | ||
| It is so dysfunctional. | ||
| And the problem is there's so few people left in the middle that you can't get a very hard left-leaning group of Democrats to actually move towards the center and find some compromises that have to take place if our representative government's going to work. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| The retirements that we're seeing sort of across the board really speak to your point. | ||
| I mean, there are a lot of moderate members who have said publicly that they feel like their respective parties are moving away from them. | ||
| I mean, look at Jared Golden, who announced his retirement from Maine. | ||
| He is a Democrat who Republicans have tried to unseat many times. | ||
| He represents one of the most Trump-leaning districts represented by a Democrat in Congress. | ||
| And he just put out an op-ed saying, look, I don't know if this is worth it for me anymore. | ||
| I'd rather be with my family giving back to my community in other ways. | ||
| There are on the Republican side, Republicans like Don Bacon, who's known for working across the aisle, represents a district in Nebraska. | ||
| And he has also said something similar, that it's time for him to move on from Congress. | ||
| So the historic level of retirements that we're seeing in both chambers from both parties, I think, really speaks to your point and raises a lot of questions of, you know, how do both parties continue to recruit high-level candidates when there is such this dysfunction in Washington? | ||
| I mean, signing up for this job means you are signing up for a lot of craziness, a lot of chaos, a lot of things out of your control. | ||
| Unfortunately, the potential threats to your personal safety. | ||
| And a lot of people are looking at that and saying, I don't know if it's worth it anymore. | ||
| Well, talking about dysfunction overnight, we saw a real breakup of a long-term relationship between Marjorie Taylor Greene, who signed on to that discharge petition to release the Epstein files, and President Donald Trump. | ||
| I want to take a listen to how he talked about the Epstein files of it all yesterday at Air Force One and Marjorie Taylor Greene. | ||
| The Congresswoman was on CBS News. | ||
| She was talking about how the files should be released. | ||
| We anticipate that a vote will happen in the House. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know you have, you wrote about the investigation today. | |
| Care about it, released or not. | ||
| What I think you should do, if you're going to do it, then you have to go into Epstein's friends. | ||
| This Reid Hoffman spent a lot of time on the island. | ||
| I was never in his island. | ||
| Bill Clinton went there supposedly 28 times. | ||
| You're going to have to look into his friends because if they're going to do that, then I think the perfect guy to do it would be Southern District, somebody like Jay Clinton. | ||
| I understand that's who's been assigned. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But does the congresswoman have a point though? | |
| Does Marjorie Taylor Greene have a point? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Does she have a point though? | |
| I know nothing about her. | ||
| Well, the release supposedly. | ||
| Well, they can have whatever they want. | ||
| They already do. | ||
| I think they have 50,000 pages already. | ||
| Look, this is a Democrat hoax. | ||
| This is a hoax put out by the Democrat, and a couple of few Republicans have gone along with it because they're weak and ineffective. | ||
| But this is a Democrat hoax to get away from the fact that they just lost the shutdown and they've lost the elections. | ||
| They've lost the big election to me in a record number. | ||
| They lost the popular vote. | ||
| They lost the swing states. | ||
| They lost everything. | ||
| I think it was 312 to 220 something. | ||
| So this is a way of not talking about that. | ||
| It's a hoax. | ||
| This is no different than Russia, Russia, Russia. | ||
| And it's headed up by Democrats and some very weak Republicans. | ||
| So how is that going to land on the Hill? | ||
| I think this is a bombshell on the Hill, honestly. | ||
| Marjorie Taylor Greene has been Trump's closest ally on the Hill, most unapologetic supporter for years. | ||
| I mean, she's been at State of the Unions wearing Trump hats. | ||
| She's the first to kind of pass companion legislation for whatever policy he was bringing up on the campaign trail or is doing in administration. | ||
| She's his number one cheerleader. | ||
| And to see this breakup happen so publicly, so directly, just really shows sort of where the Republican Party is right now. | ||
| Now, Green says Trump is doing all this because he wants to scare Republicans off from voting against the Epstein discharge petition on Tuesday, because as we mentioned, she's one of the four co-signers. | ||
| But she has been very publicly in the last couple weeks just talking very negatively about the administration, how they're not addressing affordability, how they're not addressing the health care crisis, critical of Republicans for keeping the House out of session. | ||
| So people are sort of scratching their heads as to why she was coming out so strongly against the president when she previously had been so for him. | ||
| But now President Trump officially ending this relationship is really stunning. | ||
| Robert from Harrison, Arkansas. | ||
| Democrat, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, thank you for my opportunity. | |
| One of the main things, every day that they voted on the shutdown, Senator Thune emphasized this would only be a vote for a clean CR day after day after day. | ||
| When the vote finally came up, it was an extended CR, but it also included snap benefit, I think, money for the military, but also that senators. | ||
| Robert, we're running close to our time here. | ||
| What's your question for Annie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
How come they can have that vote when it included senators being excluded from Department of Justice when they refused to take up health care, which we have a problem with? | |
| Well, you're not alone in that frustration. | ||
| House Republicans are furious about that too. | ||
| In fact, some didn't vote for the government funding bill when it came to the House for that very reason. | ||
| And the Speaker had a press conference after the House passed the government funding bill saying he was furious and blindsided by this. | ||
| In fact, he had had a conversation with Leader Thune about how House Republicans are going to introduce a way to strip that provision because you're right, it wasn't a clean CR in the end by adding this provision in. | ||
| And it doesn't even include House lawmakers. | ||
| It was just addressing people in the Senate. | ||
| And there are Republicans who are furious. | ||
| So this issue is going to be back on the House floor this week where Republicans are going to vote to strip that provision. | ||
| And then senators are going to have to address: are they going to hold by their vote or are they going to understand the public pressure that's mounted around this and remove it? | ||
| So that vote is going to be on the floor this week. | ||
| Annie, what else are you looking out for on Congress this week? | ||
| Well, this is their first real week back. | ||
| It's sort of like back to school vibes. | ||
| Like, what priorities are Republicans going to be focusing on? | ||
| I mean, they have to get through the upstream vote on Tuesday. | ||
| They're going to have this vote about stripping the provision from the Senate bill later this week. | ||
| And then is it back to regular order? | ||
| Like, are they going to try and pass more appropriations bills? | ||
| They're behind on the National Defense Authorization Act, which has to be passed by the end of the year. | ||
| They haven't held committee hearings throughout this whole government shutdown. | ||
| I think it's going to be kind of chaotic. | ||
| That's what I love covering about Congress, though. | ||
| And we really don't know what to expect. | ||
| Annie Greyer covers Congress for CNN. | ||
| Thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| And that is all for our program today. |