Washington Journal (11/30/2025) explores declining U.S. religiosity—Gallup’s 2025 poll shows only 49% prioritize faith daily, down from 87% Christian adherence in 1973—while Monsignor Jim Lasante and callers debate scandals, politicization, and personal spirituality. Democrats and Republicans clash over 2026 midterms, with ACA subsidies and immigration dividing strategists amid partisan polarization: 69% of Republicans back arrests for undocumented immigrants vs. just 13% of Democrats. Cliff Young’s Nativist Nation frames belonging as a data-driven debate, but callers reveal deeper tribalism—from Somali enclaves to white evangelical constitutional claims—suggesting identity conflicts may outlast immigration alone. Ultimately, the episode underscores how faith and nationalism now fuel both personal and political divides, reshaping American discourse. [Automatically generated summary]
Just Michael LaRosa and Republican strategist Chet Love on the Trump administration, Democratic Messaging, and Campaign 2026.
Also, Cliff Young of Ipsos Public Affairs will talk about his book, Nativist Nation, Populism, Grievance, Identity, and the Transformation of American Politics.
Washington Journal is next.
Join the conversation.
Good morning.
It's Sunday, November 30th, 2025.
At three hours Washington Journal is ahead.
And this Sunday morning, we begin on the topic of religion and its role in America today.
A new Gallup poll found that the share of Americans who say that religion is important in their daily lives has plummeted over the past decade.
As we dig into those findings and the reasons why, we want to pose that question to you.
How important is faith and religion in your life today?
Phone lines split regionally for this question.
If you're in the Eastern or Central time zones, it's 202-748-8000.
If you are in the Mountain or Pacific time zones, 202-748-8001.
You can also send us a text this morning, that number 202-748-8003.
If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on X.
It's at C-SPANWJ.
On Facebook, it's facebook.com slash C-SPAN.
And if you're good Sunday morning, you can go ahead and start calling in now.
We want to start with this new Gallup poll out this month about religion in America's daily lives.
Here's some of the top-line findings from that poll.
Fewer than half, 49% of American adults today say that faith is an important part of their lives.
That marks a 17-point drop since the year 2015.
30% of U.S. adults attend church regularly.
That's down a dozen points since the year 2000.
69% of Americans today identify as Christian.
That's down from 87% in the year 1973.
The bottom line, according to the Gallup writers on that poll, the steady decline in U.S. religiosity over the past decade has been evident for years, they write.
Fewer Americans identify with a religion.
Church attendance and membership are declining.
And religion holds a less important role in people's lives than it once did.
But they say this analysis of world poll data puts the decline in a wider context, showing just how large the shift has been in global terms.
Since the year 2007, few countries have measured larger declines in religiosity than the United States.
That's from the recent Gallup poll, drop in U.S. religiosity among the largest in the world.
It came out on November the 13th, and we're talking about it this morning on the Washington Journal.
Want to hear your thoughts.
How important is faith and religion in your daily life?
202-748-8000 is the number if you're in the Eastern or Central time zones, and it's 202-748-8001 if you're in the Mountain or Pacific time zones.
As you're calling in, I want to show you from after this poll came out, an interview from News Nations with Monsignor Jim Lesanti of Our Lady of Lords Parish out on Long Island.
He was asked about these numbers and what it means for Americans today.
Leland, you know, a lot of people don't make the distinction, but we should between belief and practice.
I don't think there are any fewer people in America who don't believe in God.
They're just not crazy about organized religion.
And in many ways, we probably have given them reasons to go in that direction.
But I think belief in God is still very strong.
Years ago, I granted it was like 90%.
It might be less than that now.
But in terms of particular membership, yeah, that's down in every religion, including ours.
But we see signs of hope.
There are things we have to confront that I think can bring those numbers back up.
I'm thinking of a couple of things.
One of them would be certainly in our church and in all churches, the difficulty of scandals.
When I talk to young adults on why they're not going to church, they'll say often they're disgusted by what happened and they shouldn't be.
I like to remind them that 96% of priests have never touched a kid, wouldn't hurt a kid for their lives.
4% did bad things.
And that's not just limited to the Catholic Church.
There's also the gospel of money.
You know that, Leland.
I guess the one people pick on the most would be, well, I won't name names, but you know, there are guys who say that if you just follow our faith, you're going to get all these blessings from God.
You're going to end up rich.
The gospel of wealth.
And that's a turnoff to people.
They look at Jesus, the carpenter, and they say, wait a second, you're telling me I'm following Jesus who's a humble man who owned nothing, but if I follow Jesus, I'm going to have a million dollars in the bank.
And of course, the last thing is, as you know too, and you probably talked about it on other newscasts, the politicization of religion.
You know, more than ever now, religion and politics are heavily wed.
And while at the same time, I can see that a lot of laws that reflect moral teachings are made by politicians.
When our church or any church becomes too related to one particular party or another, it's never a good thing for people.
They see it as just another political operation and they turn off.
So there's lots of things we can fix to make things better, but belief is still real.
Monsignor Jim Lasante on News Nation, he was talking about this Gallup poll.
That's the impetus for this question today that we're asking on the importance of faith in your daily lives.
Also want to talk about this intersection of politics and religion.
Your thoughts on that.
How comfortable or uncomfortable are you when politicians talk about their faith?
Here's the numbers for you to call in.
202-748-8000 if you're in the Eastern or Central time zones.
202-748-8001.
If you're in the mountain or Pacific time zones.
Jim Lasanti there, Monsignor, in the Catholic Church.
We're having this conversation today as the head of the Catholic Church is on his first international trip.
This is the headline from the Washington Post today.
On that first international trip, Pope Leo gives an understated persona as it quietly emerges.
The story notes that on his first international trip, the understated persona of the Pope is emerging and shining through.
The 70-year-old from Chicago Southside is positioning himself as the antidote to an era of towering egos as he wrapped up three and a half days in Turkey before moving on to Lebanon on Sunday.
In his speeches and actions, he emphasized the opposite of self-aggrandizement.
The picture there, Pope Leo at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the story in today's Washington Post.
And we're asking you about the importance of faith and religion in your daily lives.
Patrick is up first on this question out of Pennsylvania.
Patrick, good morning.
Good morning.
How are you?
Doing well.
I was a leader in the Catholic Church as a councilman for 21 years.
And I became disillusioned about the financial aspects of how our funds are being articulated into the investment in our churches and how the diocese warps how these funds will be exchanged with groupings of other churches together and then things not just the funds were not allocated properly,
but it's much deeper than that.
I think that as a Catholic, we have to recognize that the fundamentals of our church have been profoundly damaged when it comes to the scandals involving sexual predation of children.
And there are very fundamental ways that we can change.
I was interviewed in Washington when Pope Benedict had become Pope, and they asked me, What do you think the church needs to do?
And I said, It's very, very simple.
Priests should be able to marry.
Women should be priests.
You need to fundamentally graft what a representative of our faith means to families.
That's the fundamental reality and how it should be articulated.
Got a few more folks I want to get to this morning, including Miriam out of Michigan.
Miriam, good morning.
The importance of faith in your daily life.
Good morning.
I'm so happy for this topic.
I was a school teacher, and I felt that I felt a need for stronger emotional and spiritual support to be my best self as a teacher.
And I wanted to find people like myself as well.
And so I asked the Lord for that, and it came to me when I was in my 30s, you know, years of 30s.
And then I took a trip to Germany to ask one summer when I was on vacation to different schools I planned ahead to meet and ask them, what do you think is the most important thing to teach children?
And then I met a man on a train during that trip, and I asked him the same question, and he said to me something I will never forget.
He said he thought the most important thing for young people and students to learn was to be exposed to different religions so they could choose well the one that was the closest to their own And mind.
So I continued to search for that.
And then I found that the path I found, which was the most meaningful and still sustains me so deeply, was a path of meditation and social service.
And I thank God so much for this path.
And I just wanted to say it helped me a lot in my teaching career because it wasn't me, it was the Lord that was doing everything.
So, Miriam, why do you think this finding has shown that over time in America, the percentage of Americans who say that religion is very important in their daily lives has declined and more rapidly declined in recent years.
Back in 1965, some 70% of Americans said that religion was very important in their daily lives.
Even throughout the 80s and the 90s and into 2000, the number hovered around 60% or so.
Today, that number is 45, 46%.
Well, I think it's because of the advance of technology, that that's the be-all and end-all that closes everyone's mind to spirituality or any other way of thinking and the love of money.
And also, I mean, the priority and corruption in our government, and also the fear of so much change going on, the fear of global change and climate warming.
Those fears terrify people.
And also, I think it's because of laws of nature.
Nature brings us to our heart and loss of authentic cultural expression in our society here.
Everything is about technology, and we lose our heart when we lose our culture.
Miriam, thanks.
Yeah, thank you.
Thanks for that.
In Michigan, Noor is in Falls Church, Virginia.
Good morning.
You're next.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
Religion is very important in my daily life.
When I was in college 42 years ago, I converted to Islam.
I met and befriended fellow students who were Muslims from the Middle East.
And I read the Quran and I was convinced about the religion of Islam.
And so I converted in 1983.
And I pray five times a day.
I fast in Ramadan.
I don't eat pork.
I don't drink alcohol or take drugs.
I try to be a good neighbor.
I don't know what else to say.
I was raised as a Catholic, but by the time I was a senior in high school, I found myself searching spiritually outside the Catholic Church.
And I attended some Protestant churches and I didn't find what my spirit needed there.
And so I attended my university's Islamic Center, Masjid, and started taking lessons for people who were interested in learning about Islam.
In terms of the religious makeup in this country, this is a separate Gallup poll also from within the past 12 months or so, but they looked at the United States.
unidentified
If the United States was made up of 100 people, what would the religious makeup be of the country?
If the United States was 100 people, 23 of them would be evangelical Protestants, 19 would be Catholics, 11 would be mainline Protestants.
There would be five people who identify with historically black Protestant denominations.
There would be two members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormons.
The Pew Poll charts that over the course of years as well, another one of these questions that they ask repeatedly over the years.
unidentified
We're talking about the latest poll that showed drops in religiosity in Americans and a pretty startling drop distinct in 17 points dropping over the past 10 years, just the past decade.
Getting your thoughts on the importance of religion in your daily life and where you see it in the public space.
This is George in Pennsylvania.
Good morning.
You're next.
Yeah, good morning.
Yeah, originally I looked at what is said, how important is faith in my daily life.
I was thinking about the word faith.
Faith is believing in things you can't see.
But now you're changing it kind of to religion.
I think that, you know, faith, you know, believing in things you can't see comes from preparedness, surrounding yourself with the right people and listening to the right things, doing the right things.
I think more importantly, I think all the people that are running our country as far as in our daily life, you know, in our government, they should be retrained.
They should all have to go to the same courses and learn about truth and virtues and, you know, how to listen, how to communicate.
They should learn about race.
And once again, there's the preparedness thing.
And then let them do what they want, but they should be evaluated too.
I mean, everything is being evaluated today and ranked.
Nobody's, they're not on one accord because they're not all listening to the same stuff.
They're busy listening to themselves.
George, are you more likely to vote for somebody if they talk openly about their faith or their religion?
No, I think less is more.
I think when people are practicing things, that there's an attraction.
And then you might be willing to find out what they're doing to live this way.
But to openly talk about it, it's too much promotion.
I'd rather be into attraction rather than promotion.
Live it.
Live it.
Don't talk about it.
Yeah, and then people might want to follow you and say, hey, this guy's doing good.
Once again, they're not learning the truth.
They're coming in here with different motives, which has to do with the truth.
What is the motive?
They need to all be retrained and trained on one accord.
They need to be receiving the same classes.
We have all the technology to do that.
Got your point.
That's George in the Keystone State to the Mountaineer State out of Charleston.
This is Chuck.
Chuck, your thoughts on religion in your daily life?
Yeah, good morning, John.
I'm 66 now.
I was raised in the Catholic Church, sang in the men and boys choir, went to CCD classes after school.
But at the same time, I'd always been very fascinated by things like science and especially astronomy.
And I think about 50 years ago, by the time I was in junior high school, I started getting the feeling that I started realizing that I just wasn't getting the hang of the whole God thing.
It's as though my antenna wasn't picking up that frequency.
And I never bore any grudges against the Catholic Church, never went through any kind of sexual abuse or anything like that.
I have a great deal of respect for the Catholic Church.
It's just, you know, there doesn't seem to be a need for religion in my life.
The main thing I go by in my daily life is what everybody knows as the golden rule.
That is, I treat other people the way I would want them to treat me.
And I don't do things to other people that I wouldn't want them doing to me.
And I think if people focused on the golden rule more than anything, they wouldn't have to be beholden to this invisible world of angels and demons and gods and prophecies.
Chuck, thanks for the call from Charleston, West Virginia.
I guess since I'm an atheist, faith does not play any part of my life.
I have a good friend who's a Mormon.
When he and I were discussing religion, when I said there's no proof, he said to me, that's why they call it faith.
Then when I was watching young Sheldon, Mary Cooper explained it to Sheldon, saying, faith is believing in something that you can't prove is true.
So that's when the Mr. Spock in me took over, being logical and not emotional.
Well, if you can't prove something's true, doesn't that mean it's false?
And if it is false, doesn't that mean it's a lie?
What you believe in, you know, what people have been indoctrinated in from the birth, what they actually believe in is a lie from the book of Christian mythology.
That's the way I look at it.
Michael, what do you think of politicians who talk about their faith?
I think they should keep their mouths shut because Christianity and religious has nothing to do with the founding of our country.
And if they really, another point is, if people that really live their lives believing the teachings of Jesus from the book of Christian mythology and they support this man who's in the office, they're nothing but hypocrites.
There's no other way to describe them.
But politicians should keep their mouths shut about their religion and get on with the business of doing our country better than what they've been doing.
Michael, why do you think religion had nothing to do with the founding of our country?
The First Amendment, Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, the free exercise of religion.
Well, probably I'm not quite phrasing it properly.
Our founding fathers did not want anybody to be indoctrinated into a certain religion.
They wanted them to have freedom to worship how they should be, but that worship should not have any bearing on how our country has run.
That's Michael out of San Diego.
Go ahead and keep calling in this morning, this Sunday morning, a conversation on faith and religion, the importance of faith in your daily life, and what you think about politicians who discuss their religion in the public square.
202-748-8000 if you're in the Eastern or Central time zones.
202-748-8001 if you're in the mountain or Pacific time zones.
We mentioned that Gallup poll finding just three in 10 Americans say that they attend church or religious services regularly.
That number down 12% since the year 2000.
That was one of the topics that C-SPAN's Peter Slen talked about with John Kasich, former Ohio governor, on C-SPAN's QA program earlier this year.
Here's part of that conversation.
I don't think you measure people's belief in God by how many times they go to church, to be honest with you.
You know, I think that that's not the best measure.
And even for people who go to church, that's not the best measure.
Because you go to church, you're fine.
It really is about trying to connect and create a personal relationship with the Father.
And it doesn't matter whether you're Christian, Jewish, Muslim.
I mean, that's what it's all about.
It's about connecting with that higher power.
Now, I happen to be a Christian.
That's kind of where I come down and what I believe.
But, you know, just because people do or don't go to church is not really the issue.
It's about fundamentally two things.
Love God, which creates humility.
We all need a big dose of that.
I especially need an extra big dose.
And it's also about loving your neighbor.
And so if you're doing those things, you're in pretty good shape.
But I'm not here to judge.
I'm just here to kind of, that's kind of the way that I see it.
But I'm not in the judgment seat.
That's something, that's a higher power than me that can decide who believes and who doesn't, and what's the depth of their faith, whatever.
That's kind of where I come from.
And I wrote this book for the purposes of showing that these institutions can really be a launch pad for people who are looking to find their purpose in life.
And in the process of finding their purpose and building something significant, they help to strengthen and build the community, which we all need, stronger communities, more togetherness.
That was John Kasich on C-SPAN's QA program from earlier this year.
The book that he was talking about on QA, Heaven Help Us, How Faith Communities Inspire Hope, Strengthen Neighborhoods, and Build the Future.
That's the cover of the book.
This is John in Florida.
John, good morning.
Your thoughts on the importance of faith in your daily life?
Yeah, good morning.
I always hark back to these lyrics real quick.
Imagine there's no countries.
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.
John Lennon's imagine, that to me rings very well.
I mean, how many people, millions of people have died because of religious views.
Religion, you know, one of the last callers, they said about faith.
You know, there's no proof, you know, and I get it.
And listen, I'm okay with people being religious.
You know, it doesn't bother me.
Actually, it teaches some good things.
But when they try to put that on you, and they try to like, you know, make you some of the most vile people I ever met were the most religious.
Some of the best people, the most decent people were not people that were not religious.
So religion to me is your own choice, but it's very hypocritical, and I choose not to go to church or synagogue or anything like that.
John, you say you're okay if people are religious, but as long as they don't put it on you.
What are your thoughts when politicians talk about being religious when they talk about their faith or their faith journey?
Does that make you uncomfortable, make you more or less inclined to say this is somebody I could support?
It doesn't make me uncomfortable.
It doesn't make me uncomfortable.
I still, you know, it's their own views.
I don't like when they put it on you.
Like they tell you, you know, that, you know, let's say for some, somebody says Jesus is God or something like that.
Well, Jesus is God to the Christians, right?
But he's not God to the Muslims or God to the Jews.
When they try to, like, it's like a one for all.
I really don't mind if that's how they find their, you know, their way in life.
That's okay.
I think that it is very politicized.
And I think that the evangelicals, for the most part, they have such a huge influence on the Republican Party.
I don't like that either.
You know, when the church gets really into politics, but if somebody has like their own views, then, you know, it doesn't really affect me that much.
That's John down in Florida.
We'll head up the East Coast to Utica, New York.
Daniel, good morning.
About halfway through this conversation.
I did seven new weird term controls on the marital.
Thank you.
Are you there, Daniel?
Yes, sir.
So how important is faith in your daily life?
Well, I just put six things in the good plate at St. Joe's St. Pats.
May church.
Yeah, I'm Roman Catholic.
My confirmation name is Vincent.
And I put St. Michael's beads of the lovely soup kitchen.
I was up at 11.30.
They beat a lot of people.
And I never had no problems with no pretty because I got a face on your mother's above.
Thank you, everybody.
That's Daniel in New York.
We'll go to Ray, Rockwood, Tennessee.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm 86 years old.
When I was 10 years old, I was at church, Baptist church.
And I asked my preacher at 10, I said, where did God come from?
The preacher says, oh, that's blasphemy.
I didn't even know what the word meant.
I said, yeah, but where did God come from?
He said, you can't ask that question.
Then, later on in life, I asked the same preacher after a few years in school.
I said, could you explain to me how a virgin had a baby?
He says, you just have to believe.
I said, well, my bottle declares that it's impossible.
And not only that, how did she give birth if she was a virgin?
And then later on in life, I've learned that more people have been killed over religion than any other reason in the world.
Northern Ireland, Southern Ireland, Israel, Palestine, they all kill each other over religion.
So I have never believed in none of it.
I was 10 years old.
Thank you.
That's Ray in Tennessee to Raleigh, North Carolina.
And good morning.
Yes, this is Ann.
I'm calling to let you know.
I think most people, if they had some type of religion in their life, that they would be a better person.
I was a mother of big children at 16 years, 21 years old.
And if it hasn't been for him, I think if more people have some type of religion in their life and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ or some form of religion, something to believe in, their life would be better because without him, without Jesus in my life, I don't know what I would have done.
I don't know what I would have done left with three little boys in my life, tried to raise them in the mountains with no food to eat.
Eat mush, I call it, mush, with meal, water, and put some grease on it.
That was my breakfast.
Nobody's like to be without.
And without Jesus, without going to the church and finding out that I could do better, and having some hope that my life is going to get better, having some dreams that my dreams are going to be better.
So I think it's if you can't go on without just being you.
You've got to have some Christ or some Jesus, somebody in your life to encourage you, to let you know life is going to get better.
Got to have encouragement.
That's Ann in Raleigh, North Carolina.
It's 7:30 on the East Coast.
And in this first hour on the Washington Journal today, we are asking you about the importance of faith in your daily life.
In that column, the New York Times op-ed writer says this: Some people are made nervous by the mingling of God talk with politics.
unidentified
They legitimately fear that religion is such a divisive and explosive force or that it's being imposed on them that it should be kept from the public square and practiced in the privacy of a church and home.
Keep God and politics separate.
He says, I wonder how much such people know about American history.
The founders believed that democracy could survive only if citizens could restrain their passions, be obedient to a shared moral order, and point their lives toward virtue.
They relied on religious institutions to do that moral formulation.
As John Adams put it, quote, our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.
It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Alexis de Tocqueville observed, for the Americans, the idea of Christianity and liberty are so completely mingled that it is almost impossible to get them to conceive of one without the other.
He goes on to say, I'd add only that a naked public square is a morally ignorant public square.
American public debate was healthier and conversation more profound, he writes, when religious leaders like Reinhold Niebuhr, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Martin Luther King Jr., and Fulton Sheen brought their faith to bear on public questions.
Today, morality has been privatized and left up to the individual.
The shared moral order is shredded, he says, and many people, morally alone, have come to feel that their lives are meaningless.
David Brooks writing in the pages of the New York Times that from just the past couple weeks, if you want to read it, this conversation this morning is asking you on the importance of faith in your daily life.
George is in Louisiana.
Good morning.
You're next.
Good morning.
I think it's very important to have a code of conduct.
I think it's very important to understand the value of perfection.
All of these are parts of the foundation of what makes up religion.
Religion is just a Latin word for a self-discipline, a discipline.
There are all sorts of societal compulsions out there that have to be measured through the value of understanding individuality and freedom of choice.
So that's what we're talking about.
Do we believe in having a philosophy of life?
Do we understand, for example, one of the most basic religious concepts is the work ethic.
You know, I mean, just to let you know that how do you wish to spend your time alive in this world?
How are you going to occupy your time?
Kronos time versus Karios time.
Are you going to be thinking about how you others?
Do you believe in caring for others or do you believe in more of focusing on your individual self-care and individual prerogatives, right?
So we're all about it.
We're a community.
We're about caring.
We're about Karios.
It's the dynamic.
Having a religion can help, whatever the religion is, just waking up in the morning and looking at how you can, what is your purpose of your life.
Do you think this decline in religiosity, as the Gallup poll describes it, do you think that is related to other polling that we've talked about on this program, showing a rise in nihilism, especially among younger Americans, that nothing matters, this feeling that nothing matters.
Does religion provide that philosophy of life that you're talking about?
Well, it could.
The whole thing about nihilism, that nothing matters, my life is going nowhere.
I'm not going to amount to anything.
If you have, yes, the answer is yes.
Yeah.
Because if you learn to wait patiently in expectation, which is what Thomas Jefferson actually talked about, hope, you know, no matter how much suffering you're going through, you can choose despair and despondency and be destroyed by it, or you can choose the promise.
You can choose hope, right?
And so, yes, nihilism is a concept that when you don't reflect upon it, you'll choose depression.
When you reflect upon it, you can choose hope.
Yes, absolutely.
Those are all related topics.
George, thanks for the call from Louisiana.
You mentioned Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, often cited by those who are advocates for the distinct and strong separation between church and state because of his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists.
The history of it is listed on the webpage of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a group that we often have on this program to talk about these issues.
unidentified
For those who don't know, Thomas Jefferson's January 1st, 1802 letter to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptist Association is a seminal document in American church state history.
In that letter, Jefferson used the metaphor of the wall of separation between church and state, a phrase that, as the Supreme Court once noted, has come to be accepted as an authoritative declaration of the scope and meaning of the First Amendment, the Jefferson letter to the Danbury Baptists.
By the way, as a youngster through my teens, raised here in Texas, I was taught in my school that at Thanksgiving time that the reason the pilgrims left Portugal's Spain area and traveled across unknown waters searching for a new land was to find a place to make a home where they could worship God freely without government intrusion on a government-controlled religion, which the Romans had done.
The Romans had taken over a huge chunk of Europe and they wanted to worship God.
They wanted to follow God's will in the Bible.
Too many churches do not follow the Bible.
They follow commandments of men, traditions of men, and religions take people down that ugly path because personal relationship with each one of us have with God through Jesus Christ is so important.
Like the Bible verses, John 14, 6 and Job 28, 28 are very important.
But of churches that don't use the Bible, they use their little religious rule books has taken people away from what God wants to hear.
So either way, God bless America and everybody that loves Jesus.
Here's a few of your comments from social media as we've been having this conversation over the past 40 minutes or so.
Sean writes on Facebook in this question of how important is faith in your daily life.
Not at all.
I've seen too many people suffer, had too many disappointments in my own life to expect there is a divine entity that loves us that just lets these things happen.
President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were my heroes.
I didn't grow up in a political family.
It wasn't a prominent family in my hometown.
But I had the calling for public service in my heart from very early on.
But when I came to faith in Christ, I thought I was going to have to choose between living out my Christian faith and going into politics.
And in our course, that's how we began our course, by essentially saying to young people, if you learn nothing else from this class, I want you to know you don't have to choose between living your faith and being in public service.
Now, you have to make choices along the way if you want to keep faith with the first and the second, but you don't have to choose.
And then in fact, as Paul just very eloquently said, you look at the American founding, my favorite vice president was John Adams.
It's our first vice president.
I'm 47 later.
And John Adams said, our government was formed for a deeply religious people, and it's wholly inadequate for the governance of any other.
I mean, the freedom of religion is enshrined in the First Amendment because the founders understood what Paul just said so well, that religious conviction nurtures virtue, and virtue is essentially essential for the survival of freedom and democracy.
You have to have a people of a certain character.
Whatever your religious perspective is, wherever you have your values reinforced, the founders wanted to ensure that Congress would make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
The idea being there would not be a church of England.
And like I'm telling people from Pennsylvania about the American founding, right?
But that was Philadelphia State House, First Amendment.
We've got our own church in Pennsylvania, right?
I think of the 13 original colonies, 11 of them had established churches.
And so the founders said no established church in the federal government.
And then the second thing they said, you know, establishment or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
There'd be no barriers to people living out their faith.
unidentified
Former Vice President Mike Pence discussion earlier this month in Erie, Pennsylvania.
If you want to watch it in its entirety, you can do so on our website at c-span.org.
Just type Mike Pence in that search bar at the top of the page.
How do you see that spiritual awakening in America in 2025?
Well, because the people that I talk to and the people that I'm drawn to are really interested in improving their life, and they're learning.
They're interested in learning about becoming their best friend.
In other words, can you learn to greet your opportunities to expand your horizon by meeting your lessons with a smile instead of saying, oh, why is God doing this to me?
Or why did this happen?
Or why did that happen?
Well, things are going to happen.
And they happen because of the choices we make.
So we say to choose wisely.
Choose to love, not to hate.
Choose to build, not to destroy.
Choose to help.
I wrote a book called The Art of Falling in Love with Your Time on Earth.
And it's on Kindle on Amazon about 15 years ago.
But that's a purpose of my life, is to help people realize that God loves them.
No matter what happens when their life is over, they're going home.
We're all going home together.
We're in this thing together.
But it's just that we're all in different grades.
That's the thing we don't understand.
It's like, you know, you're trying to explain something to me.
Well, you know, I'm in the second grade.
You're in the 12th grade.
What makes you think I'm going to understand how to do algebra when I don't know what two plus two is?
But if I was five years old and you saw me, you wouldn't expect me to know algebra.
So can we just learn to not judge so much and just try to help each other?
I just wanted to agree with the man that called in earlier about judging other people and believing that your faith, your religion, is the only one that is the true religion and everyone else is wrong.
Yes, that woman's story is an example of how pernicious religion can be when people are misguided.
I personally find that Christianity has the most beautiful message, and I really believe in all of the Christian commandments, Judeo-Christian, I should say.
I do not go to church.
I do not believe that Christ was the Son of God.
You look at other religions, including Greek mythology and Scandinavian mythology.
To me, that is all superstition.
But what comes out of it is a set of rules or faiths to believe in.
And If you follow the commandment that you want to be kind to fellow human beings, not to judge, everyday life becomes a reward in itself.
And I think that is enough for me.
It is just a pleasure to try to live by those recommendations.
Yes, and there I learned from the Jesuits, who, by the way, they knew my dad's brother, who was a priest.
The best priest known in Akron or Cleveland was my dad's brother.
They knew I came from a public school, and they really kept an eye on me, and I thank them for that.
One thing they taught, they said there's many ways to get to heaven, but the Catholic way is the best way to get to heaven.
They said, you don't have to be a Christian.
Heaven is open to all people of all faiths, of all countries, but the Catholic way is the best way.
After that, I went to Kent State University.
There's a lot of common between the hippies of Kent State back in 1971 when I graduated and the Jesuits.
They're by no means identical, but they did have a lot in common.
From there, I taught public schools, Akron public schools, and I taught history.
And one of the things in history I taught was about the Protestant Reformation.
And I told my students at Junior High that that may have been the best thing to ever happen to the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church was getting too big for its riches, and other people wanted to be Christian without having to do with the Pope, told them what to do.
I told my students that I taught, that I was raised Catholic, and that I'm not there to convert them.
And my biggest message to all of my students is, you do what your parents tell you to do.
You go to church or the house of worship your parents go to.
When you move away from your parents' house, you're free to do what you choose.
I said it's more important to have a strong moral compass than it is to have any religion.
And we need to vote for people with a strong moral compass, because without that moral compass, your religious beliefs means nothing.
And if you do have a strong moral compass, that in itself is enough to get by.
You don't have to worship any faith, but I encourage you to do what your mom and dad asks you to do when it comes to any religion that it may be.
And they're all good religions.
And for the most part, religions do more good than harm, but there's no such thing as a perfect religion.
But you choose what's the best and just do what your parents tell you to do.
And when you leave home, you free, you know, you do what you want.
But it's a moral compass.
That's what gets us through.
Thank God for this country, America, we have that kind of freedom.
Time for just a couple more calls here in this first segment of the Washington Journal today.
Pastor Staten Island.
Pastor, are you a pastor?
Is that your first name?
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
And thank you for everyone behind the scenes that put all of us on every day.
And I support C-SPAN's complete and full funding, which I hope that all listeners of any perspective can speak up for First Amendment.
This is Pastor Michael Vincent, who is the first name, last name Crea C-R-E-A.
I have my Master's of Divinity from Catholic University about two miles from where you're sitting.
However, I chose not to put new coffee into old filters because every day I'm a daily reviver from being raped in the New York Seminary.
The rapist is on a list like Stormy Daniels, and they don't tell the people in the pews, and that's why I speak up.
He's now an Episcopalian priest in Florida.
I was accosted by Apollo's father up on 4th Street Northeast, across from Catholic U, where the bishops' conference is.
And yet I have to go to the Vatican to even get my reparations because only the Pope can break the silence.
That said, I started one ONE, one world life system, serving one love and developing one world for the common good of humanity.
Some of your previous guests, the author, as well as the gentleman who self-described as an atheist, is in the perspective that I bring to my human rights ministry.
35 years, no parish, pulpit, plate, paycheck, political party, or pastoralization.
I work with everyone A to Z, serving one love and developing one world for the common good of humanity.
I'm actually calling from a hospital room because I collapsed about 15 days ago.
And sometimes that's this.
Yes, and I just want us to remember that those that are speaking up and trying to find their way, we have to have one love.
And I start when I write that, one love, colon, me, you, yours, each and all of us.
Why do I put me first?
Because if one doesn't love who one sees in the mirror, one can't love God or anything else as much as oneself, and one can't love one's neighbor as oneself.
And in terms of human rights, my mother's from Occupied Ireland.
I faced British machine guns going from the 26 counties into the occupied counties in 1968, three months after Dr. King's assassination, three weeks after U.S. Senator from New York, Robert Kennedy the Sr.'s assassination.
But only eight Catholics out of 10,000 in my grandparents' district could vote because you couldn't vote unless you own property.
I know it's against the law for Catholics to own property.
What I'm saying is we had our diagnosis in Brown v. Board of Education that the congenital defect of this constitutional democracy is separate but equal, is inherently unequal.
But we've never had a vehicle of veracity with the capacity to uphold those self-evident truths that every child, every woman, every man is created equal.
What we need to stop is the parroting of the propaganda, especially from what is being said by our 34-time criminal occupier of the presidency, that we need to have that respect for every individual, every person.
And I see, first of all, if we're required to pay taxes, why don't we adopt, first of all, paying or voting is like taking your vital signs.
Let me try to get one or two more calls in before we end this segment.
unidentified
Glenn's been waiting for a while in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you.
I just get so confused on faith.
Faith is what you're told to believe in.
I have been through so many things in my life.
I can stand in my kitchen and talk to God, maybe not get the answer, or do I?
I sometimes think the way I behave the next day is I did get the answer.
Organized religion is complicated for me, and I get upset because I was a victim of some stuff, and people believe in leaders.
Well, leaders should be leaders.
Faith is believing in something that you're not really sure of.
The Bible, to me, is a book of lessons, not necessarily exactly what happened.
And people do believe that that is what is reality.
I'm sure there's pieces of it that do make sense, but it's not the whole world was flooded.
Maybe just an area of the world was flooded.
But Glenn, on this idea of it's complicated.
Just last couple seconds here, you've been asking this question over the past hour.
Fair to say that faith in Americans' daily life is complicated?
Well, it's I hear different people treat each other differently.
It doesn't really matter to me what religion they are or aren't.
Somebody's not right and somebody's not wrong.
Are you living a good life?
Are you treating people well?
Are you treating, are you doing the rules?
Is that fair?
It's fair to say, Glenn, and appreciate it.
We're out of time in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
But stick around.
Plenty more to talk about today, including later on, it's Ipsos Public Affairs Cliff Young discussing his book, Nativist Nation Populism Grievance Identity and the Transformation of American Politics.
But first, a Sunday roundtable discussion on politics in America today.
We're joined by Democratic strategist Michael LaRosa, Republican strategist Chet Love.
That's right after the break.
unidentified
Weekends bring you Book TV featuring leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books.
Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend.
We'll head to the 2025 History Book Festival in Lewis, Delaware, where authors come together to explore topics ranging from Native American identity and Abraham Lincoln to Titanic survivors and more.
Dory McCullough Lawson also reflects on her father, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, and his belief in the vital importance of studying history.
It's America's Book Club from the Catholic University.
Chef, humanitarian, and author Jose Andres joins David M. Rubinstein on America's Book Club to discuss his career, his global relief efforts with World Central Kitchen, his books, and his love of food.
Retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy talks about his memoir, Life, Law, and Liberty.
President Ronald Reagan named Mr. Kennedy to the nation's highest court in November 1987.
Watch Book TV every weekend on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule in your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro went to prison in 2024, convicted of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the January 6th Committee after being found guilty on two counts.
In his new book, I Went to Prison So You Won't Have To, Peter Navarro lays out the Justice Department's case, his arrest and trial, and what it was like for him behind bars.
People think you're in a dorm rather than a cell.
It's like everybody told me there that they'd rather be in a cell because you only have to worry about one other guy.
You know, there's a thing called the lock, lock in the sock, right?
You take a padlock, you throw it in a sock, and a lot of rough justice goes on like that.
White House trade advisor and author Peter Navarro tonight at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's QA.
You can listen to Q&A wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
Yale constitutional law professor Akhil Reed Amar's second book in a trilogy is titled Born Equal, Remaking America's Constitution, 1840 to 1920.
In Professor Amar's introduction, he writes, Millions of Americans can recite by heart Lincoln's opening line at Gettysburg.
But how many of us understand it?
This sentence sits at the very center of this book.
Akhil Amar was born in 1958 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was raised in California after law school at Yale, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, and became a junior professor back at his alma mater at age 26.
unidentified
Author Akil Reed Ammar with his book, Born Equal: Remaking America's Constitution, 1840 to 1920, on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
Book Notes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
Washington Journal continues for a Sunday political roundtable.
We are joined this morning on the Washington Journal by Michael LaRosa from the Democratic side of the aisle and by Chet Love from the Republican side of the aisle.
And Chet Love, I want to start with your perspective as we sit here 338 days until Election Day 2026.
If Republicans want to keep the House and the Senate 11 months from now, what is the most important metric or poll that they should pay attention to?
Is it inflation?
Is it presidential approval?
Is it something else?
I think it's what President Trump is actually doing.
So if you look right now at President Trump's approval rating among those who voted for him in 2024, he's in the high 80s and 90%.
He's delivering on his promises for his voters.
And I think at the end of the day, that's the most important thing because you want those people to remain engaged and to show up and to vote in 2026.
Show up and vote in a midterm election when Donald Trump is not on the ballot.
How do Republicans get voters who are Trump voters to show up?
Well, I think, again, the most important thing is for those Trump voters to understand that in order to continue President Trump's agenda and to see things like we have with the Big Beautiful Bill, you need to continue to have Republicans in the House.
We know that the Senate is going to remain Republican-controlled, but the House is up.
And so it's going to be a fight.
And so we need every Republican to show up to vote to continue to further President Trump's agenda.
Michael LaRosa, same question.
What is the most important metric that Democrats should pay attention to if they want to take the House or the Senate or both?
Well, I don't think there's any one metric.
I think let's look at where we are today versus where we were a year ago.
And what we know, according to government statistics, is that inflation is higher than it was a year ago.
Unemployment is higher than it was a year ago.
Job workforce participation is lower than it was a year ago.
And consumer confidence is lower than it was a year ago, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics.
So, you know, I think Democrats are going to be focusing on how voters, or at least they're going to be targeting how voters feel about the economy under the Trump administration.
unidentified
And I think what you can say right now is that a year in, there's been a lot of action on the Trump White House's part.
They certainly project action and strength.
Whether that action is translating into consumer or voter confidence is yet to be seen.
But they managed to get past a big bill, the Big Beauty.
No one is necessarily feeling the impact of that yet.
We'll wait and see whether they do.
But they haven't achieved much else aside from that legislatively.
They've done a lot through executive action and executive authority, and that's fine, but that's not permanent.
A year from Election Day, this is the NPR Marist poll asked Americans what the Trump administration should focus on.
Here's the answers from the poll.
unidentified
57% of respondents chose lowering prices, 16% controlling immigration, reducing crime at 9%, ending the war between Ukraine and Russia at 7%, war in Israel and Gaza, 6%, and so on down the line.
57% at lowering prices, immigration down to 16%.
Chet Love, immigration was such a major issue in the 2024 election.
I wonder if last week's shooting here in Washington, D.C. puts asylum and immigration issues back up further in the spotlight.
As we still are waiting on a motive and a whole lot from this investigation last week.
And that situation was in quarterly traffic.
And again, prayers to the families in terms of that.
But I think at the end of the day, what we saw even with President Trump and with the new mayor Mamdani out of New York, they aligned on the issue of affordability.
And I think at the end of the day, that's what Americans are really going to be focusing on.
We know since 2020, prices have risen over 25%.
So it's very, very costly for rent, for food, et cetera.
And so at the end of the day, for most Americans, that's what's going to be the major driver is pocketbook issues.
So you don't think immigration is an issue Republicans want to get back to in 2026?
I think immigration is certainly always going to be a top-line issue for Republicans, certainly.
And they appreciate what President Trump has done in terms of enforcing immigration.
And they're very frustrated with what Democrats are doing around the country in terms of trying to stall and protest and to prevent President Trump from actually effectuating immigration issues.
But at the end of the day, pocketbook issues are going to be the number one thing.
So I think, first of all, housing is the number one driver of inflation.
And certainly housing is much more expensive, whether you're renting or owning than it was a year ago.
But over the course of the last several years, housing has become a huge problem for core inflation.
And that was one of the issues that President Trump and Mayor Mandani did sort of focus their agreements on last the other week, talking about housing and affordability in that context.
I think you're going to see the Trump White House and the Trump and the Congress over the next couple weeks focus, hyper-focus on trying to pass a health care fix to Obamacare in some way.
I think that there's going to be two probably side-by-side companion bills in Congress in December, both of which will fail, which will lead to the expiration of the ACA subsidies, unfortunately.
That's my gut.
unidentified
But I do think what President Trump is going to do and the Republicans are trying to do some sort of reform effort with Obamacare income eligibility requirements.
So if it plays out the way you're saying, then who gets the blame?
Are you saying that Americans whose prices shoot up on their health care costs blame Donald Trump for this?
Well, the Republicans certainly had the opportunity to extend the subsidies.
However, I'm a pragmatist.
I'm a realist.
Republicans have never supported any aspect of Obamacare or Obamacare subsidies.
But if they support affordability, it is in their best political interest to extend those subsidies.
And that's what Democrats have to be careful about is constantly being the party of no and voting down act, being opposed to action, whereas Trump is opposed to Democrats opposed to action and Trump's supporting action on anything.
unidentified
Chet Love, Republican strategist, what is the strategy for dealing with this health care cliff that's rapidly approaching?
Yeah, at the end of the day, what we know is that access to health care is important and Republicans certainly support it.
What we saw in the fight with the government shutdown was Democrats focusing on a very small issue where Republicans are simply saying we need to have a holistic plan to address health care in this country.
And President Trump's talked about this as well in terms of lowering drug prices, making things more affordable for the average everyday American.
And so you see Republicans taking steps to address health care issues in this country, and I think that's being well received.
But I do think that Congress needs to have a actual bill, I mean, a budget.
The problem we have really, at the end of the day, the big elephant in the room is after the last 30 years, we have not had an actual budget pass by Congress that specifically lays down where America is on health care.
And so you can't have these small little fights every other month or every other year around these issues.
What we need to have in America is a comprehensive plan with Republicans and Democrats sitting down and actually voting on health care.
How do you get that to happen?
Well, number one, I think that we need to get rid of the filibuster.
I think that's been a huge issue that's limited our ability to be effectual.
And so what you see is that Congress's overall approval rating is somewhere around like 10%.
I mean, it's absolutely terrible.
Most Americans are frustrated with the fact that Congress is basically doing nothing.
And so I think if we can get rid of the obstacles to actually get legislation passed, I think that's going to be really important and effective in terms of getting budgets passed.
You want to jump in?
Well, I think there's two separate issues under the healthcare sort of umbrella, right?
There's the short-term ACA subsidy, which will increase premiums.
And people are going to get that first of the year kind of premium, you know, sort of whiplash, I think.
And that can be prevented.
We have until December 31st, technically.
The markets will obviously be in disarray.
They're in disarray now.
But we technically, the Republican Congress and the Republican president could save the American people a lot of money by just extending these subsidies, at least temporarily, maybe for a year.
And in that year, we could be negotiating and debating a larger health care reform package.
And I think you'll probably see plans from Senator Cassidy, Senator Marshall, a few Republicans over the next few weeks and a few months, Senator Johnson.
They'll probably be debating a lot of that throughout the spring.
A Sunday political roundtable this morning on the Washington Journal.
Our guests, Michael LaRosa, Democratic strategist, former press secretary to First Lady Joe Biden, Chet Love, Republican strategist with the Cornerstone Group, joining us once again on the Washington Journal and taking your phone calls.
Chet Love, as people are calling in, let me come to another question as the New York Times has an article today about Marjorie Taylor Green and where she fits in the Republican movement right now.
How united is the Republican Party right now heading into the midterm elections?
I think at the end of the day, what we see with both political parties is an issue around idealism and populism.
And so you see that with AOC and Bernie Sanders going around the country criticizing Democrats.
You see that with Marjorie Taylor Greene going around the country criticizing Republicans.
So at the end of the day, America is trying to find a new way in terms of how do we address this affordability crisis?
How do we actually bring back the American dream for the average American?
And those are the issues that politicians are really focusing on.
You talk about both sides are doing this.
Is one party more united going into the midterms than the other?
I think at the end of the day, President Trump is a great uniter and he's a great leader.
And so people tend to rally around the president.
Clearly, we've seen issues like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
I think that are anomalies.
But at the end of the day, you have much greater leadership in the Republican Party.
Right now, people are calling for the Democratic leadership's heads.
I mean, Hakeem Jeffries is certainly under siege, as you know.
And so I think ultimately, Republicans are in a much better position than Democrats are.
Michael LaRosa, the unity of the Democratic Party going into the midterms.
Yeah, like every family, we have a lot of family disputes.
And we are no stranger to sort of having a shared goal, but different ways of getting there.
But I will say, I think the off-off year election two weeks ago, three weeks ago, was a big shot in the arm for the Democratic Party all across the country.
I think Governor Newsom's ability to put together a 90-day campaign and sort of even the score with Texas on the redistricting fight was incredibly energizing and incredibly motivating, perhaps, to a new governor in Virginia who now has a trifecta governor-elect Abby Spamberger.
Could we see her do the same, possibly?
unidentified
Could we see Westmore sort of speed up the process there that has really stalled in Maryland to get to squeeze another Democratic seat out of there?
So I think Democrats are getting a little bit more energized about the redistricting fight.
But what I saw on that election at the local level in a state like Pennsylvania, in places like Northampton County, Erie County, two counties that flipped from Obama to Trump to Biden back to Trump, just Democratic blowouts at the county level, which is really, that's the kind of thing that matters to the Democratic Party.
unidentified
And that, those two counties, plus Luzerne County and the Supreme Court statewide in Pennsylvania, that matters.
And that means that what works in New York City will not work in places like Allentown or Grand Rapids or Sarasota, Florida.
And so in order to win in places like that, which we need to win a majority, we have to have tailored messages to the communities.
unidentified
That's why recruitment, recruitment, recruitment is everything.
2026.
Go ahead.
But if I can't, I would argue that the leader of the Democratic Party is Donald Trump.
The whole message from Democrats consistently has been anti-Trump.
The way they've gotten energy is to go around and create these no-kings rallies and try to go Biden's whole message was anti-Trump.
And that's why Democrats were so frustrated in terms of they saw Democrats really doing nothing during Biden's term in terms of moving their agenda because it was all about anti-Trump.
And now that Trump's back in office, again, it's just simply, we don't like Trump and everything that Trump does is bad.
That's not effectuating policy.
Nobody really believes that Democrats are actually going to be able to lead.
And what we saw in this off-off election was races that Democrats were already set to win.
I mean, Virginia, every single year for their governor's races, they always flip-flop.
They always go from Republican to Democrat, Republican.
So it was their turn.
It was Democrats' turn to win.
So again, they're grasping at straws for anything that they can see that's daylight that gives them some hope in terms of being able to say that they're winning on these issues.
And again, we're about 335 or 38 days away from Election Day 2026.
His first point, going back to our question earlier about religion and politics.
unidentified
We can set that aside and focus on Citizens United for a second.
In terms of spending in the midterms, the 2026 midterms, have you seen any expectations about what the number is going to hit?
Are we going to set another record for ad spending in the midterms?
I'm sure we will.
I think the way ads are placed are different now.
It's a lot of digitally targeted, micro-targeted digital advertising, but I still think the spending, whether you have the outside groups like the 527s or the super PACs, and then you have the party committees and the DNC, the Driple C, the DSEC, the equivalent on the Republican side, and then you have the individual campaigns.
So I think it's going to be probably record-setting for a midterm.
I'm sure.
I have no doubt that consultants will make a lot of money.
Did Donald Trump change the way we try to target messages, especially with a social media focus in 2024?
Does that play out?
Does that work on a House and Senate level, or is that just more of a national?
No, absolutely.
I mean, I've talked to a lot of my Democratic strategist friends, and there's tons of money being poured into now by Democratic donors to social media and to podcasting.
They realize that a lot of the right-pill guys have done a fantastic job in terms of reaching key demographics.
And so now they're going to try to compete.
And so you're seeing that being done at the Democratic side.
But I think what's important, what the call was talking about in terms of money and politics, you see Marjorie Taylor Greene going around the country and actually talking about these issues.
So this is a bipartisan issue in terms of, hey, the system's not working for the average everyday American, and we need to be finding more ways to get back to that.
I think what you see is a natural fight, which is what people voted for Trump initially in 2016, which was he said he was going to come in, he was going to drain the swamp, and it was all about America first.
And so ultimately, at the end of the day, what we're seeing is this fight about, well, what is America first?
What are the policies that make sense?
Or who are we prioritizing?
Why are we spending money in foreign countries and foreign wars versus allocating funds here in the United States?
So these are issues that are being grappled with.
I think that are really important.
Michael LaRosa, opportunity there for Democrats or go ahead and let them have that fight and stay out of it if you're a Democratic.
Yeah, for me, it's just sort of not my clowns, not my circus.
I'll let them figure out their.
We have enough to deal with inside of our own party, whether it's on cultural issues, figuring out a coherent message or just the ability to have courage at all to talk about them.
What's that cultural issue that comes top of mind for you?
Well, I think the cultural issue that we see a lot of candidates run away from or run scared from is the trans issue, the trans and sports issue.
It's obviously an issue that is highly emotional, highly triggering, but also extremely rare.
At that same time, because it's so rare and, you know, unlikely in terms of being an issue facing your community, it does face some communities for sure, but all the more reason for people to have a straight answer.
I would encourage them to say that there are men and there are women.
I would encourage it.
That's where the electorate is.
That's where the voters are.
You know, there's a way to take a position without alienating the marginalized or and also with having compassion for the marginalized, but also having a having conviction, having a position, and most of all, just having an answer.
Let me go to Hamilton, Ohio.
This is Robert, line for Republicans.
Robert, you're on with Michael LaRosa and Chet Love.
Robert, you with us?
Yeah.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I'm here.
I got three things I want to say, so I want to try to hurry up and get through this.
First, Chet Love, you are the first one that I've seen get up here and really speak your mind.
Why don't you run for office?
Second, these polls, they're so fake.
It's not that they're fake.
It's that they're produced in Democratic states like New York, Chicago, California.
All these states have ran the Republicans.
The Republicans that could get away from them states, they've ran away from them states.
They've moved.
That's why them states are always going to be Democratic.
Now, the third thing is this ACA.
15 years ago, we never wanted this ACA to come in effect anyway.
We knew it was bad for the health care system.
We knew it was bad for everybody in the United States.
But the Republicans fought, they fought for us in the beginning, but then they caved in because of Obama.
And that's when it all went down.
Healthcare, healthcare sucks all the way around.
No matter what, I make $16 an hour.
I pay for my insurance through my work.
And I got to subsidize, and I got to pay taxes to help for this ACA.
Don't nobody want a year extension.
We want to get rid of the ACA and really do the right thing.
Not just try to sit there and play to your constituents or not to your constituents, but to the people.
Six in 10 blame congressional Republicans or Donald Trump for the government shutdown.
unidentified
And six in 10 say President Trump's top priority should be lowering prices.
Is any of that fake polling, you think?
No, I mean, look, I think we've seen President Trump have these poll numbers in his last term.
I mean, I think the lowest he got was around 34%.
And that was during the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax that we saw going on.
And so now he has lower poll numbers slightly overall because we've talked about the Epsom files, and that's been a big issue.
But I do think at the end of the day that the focus really needs to be on the fact that one, affordability, and two, continuing to deliver for the American people.
I think you can't get rid of the ACA at this point, just practically, I think from a logical perspective.
But I do think that there are reforms that do need to be made to the ACA.
But again, what that actually is going to look like is really going to be about the midterms and what Congress looks like after 2027.
Michael LaRosa, you were taking notes during that?
Sure.
Well, I think President Trump has caught a little bit of the Biden flu because he's in the territory where President Biden was for the last three years of his presidency in that 36 to 40 percent approval area, 57 to 62 percent, 60 percent disapproval.
None of that's good for President or the Republicans.
And as you mentioned, that 14-point advantage is exactly where Democrats should be.
Any lower will be problematic for Democrats when it comes to the generic ballot, I would think.
So I think Democrats have all the right tools heading into next year.
And I wouldn't discount the Senate, the Senate.
We are putting more states in play, forcing Republicans to spend money with recruits.
Democrats are getting their top recruits.
They couldn't ask for better recruits in North Carolina, Maine, Iowa.
We'll have to defend Georgia and Texas.
So I think Republicans are going to have to spend money in places they weren't anticipating on when it comes to the Senate.
And I'm thinking about the abortion case and the election cycle after that.
unidentified
Yeah, I think it's a really important question.
And again, I think it's really important when we think about what are the values of America and is this something that's really important for us in terms of birthright citizenship around these issues, especially when it comes to immigration.
And so, yeah, I mean, I think that it's right that we're challenging it and considering the implications of that.
But I do think that for most Republicans, they would like to see a change with regard to birthright citizenship.
First of all, I'm calling because the Republican person said that Trump was a uniter.
Look up, define the word unite.
He has never been a uniter.
Whenever he says something, it's either if he doesn't care for you, it's derogatory.
It's terrible.
Again, I can't imagine how anybody could think that he's a uniter.
I just came back from Europe and most of the people that we did talk to, not that it was a lot, a couple of things.
I feel sorry for you.
You never know what your president is going to say next.
It goes from treating the reporters in the Oval Office to me, when the president insults a reporter, they should all walk out.
He has never called on the terrible, rude, ugly things that he says.
Thank you very much.
I really enjoy your show.
Take care.
Chet Love, I think you were the Republican person that Janet was referring to.
What would your response?
I think the challenge that we have in this country is that there's politics.
And in politics, Republicans don't want Democrats to win and Democrats don't want Republicans to win.
And so, yeah, there's going to be divisiveness in this country.
And as much as President Trump may try to extend an olive branch, people are going to try to create division.
Give me some examples of the olive branch.
Well, I mean, you just saw Mamdani go into the White House to meet with President Trump, and you saw how great that was.
I mean, most people thought it was going to be a knockdown, drag out fight.
And in fact, many Democrats were highly upset with the fact that he didn't go to task against President Trump.
You even see Democrats criticizing Mayor Bowser here in D.C. for trying to work with the administration with their messages, resist, resist, fight against the president.
He's a dictator.
He's a Nazi.
So again, this rhetoric that's being pushed by Democrats.
It's local politics in D.C., but do you think that's any reason why she's not running for office again for another time?
Oh, absolutely.
I think it's incredibly frustrating.
I mean, I think you've seen this across the country.
I mean, you've seen other mayors like in San Francisco who found it very difficult to govern in these extraordinarily far-left cities, which again, go beyond reality.
I mean, we're trying to control for crime, trying to control for regular everyday things.
These Democratic cities are really, really, really difficult because as a mayor and as a person responsible, you have to work across the aisle.
You have to be bipartisan.
But again, right now, we're seeing an environment where it's very polarizing on both sides.
But Democrats carry a lot of that weight in their messaging and their rhetoric, especially if you look on online, on X, on Twitter, and those kind of things.
Just about 15 or 20 minutes left and lots of calls for you gentlemen.
unidentified
Let me get Rob in Ruskin, Florida, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning, fellas.
I guess I want to start with Mr. Love and the one caller who said, you know, we're talking about polls and how they're all Democratic run and this and that.
And I will say that some polls favor certain politics and issues.
My thing is, you know, people like Mr. Love, one of his first statements when he came on was like, hey, you know, Trump is 87% in his polls, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But then when the host here asked the question, hey, do you believe in polls?
You know, he kind of veered off and didn't really want to make a statement on it of very, you know, true or false and this and that.
And I think we're talking about a poll about Trump voters and whether they thought he was doing a good job.
That's right.
Yeah, look, I mean, polling's not an exact science, but yes, I mean, we do believe in polling.
Polling does, it's helpful directionally to understand where America is.
And so, yes, the facts of the matter is Trump's approval rating among most Americans is somewhere around in the 30% range right now, ranging between the mid-30s to high 40s.
And again, a lot of that is the reason it's lower is because, again, like I said before, it's this Democratic messaging that's been going around saying Trump's a bad, evil person when he's doing things that in a lot of cases are similar to what President Obama did around immigration, around Venezuela, et cetera.
But everything that Trump does now is a bad thing.
So I think what we need to get away from is getting hyper-focused on the polling and really start more focusing on bringing more Americans together instead of having this hyper-partisanship and this messaging that everything that Trump does is bad, everything that Democrats do is bad because America's not working for the average everyday American right now.
And that needs to be the major focus for politicians here in D.C. Michael LaRosa, there's an old adage on negative ads that nobody likes negative ads, but they wouldn't run them if they didn't work.
That's exactly right.
They're the best kinds of ads because they are meant and targeted at to draw emotion and to be a little bit hyperbolic and to be to really drive voters to the polls through either fear or anger or resentment.
And, you know, that's their intent.
So it works.
And look, there is a look, we have a two-party system.
And in that two-party system, when it becomes team sports, one, like blue versus red, that means like, you know, everything is seen through the lens of your tribe.
And there's a huge tribalism problem when it comes to the information we consume, when it comes to the polling we consume, when it comes to the news and friends that we have even.
And that's a problem.
I think we need, as a country, we need to be more open-minded.
Polls themselves are not necessarily meant to be instructive, but they are meant to sort of inform, form a campaign or the public about where things stand at that particular moment.
I mean, I wish my old friends on the Biden reelection campaign had started taking polls a little bit more seriously because when polls show trends, that is incredibly informative.
It either reminds you of like Joe Biden, which is either smart and they're trying to turn people off, or it's just meant to be something useful that is provocative and different to sort of make people to stick with the voter or the viewer to get audience attention.
And like attention is the biggest part of the message you're sending to the viewer.
So that gets attention.
So it's either a couple of things.
First of all, it's interesting that they're already spending money on Janet Mills.
That means the Republicans are scared of her as a candidate.
And again, we are 11 months and to be spending money that early.
At the same time, it's smart for them to be defining their opponent early.
That means they know she's going to be a tough candidate.
She's going to have the goodwill because she's been elected twice statewide.
So they're smart to be spending money early.
At the same time, really smart choice by Senator Schumer and the Democrats to, you know, not lean, but, well, yeah, I'll just say it, to lean on Governor Mills and ask her to run.
It was a good recruiting victory for Senator Schumer and the Democrats.
But our cost of health care in the country, all the dollars we spend together last time I looked was about $1.7 trillion.
If you look at 350 million people in the country, that equates to basically $500 to $600 per person.
When you look at the cost of health care, though, on that side, I've seen numerous reports that the administrative cost in the healthcare system is in excess of 50%.
The reports I've seen put it at 65 to 67%.
And so when 65 cents of every healthcare dollar is not providing health care, I would think, and that's where Obamacare didn't look at the call side of it and do anything about it, is a normal company, administrative costs would run in about the 15% range.
And so we have a lot of health care dollars not providing health care.
So at $500 to $600 per person, say a family of four, total health care cost annually would be about $2,000.
And on a company paid plan, when I retired, I was paying my family plan was already costing me $630,000.
This is the kind of question that I've spoken to numerous physicians and nurses.
And on the inside, they see it.
They see the problem.
We have for-profit, which is taking money out of the system.
We have not-for-profit hospitals that pay CEOs.
Locally here, each bed in this hospital near me has to produce $1,000 a day to pay one person.
And these are the kind of problems that should be addressed.
If these problems, Jim, before you go, if they don't get addressed, if it isn't fixed, and right now we're just talking in December about the healthcare subsidies and whether they should be extended or not.
If it doesn't happen and we're stuck a year from now in this same system that you just described, whose fault is it?
When you go to the ballot box, how do you express your displeasure with this system?
unidentified
Who do you vote against?
Well, see, being an independent, I'm not tied to either party because I don't see either party with an answer.
That's why I'm particularly interested in your answer to this question.
Well, one thing is that I would health insurance companies, which, again, take money out of the system, need to start with not paying dollars an immediate drop in what they pay, because if we know that 50% goes to administrative costs, that would immediately cut the amount to pay to 50%.
Not-for-profit hospitals already have a 15% advantage because they don't pay federal taxes.
So if they can't pay wages out of the 15% tax burden, that means 100% of my money that I pay would go directly to healthcare.
And, you know, one of the big drivers of healthcare costs, when he was talking about administrative costs, one of the biggest drivers is the hospital consolidations into these health care systems where it's just where there's mergers of different hospitals in regions of your state.
Particularly, there's one going on in Indiana, actually, in Terre Haute, a big hospital merger.
And when there are mergers of hospitals, and there's less competition, less choices, less options, rates go up.
The reimbursement rates go up in these hospital systems.
I would encourage the caller to check out what's happening in Terre Haute.
unidentified
But also keep in mind, Obamacare, while it may have not, and I don't think it did really address the cost problem, it was meant to close a gap and allow and provide access to healthcare to people who didn't have it before.
And that's a good thing.
But now it's time to move on from Obamacare and start focusing on costs for people like the color and what the color mentioned, the administrative costs, the hospital costs, the cost of care.
Why is the cost of care so expensive?
That's what we need to come back and focus on.
Both parties need to focus on cost of care over fighting over the different Obamacare subsidies and whatnot.
Chad, love you're nodding your head to some of that.
Well, yeah, absolutely.
And I always love calls coming in from independents because more of Americans becoming independent.
I mean, that's just the reality.
Because again, as we said before, the polling shows that the approval rates for Congress is really, really low.
And so, yeah, addressing these issues and getting rid of the bureaucracy in healthcare, understanding we need more innovation in healthcare.
The way that the healthcare system is set up, it just doesn't work.
It's not delivering for the American people.
Let me go to Rick in Homestead, Florida, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning, my friends.
My question is to Mr. LaRosa.
I'm a moderate Republican, voted twice holding my nose for Trump.
My question is, why does it the National Democratic Party get it?
If you give us candidates like Kamala and Hillary, we're going to vote for our traditional Republicans or non-traditional Republicans like Trump.
Why don't they see the reality and put forth purple candidates that we could vote for?
I believe if the Democratic Party would put a purple candidate like Bill Clinton and even Obama, that they would sweep the elections.
And I'm frustrated with my Republican Party because we've let this happen.
But I'm equally frustrated with the Democratic Party.
Why don't they get it?
Why don't they get it that they can't put it?
Was Joe Biden a purple candidate?
I think originally, I think he was steered at the end of his, you know, during his presidency.
But originally, man, I wanted Biden to go against Trump at the first election.
I think he would have won when he was a younger Joe Biden.
Michael LaRosa.
I think Joe Biden would agree with the color that he should have been the one to go up against Donald Trump in 2016.
And probably in 2024.
I think he probably does believe that too.
But I think that 2020 primary was such a great example of what the caller is talking about.
You know, there's a lot of noise and there's a lot of high volume on Twitter, on social media, on cable news when it comes to the progressive side or the left-leaning side of the Democratic Party.
But the silent majority of Democrats, and I think the 2020 primary was a fantastic case study for that.
The silent majority of Democrats are not from the extreme left.
And when I was on that Biden primary race, we certainly tried to run as somebody who had the experience to sort of work with both sides of the aisle.
That was a big part of what Joe Biden talked about during those primaries in 2020.
And while we got our butts kicked in the first three, once we won South Carolina and once the primaries spread out across the country, I think we saw the majority of Democrats just overwhelmingly support Joe Biden.
That's why he became the nominee.
And I think there's a good argument to make that he may have been dragged too far to the left when he was in the White House.
But I was really quick, but what I was going to say, though, you can kind of push him back a little bit.
I actually think that if Democrats didn't steal the election from Bernie Sanders, you probably wouldn't have even had Trump.
Because you have all those Bernie bros who actually switched to vote for Trump.
They came around the backside.
Yeah, because the reality is Democrats really have not had a fair election within their party since Obama.
I don't know what that means.
Well, I'm saying how did they get it?
Well, because I think we've seen, I think we've seen reporting that's come out that talked about how the DNC sort of manipulated these issues to kind of hurt Bernie Sanders.
And Bernie's talked about it at NASDAQ.
Right, but how do you think?
How do you manipulate states that vote and choose their own primaries?
Who, again, didn't go through a primary, right, and was put on the voters and lost abysmally.
So Democrats have this problem of not actually being able to listen to their base in terms of who they really want to be their champion.
In terms of the primary field, I know we've been talking midterm elections in 2026, but go ahead to 2028 if you could.
The candidate that the caller describes, the purple candidate that could get his vote as a moderate Republican, who is that right now in the Democratic Party in your mind?
Hard to say.
I think there's a lot of talented candidates.
There's a lot of talented potential candidates.
It sounds like what the caller was referring to, what he reminded me of, was Governor Bashir in Kentucky.
It sounded like somebody like that who is a Democrat who has to work with a Republican legislature, who has successfully navigated the tricky cultural waters of abortion and trans issues.
At the same time, I don't know how well he this is what's great about primaries.
You kick the tires, you lift the hood up and you kick the tires.
And I agree with Chet on the Harris situation.
It was a problem of historic proportion, unfortunately, not of her making, of Joe Biden's making.
And it kills me to say that because I love him and I love his wife.
unidentified
And I worked for them tirelessly for three years and devoted my life to them.
But there is a major miscalculation or so, I guess, by choosing to run and then by choosing to get out as late as he did.
To Chet Love's point, do you think that situation has served to undermine the Democratic base's trust in a future primary?
Is there trust that needs to be rebuilt before you can have a big open primary and make people feel like their voices are being heard and everybody's getting a fair ticking of the tires?
At the same time, everybody came together pretty quickly, from the delegates to the left to the center, to rally behind Harris and ultimately Harris Waltz and sort of unite around one basic idea was that we need to beat Donald Trump.
Going forward, I imagine that there's going to be a lot of discussion about how debates are run during the primary, how primaries, you know, there's going to be states and state parties choosing when to hold their primaries in conjunction with the DNC's calendar.
So look, there's a lot to be sorted out, and I'm sure there's a lot of discussion to be had about the fairness of the next primary.
But the last Several primaries, 2024 aside, I would say we're very fair and populist and certainly not rigged, at least no matter what you want to read in the conspiracy theory land.
He's Gavin Newsom.
Just say it's Gavin.
You know you guys are going to run Gavin and T. Do you think it'll be Gavin?
There's no you guys.
It's either people vote in primaries or they don't.
It's called Nativist Nation: Populism, Grievance, Identity, and the Transformation of American Politics.
We'll talk about that in some of the latest polls after the break.
unidentified
America marks 250 years, and C-SPAN is there to commemorate every moment.
From the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the voices shaping our nation's future, we bring you unprecedented all-platform coverage, exploring the stories, sights, and spirit that make up America.
Join us for remarkable coast-to-coast coverage, celebrating our nation's journey like no other network can.
America 250, over a year of historic moments.
C-SPAN, official media partner of America 250.
Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro went to prison in 2024, convicted of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the January 6th Committee after being found guilty on two counts.
In his new book, I Went to Prison So You Won't Have To, Peter Navarro lays out the Justice Department's case, his arrest and trial, and what it was like for him behind bars.
It's like everybody told me there that they'd rather be in a cell because you only have to worry about one other guy.
unidentified
You know, there's a thing called the lock, lock in the sock, right?
You take a padlock, you throw it in a sock, and a lot of rough justice goes on like that.
White House trade advisor and author Peter Navarro tonight at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
Weekends bring you Book TV featuring leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books.
Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend.
We'll head to the 2025 History Book Festival in Lewis, Delaware, where authors come together to explore topics ranging from Native American identity and Abraham Lincoln to Titanic survivors and more.
Dory McCullough Lawson also reflects on her father, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, and his belief in the vital importance of studying history.
It's America's Book Club from the Catholic University.
Chef, humanitarian, and author Jose Andres joins David M. Rubenstein on America's Book Club to discuss his career, his global relief efforts with World Central Kitchen, his books, and his love of food.
Retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy talks about his memoir, Life, Law, and Liberty.
President Ronald Reagan named Mr. Kennedy to the nation's highest court in November 1987.
Watch Book TV every weekend on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
Washington Journal continues.
I was glad to welcome Cliff Young back to our desk.
It's only when you have high levels of immigration, whether that be in the mid-1800s, the turn of the last century, or now, which were all super high.
We're about 15% foreign-born right now in the United States, and in Europe, by the way, the very equivalent experience is today.
That's when nativism, these sort of more essential or existential debates about belonging kind of crop up and become center in front and center in politics.
Populism is the belief in the people over, let's say, the establishment.
Racial or economic grievance are sort of critiques of the system, feeling alienated.
Authoritarianism is another one that often is used.
That is like taking strong, firm sort of directive and pushing forward policies.
We can see that especially in present politics today.
But all those other sort of beliefs and values are a function of, or at least we argument, a function of nativism.
Ultimately, our central conflict today in the United States, the polarization that we see in the United States today, is a function of who belongs and who doesn't.
So how do we see that for our visual learners on the Washington Journal in this poll?
The poll asks, the percent of people who agree that when jobs are scarce, employers should prioritize the hiring of people in this country over immigrants.
The top line is Republicans.
unidentified
Today, 68% saying that they should prioritize the hiring of Americans over immigrants.
It's a great question that kind of captures the essence of nativism.
In this case, it's economic in nature, favoring native-born over foreign-born.
And what we see is three decades ago, two generations ago, or a generation and a half ago, Republicans and Democrats were really very similar on this issue.
They were equally restrictive in nature.
They wanted more restrictions, not less restrictions.
And what's happened over time, over the last three decades, is that Democrats and Republicans have increasingly become different from each other on this issue.
Indeed, in some ways, it's interesting because you have Republicans that have basically stayed flatlined.
They've been about as nativist as they were three decades ago.
It's Democrats who have become increasingly less nativist over time.
And this is a function of a variety of things, mostly because of education.
unidentified
Dive into that.
What has changed over the past 30 years that you think moved that number from 57% in 1995 to 36% today?
People kind of select into one party versus another given, let's say, the party's overall orientation.
The more nativist one, the Republicans, are going to attract nativists.
So you have this sorting going on on the one hand.
You also have a wholesale shift in the party composition.
The Democrats were a party of the working class a generation, generation and a half ago.
Now they're the party of the well-educated marginalized.
It's a very different profile.
And so ultimately, this sort of reflects that, a much more sort of liberal, progressive view of the world, a much less restrictive view of the world than, let's say, a generation or two ago.
unidentified
So what would be your advice to a candidate running today on the issue of nativism and how they should factor it in in their messaging for 2025?
There's a policy and then there's a political level.
Let's talk about the political level.
Obviously, it's a minority view.
Strong nativists represent about a third of the population.
Nativists adjacent, maybe another 20%.
So we're around 50% of the population plus a little bit that we can characterize or we characterize as nativists in the book.
So it's a difficult coalition to keep together ultimately, but it's one for the Republicans that really shores up the base.
So it's really a base issue, right?
That has done them well over the last few electoral cycles, last three at least since 2016.
So messaging to these sorts of issues, sort of restrictive sort of immigration policy, resonates very well and still does with Republicans.
That's one of the reasons that Trump has had a lot of staying power over this first year of his administration.
At a policy level, it's more difficult because ultimately we have two very different views of the world.
One more restrictive, Americans should be native-born, maybe they should be more white, maybe they should be more Christian, more restrictive, more ascriptive in their characteristics.
You have another view of the non-nativist, which is more diffuse, less restrictive, that maybe someone who has come here as a child who's lived here their whole lives maybe doesn't have on paper the fact that they're a citizen, but they speak perfect English, they feel American, they root for their local sports teams, they are American.
And we don't have consensus on who definitively is an American today.
I think any sort of policy solution will need to be some sort of compromise between these two views, a more restrictive one and a less restrictive one.
It represents the nativist view of the world, the native view of the world.
When we ask questions of identity, you know, who is, what are the sorts of characteristics that an American has?
The number one thing that nativists cite is actually being born here in America.
You know, that's the number one most important characteristic to define who is a true American or a real American.
And I think the birthright citizenship issue is just a function of this conflict that we're seeing today between a more restrictive view of America and what America is and a less restrictive one.
So this was a process of trying to understand America.
And I would say that it's a book about the big, broad social trends.
It's not about who's going to win the next election.
It's about what's shaping America, what's shaping the world.
And what I would say is that in 2015 and 2016, we were trying to understand the rise of Trump as pollsters.
And he wouldn't fall in the polls.
He wouldn't implode.
We remember that moment.
We started sort of taking bits and pieces from his speeches and testing them.
And what we found was there is massive resonance for this more restrictive view of what an American is, this more nativist view.
And from that time on, we track the issue, that we track the issue globally.
We found that it has resonance around the world, not just the United States, but it's the primary determinant of politics globally speaking as well, especially in Europe.
And this was really supposed to be just a memorialization of this process of discovery, that we found this phenomenon, we measured this phenomenon, we understand it now, we understand it as being a very important determinant.
We wrote the book or writing the book and Trump won his second term, and now we're in the middle of it.
And obviously, it's very topical given everything that's going on.
I just find it funny that it's unfortunate that for the past 30 years, I mean, you go back to the news and you go look at immigration during the 90s, it was almost the same as it is today.
And it just seems like the senators and House of Representatives are taking these issues and making them a career-long issue, you know, and running on it for 20, 30, 40 years.
And it's just, to me, that shapes America in the nativism you're talking about, right?
And I just think it's unfortunate that then people that can stay in power for 20, 30, 40 years can help shape what we think today and how we feel today, right, towards people that are not from this country.
I just think it's just outlandish, you know, because these ain't not rocket science, right, to figure out how to restrict a border and allow people in and out, right?
It's, you know, it's just, it's a career-long issue.
I do believe that the nativist phenomenon today exacerbates all the other isms.
It exacerbates polarization.
It exacerbates tribalism.
And I do believe I'll take my pollster hat off.
I'll put on sort of my policy wonk hat on.
And I do think that America needs at one point a social contract on belonging, a new one.
We have to come together and have a consensus on what it means.
And it might include more restrictivist and less restrictivist elements.
Close the border, strong border control on the one hand, some sort of very selective, restrictive way of bringing in new immigrants that's detailed and there's a consensus around detailed and focused.
There's a consensus around it.
And what do we do with all the people that are here that are not legal?
Some sort of path to citizenship, but some sort of deportation, all done in a humane way.
But the point being is, we're not there yet, obviously.
This hasn't been an issue that's been run on necessarily on the left as strongly as the right.
Right, it really is a critical issue that resonates with the base and brings and mobilizes the Republican base.
It's not necessarily one that has in the past.
That's one of the reasons, at least in my assessment, that we haven't had some sort of broad-based consensus is because you need an election or you need elections where these things are run on in conjunction.
But ultimately, ultimately, it would be part of the solution, if not the entire solution, to our tribal problem.
unidentified
Let me go to John in McLean, Virginia.
You're on with Cliff Young.
Good morning.
Hi, good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
Thanks for C-SPAN.
The comment I guess I want to make is that the nativist approach doesn't quite capture the civic approach, which is what does it really mean to be an American, to have American values.
My own take on it as a Republican is that the American values are individual rights, personal responsibility, Republican forms and institutions, our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, all through equal protection and due process.
So it's not, for me, a nativist question.
It's a civic question.
I think we want the people who come to this country to embrace those American values.
And that's the difference between your take on a nativist issue or approach versus a civic approach.
John, could I ask you, before we get to Cliff Young, how do we judge whether people have embraced those values?
unidentified
What is the system by which we acknowledge that they've embraced those values?
Well, I can start with the two most basic points from my point of view, individual rights and personal responsibility, our social contract.
Basically, I would say I'd look at whether or not the migrant to our country takes the position that I am going to respect the individual rights of others.
I'm going to take on my personal responsibility as a citizen of the United States.
Yeah, well, it's a great point and great question.
And yeah, it goes to the heart of the issue.
I would make the argument today, but historically speaking, we've always had these two views of America, you know, sort of, you know, walking together.
You have a more restrictivist notion, a more nativist notion.
You have a more civic-minded notion, these values that are American values.
They're not necessarily at odds with each other.
A nativist can be very civic-minded as well, but want many more restrictions than a non-nativist.
So it's important to say that they're not completely orthogonal or separate.
But any sort of solution is going to have to be a consensus solution.
It's going to have to include a majority plus of Americans agreeing with it.
And there are many Americans that place much more emphasis on the nativist side, the more restrictivist side, than the more civic-minded side.
And so any solution is going to have to kind of combine both of those perspectives together.
unidentified
I think at the beginning of this conversation, you said something like, nativist is not necessarily a bad word.
Yeah, that's a, you know, nativism has always been, I don't know the exact timing or when it did, but I think there's a pejorative element or connotation to the word, right?
We think of populism, kind of nativism, these isms like that in a more negative way.
Maybe they're less democratic, I think many, many authors and scholars would think.
If you do kind of a Google search, you find that the sentiment's a little bit more negative than positive.
And what we just want to do is become very operational with our definition that's favoring native-born over foreign-born and be very generic about that.
And ultimately, like I said, if you're very sort of mechanical about the definition, it allows you to just sort of open your eyes and see, listen, there is one belief system that's about a much more restrictive view of the world.
There should be restrictions on the border, stronger restrictions to who comes in to be more selective, whatever that means.
Let's set that aside for a second, that there needs to be sort of a rigorous execution and dealing with the sort of those that are here.
And what we try to do is kind of take away that sort of the value judgment around the word and try to treat it as much more of a scientific concept.
unidentified
Heading down to Austin, Texas, Alfredo Independent.
Good morning, Mr. Young, and thank you for this program.
I was listening just earlier.
I just love this conversation.
It's wonderful.
The notion of nativists being kind of needing to be more generic, I do take some umbrage with that and think that perhaps either on the left or maybe toward the middle, I'm calling, of course, on the independent line, but perhaps the sort of oppositional, you know, iron striking iron gets closer to the point and closer to what we mean.
Perhaps an opposition group to, or an oppositional position to the nativist position would be an integrationist position.
And that may be where the left or the middle part of the Democratic Party or others can, I guess, look at the nativist position and challenge some of these notions.
You just said, Mr. Young, I think that nativist politics or understanding of the term and development of the term needs to be more generic.
An integrationist position would be it needs to be more contingent and specific to individuals coming from different parts of the world.
Someone coming to my home state of Texas from South Asia is going to have a different mode or a different sort of look at integrating themselves into American and Texas society than someone from Central America fleeing civil war or from Mexico, you know, looking for work.
That's all.
I just wanted to offer that as maybe a position that could counter and sharpen and intensify, light only comes from heat, our debate and understanding of these current political modes of thinking.
I mean, we ultimately, any sort of consensus, and indeed I'll just reiterate my point, which is we see nativism as a central driving force of politics today.
It defines whether you find yourself with the Republican or Democratic Party.
And specifically, it helps understand the coalitions that we have today.
But any sort of solution around that is going to have to include a more restrictivist notion of who belongs and a less restrictivist notion of who belongs, ultimately.
And, you know, I think we, Nativist Nation obviously has a nice ring to it as a title, but I think we used it because we wanted to take on a term that's taken on a pejorative meaning.
We wanted to just say, I think throughout, if you kind of read the book, and it's a short book, it won't take long.
It's 174 pages.
It was purposely so.
We didn't want a huge tone.
But ultimately, we wanted to make the argument that, listen, there's legitimacy to wanting a restrictivist notion.
And by the way, historically speaking, there have been moments when America has said we want more restriction, not less.
We think that's important.
We think that's important in a consensus-based solution.
When you take both sides, you have to kind of understand the other side, ultimately.
And I think the undertone of the book is a bit that, to show the phenomenon, show its importance, and show that it really goes to our politics today.
I think right now, you know, nativism as a sentiment measured by pollsters like myself is declining ever so slightly, even though it's becoming more important politically because the parties are increasingly becoming distinct on that issue.
On average, it's becoming less important, but I just think that's a momentary trend.
Ultimately, it goes at a human condition of belonging.
We need to belong.
We are social creatures, and this goes to the social aspect of who we are.
Yeah, well, I mean, the one that I've been like, the base case I've used, like maybe since 2016, is that it will just work itself out with generational replacement.
As new generations come in that are less restrictivists or less nativists, they'll become a non-nativist or a less restrictivist nation.
That's one base case.
The other one is that it's part of the human condition and things sort of reset.
And as long as you have especially high levels of immigration like we do today, we're at 15 or 16 percent foreign-born, somewhere in that sort of range.
That's sort of the tipping point range where it becomes a societal and a political issue.
If we keep on having these high levels of immigration this way, it will continue as a critical point.
The other one is it can take on another form, right?
In some countries, we have nativism, but we don't have immigrants because you don't necessarily need immigrants to have nativism.
You can have internal conflict, internal ethnic differences, or socioeconomic differences.
Take Brazil, you have socioeconomic status and regional differences.
You have South Africa or India where you have different ethnicities.
And so it can take on different forms that way.
Are we headed into a have-and-have-not world with AI and technology?
We don't know.
I think there's a lot of worry about that.
But nativism could be turned on its head.
We could have humanism.
So the point being, I think, critically is it goes to the condition of being a human being.
And us humans are social creatures and we have a need to belong.
And when we feel that threatened, we react.
unidentified
Chris in the Steel City Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I think you kind of just answered my question.
I was just thinking, listening to your talk about whether you considered people moving from one area of the country into another area of the country and interacting with people that maybe have been there for three generations and you're the outsider moving in from a different city and maybe have different experiences and nativism is maybe plays out the same way there.
And in the back of my head, I'm thinking varieties of spice of life and it's great to have the cultural aspects of local areas that are dramatically different than other parts of the country.
I'll give you one, which is like it's in the chapter on identity, which goes to this restrictivist versus less restrictive notion of an American.
And my son, my older son, he was a wrestler at the time, wrestled in Potomac, Maryland, was a really good wrestler.
He got second in the state that year.
And I talk about the difference in the ceremony between the wrestling match in Potomac, Maryland and the wrestling match in Front Royal, Virginia.
Two Americas, two very different Americas.
Potomac, Maryland, everyone is respectful, respectful of the national anthem, but it was more like a ritual that had to be done.
We did it.
We put our hands on our hearts and we were done.
When you went to go to Front Royal, the national anthem, the pre-match sort of ceremony was not just routinized, it was felt by people viscerally.
They came in with a color guard, veterans basically saluted.
And the point of that vignette is that our relationship to symbols is highly differential.
How we hold those symbols in our hearts and our minds is differential.
And it goes ultimately to this notion of nativism.
We know by the data that that part of Virginia is much more nativist.
We know by the data that Potomac, Maryland, where I'm from, is less nativist.
It goes once again to a much more restrictive view of what an American is.
They have certain sort of characteristics that are very important to another one where ultimately an American is much more diffuse sort of concept.
I'll give you an example.
I use this example a lot.
Think of a two-year-old that comes here from Honduras.
She's lived her entire life, speaks fluent English, loves the commanders.
Let's say we're here in D.C., loves the commanders, is everything that an American would be, except that she doesn't have a piece of paper.
She wasn't born here.
She doesn't have legal status.
The more restrictive view is like that individual is not an American, maybe could become an American, but is not an American.
The less a restrictive view, the more diffuse view, the more Potomac view versus Front Royal view is ultimately that that is an American because that person, culturally speaking, is an American.
I mean, and if we were to peel away the onion and look past the specific policy questions we embedded in those items, we would find that like, you know, the one view is much more restrictive and we need to follow the rules.
We need to sort of deal with those here illegally.
They are not an American.
They don't necessarily have a right to be here.
And you have another group of non-nativists that feel the contrary, very much so.
And, you know, in polite company, talking to both sides, right, engaging with people just in general, professionally and personally, you know, there's a huge gulf in empathy on both sides for understanding each other's arguments, right?
The less restrictive side, the more Potomac side, let's say, says, well, if everyone just knew them, that is the illegal immigrants, like they knew them, they had a little bit more empathy for them, they would feel for them.
The other side is, listen, you know, they didn't follow the rules to come in here.
My great-grandparents did, or, you know, our schools are swamped.
I live in a border town in Texas.
You know, the schools are swamped.
We can't handle this.
There needs to be some sort of control.
There's a huge gulf right now in terms of our understanding because we live in these two very different worlds.
Yeah, this is all a very white academic topic and discussion that I've been hearing.
If you were to present these same topics and discussions and questions to, let's say, the Somalian community in Minneapolis or the Muslim community in Dearborn, Michigan, or the Haitian community in Miami, they would look at you like you had your, you know, had three heads coming out of your neck because none of this stuff matters to them.
What matters is tribalism.
And unfortunately, Caucasians are the only people on the planet, except for some, that refuse to be tribalistic in the sense of looking out for their own people and their own kind.
Look at South Central LA, who the majority of the people there are all from Central America or Mexico.
They're all very tribalistic.
They don't care what you and I are having this discussion about on TV.
This is all meaningless problem to them.
What they care about is their immediate tribe, their immediate family.
And I think that what I would say is I'm glad that it's a little bit sanitized our discussion.
I'm glad that we're dealing with it in a scientific way because I think there needs to be a bit less emotion and a bit more data and science to kind of discuss and reflect on these things.
That said, the point he's making is a legitimate point in a democracy.
And the point is, we should have a right, at least, to have our voice heard about who should and should not belong.
That's as old as a democracy has ever been.
I think it's one of the only things that goes to reconstituting our notion of like a collective notion of belonging.
And obviously, who comes here and who doesn't should be on the table.
People should feel like they had their voice heard on this oh-so-critical issue.
And I think what we heard in the viewers' voice was that emotion, that angst, that reaction, and probably, though I don't want to put words in his mouth, but like not feeling heard.
unidentified
Time for one or two more calls.
Robert, here in D.C., Independent.
Go ahead.
I need to say something, but before I do, one thing that you missed was indigenous peoples.
See, there's native which stands for generations, indigenous as original inhabitants and citizens as belonging.
But now, the reason why I called, I got a very unique one for you here.
Now, I'm a native Washington Tony, third generation.
Now, I went to school outside of the college, right outside of D.C.
And so I'm at the registration office, and so I'm registered for classes.
And so the counselor asked, say, okay, well, where are you from, exactly?
I said, Washington, D.C.
Well, the counselor dropped a pen, looked at me, and said, You are not a United States citizen.
I said, Excuse me.
I said, That's the nation's capital.
He said, No, you're not a citizen.
See, you live in a district.
You are not in a state.
And you are considered as a resident.
So I said, Wait a minute.
See, we couldn't even let you in school even at all, even though I had not taken the entrance exam because I was on the West Coast.
And so he said, Well, look, this is what you need to do in order to get your state citizenship.
Now, I'm in New Mexico.
I went to UNF.
So she talked shit.
This is what you need to do in order to get safe citizenship.
Well, Robert, let me hold off on that part, but start on the first comment that he made about Native peoples in this country and this idea of nativism.
For those C-SPAN viewers who stick around, after our program today, we will take you right to this week's Ceasefire.
Ceasefire host Dasha Burns sat down with Union Theological Seminary President Cornell West and Princeton University Professor Robert George for a dialogue on rising political polarization in the U.S. and the top issues facing the country that will air right after this program ends at the top of the hour, 10 a.m. Eastern.
Until then, your phone calls an open forum, and Richard is up first out of the show me state.
Democrat, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I'm calling you about this Venezuela deal we got going here.
You know, Cortez and they went to South America to steal all their gold.
The Spanish did.
Now we're down there.
We're after their oil.
You see, we're just like the old guys in the old days.
If you got Mike, you can take it.
This deal about blowing them boats up out there and murdering them people that headed our army and President Trump, both of them ought to go to world court and be hung.
All right, that's Richard in Missouri on Venezuela.
unidentified
This is the lead story in today's Washington Post.
President Trump on Saturday said that commercial airlines should consider Venezuelan airspace closed, increasing the pressure on the country's leadership after weeks of escalating tensions between Washington and Caracas and the growing threat of the U.S. attack against that country.
The story notes, though, Trump does not have the legal authority to close airspace.
His declaration follows a massive buildup of U.S. military forces in the region in recent weeks as he's ramped up his threats against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
This lead story in today's Sunday Washington Post.
This is Mike Jarrettsville, Maryland, Republican.
unidentified
Good morning.
Hey, good morning, John.
It's so nice to see you again.
You're one of my favorite hosts there at C-SPAN.
And listen, thank you so much for doing this.
And I think I have your tie, by the way.
I think I bought that a few years ago.
This exact same necktie that you have.
Good case, Mike.
I'll be real quick here, John.
I wanted to speak with your last guest.
And here's the problem.
I don't think it's really nativism that we have a problem that divides us, or the whole scheme that he was presenting.
I think it's not that much.
I'll tell you really what it is.
It's respect for rule of law.
You know, as Americans, you know, we are a state, a country of laws, very strict laws.
And if you drop a candy wrapper on the sidewalk and a policeman sees you do it, you know what?
He might come over and ask for your ID and tell you to pick it up.
John, you live in Virginia.
I know.
Listen, you're driving in Virginia and the state trooper sees you.
Maybe you do a lane change without a turn signal.
He pulls you over.
Oh my gosh, you were at the Christmas party.
He's going to, listen, we all are subjective to these laws that are very, you know, you have to watch your step here in America.
You can get into trouble all over the place.
So here I have to worry about my gum wrapper when I'm eating my candy on the street.
I have to worry about my lane change, put my turn signal on when I'm driving in Virginia or Maryland.
Hey, listen, you know, but yet I'm going to take my entire family.
Let me get this right.
I don't understand this.
You're going to move your entire family from one country.
You're going to go into another country illegally.
I mean, this is the problem that Americans have, John, I think, with this whole thing is because we are a nation of laws.
We're a people of laws.
It doesn't matter the color of your skin.
We all have to respect the law.
And the fact that these people, these illegals, as Trump says, and they are illegal, have come over, and this was their first offense.
By coming into the country, in and of itself, is breaking the law.
And this is what Americans, I nailed it.
This is what Americans, I believe, really dislike.
Yes, I'm just calling in to let you know that at one time that we were thinking the last few years that the white race was losing their voting block, then they allowed Donald Trump to get back in there so they can try and change the Constitution.
They changed the Supreme Court to where these guys on Supreme Court, they're answering to the Republican Party.
The Republican Party is run by a white evangelical.
They don't want to lose their voting block, so they're doing whatever they can to fix stuff because they know there's not going to be a chance for them later in the years to come.
So they didn't give us the opportunity to even learn our own heritage.
They told us it was just a law for us to read.
Here when they say it was possible for us to read, they gave us the King James.
All those stories in there as allegory.
Somebody walking on the water, somebody making a blind seed.
I've been a Democrat, but I've been supportive of all the presidents.
My first question is: how can a convicted felon who is the president of the United States be allowed to pardon anyone?
And my second question is: I'm Velenzuela.
He's killing these people on the boats with no rights for supposedly the drugs, but yet he's pardoning this other guy from another country who has recent, who has been doing 45 years in prison and he's giving them a pardon that he was one of the biggest drug dealers in their country.
Tell me what's in it, Max, because I've got two minutes left here.
unidentified
You got it.
I'll read the first paragraph very quickly.
It says, any alien who is physically present in the United States or arrives in the United States, whether or not at a designated port of arrival, including an alien who is brought to the United States, after having been interdicted internationally or in the United States waters, irrespective of such alien status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section, which is U.S. Section A or Title VIII-1158 asylum.
Max, if they don't show up for their asylum hearing or otherwise disappear into the country after claiming asylum, are they illegals at that point?
unidentified
I don't think they would be illegal.
I think they would have to go before a board that would designate whether they were illegal or a board would decide that.
I don't think they just automatically become illegal.
And again, I'm a little fuzzy on that part of it, but the laws say that if you were present physically in the waters or on this land, you can seek asylum.
So it blows my mind.
All the people that say we need to follow the laws, well, this is the law, but you're calling them illegal.
There's something wrong here.
There's like a misconnection, it seems to me.
So that's why I brought that up.
And I wanted to say the title because hopefully everyone will look it up and realize: wow, we are calling these people that are seeking asylum illegals, and that's not the right thing.
And that's not American.
That's kind of, sorry to use this word, but that's very Nazi-ish.
Nazi-ish.
Sorry about that.
But yeah, that's what I'm referring to.
Just that we're a country of laws, yes, but this is the law.
Welcome to Ceasefire, where we seek to bridge the divide in American politics.
I'm Dasha Burns, Politico White House Bureau Chief, and joining me now, two guests who have agreed to keep the conversation civil, even when they disagree.
They're both very good at this: former independent presidential candidate Cornell West and conservative legal scholar Robert George.
They are co-authors of Truth Matters, a dialogue on fruitful disagreement in an age of division.
What could be more perfect for ceasefire than that?
Thank you both, gentlemen, so much for joining me.
Two big brains, two scholars, two professors who are agreeable disagreers, I would say.