Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Source
Participants
Main
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emily randall
rep/d16:23
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frederick hess
18:20
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greta brawner
cspan29:05
Appearances
chuck schumer
sen/d02:02
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elissa slotkin
sen/d02:12
george w bush
r01:28
jd vance
admin02:23
karoline leavitt
admin01:53
linda mcmahon
01:12
lindsey graham
sen/r02:06
mike johnson
rep/r00:38
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sheila cherfilus-mccormick
rep/d00:47
zohran mamdani
d00:44
Clips
chris hayes
msnow00:14
david rubenstein
00:06
willie nelson
00:04
Callers
dennis in north carolina
callers00:03
william in arkansas
callers00:04
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Voice
Speaker
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Senator Alyssa's Condemnation00:15:26
unidentified
Today, on C-SPAN Ceasefire, Florida Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz and Tennessee Republican Congressman Tim Burchett come together for a bipartisan dialogue on the Epstein files, health care, and top issues facing the country.
They join host Dasha Burns Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
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MediaCom supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, along with your calls and comments live, we'll talk about the Trump administration's efforts to dismantle the Department of Education with Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute and newly appointed Washington Democratic Representative Emily Randall discusses the Epstein files and Congressional News of the Day.
We're going to begin this morning with President Trump calling for the arrest of Democratic lawmakers who appeared in a video calling for members of the U.S. military to disobey illegal orders.
The president said it's seditious behavior at the highest level.
Your reaction this morning, here's how you can join the conversation.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
You can text if you don't want to call at 202-748-8003, include your first name, city, and state, or post on facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ.
While you dial in or text, we'll begin with that video from a portion of the video showing Democratic lawmakers with military and intelligence background telling service members to disobey President Trump if his directives amount to illegal orders.
It was posted on Facebook on Tuesday by Senator Alyssa Slotkin of Michigan.
An ad posted by Democratic lawmakers with military and intelligence background of the president responded on Truth Social, saying it's called seditious behavior at the highest level.
Each one of these traitors to our country should be arrested and put on trial.
Their words cannot be allowed to stand.
We won't have a country anymore.
An example must be set.
He went on to also post this on Truth Social: seditious behavior punishable by death.
Now, here's Democratic Senator Alyssa Slotkin, who began that video responding to President Trump's Truth Social post while speaking at a conference in DC yesterday.
I think if you just take a step back, we have the President of the United States calling for a group of service and veteran lawmakers to be arrested, tried, and then hung.
I mean, this is what he said.
And because we made a video that he didn't like.
And I think separate from any one of us who made the video, this is just for me about who we are as a country and whether we're going to accept that this is the new normal for how we treat people we disagree with.
It's about the example we want to set for our kids and it's about whether we are going to accept that this is just how we're going to engage with each other.
You know, I, in my previous life, swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution.
I took that same oath when I was sworn in as a senator 11 months ago.
And that oath is to the Constitution, not to any one man, any one president.
And I think, certainly for me, I refuse to be intimidated out of fighting for the country that I love.
And I think, and you all know this, as state and local officials, fear can often be contagious.
And when it's scary and people don't speak up, then it kind of spreads.
But if fear is contagious, so is courage.
And I think when a lion's share of Americans understand that it is in their own power to push back on this kind of rhetoric and this kind of threat, that's when we actually turn the tide.
So I appreciate the support.
I appreciate law enforcement.
But this country has given me everything.
I am here because I'm an American and it gave me everything.
And I'm not going to shut up because Donald Trump is threatening me.
Democratic Senator Alyssa Slotkin, they're responding to the president's Truth Social post.
Now, the Washington Post this morning says it's not clear what orders, those illegal orders, those Democrats are referring to, but they said they are hearing from some service members questioning the legality of strikes that have targeted people by targeting people in the narcotics organizations by sea.
So related to that, Punch Bowl News has some news this morning.
House Democrats plan to unveil a bill today that would cut off funding for U.S. operations in or against Venezuela.
The legislation led by Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts would bar the Trump administration from spending money on military campaigns targeting Venezuela unless lawmakers approve an authorization for use of military force.
Moulton plans to announce the push during a 9 a.m. news conference today alongside fellow Democrats.
The legislation continues House Democrats' pushback against the Trump administration's strikes targeting alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific.
Half a dozen leading lawmakers earlier this week pitched a resolution seeking to prevent Trump from using U.S. forces against any group he's labeled as designated terrorist organizations within the Western Hemisphere.
The Senate has blocked two similar resolutions in recent months.
Let's get to your calls.
The president accusing Democrats of seditious behavior, John in New York and Independent.
Your reaction to this back and forth in Washington this week.
unidentified
My response is the tape that these Democratic congresspeople made was really shock.
It was shocking.
I've never heard of anything like this ever that I read in history or notice.
I'm 72 years old, and I never saw any response like this from a Democratic or anything.
And I do believe that this has to be truly investigated.
Donald Trump's response was rational.
I give him credit for that.
That was very rational.
But I don't believe that any of these senators should have any kind of contact with the Pentagon, our military forces, or anything until this is fully investigated.
And that I do hope that the Washington Journal doesn't totally doesn't get complicit in this because I hope they don't defend the response that these Democratic senators made.
John, can I ask you to respond to the Wall Street Journal and how they frame the story?
They say that the president asked his more than 11 million followers on Truth Social whether they should be jailed, saying that seditious behavior was punishable by death.
You said his response was rational.
What about the suggestion they're punishable by death?
unidentified
Do you think that the Democratic Congress people response was rational?
How come you focus definitely on Donald Trump?
And you know, that's what's wrong with this.
The Washington Journal is complicit in all this mess.
Let's be clear about what the president is responding to, because many in this room want to talk about the president's response, but not what brought the president to responding in this way.
You have sitting members of the United States Congress who conspired together to orchestrate a video message to members of the United States military, to active duty service members, to members of the national security apparatus, encouraging them to defy the president's lawful orders.
The sanctity of our military rests on the chain of command.
And if that chain of command is broken, it can lead to people killed.
It can lead to chaos.
And that's what these members of Congress who swore an oath to abide by the Constitution are essentially encouraging.
We have 1.3 active duty service members in this country.
And if they hear this radical message from sitting members of Congress, that could inspire chaos and it could incite violence and it certainly could disrupt the chain of command.
These three members of Congress, I will also add, knew exactly what they were doing.
You look at Alyssa Slotkin.
She's a former member of the CIA.
Mark Kelly was a captain in the U.S. Navy.
Maggie Goodlander was a naval officer.
And notably, she was also, she is also the wife of Joe Biden's National Security former advisor, Jake Sullivan.
And so these members knew what they were doing.
They were leading into their credentials as former members of our military, as veterans, as former members of the national security apparatus to signal to people serving under this commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, that you can defy him and you can betray your oath of office.
That is a very, very dangerous message, and it perhaps is punishable by law.
I'm not a lawyer.
I'll leave that to the Department of Justice and the Department of War to decide.
Caroline Lovitt at the White House podium yesterday, we want to get your reaction and your res and hear your response to her argument there about the President's Truth Social Post and this ad by Democratic lawmakers.
The Washington Post reports this morning the Pentagon did not respond Thursday morning to questions about the president's post.
Traditionally, the U.S. military adheres to the uniform code of military justice, which holds that service members must obey lawful orders.
Whether they agree with them or not, they are obligated to not follow manifestly unlawful orders.
But such situations are rare and legally fraught.
Members of the military take an oath to the Constitution, not the president.
The Washington Post this morning with their reporting.
There are the lines on your screen.
We want you to join us in this conversation this morning.
Eddie is in Ackworth, Georgia, Democratic caller.
Morning, Eddie.
unidentified
Good morning.
I'm going to say, it is very scary with Trump in this office.
Man, I'll be glad when he's gone.
These Republicans, boy, they is block-minded by everything this man done.
This man trying to destroy United States.
The whole world he's trying to destroy.
And the Republic too blind and too stupid to see that he's trying to tear us down.
We'll go back to the topic here this morning, the Democratic Act.
Six lawmakers who have experience in the military and in national security calling on those in the military to disobey illegal orders.
The president responding on Truth Social, calling it seditious behavior.
Here's the definition of seditious behavior from newsweek.com.
If two or more persons in any state or territory or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States conspire to overthrow, put down or to destroy by force the government of the United States or to levy war against them or to oppose by force the authority thereof or by force to prevent,
hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years or both.
Barbara in Tennessee, an independent caller, Wall Street Journal.
He asked his more than 11 million followers on Truth Social whether they should be jailed, saying that seditious behavior was, quote, punishable by death.
He reposted comments from Truth Social users saying that the Democrats should be charged with sedition and hanged.
That's the Wall Street Journal this morning.
Lou in Tampa, Florida, Republican.
We want to hear from you, Lou.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Oh, good morning, Greta.
Good morning, America.
I'm really shocked when I turned on the TV today for Washington Journal.
You know, more dysfunction in Washington, more not getting along.
You know, I think this whole thing started with Venezuela maybe, and he needs an act of Congress to declare war and get this guy Maduro out.
But, you know, America was sinking down during Biden, and her economy was a mess.
And anything to take the focus off the issues in Washington, let's, you know, argue.
Let's not talk about other issues and stuff like that.
Lou, in case you missed it and others at the top, we told you news from Punch Bowl this morning that at 9 a.m., Representative Seth Moulton, the Democrat from Massachusetts, along with some other Democrats, are going to unveil legislation that would cut off funding for U.S. operations in or against Venezuela.
They're going to announce this at a 9 a.m. news conference.
The legislation continues House Democrats' pushback against the Trump administration strikes targeting alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific.
And this legislation would bar the Trump administration from spending money on military campaigns targeting Venezuela unless lawmakers approve an authorization for use of military force.
So Punch Bowl News with that this morning.
Matthew Crawley on Facebook has this to say.
He's correct about the president.
They are encouraging an insurrection.
And Lucy Howard says one shouldn't follow an unlawful order.
Military service members swear an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, not the president's desires.
Back to your calls in just a couple minutes.
Let's listen to the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York on the Senate floor yesterday on this.
I know the DOJ and the Pentagon are looking into the legality of all that, but what I can address is what everybody knows.
That was wildly inappropriate.
It is very dangerous.
You have leading members of Congress telling troops to disobey orders.
I think that's unprecedented in American history.
And as the father of a young man who is at the Naval Academy, going to be joining the service, I know young soldiers, airmen, sailors, they don't need that kind of nonsense from people in Congress.
Speaker Mike Johnson talking to CNN's Manu Raju yesterday on Capitol Hill.
Back to all of you.
It's your turn to let lawmakers and the president know what you think of this back and forth.
Ralph in Florida, Republican.
Hi, Ralph.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
These so-called six despicable lawmakers are basically telling the Americ U.S. military to do an insurrection to the American people, to the United States of America.
And I am appalled that these people are even a lawmaker.
All right, Lenny, Edison, New Jersey, Democratic caller.
It's your turn.
unidentified
Yes.
Hi.
Good morning, Greta.
Thanks for taking my call.
So, first of all, with these things by the Democrats, the hypocrisy is so great.
They were so into the January 6th incident.
I noticed in the definition, too, that you showed on TV.
The very last sentence says, sedition includes acts of insurrection.
So this is an act of insurrection.
So the hypocrisy is so great.
And then regarding Venezuela, I don't recall President Johnson, Lyndon Johnson, ever asking Congress to declare war on Vietnam because it was so-called a police action.
So Congress has never approved that war, yet it still happens.
So regarding Venezuela, really don't need Congress' action.
It's a police action.
It's not a war.
And then the third thing about political violence, the last time I checked, the people that are getting shot at and killed are conservatives.
I don't recall any Democrat in the recent years being shot at or even killed.
So the violence is on the left, not on the right.
The political rhetoric is on the left.
Calling people Hitler and stuff, it's on both sides.
Because of a shorter program, we're going to turn our attention to open forum here for the next 30 minutes of today's Washington Journal because there is a lot of other news to share with you as well.
You can keep talking about this Democratic ad and the president's response, as well as any other public policy or political issue that's on your mind.
Democrats for open forum, same numbers, 202-748-8000.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
Before we get to Open Forum, though, let's begin with yesterday in Washington.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who died earlier this month at the age of 84, was remembered at the National Cathedral in Washington.
In his tribute, former President George W. Bush spoke about how he picked Mr. Cheney as his running mate.
25 years ago, I had a big choice to make, a big job to fill.
I want to know all my options, so I enlisted the help of a distinguished former White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense to lead my search for running mate.
Dick Cheney and I went through the files name by name.
We talked over the various qualities I was looking for in a vice president: preparedness, mature judgment, rectitude, and loyalty.
Above all, I wanted someone with the ability to step into the presidency without getting distracted by the ambition to seek it.
After weeks of these meetings, I began to have a thought I could not shake.
I realized the best choice for the vice president was the man sitting right in front of me, and I told him that.
At such a moment, most in this position would have jumped at the chance, but Dick stayed detached and he analyzed it.
Before I made my decision, he insisted on giving me a complete rundown of all the reasons I should not choose him.
He also heard one of my top advisors was against the choice.
So Dick invited him to make the case.
As he did so, he sat there unfazed and expressionless.
In the end, I trusted my judgment.
I remember my dad's words when I told him what I was planning.
Cheryl, how is it attacked to, when there's a debate happening in Washington, an ad was put out by Democrats, we show you the ad, then we show you the president's response.
We showed you the White House with their defense of the president and their argument laid out by Caroline Lovitt.
We then showed you the Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, and his argument against the president's response.
And then we're letting you call up and tell Washington what you think of it and have a conversation.
unidentified
That's what I'm trying to do, and you are cutting me off.
So I'm a veteran.
I'm appalled at what those politicians did, injecting dangerous rhetoric into our military.
A young soldier's life could be ruined by a dumb mistake based on what those people are doing.
That's dangerous, and it cannot be allowed in our military politics.
Come on, they're not disobeying.
They're not obeying unlawful orders.
There is plenty of evidence.
There's plenty of intel that you and I are not privy to.
So I'm sorry.
Donald Trump was duly elected by millions of people to do a job, and he's being prevented by doing it every day by Democrats.
This is an ugly scene, and we are so tired of the bickering and the nasty, nasty stuff that comes out of even a lot of your callers calling Trump filth aren't even true.
Well, Desmond, did you hear what Caroline Levitt had to say, her argument that it invites chaos?
unidentified
Why is it inviting chaos to tell someone not to follow unlawful orders?
If someone could let me know that, then, you know, just tell me where, how wrong is that to say to someone, hey, make sure you not follow unlawful orders.
The Pentagon did not respond Thursday morning to questions about the President's post.
Traditionally, the U.S. military adheres to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which holds that service members must obey lawful orders, whether they agree with them or not.
They are obligated to not follow manifestly unlawful orders, but such situations are rare and legally fraught.
Members of the military take an oath to the Constitution, not to the President.
Respond to the part about situations like that being rare and legally fraught.
unidentified
Well, see, that's a reminder for them.
If in case that comes up, remember, you took an oath to the Constitution.
So it's a pure reminder to them to say, hey, with this individual who is unpredictable in the office, in case that appears, keep in mind what you took an oath to.
You're going to have to call back, but on a better line.
We are in open forum here this morning until the top of the hour.
Any public policy or political issue, we want to hear about it and any debate that's happening in Washington.
Craig Kaplan, who is C-SPAN's Capitol Hill producer, noting that the House today will vote on a resolution that denounces socialism and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States before members leave for their Thanksgiving holiday break.
And later today, President Trump will meet in the Oval Office with New York City mayor-elect, Zo Ron Mamdani.
That is taking place at around 3 p.m. Eastern Time when the mayor-elect will arrive.
It is closed press right now.
If it opens up, C-SPAN will cover it.
Go to c-SPAN.org or C-SPANNOW, our free video mobile app, for updates on our coverage.
In an interview on MSNOW on Wednesday night, New York City mayor-elect Momdani said he plans in his meeting with President Trump to talk about inflation and affordability.
We did reach out to the White House, and my team reached out because of a commitment that I made to New Yorkers that I would be willing to meet with anyone and everyone so long as it was to the benefit of the eight and a half million people who call the city home and their struggle to afford the most expensive city in the United States of America.
I want to just speak plainly to the president about what it means to actually stand up for New Yorkers and the way in which New Yorkers are struggling to afford this city.
And frankly, cost of living is something that I heard time and time again from New Yorkers about why they voted for Donald Trump.
And this is something that has only continued in the last few months of this year where we're hearing about child care concerns, rent concerns, con ed concerns, even just getting on the bus just $2.90.
And just to make it clear to the president that this is what we're talking about, these are the stakes for New Yorkers and their ability to keep calling the city their home.
The mayor-elect of the Big Apple, Zohran Mamdani, he'll be at the White House at 3 p.m. Eastern Time today, and he wants to talk about affordability and inflation.
Front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning, middle class is buckling under financial strain from inflation.
For those of you that are interested in reading that front page of the Wall Street Journal.
At an event hosted by Breitbart News yesterday, Vice President JD Vance issued a plea for Americans to be patient as the administration works to improve the high cost of living.
I guess my message to the American people who are still feeling like things are unaffordable, who are still feeling like things are rough out there, is, look, we get it, and we hear you, and we know that there's a lot of work to do.
There's a lot of wood to chop because the Biden administration put us in such a very, very tough spot.
And the way that I think about this is it's always helpful to take this from the abstractions to the actual real things that people are worried about.
So, take, for example, a dozen eggs.
I'll never forget this.
It was one of the very first, maybe the single first press conference that the president had done since he had been the, since he had started his second term.
And some reporter, probably from ABC, yells at him and says, What have you done about the price of eggs?
The price of eggs are up 300% over the past three years.
And it's like it was January the 23rd.
Like, what do you mean, what have we done in two days?
It's going to take a little bit of time to fix that problem.
And so, if you're an American who's just struggling to get by, you work hard, you pay your taxes, you want your kids to have good opportunities, and the price of eggs goes from $2 a dozen to $8 a dozen under the Biden administration, and then under the Trump administration, it goes from $8 a dozen to maybe $6.50 a dozen.
Well, to you, that is still a major problem.
And even though we've made incredible progress, we understand that there's a lot more work to do.
And the thing that I'd ask for the American people is a little bit of patience.
This economy was not harmed in 10 months.
It took a deliberate four-year administration that was making life harder for everyday Americans, that was importing foreign workers instead of giving jobs to American workers, that was over-regulating, over-taxing, overspending.
They were doing everything wrong.
And as much progress as we've made, it's going to take a little bit of time for every American to feel that economic boom, which we really do believe is coming.
We believe that we're on the front end of it, but we also recognize that we've got a lot of work to do to undo the damage that Joe Biden did to the American economy.
And the last one I'll say, Matt, is it's, let's be honest, it's not just Joe Biden.
As much as I think Joe Biden was one of the most disastrous presidents of American history, we had a policy in this country for 40 years of shipping American jobs overseas and hiring foreign workers instead of American workers.
That has caused the economic stagnation of the American middle class.
Yeah, I can't go down the hole of that last colour.
But I think this is a good thing.
Now, I'm MAGA.
I support the president, the sports red men, or what.
But what they said is not untrue.
I guess we can hint at what they're getting at.
But I wish these Democrats would do this more.
And I wish that you would ask the next Democrat that comes in there says, so when a judge gives you an unconstitutional order, you're not supposed to follow it.
Like these injunctions and stuff, they get overturned.
All right, Dennis's thoughts there in North Carolina.
A couple more headlines to share with you.
This is from Axios this morning.
President Trump peace plan for Ukraine includes NATO-style security guarantee.
Axios reports that from the White House on this deal, get to it here in just a minute.
This is what they report, that President Trump's peace plan for Ukraine includes a security guaranteed modeled on NATO's Article 5, which would commit the U.S. and European allies to treat an attack on Ukraine as an attack on the entire transatlantic community.
Why it matters, Trump's plan demands painful concessions from Ukraine, but it also includes an unprecedented promise.
President Zelensky's top objective in peace talks is to obtain a robust U.S. and European security guarantee.
And this is the first time President Trump has been willing to put one on the table.
It says that in states that future significant deliberate and sustained armed attack by Russia on Ukraine shall be regarded as an attack threatening the peace and security of the transatlantic community.
That is some of the language from this proposed peace deal.
And there's also this from the Wall Street Journal on the situation in the Middle East.
First, this headline at the top of the page, Mideast truce looks like war elsewhere.
Israel is carrying out strikes as it loses patience with Hezbollah and Hamas.
I want to show you below that headline is this picture.
At least 33 killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
A pair of Israeli attacks in Gaza's southern city on Thursday killed five people, bringing the death toll from airstrikes in the Palestinian territory during a roughly 12-hour period to 33.
So those are some of the headlines for you this morning on the international front.
Jim in Hudson, Florida, Republican.
Hi, Jim.
One Small Thing Leads to Four00:10:26
unidentified
Comment to make on these people that's telling somebody in service not to do anything illegal, they know that Trump's not going to order anybody to like a sniper to take somebody out.
What they're saying is somebody in service do one small thing.
Like you've got some new recruits.
The sergeant comes in and says, we're taking the 10-mile hike today.
One of the recruits stands up and says, I don't feel like taking a 10-mile hike.
That's what they want.
They want somebody, one person, to do something small that naturally is going to be overturned by the sergeant.
That's why when one thing leads to two, two leads to four.
First of all, I want to applaud you for being measured and listening to the callers, even if their content is less favorable for you personally versus your role.
Regarding the situation in Venezuela, my challenge with this is the key word in every tag I see, alleged.
Alleged.
I have not heard anything concrete from this administration that can affirmatively say that those individuals in those boats are trafficking drugs.
I am appalled.
I mean, I lost my breath when I first heard that, when I first read it.
So where is the intel?
We may not see it all, but the word alleged is disturbing.
It should disturb anyone for loss of life.
There's a difference in lethality and an investigation and then an adequate response to the outcome of the investigation.
But to say that they are taking down votes from U.S. forces in that with lethality for an alleged crime is disturbing.
Let me go back to your video of Chuck Schumer on the floor and his comments.
It seems a little righteous for Chuck Schumer to be saying what he said after he specifically, before Trump was shot, said that Trump was a threat to democracy and on our way of life.
I don't get how Democrats even justify saying anything when it comes to this violence because they know darn well that there aren't Democrats being shot or attempted to be shot or attempted to be murdered.
It's all coming off the left side.
There's a lot of evidence for that, so we don't need to discuss that.
But what I want to talk about, of course, is what they said to three senators or three congresspeople.
Jay's thoughts there, Republican in Edgewater, Florida.
Another headline to share with you from the New York Times: House voted to kill the bill allowing senators to sue the government.
The measure has prompted a backlash, but the top Senate Republicans appeared inclined to preserve it, arguing that it would protect the body against investigatory overreach.
Listen to Senator Lindsey Graham on the Senate floor speaking about why he rejected efforts to repeal this new provision that would allow him and other senators to sue over phone record seizures.
Senator Lindsey Graham on the Senate floor yesterday, also on Capitol Hill, the Wall Street Journal with two headlines, indicted congresswom loses her leadership spot.
Representative Sheila Scherfilis-McCormick was indicted by a federal grand jury on Wednesday.
She gave up a leadership spot on a committee after the Democratic leadership asked her on these charges to do so.
Then there's this headline: Mills avoids censure vote as ethic probes advances.
The Secretive Ethics Committee said the inquiry would consider whether Corey Mills violated House rules or federal laws, including claims that he improperly disclosed or failed to disclose information on official filings, misused congressional resources or campaign finances, received gifts or favors inappropriately, and engaged in sexual misconduct or dating violence.
So the Ethics Committee is looking into Congressman Corey Mills.
Congress this week has made several efforts to discipline members from across the aisle.
Back to the story about Congresswoman Sheila Schifferless-McCormick.
The indictment alleges that she funneled the funds from disaster relief to family and friends who in turn contributed to her campaign as straw donors.
It also alleges she conspired to file false federal tax return, claiming political spending and other personal expenses as business deductions.
The House Ethics Committee has said it was investigating similar allegations against her.
The congresswoman spoke to reporters outside of her office yesterday.
Well, it's an unjust indictment, and it seems like his intimidation tactics have been pervasive.
We spent all weeks seeing different members getting censured, all in hopes of intimidating and kind of distracting from the Epstein files.
And I look forward to my day in court so I can prove myself and actually state the truth.
But if this is what Congress is becoming, where they're always trying to intimidate you, scare tactics, especially attacking minorities, black, and brown people, then we're going to have to keep fighting for the district.
And everybody has been giving me so much support that we're going to keep fighting until the district gets what it needs, which is fair prices, housing, and fair representation of Congress.
Did you think you improperly responded to that?
They didn't elect me.
It was my district.
And so we'll keep fighting for the people and keep working like we're doing now until they get what they need.
So we're here for the people.
So the only people who elected me should make that decision.
All right, Janice in Plainfield, New Jersey, Democratic caller.
We'll leave it there for now.
We're going to take a break.
When we come back, we'll pivot and turn our attention to education.
Joining us for that conversation.
Well, later on in the program, we're going to be talking to Washington State Democrat Emily Randall about news of the day.
Before that, though, when we come back, American Enterprise Institute's Rick Hess on plans by the Trump administration to dismantle the Education Department.
Stay with us.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
Friday, on C-SPAN's ceasefire.
At a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, Florida Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz and Tennessee Republican Congressman Tim Burchett come together for a bipartisan dialogue on the Epstein files, health care, and top issues facing the country.
They join host Dasha Burns.
Bridging the Divide in American Politics.
Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
Join Book TV this weekend for the 2025 Miami Book Fair at Miami-Dade College.
Our two-day live coverage begins Saturday at 10.30 a.m. and Sunday at 10 a.m. Eastern.
Highlights include discussions with historian Pamela Nadel with her book Antisemitism, an American Tradition, an investigation into the depths of anti-Semitism's history and its recent manifestations.
Cartoonist Art Spiegelman revisits his Pulitzer Prize-winning series Mouse in his book Meta Mouse.
The president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, Jeffrey Rosen, with his book, The Pursuit of Liberty, which explores clashing visions of Hamilton and Jefferson and the lasting effects on the power dynamics in America.
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Book TV will also feature author interviews with viewer Collins, with MSNBC's Jonathan Cape Hart, and his memoir, Yet Here I Am, Lessons from a Black Man's Search for Home.
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We are back this morning with Senior Fellow and Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Rick Hess, joining us to talk about the Education Department.
Mr. Hess, thanks for joining us this morning.
I want to begin with yesterday at the very top of the White House briefing.
We heard from the Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
The Democrats' government shutdown proved that without a doubt, now I'll reiterate what you said, that the Department of Education was not necessary during the shutdown.
It should be overseen locally by those who best know local needs.
We're not ending federal support for education.
We are ending federal micromanagement and paving the way for education renewal through state reforms like school choice, the science of reading, and restoring the right priorities in higher education.
President Trump promised to send education back to the states, and we're keeping that promise.
America's Next Generation will look back on the work we've carried out, thankful for an education system that prioritizes students over bureaucracy.
Yeah, so what happened this week was the department signed what they call interagency agreements to move a number of programs to four other cabinet agencies, Health and Human Services, Department of Labor, Interior, and State.
Interagency agreements are a standard feature of Washington.
There's lots of these.
What's different about what the department did was instead of using them to do small portions of a job, it's used them to move over whole programs.
How big a deal is this?
Depends how you look at it.
At one level, if you're a student, if you're a teacher, if you're a professor, there's really no impact.
This doesn't change any of the money that Congress has appropriated.
This doesn't change or end any of the programs.
It really just changes who's managing that in Washington.
It is, though, a big deal in the sense that it fundamentally changes the role of the Department of Education.
It's moving all these programs over to the other agencies.
The theory here is that this could be good.
It could make services more seamless.
For instance, if the Department of Labor is also handling career and technical education, it certainly reduces the footprint of the Department of Education.
But the ways in which it's important is really more of an inside-the-beltway conversation rather than one that's likely to have a significant impact on Americans when they think about schools or college.
I want to note from USA today the Education Department and the moves that have been made under the Trump administration so far.
Labor Department will administer programs for colleges, universities, and K-12 schools, Office of Elementary, Secondary Education, and Office of Post-Secondary Education.
The Interior Department will oversee responsibilities related to Indigenous education.
HHS will manage grants for parenting college students and assessing accreditation standards for foreign medical students.
And the State Department will do more work related to foreign language studies and international education.
Most of the hyperbole about this, the folks who are cheering it or the folks who are worried about it, are overstating how this matters.
Again, these programs aren't going away.
So the Title I program for low-income students, every dollar Congress had appropriated earlier in the year is still going out the door.
Pell Grants for higher ed, unchanged.
Workforce workforce support programs, unchanged.
What's not changing is whether the money is getting spent.
What is changing is where it's getting spent in Washington.
Again, the way to understand why this might be good is if it simplifies things for states or colleges to manage these grants, that could be helpful.
If you think the Department of Education has been bureaucratic and often frustratingly slow, as I do, this is a chance to potentially speed those things up.
Critics also, though, have fair questions to ask.
Are we actually going to make things simpler on states and colleges, or is this going to actually make things more confusing?
Should we be confident that moving these programs out of the Department of Ed to these other agencies will make them operate smoother?
Are these other agencies less bureaucratic or less frustrating?
You know, it's not obviously clear how this is going to play out, and it's really incumbent on Secretary McMahon's department both to execute on this, to explain how this is working, and to anticipate and address any problems that might arise.
The U.S. Education Department began operating in 1980.
It employs 4,400 people.
The 2024 budget was $238 billion.
So, Rick Hess, do you expect that the number of employees goes way down and that that money that is given to the education department is significantly less?
So, the number of employees is already well down, in fact.
Doge earlier in the year, the Department of Education was one of Doge's big targets.
After several rounds of cuts, it's now under 2,000 employees, so less than half of what it was nominally in January.
What's going to happen is whole units of the department are now being moved over to these other agencies, or the functions are being moved, and some of the employees are going to be let go.
So, absolutely, the department is now much smaller than it was 10 months ago, and is going to be smaller still.
But none of that money actually changes.
I mean, here's where it's uniquely Washington.
The way to think about this is if like if you get a letter, if you get a letter or an email that tells you your insurance company is reducing its workforce by 50%, that might have an impact on your actual insurance.
It certainly might have an impact on customer service, but it doesn't necessarily change the insurance you have.
That's what we're talking about here.
Congress decides how much money to spend on education, educational programs.
Congress has made its decision.
It's in the midst, obviously, of making decisions for next year.
However much Congress decides to spend is going to flow.
What we're talking about here is whether those resources are going to flow through the department or through another agency.
He is the Director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
He'll take your questions and your comments about how education works in this country.
Start dialing in now.
If you're a parent or a student, 202-748-8000.
Educators and administrators, your line this morning is 202-748-8001.
All others can call in at 202-748-8002.
And of course, you can text if you don't want to call, include your first name, city, and state at 202-748-8003.
Rick Hess, is Linda McMahon, the Secretary of Education and the President, moving to completely abolish the Education Department, or would that take an act of Congress?
Congress created the Department of Education under President Jimmy Carter in 79.
As you noted, it opened in 1980.
Only Congress can dismantle an agency that Congress has created.
But what we're seeing here is something that I think even many of us who have been highly critical of the Department of Ed and who have hoped to see it downsize, this is much further than I think we thought they would be able to go without congressional action.
It's important to understand Republicans have been trying to eliminate or radically downsize the Department of Education for 45 years, partly because there's concerns that it tends to create bloat, that it has generated lots of red tape for schools and for colleges.
And there's a real frustration that it has often seemed to serve as a one-stop shop for Democratic interest groups, particularly the teacher unions.
But you'll notice from 1980 through President Trump's first term, there was never any real movement on trying to shut down the department.
So a lot of folks are wondering: well, what's different this time?
Why, after 40 plus years, are they suddenly so intent on it?
And I think one way to understand this is that the experience over the last four years under President Biden and during the pandemic, in many ways, was a breaking point for a lot of Republicans.
The Department of Education played a role in helping the National School Board Association sick the FBI on parents who were worried about school curricula.
It offered, it turned out, backdoor access to the teacher unions to delay school reopening.
There was a highly controversial effort to spend a half trillion dollars on loan forgiveness, transferring money from taxpayers to borrowers.
One way to understand a lot of what this is about is it's really an effort to make the department so small and so weak that it can no longer serve as a source of that kind of mischief.
And so if you're trying to say, what are the Republicans really doing?
Rachel Goodeman, who is the head of a union representing Education Department Workers, said this in USA Today, breaking apart the Department of Education and moving its responsibilities elsewhere will only create more confusion for schools and colleges, deepen public distrust, and ultimately harm students and families.
Let's get to calls.
Nick in Michigan, an educator.
Morning, Nick.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Hi, Greta.
Thanks.
I have 65 years of experience in education, 10 as a student in K-12, and another five in college, and five as a research assistant in graduate school, 40 as a professor in the nation's top public university, and five as a retired professor.
And the Department of Education did not exist before 1975.
So for 200 years, the U.S. worked without the Department of Education.
And after it became a department, and we spend all these billions, do you think students that graduate from our schools are better today than they were before the department?
There's two major international assessments, the PISA and the TIMS.
We tend to score fair to middling on both.
You know, the question arranges a terrific issue.
For folks to understand, if the department were abolished, those federal programs, federal student loans, Pell Grants, money for special education, would not go away.
Most of these programs predated the Department of Education.
Washington has had an office of education since the 1800s.
What really changed in 1980 was President Carter moved a lot of these educational programs into one building, and we named it the Department of Education.
So when we're talking about whether or not you abolish the department, that's actually a different conversation from which educational programs should Washington be involved in or not involved in.
Rhonda, Jersey Shore, a parent, good morning to you.
unidentified
Hi, good morning, Greta.
You know, I don't understand how the United States Congress is allowing Donald Trump to divert all of our treasury to his personal desires.
This is all Project 2025.
They want to take our money, divert it to these private Christian schools and these Catholic schools, which black and brown people aren't being allowed to go.
The school lunch program, as far as I know, has not been affected.
That's actually run out of the Department of Agriculture.
So if listeners are wondering, what does this mean for school lunch?
That's actually not affected by what we're talking about.
There's no such thing as a Christian charter school.
There's charter schools in the United States.
There was a Supreme Court case which ended 4-4.
Right now, states write laws which require that charter schools be non-sectarian.
Charter schools are not allowed to have a religious component at this point in time that may change going forward.
There are obviously voucher and education savings accounts programs in which states allow parents, kind of like you would with a Pell Grant voucher or a Section 8 housing voucher, to use state funds to attend private schools of their choice.
That's not really implicated in anything that we're talking about about this week's news.
Project 2025, for folks who've maybe seen the clickbait and understand exactly what it is, there's a think tank in Washington, D.C. called the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing conservative foundation, excuse me, think tank, that has, you know, was established in the early 1970s.
Every year since 1980, Heritage has published what they call a mandate for change.
In 1980, it was hugely influential in shaping the Reagan administration agenda.
Project Heritage, excuse me, Heritage's 2024 version of this was called Project 2025.
And it's a collection of a lot of ideas promoted both by conservative scholars at Heritage and elsewhere.
And one of those objectives, like we've mentioned, has been to do away with the U.S. Department of Education.
That's been true for 45 years.
It was true again.
And so, sure.
But it's not so much, I would suggest, that there's anything conspiratorial about Project 2025 being responsible.
Project 2025 was kind of like a group chat of a whole bunch of what a bunch of conservative advocates had been hoping to see on education.
And because of the nature of this administration and because of what unfolded the last four years, efforts to dismantle the department have moved in a way that simply never happened before.
Elijah is an Upper Marlborough, Maryland Democratic parent.
Excuse me.
Parent, Elijah.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Hey, good morning.
And first and foremost, just to comment on the notion that Project 2025 with some sort of group chat is just patently irresponsible to say.
We know that there was actual documentation and that the administration has shown in very clear ways that they intend on carrying out a large portion of that policy or that documentation that's been put in place.
But let me just pivot real quick to the education department.
You sound like a very rational person.
Disassembling the education department and placing it throughout different bodies of the government, or let's just say within the executive branch, to me sounds insane, right?
I mean, that is going to cause more confusion than what it's already causing right now.
You don't go into a department and just simply do away with it because you don't like how it's functioning.
Go in, reform it, and, you know, kind of move forward that way.
But to go in to wholesale, change it and take pieces out and put it in different areas is going to cause way more confusion than it's already causing right now.
Yeah, so first off, if I misspoke, when I said group chat, I meant kind of crowdsourced the Project Fund Cover.
It's absolutely a real document.
It's hundreds of pages long, and it absolutely does have a blueprint on a whole series of policy areas, including education.
What I meant by group chat was that it's, you know, it's essentially a compilation of what a lot of different right-leaning advocates have urged on education.
I mean, I think the caller's question is a good one about if your concern is that the federal government creates issues with the amount of red tape that surrounds these federal grants, that it has all kinds of really frustrating reporting requirements for school district colleges, things like time and effort reporting requirements and supplement,
not supplant strictures that if you spend time with superintendents or college presidents can make their lives difficult when it comes to spending federal funds.
These are real things.
And it's absolutely a fair question to say, should we address these more effectively by scraping the rules, by taking a hard look at what's not working, by reforming these programs?
Is that a better strategy than moving them to other agencies?
Hopefully they will do both.
I think there is a plausible argument for moving them to these other agencies.
When you're dealing with workforce issues, for instance, it's good to have both workforce support and career and technical education potentially handled by the same folks.
But at the same time, the caller's not wrong that this can actually start to create confusion or headaches of its own.
Either way, though, all of those rules and regulations that Secretary McMahon alluded to in your clip, they don't go away just because this stuff moves from the Department of Education somewhere else.
There is still a need for this administration or any future administration to take a hard look at how all these rules and requirements may be making it harder for educators in K-12 or higher ed to spend money effectively to run programs effectively.
And that work needs to be done wherever at whatever agency these programs sit.
And here's where a lot of this, again, on both sides, are responsible for sowing a lot of confusion.
Gret, as you mentioned, in January, when it was at full, the Department of Ed had 4,000 employees.
None of those 4,000 are teachers.
None of those 4,000 are professors.
None of them are superintendents or curriculum developers.
The Department of Education is mostly in charge of moving money around.
Student loans, Pell Grants, money for children with special needs, and so forth.
So there is actually federal law that says the Department of Education is not allowed to write a curriculum or require school districts or colleges to use particular curriculum.
That's actually been an issue earlier in the year with some of the administration's efforts around higher education reform.
So nothing should change in terms of your children's curriculum.
The questioner does raise an issue.
For instance, one of the programs getting moved to the Department of Labor is the federal charter schools program.
It is very fair to ask, as some of the questioners have, why we suspect that the charter schools program is going to be better supported and better run at the Department of Labor than it was at the Department of Education.
This is not a question of curriculum, but it is a question of, you know, Secretary McMahon's team is a job to do of making sure that these things work as promised and of explaining to American voters and taxpayers how they can be confident this is working like the way they've promised.
I wanted to make a point about: does your guest remember we used to have a department of HEW, Health, Education, and Welfare?
And as a campaign promise by Jimmy Carter to the teachers union, the NEA, which stands for the National Extortion Agency, he promised to move the education over because the Teachers Union had supported his campaign.
It was a campaign promise.
And since then, education quality has gone way down.
And if you don't believe me, go to any high school that is graduating students with a high school diploma, and then they go to a junior college and have to take remedial English, remedial math, remedial reading.
So what we need to do is end the Department of Education, get rid of the influence of the NEA, and then maybe kids can start learning again and not be beholden to a private political organization that only supports Democrats.
So it is absolutely true that what happened was when President Carter was running for president in 1976, in order to get the first ever endorsement from the teachers union, the National Education Association, he said, I'm going to create you a Department of Education.
There was a lot of opposition, a lot of questions about how this would work, but Congress passed it in 79.
And the caller's exactly right.
What had been the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, education programs, some of them were left behind, like Head Start.
Some of them were moved over.
Some other programs were pulled over from random other parts of the government, like State Department and Interior.
So, in some ways, what you're doing is you're reassembling agencies the way they used to run.
And there's reasonable arguments about whether it makes more sense for, say, education for Native American students on reservations to be handled at the Department of Interior by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
These are reasonable questions.
You know, if this were a commercial era, we'd probably be talking about this with less vitriol.
As far as American student achievement, I would say the caller's got it part right and part wrong.
If you look at academic achievement today in the U.S., it is a debacle.
Our students have been losing ground for over a decade, well before the pandemic.
If you look at the National Assessment of Educational Progress in Reading and Math, it's absolutely true.
There's just horror stories when you look at what's going on in college in terms of declining expectations, falling workloads, real questions about student preparation and performance.
But you will hear folks tell simple stories about the role of the Department of Ed.
The truth is, we saw remarkable gains in this country from 1992 to 2012.
20 years of gains in which our students, especially low-income and low-performing students, had outsized gains.
And since 2012, we have seen across Democratic and Republican presidential administrations, a 12-13-year steady decline.
This does not map onto the history of the Department of Education.
It maps onto some other trends we could might want to talk about, like social media and cell phones.
But I think it's important that we not romanticize the Department of Education, either the notion that it's really important for us to serve kids well, or to imagine that, well, I think the Department of Education is problematic and has generated too much red tape and has too often been too political, especially the last four years.
I think it's a big mistake to imagine that just getting rid of the Department of Ed is going to make a big difference in the lives of children or families.
When we come back, we'll be joined by Washington State Democrat Emily Randall to discuss congressional news of the day.
Stay with us.
unidentified
Friday, on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, Florida Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz and Tennessee Republican Congressman Tim Burchett come together for a bipartisan dialogue on the Epstein files, healthcare, and top issues facing the country.
They join host Dasha Burns.
Bridging the Divide in American Politics.
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 with our guest-famed chef and global relief entrepreneur, Jose Andres.
His books on reimagining food include Feeding Dangerously, Change the Recipe, and We Fed an Island.
He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
Joining us from Capitol Hill this morning, Congresswoman Emily Randall, Democrat of Washington State, serves as a member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee as well as on the Natural Resources Committee.
Congresswoman, let's begin with that first committee assignment, oversight and government reform.
This is the committee that has been overseeing the investigation into the Epstein files.
You voted for the release of those files.
President Trump has signed it into law.
Calls on the Justice Department to release the files within 30 days.
Well, the one thing that you didn't mention was that the President and the Justice Department have also opened a new investigation, which per the language in the Massey Cana bill that was just signed, allows some redaction and withholding of documents that are related and that are in the Epstein files.
Importantly, the subpoena that was issued by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, spearheaded by Summer Lee, doesn't include that same language.
So the Justice Department and the Trump administration are obligated to release the full set of files to the committee.
Now, they have been since we issued that subpoena, and they have not released the full set of files.
So they are in violation of the subpoena, the subpoena that Chair Comer is not enforcing currently.
So I guess I'll say we're taking a few steps forward, but it doesn't yet feel like the Trump administration is participating and fulfilling the requirements of the subpoena and this bill in the way that they're meant to.
So, Representative Summer Lee, a Democrat on the committee, introduced a subpoena in the subcommittee on law enforcement right before the government shut down.
After we had voted on the continuing resolution when Republicans had, many of them had gone home.
They had the votes in that subcommittee to pass her subpoena.
I think it came as a surprise to the Republicans on the committee.
And so we have begun to see a release of files.
The first release of files from the Justice Department were files that had already been disclosed to the public.
We've seen subsequent releases of files from the Epstein estate of previously unseen information.
But the Justice Department does owe the committee further files that they have not yet released.
It's a significant tranche of documents that we receive at a time.
The committee staff begins the review and I'll point out that Republican staff and Democratic staff are allowed access to it as our members, but the Republicans have double the number of staff as Democrats do because they're in the majority.
So our staff is working diligently and overtime to ensure that they read through all the documents, each one piece by piece.
And because Democrats made this promise to the survivors, we are redacting information before we release to the public.
The Republicans haven't done the same thing.
They have been releasing completely unredacted documents.
But it was a promise that we made to the survivors at their request that we redact particular names before releasing files.
Now, because of a courier tool, most of these documents are also available to the public since the Republicans released from the committee released them all to the public.
But they didn't do that until the Democrats released three emails at the beginning of the week.
Yes, those emails included references to President Trump, references to him being on the plane, references to him not yet disclosing information about Jeffrey Epstein's activities, emails between Epstein and Ghillen Maxwell.
You know, it opened the floodgates.
And at that point, President Trump had been bringing in Republican members who had signed the discharge petition to release all the documents to the public.
He had been bringing them into the White House, Lauren Boebert, other women, Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene, to try and pressure them to remove their names from the discharge petition before Adelita Grajalva was sworn in and signed and signed the discharge petition to allow this full release of the files.
At that point, the president changed his tune.
He said, oh, he told the Republicans to vote for it.
He told the Republicans to release it.
I think the writing was on the wall that the public would no longer be behind him in withholding this information from the public.
So now it's our job to make sure, to make sure that the DOJ complies with our subpoena and the committee and complies with the language in this bill, bipartisan, unanimous bill, to release all the files to the public.
Yeah, I think the strategy was to inspire the Republicans to release all of the documents and to change their tune and to ensure that we were able to get the support of, you know, the entire chamber but one member to fully release these files.
You know, the Republicans didn't release information before that.
They were withholding the information.
You know, I'd say the subpoena language only required the documents to be released to the committee.
And without Democrats taking the first step, I don't know that we would have seen the same release and the same change of tune from the White House.
We are talking with Congresswoman Emily Randall, Democrat of Washington State.
She is here to take your comments and your questions about the latest from Capitol Hill.
Democrats dial in at 202-748-8000.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
Congresswoman, we'll go to Mason first, who's in Dayton, Ohio.
Democratic caller.
Good morning, Mason.
unidentified
Thank you so much for taking my call.
Let me applaud you and your efforts in getting these released, supporting the women who have gone through such horrific things.
My concern is this.
I saw a video yesterday and it was of a DOJ official who didn't know he was being recorded.
And he was saying that in the effort to keep Republicans out of harm's way, they were going to ensure that anybody's name that was a Republican or Republican donor would be redacted and they would leave only the Democrats' names available.
I don't care who you are, whether it's Democrat or Republican.
We need to know who these folks are.
And we need to take accountability, have them take accountability, meaning through the law, through getting them in prison, because that's where they belong for sex trafficking these little girls.
It's disappointing that the one person that's been named and held accountable is in England.
And the only thing that happened to him is he's no longer called Prince.
That's ridiculous.
Like women deserve better than that.
And they deserve better than Trump because Trump could have released these on day one like he did with the JFK and MLK records.
And he chose not to.
So in my mind, they've got something going on in the background that's going to ensure that they cover, let me say, CYA, if I don't put it any other way.
I mean, this is, I hadn't seen that video yet, but this is exactly what I was mentioning the committee was fearing.
I feared that they would use tools to redact and withhold information from the public, whether it's an investigation, whether it's choosing whose names to blackout, and in our case being survivors, in their case being Democrats.
I think Larry Summers deserved to have accountability.
I think the former Prince Andrews deserve to have accountability.
I think anyone who participated in these horrific crimes, anyone who participated in the trafficking and abuse of girls and women deserves to be held accountable.
I don't care what your partisan ideology is.
And the people deserve to know what happened.
I hear this from the survivors of the Epstein trafficking ring, but I also hear it from survivors of trafficking and sexual assault across the country from other means.
All survivors are watching and all survivors are taking a message from how Congress deal, Congress and the president deals with this particular case of trafficking and assault.
Are they hiding behind their power or are they taking accountability?
And that will be a message that America learns from how we deal with this situation.
Congresswoman, you've read these documents, so how would you characterize the people, the names that folks might recognize that you've seen in these documents?
Yeah, I think there are a lot of people in power or close to power involved in these crimes who are in relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
And what I see is that powerful people have continued to act with impunity.
They have considered themselves above the law.
They have done whatever they wanted and used girls and women as collateral.
And it's appalling.
It's disgusting.
It's horrifying.
I don't know, fill in the blank.
I, as a woman who listens to the stories of survivors, who listens to the stories of my friends who have been mistreated at the very low end of the spectrum by powerful men in their lives, by powerful people in their lives.
We need to see accountability.
We need to hold these people to account.
Otherwise, we will continue to see power corrupt and we will continue to see the exploitation of girls and women.
We are continuing to work across the aisle wherever possible.
You know, unlikely partners have arisen.
Just a few days ago, the Democratic Women's Caucus met with many of their survivors.
And while a change in schedule didn't allow the Republican Women's Caucus to meet with the survivors as they had planned, many of the Republican women joined our meeting.
We are standing together to bring these perpetrators, these crimes to light.
It's very, very sad that these girls were put in the position to be taken advantage of in this way, to be assaulted in this way, to be trafficked in this way.
Absolutely.
And I don't know what to say except for I agree with you that that is heartbreaking and not every parent knew.
We'll go to Mary, Palm Desert, California, Republican.
unidentified
Oh, good morning.
Thank you for having my call.
So I lived in Washington State for 30 years.
My three children, all girls, were born there.
And I worked there as a registered nurse for 30 of my 40 years.
Daughter was assaulted, one, by her boyfriend, had to move her home, take care of her, get her a new job.
So I get it.
I got two points to make.
Jeffrey Epstein casted a wide net up in Upper Manhattan.
He knew all kinds of Democrats, especially he funded all kinds of buildings, hospital wings, etc.
So I see Gloria Allred this week with one of the victims.
She went to shutters to go meet with him in a hotel room for a lingerie shooting for Playboy or Victoria's Secret.
And by the way, I'd like to know what Mr. Wexman has to do with all this files.
And, you know, when Crockett from Texas comes out and starts naming people who knew some Jeffrey Epstein, you don't think this is going to cause so much trouble when all these people are being accused of just knowing this man.
You know, we, I believe, and I believe that my constituents believe that everyone who was involved in this behavior, in this trafficking, in these crimes, in the assault of girls and women needs to be held accountable.
Now, do people deserve due process?
Absolutely.
Absolutely, people deserve due process.
And it's not our job to continue to hide the names of people because they're powerful.
It's not our job to shelter people from the impact of their behavior and their participation.
I think the files need to be disclosed.
And then folks who participated in criminal activity, who are responsible for criminal activity, will have their day in court.
But it is because we have kept this information quiet.
Congresswoman, on another topic, President Trump's called six Democratic lawmakers' behavior seditious when they released an ad saying that military officials can refuse illegal orders.
What do you make of the argument that those six Democratic lawmakers caused, are soliciting chaos by telling them they don't have to listen to the commander-in-chief?
You know what I think is encouraging chaos and violence is the commander-in-chief sharing tweets about requesting that these lawmakers be hung and put to death.
It is not sedition to say that you should uphold the oath that you made to our Constitution.
It is not sedition to remind our troops that they owe their loyalty to the Constitution of the United States.
And in fact, as I've talked to many veterans and many active duty troops, they say we have regular training about the importance of our duty to uphold the Constitution.
What my colleagues, veterans and former security officers have said is the truth.
It is the truth that our military owes their loyalty to the Constitution of the United States.
So too did Donald Trump swear an oath to the Constitution, just like all of us swore an oath to the Constitution.
And what we have seen is our separation of powers be dissolved.
What we have seen is over and over challenges to our Constitution and our democracy.
And none of my colleagues were calling for anything other than our troops to remember the integrity of their oath and to uphold the oath that they swore to protect and defend our Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Well, let me start by saying I've seen a lot of infomarshals from the Trump administration and Secretary Christine Noam over this first year in Congress.
So I think it's our job to be messengers for the rule of law, for the will of the people, and for our Constitution.
And that's what I think my colleagues were doing.
As to why there were no efforts to disclose the files in previous administrations, I've only been in Congress since January, so I can't speak from active experience here in this body, but I can say that Ghelane Maxwell had an ongoing appeal during the Biden administration.
But I do think that there are real questions to be leveled against both the former Trump administration and the Biden administration Department of Justice as to why they did not release any of the files sooner.