C-SPAN’s Washington Journal (12/05/2025) dissects Trump’s "Peace President" legacy, from the Rwanda-DRC Washington Accords—formalizing June ceasefires—to skepticism over deals like Israel-Iran amid Russia’s rejection of Ukraine’s U.S.-backed terms. Callers clash: Republicans praise conflict resolution, while Democrats demand accountability for drug boat strikes and pardons (e.g., Honduras’ Juan Orlando Hernández). Meanwhile, Dr. Jeffrey Singer argues opioid prohibition fuels fentanyl’s deadly black market, citing 20x-potent nitazenes and Europe’s lower overdose rates via decriminalization. Critics counter with patient suffering and systemic failures, exposing tensions between enforcement, medical ethics, and Trump’s divisive policies. [Automatically generated summary]
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Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, along with your calls and comments live, the Migration Policy Institute's Andrew Seeley covers the Trump administration's new immigration restrictions, including a recent pause on all asylum decisions after an Afghan national was identified as the suspect in the shooting of two National Guard members here in Washington, D.C. Also joining us, Dr. Jeffrey Singer of the Cato Institute will discuss the state of the U.S. Fentanyl Crisis.
This morning, we begin with President Trump presiding over the signing of a deal yesterday aimed at ending the long-running conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It's one of eight conflicts that the president claims to have solved over the past 11 months, including the Gaza peace plan.
And it comes as the administration continues to push for an end to the fighting in Ukraine.
This morning, we're asking what you think of those efforts in the Trump administration's description of Donald Trump as the president of peace.
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We began with this X post by Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday after the signing of that peace deal.
President Trump will be remembered by history as the president of peace.
It's time our State Department displayed that announcing the renaming of the U.S. Institute of Peace here in Washington as the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.
Another tweet from the State Department, this from earlier this fall, President Trump, the President of Peace, announcing the eight conflicts in eight months at that time that the president had solved.
They include Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Israel and Hamas is listed by the State Department as the achievements of the President of Peace.
Yesterday, here's a portion of the remarks by the President at that signing ceremony.
The agreement between the leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda was reached back in June.
The compact we're signing today, which will be known as the Washington Accords.
Everybody sort of like that name.
Formalizes the terms agreed to in June, including a permanent ceasefire, the disarmament of non-state forces, provisions for refugees to return to their homes, and justice and accountability for those who have committed illegal atrocities.
Very importantly, this agreement also creates a new framework for economic prosperity.
There's tremendous wealth in those in that beautiful earth.
It's a beautiful earth, but it was stained badly with blood, tremendous amounts of blood.
But in the region, it will support a lasting peace.
And the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda have agreed to more closely integrate their economies with each other rather than fighting.
And they'll be doing that.
And these two gentlemen are very smart.
And I think they liked each other a lot.
I spent time with them.
I think they liked the some people may be surprised.
I really do.
I think they've spent a lot of time killing each other.
And now they're going to spend a lot of time hugging, holding hands, and taking advantage of the United States of America economically like every other country does.
So they're going to do very well.
But they do have some very valuable things.
They're going to have a lot of money and a lot of success.
And I think they're going to get along really well.
Here's the news this week out of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Admiral Frank Mitch Bradley on Capitol Hill defending the killing of boat strike survivors, saying in a House briefing Thursday that a second strike on a narcotics boat was warranted because the survivors meant to continue the drug run.
Democratic members saying videos showed those targets were in distress at the time.
That's been the news on Capitol Hill this week when it comes to the Caribbean and Latin America.
We're asking you about the president's legacy when it comes to these peace deals.
With regard to the legacy of peace deals, I think most of them that have been mentioned, really we don't have enough time to evaluate.
It's just been a few months many of those deals.
And I think we have to wait for a year or two to see if, in fact, peace was truly accomplished, such as the one between Israel and Iran.
That's questionable.
Also, I think as far as legacy is concerned for peace deals, I think there's right now a tremendous failure for Ukraine and Russia.
He tried to intervene several times in that.
However, I think he is swayed by Putin to a great extent, as demonstrated by that original 28-point plan, which was, from all intents and purposes, designed by Russia.
So I think, again, my two main points are: we have to wait a while to determine if those, in fact, are true peace plans.
Let's wait six to twelve months after they've been signed to see where we stand.
And secondly, right now, it's considered a failure for what he has done for Ukraine and Russia.
This is what he had to say: We ended eight wars, thinking eight wars, but we're going to do one more, I think.
I hope.
I hope.
Every time I end a war, they say if President Trump ends that war, he's going to get the Nobel Prize.
If I end that war, well, he won't get it for that war, but if he ever gets it for the next war, now they're saying if he ever ends the war with Russia and Ukraine, he's going to get the Nobel Prize.
What about the other eight wars?
India, Pakistan.
Think of all the wars I ended.
I should get the Nobel Prize for every war, but I don't want to be greedy.
Actually, the woman who got the Nobel Prize said, you've got to be kidding.
Trump deserves the Nobel Prize.
So that was very nice of her.
I appreciate it.
Which is true, actually.
But I don't care about that.
You know what I care about?
I care about death.
I care about all the people that are dying.
And last month, 27,000 young people died, mostly young people, mostly soldiers, despite some missiles being shot into Kiev and other places.
But think of it, mostly young people.
27,000 people died between Russia and Ukraine last month.
That was President Trump at his Tuesday cabinet meeting, President Trump taking some heat from Democrats on Capitol Hill and others for negotiating with Vladimir Putin when it comes to ending the war in Ukraine.
One of those was Senator Chris Van Holland, Democrat from Maryland.
From the day he took office, Donald Trump has been played by Vladimir Putin.
You remember that big meeting up in Alaska, the summit meeting?
Well, after that meeting, Trump said there were great hopes for peace.
Vladimir Putin and Russia stepped up their attacks on Ukraine.
And we saw something similar just unfold over the last couple weeks.
Donald Trump unveiled this 28-point plan.
Well, it turned out that the 28-point plan was really stacked toward Russia.
In fact, it was so stacked that two United States senators, a Democrat and a Republican, said that Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, told them that the 28-point plan was a Russian plan.
Now, Marco Rubio has said he didn't say that, but that is the reality of the plan.
It is stacked toward Russia.
So it was no surprise when the Ukrainians and our NATO allies said, no, we can't support a plan that's stacked in favor of Russia.
And so then they worked with the Ukrainians to try to come up with the 19-point plan.
And even that plan, there was not agreement on.
And then they went to Vladimir Putin.
President Trump sent Steve Witkoff, his envoy, and his son-in-law, Jared Krushner, to Moscow to talk to Putin.
Well, not surprisingly, Putin said, hey, you know what?
I'll take your 28-point plan, the one that was stacked toward Russia.
And why wouldn't they?
This is not the way you end a war.
Everybody wants to see peace in Ukraine, most of all the people of Ukraine.
If you really want to secure peace, you need a strategy that will achieve that goal, not one that keeps giving Vladimir Putin the upper hand.
And the fact that we're talking about this instead of the J6 bomber is really why I'm falling because this was the biggest crime in the last five years.
That's Mike in Tampa, Florida with his one call this month, a story on the pipe bomb case.
It is the lead story in today's Washington Times.
Federal authorities accused a Virginia man Thursday of laying pipe bombs at the Republican and Democratic headquarters on the eve of the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol, ending a nearly five-year search.
Brian Cole, 30 of Woodbridge, Virginia, was charged with use of his explosive device.
It was FBI Director Kash Patel who said that the arrest did not result from any new tips, but rather from revisiting the extensive evidence that had been compiled and remained dormant, the Washington Times writes during the Biden administration.
It was a press conference yesterday where Attorney Pam Bondi discussed that arrest.
Pam Bondi speaking alongside Kash Patel at that ceremony here at that press conference here in D.C. Here's what Pam Bondi had to say.
Today's arrest happened because the Trump administration has made this case a priority.
The total lack of movement on this case in our nation's capital undermined the public trust of our enforcement agencies.
This cold case languished for four years until Director Patel and Deputy Director Bongino came to the FBI.
The FBI, along with U.S. Attorney Piero and all of our prosecutors, have worked tirelessly for months sifting through evidence that had been sitting at the FBI with the Biden administration for four long years.
Let me be clear, there was no new tip.
There was no new witness, just good, diligent police work and prosecutorial work, working as a team along with ATF, Capitol Police, Metropolitan Police Department, and of course, the FBI.
We are working every day to restore the public's trust.
Some of the photographs from this case, that picture that you're probably very familiar with, the alleged pipe bomber from January the 5th, late at night, planting those bombs before January 6th of 2021.
The other picture to the right, police blocking the street near the house where the FBI made that arrest in Woodbridge, Virginia.
That's a story out of Washington, D.C. this morning.
And we're talking about President Trump's peace deal yesterday.
And the moniker, the president of peace, getting your thoughts on that in the wake of the latest deal announced by the administration when it comes to foreign affairs and foreign conflicts.
This is Tony out of Kingston, New York, Independent.
Tony, what do you think?
unidentified
Hi, how are you doing?
You're one of my favorite C-Spanos.
You're fantastic.
The point that I wanted to just make to people is, you know, two things can be true at the same time.
And the point I'm trying to make to a guy like Donald Trump, which I didn't vote for, I'm an independent, a vote libertarian or Green Party.
But in history, many men can be two things.
Leonardo da Vinci.
We all know about the great things he did.
He was also, you know, kind of a very evil and cruel person.
Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Newton.
Men can have qualities of, let's say, is Trump really promoting peace?
We'll find out in, you know, five or 10, 20 years from now.
Did the peace last?
Is he also a pathological liar with lots of brutal traits in his wake?
But both things can be the truth.
And that's hard.
And like, I think, you know, like, you know, Einstein used to say that you can have two conflicting ideas about a thing, but especially about people, because we're complicated.
Both of these things can be true.
And, you know, it's never ending.
The Democrats call in and, you know, he's like, he's like whatever, Satan.
And then, you know, the MAGA crowd are like worship him like he's Zeus.
I think Donald Trump's doing an excellent job as far as the peace deals and bringing Iran down.
You know, he gets criticized because he bombed Iran.
Iran was a big bully of the East, and everybody was scared of Iran.
What does Trump do?
Them and Israel bring them down to their knees.
And Democrats, all they know how to do is criticize.
I mean, they don't do nothing.
It's just like, but the waltz fraud over in Minnesota, I've been waiting for y'all to cover that.
And y'all never cover it.
Now, it includes Democrats funding money to Al-Qaeda terrorists, Al-Shabaab, Through the welfare plane, Minnesota.
Waltz covered it up.
And evidently, the meetings covered up.
Cease band, y'all rather cover the gunboat thing and chastise a highly decorated admiral, a highly decorated man that's put his life on the line for this country.
And yesterday, Greta was, and she got called on by several people and criticized Greta because she rightfully got criticized because she was sitting there kind of defending those drug dealer killers.
That's not what we do here as hosts, defend or not defend.
We're literally just trying to create a conversation and hear from you and give you a chance to talk back to Washington, D.C., a place that talks a lot to the rest of this country.
But I appreciate your call from Texas.
Essie is also in Texas.
Democrat, Essie, go ahead.
unidentified
Yes.
Trump, to me, just because I'm a Democrat doesn't mean whatever, but Trump, to me, has not ended any wars since he's been in office.
The war, he said, the first day he got the war in Russia with Ukraine.
But then it hasn't ended.
Russia is invading Ukraine, not the other way.
So why should Ukraine give up their land to Russia?
This is David Ignatius, foreign policy writer in today's Washington Post.
The headline of his piece today, the Middle East moment of opportunity is slipping away.
He ends his piece by saying Donald Trump's ambition as a peacemaker does appear boundless.
Trump's problem is that he's juggling so many diplomatic balls at once that some of them will inevitably tumble to the ground.
That's what happened after his Gaza peace plan deal.
He promised far more than he has so far delivered.
Trump is now trying to broker a desperately needed Ukraine peace agreement, he writes, but his credibility as an omnidirectional mediator will be enhanced if he can demonstrate that he not only announces projects with fanfare, but he gets them done.
Longtime foreign policy writer David Ignatius in today's Washington Post.
Coming up on 7.30 on the East Coast, we're talking to you this morning about Donald Trump's legacy as a peacemaker.
The peace president is what the administration has dubbed him.
The latest being this deal yesterday announced back in June between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.
It was formally signed yesterday here in Washington, D.C. at the newly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace here in Washington.
This is Tom in New York Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hi, how you doing?
Yeah, I'm calling from Long Island, New York.
I just see all these things that are going on, and it's very I'd like to know what happens with the no one seems to be thinking that they don't follow the Constitution, Ms. President.
He wants to circumvent the Constitution as much as he wants, and he wants to generate as consolidate as much power for the executive branch.
Tom, if he does stop the fighting in Ukraine, if he can bring both sides to the table and get a peace plan in place, do you think he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize?
unidentified
Well, he doesn't bring both sides to the table.
They negotiate strictly with Russia.
And they were negotiating without having them both at the table.
Congressman Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, speaking to reporters after seeing the video of the U.S. strikes against suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean.
Jim Himes, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, this is what he told reporters yesterday.
unidentified
Let me just say this: Admiral Bradley and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff did the right thing.
And Admiral Bradley defended the decisions taken.
And Admiral Bradley has a storied career, and he has my respect, and he should have the respect of all of us.
Under the DOD manual for abiding by the laws of armed conflict, the specific example given of an impermissible action is attacking a shipwreck.
unidentified
Any American who sees the video that I saw will see the United States military attacking shipwrecked sailors.
Bad guys, bad guys, but attacking shipwrecked sailors.
Now, there's a whole set of contextual items that the Admiral explained.
Yes, they were carrying drugs.
They were not in the position to continue their mission in any way.
People will someday see this video and they will see that that video shows, if you don't have the broader context, an attack on shipwrecked sailors.
Last thing I'm going to say, the last thing I'm going to say is that the Admiral confirmed that there had not been a kill-them-all order and that there was not an order to grant no quarter.
So, does it exonerate accept?
Does it exonerate?
That's all I got.
Do you think the video should be released publicly?
Yeah, I want to thank Admiral Bradley and General Kaine for coming to brief about the strikes on September 2nd, which were righteous strikes.
These are narco-terrorists who are trafficking drugs that are destined for the United States to kill thousands of Arkansans and millions of Americans.
The first strike, the second strike, and the third and the fourth strike on September 2nd were entirely lawful and needful, and they were exactly what we'd expect our military commanders to do.
unidentified
What exactly did you see in terms of the video of the second strike?
I saw two survivors trying to flip a boat loaded with drugs, bound for the United States, back over so they could stay in the fight, and potentially, given all the context we heard, of other narco-terrorist boats in the area coming to their aid to recover their cargo and recover those narco-terrorists.
And just like you would blow up a boat off of the Somali coast or the Yamini coast, and you'd come back and strike it again if it still had terrorists and it still had explosives or missiles.
Admiral Bradley and Secretary Hedsett did exactly what we would expect them to do.
What's disturbing to me is that millions of Americans have died from drugs being run to America by these cartels.
What's gratifying to me is that the president has made the decision finally, after decades of letting it happen, that we're going to take the battle to them.
And we're going to continue to strike these boats until cartels learn their lesson that their drugs are no longer coming to America.
Pat, you mentioned him aiming for the Nobel Peace Prize, an interesting story on the front page of the New York Times today.
The headline, the president may get his peace prize, but from FIFA.
The story noting that not long after President Trump missed out on the Nobel Peace Prize that he openly campaigned for, his friend Gianni Infantino got to work.
Mr. Infantino, president of FIFA, soccer's global governing body, who had publicly lobbied for Mr. Trump to receive the peace prize, simply had his organization establish its own.
The announcement of the FIFA Peace Prize, Football Unites the World, was so hastily arranged, they write, that it was surprising to several of the body's most senior officials, including board members and vice presidents.
On Friday, FIFA was scheduled to announce the award winner along with the draw, determining how countries will be grouped for the 2026 Men's World Cup.
While the results of the draw will be unpredictable, they write, there is little doubt about who will receive the peace prize.
Why FIFA established the peace prize owes less to sports and more to Mr. Infantino's efforts to ingratiate himself with Mr. Trump.
That's a front page story in today's New York Times.
This is Elaine out of Bowie, Maryland, Democrat.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hi, good morning, C-SPAN.
Regarding Trump's obsession with getting the Nobel Peace Prize, it is an obsession, and it's also linked to him with something with Obama.
He wants everything Obama has done that he can't do.
And also with attacking of the boats.
If they could just give us some justification, we would all just show us some proof.
Then I think we would all feel so much better about it.
And also with the drugs.
Elaine, what proof do you need?
Some proof of drugs on the boats before they blow it up.
I mean, how do we know that this is what's happening?
Because if Trump is so strong about protecting us, why would he give a pardon to the Honduras president the other day who was clearly bringing drugs and bragging about it?
And on the drugs, people pay to take drugs.
We have to also hold some people accountable for all of this drug use.
Yes, some of it is not their fault if the drugs is laced in with another drug.
But a lot of people are on drugs, paying for it.
Take responsibility for it, just like people do with alcohol.
You go to the store, you buy alcohol.
Take responsibility for it.
And also, Trump wanting another term, he's already a dictator.
So imagine how bad things would be if he had another term.
He's getting more and more power.
And my last thought is Trump wants to be known as the peace president.
Come on, that's a joke.
He's turning the military against Americans.
He hates half of Americans.
He's forcing his DOJ people to bring charges against his enemies over and over, like for instance, with Letitia James.
They're now on their second, I think, charge against her, and the jury yesterday refused to get a verdict against her.
So how can he be known as the peace president when he openly hates half of Americans, attacks Americans, name-calls them?
He's a very cruel man.
So there's no way he should get the Nobel Peace Prize.
At Elaine in Bowie, Maryland, on Letitia James, it was a jury that declined to indict her again.
This is the story from the Wall Street Journal.
That grand jury on Thursday declining to approve a new indictment for the New York Attorney General.
Days after the first one was dismissed.
The refusal by the panel in Norfolk, Virginia deals a blow they write to the Justice Department's efforts to prosecute one of President Trump's most prominent critics, prosecutors, had moved quickly to revive the case after Judge Cameron McGowan Curry dismissed criminal charges against both Letitia James and former Federal Bureau of Investigations Director James Comey back on November 24th.
The judge, of course, finding that the Trump-appointed prosecutor in that case, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully serving in that role.
The reindictment came as federal prosecutors attempted a workaround to bolster their case and continue the charges.
Again, the story from the Wall Street Journal.
This is Susan in Las Vegas, Republican.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
You're going to have to shut me off because I'm going to go on for so long.
First of all, I want to say Robert in Kentucky, I couldn't agree with him more.
He's a very smart man.
And as far as peace, as far as I'm concerned, millions of people around the world have already seen Donald Trump as the president of peace.
He doesn't need a little award or any fame.
Many millions of people, including myself, already see him as that.
Why do you think he continues to mention the Nobel Peace Prize?
Do you think that's something?
I mean, he said that he thinks he deserves it.
unidentified
As much as I love Donald Trump and I love him, I voted for him three times.
I would vote for him three more times.
Donald Trump is Donald Trump and he has a bit of an ego.
He wants to be recognized for president of peace, and that's fine with me.
He deserves it.
So I'm fine with that.
I understand who Donald Trump is, and I love him for it.
So as far as I lost my train of thought now, so you have to hold on with me for a second.
Critics around the world, such as that woman that just spoke, if you ask them, did you watch Donald Trump speak yesterday?
No.
Did you see him on speechmen?
No.
Did you watch his speech to the nation?
No.
They don't want anything to do with Donald Trump.
But if they would listen to Donald Trump, like people like I do who love Donald Trump, they know what Donald Trump is doing.
They know what the long-term plan is.
The long-term plan is to get these other countries who are at war and at odds to see that there's more they can do in peace to put down their guns and make money.
Not for Donald Trump, but sure, we'll take a piece of it.
We're the ones that brokered the deal.
But so that the countries themselves stop fighting, get more educated, learn to sell their products to other countries like China and Russia for more money.
Stop letting China come in and really rape all the materials out of South Africa and other countries, but instead become more sufficient and stop fighting and start making money.
He is operating extrajudiciously outside of the Constitution.
He's ignoring the Fifth Amendment, which is due process.
The caller from the young lady said evidence.
And you said, what kind of evidence?
Well, what you do is you get a Coast Guard cutter or any one of those vessels that is in the Caribbean or nearby, grab a bail of whatever it is, straw, newspaper, or probably, yes, cocaine, fentanyl, grab a bail, grab 10 bales.
They repatriated two survivors about two months ago, brought them back.
Well, if they're drug smugglers, you bring them back in handcuffs to the U.S. and you put them through the legal process.
We're talking about the peace prize.
He's killing people without adhering to the United States Constitution due process.
I don't care if they're good or bad people.
Of course, I do.
But whoever they are, good or bad, they deserve a trial.
They deserve to be treated with the entirety of the United States Constitution, meaning what?
They've got a right to legal counsel.
They've got a right to a trial, a speedy trial.
They've got a right to due process.
And if they're guilty, throw them in jail.
Are they guilty?
Probably, but there's no word of probably in the Constitution.
It's pretty well and clearly written for the common man to understand.
That's why the founders wrote it in such common language for everybody to understand.
The people that are running these drugs, running these boats, are being denied due process.
Peace prize?
Hell no.
He's killing people without giving them the chance to defend themselves.
That is one of the arguments that the New York Times made in suing the Pentagon over the new press restrictions that have been put in place at the Pentagon.
This is the story today from the Washington Post reporting on it.
The New York Times sued the Defense Department over the press policy prohibiting journalists from soliciting any information not explicitly authorized for release by the government in a complaint filed Thursday morning in federal district court in D.C.
The Times alleged that the press rules violated the First Amendment's guarantee of free press and the newspaper's due process rights under the Fifth Amendment.
Doyle is next out of the volunteer state.
Democrat Doyle, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I was nice to talk about those boats in Venezuela.
I was on a destroyer once upon a time, and it's the last to see that I'm the power that's over there.
Wearing about boats, little bitty boats.
You don't need an aircraft carrier, a cruiser, a B-52.
All you need is one destroyer.
Look at the firepower that destroyer got on.
He's the spear of a task force.
And blowing them boats up, they need to take a 60-caliber machine gun to take care of that.
Bring me to this question we're asking about Donald Trump and his legacy and peace deals.
unidentified
Give it to him.
I don't care.
I don't care if you get to him.
Don't bother me, man.
I'm talking about killing those people over there.
You can throw their peace fat.
I don't care.
Don't bother me at all.
I'm talking about, I feel sorry for them people that getting blown up in those boats when we could take one destroyer, one, not two, not three, not four.
Not no care.
Care supposed to be out in the ocean away from Venezuela.
Trump will go down in history as the greatest human being ever to sat in the White House.
And I think the main people that are Christians that are listening in to this show right now, look what Trump has done for Israel.
All of our presidents claimed they were going to do something for Israel.
They never did.
And number one, do not shy away from helping Israel.
Number two, look what our colleges are teaching our young kids about hating Israel, about supporting the Muslim terrorists who want to completely destroy every Israeli man, woman, and child in that country.
And we have a system here where you have one phone call a month, and we have a phone system set up to do that.
unidentified
He goes by Bill Larry stand, and today it was Steve.
And I mean, you got one from South Carolina named Betty that calls way before 30 days, and one from Mississippi that complains about C-STAN but doesn't wait a month before she calls.
So, but this one from Texas, there's got to be something wrong with him that he has to call constantly.
The compact we're signing today, which will be known as the Washington Accords, everybody sort of like that name, formalizes the terms agreed to in June, including a permanent ceasefire, the disarmament of non-state forces, provisions for refugees to return to their homes, and justice and accountability for those who have committed illegal atrocities.
Very importantly, this agreement also creates a new framework for economic prosperity.
There's tremendous wealth in those in that beautiful earth.
It's a beautiful earth, but it was stained badly with blood, tremendous amounts of blood.
But in the region, it will support a lasting peace.
And the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda have agreed to more closely integrate their economies with each other rather than fighting.
And they'll be doing that.
And these two gentlemen are very smart.
And I think they liked each other a lot.
I spent time with them.
I think they liked the, some people may be surprised.
I really do.
I think they've spent a lot of time killing each other.
And now they're going to spend a lot of time hugging, holding hands, and taking advantage of the United States of America economically like every other country does.
So they're going to do very well.
But they do have some valuable, some very valuable things.
They're going to have a lot of money and a lot of success.
And I think they're going to get along really well.
President Trump, yesterday delivering peace was the message in the background.
And it was President Trump's Secretary of State calling the president, the President of Peace, saying history will remember him as the President of Peace, changing the name of the former U.S. Institute of Peace here in D.C. to the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, making that announcement yesterday was the Secretary of State.
A few minutes left for your phone calls asking you about President Trump's legacy as a peacemaker.
This is Charles in Alexandria, Virginia, Independent.
Charles, go ahead.
unidentified
Hey, good morning.
I don't know where to begin.
No, I don't think he's a peace president.
I don't think he deserves any Nobel Peace Prize.
For those who think that he does, I've never seen a person that wants something so bad and hasn't worked for it.
You're causing conflict around the world.
Making a joke out of the two countries that he supposedly have gotten a peace plan with in Africa, but yet you call them ass-hole countries, particularly about the Somali natural ass citizens in Minnesota.
You want them to leave.
To the lady, the gentleman in Maine, I think, who speaks about Christianity, but yet this president doesn't go to church.
I think Jesus said to the least of those, do you do good too?
But he cut out U.S. aid to African countries, starving people, throwing away food that we have in this country that can be used for the good of those who don't have.
And I don't think the peace plan in Gaza is going to last.
I think it's totally commercialized by him and Netanyahu.
And I do not believe that the people in Israel are the so-called chosen people.
I think we all are chosen for that matter.
To the lady in Nevada, who loves him so much, I just got one question when he spoke about the Hollywood tapes.
If he were to touch your children, your daughter, your mother.
Could we put up President Obama's security advisor who made a statement that was on TV last night that they double-tapped, triple-tapped many times to finish off the job?
Never heard one person say one thing about it.
They bombed the wedding, killed everybody at the wedding.
President Biden bombed civilians in the mess after the retreat going out of Afghanistan.
And now we're concerned about two people being killed in what was a justifiable situation, as most people who saw it yesterday did.
They were trying to talk to people still active.
They weren't ordering from dominoes for sure.
They were bringing poison into our country.
I've talked to a former major in the military at West Point Grad about the situation, and he was totally like, that's ridiculous.
And very close to a friend, a retired DEA, who said the agency is excited now because we're finally doing something about this poison coming into our country.
But could we be fair to all these people who are so upset who would not say one word what happened when Afghanistan, what happened when Obama was president, and you could probably go all the way down the line.
And for those who call him racist, he just brought two African Americans, two African countries together to stop killing each other, you know, and where color didn't matter.
So this double tap controversy, and President Obama's security advisor said we did it all the time.
Double tap.
Sometimes we triple tap just to make sure that the job was.
That's Richard in Pennsylvania on ongoing peace efforts when it comes to Ukraine and Russia.
This is the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal this week writing another schlep to Moscow by President Trump's envoys has produced another Vladimir Putin rejection of another plan to end his war with Ukraine.
Maybe it's time to conclude.
They write that Mr. Putin doesn't want peace.
He wants Ukraine.
Kremlin officials called five hours of talks with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner constructive, but also said the root causes of the war still haven't been addressed.
The root causes, the Kremlin means that Ukraine is still free of Russia control.
For months, Mr. Putin has refused Mr. Trump's proposals for even a temporary ceasefire along the current battle lines, which Ukraine accepted.
The administration put Ukraine over a barrel with its 28-point draft peace plan, and Kyiv is trying to discern the worst deal it can tolerate and still survive as a free country.
The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal this week.
This is Joan.
Time for one more call here in this first segment of the Washington Journal out of California.
Joan, go ahead.
unidentified
Yes, I think that Donald Trump's ego is bigger than anything I have ever witnessed in my 86 years of life.
Why would a convicted felon get the Nobel Peace Prize?
He is killing people all over the place.
He's starving children and he is making it impossible for Americans to live out their dream.
Last call in this first segment of the Washington Journal on this snowy day here in Washington.
Stick around, plenty more to talk about this morning, including a little later, we'll examine the use of fentanyl in the United States.
We'll be joined by Cato Institute senior LO Dr. Jeffrey Singer.
But first, the Migration Policy Institute's Andrew Seeley joins us to discuss the impact of President Trump's new immigration restrictions, including a recent pause on asylum decisions.
Stick around for that conversation.
unidentified
We'll be right back today on C-SPAN's ceasefire at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington.
Host Dasha Burns sits down with Democratic California Congressman Ro Khanna and Republican Nebraska Congressman Don Bacon for a bipartisan dialogue on the top issues facing the country.
including rising U.S. tensions with Venezuela and the future of ACA subsidies.
Bridging the Divide in American politics.
Watch Ceasefire today at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific only on C-SPAN.
Book TV, every Sunday on C-SPAN 2, features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books.
Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend.
At 8:30 a.m. Eastern, University of Georgia professor emeritus George Selgin, author of the book False Dawn, argues that many of FDR's New Deal programs were counterproductive and impeded recovery during the Great Depression.
And then at noon Eastern, his new biography, Nicholas Boggs, examines the life of famed 20th century writer James Baldwin.
And beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern, watch Book TV's coverage of San Francisco's annual LitQuake Literary Festival.
Since 2002, the festival has sought to inspire engagement with key issues of the day.
Hear from authors about racial identity, America's involvement in the Middle East, and more.
Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find the full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
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Her books include The Storyteller, 19 Minutes, and Her Latest by Any Other Name.
She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
But there are a lot of minds that you can change one mind at a time.
unidentified
Watch America's Book Club with Jodi Pico this Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
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A conversation now on the U.S. asylum process and how last week's attack on National Guard members in D.C. has upended that system.
Our guest is Andrew Seely, president of the Migration Policy Institute here in Washington, D.C.
And for those who aren't familiar, just begin with what the Migration Policy Institute's mission is, how you're funded.
unidentified
Sure.
We are a think tick, a nonpartisan, independent think tank.
We're based here in Washington, D.C.
We have an office in Brussels and a sister organization there.
We work on issues of migration.
We do a lot of data work.
We do a lot of trying to explain immigration systems and a lot of thinking about how you make immigration work for the larger society, both in the U.S., but we actually work internationally quite a bit, probably a little over half our works international these days.
And we're funded by mostly by foundations.
We have a few companies that have been very generous and a number of individuals who've been very generous as well.
On explaining immigration, can you explain the asylum system and how it works generally in the United States?
And let's start with the process before the changes that came last week in the wake of that National Guard shooting.
unidentified
Sure.
I mean, so the history of asylum, the history of protection, what we call humanitarian protection, is out of a 1951, I know I'm going way back here, but 1951 convention on refugees, you know, led by the U.S. and European governments after World War II, trying to create ways that people who were running for their lives could get protection, recognizing a lot of people had not been able to get out of Europe during World War II and that other people were getting trapped behind the Iron Curtain.
And so asylum is part of this.
Asylum, which is now in U.S. law as well, says if you get to the United States or any country, you have the right to apply for protection.
They have to see if you have a real, a well-founded fear of persecution in your country.
If determined yes, you have to let them in and give them a chance to stay.
If not, you can return them to their country.
Historically, there have been two ways of doing this in the U.S. You can get asylum at the border.
That has largely been suspended since the Biden, since July, actually, in the Biden administration, the last year.
There is some exceptions, but very few.
And then if you get into the United States, you can also apply for asylum.
And so there are people who either have come in on tourist visas, student visas, or in the case of Afghans, were relocated in, given temporary parole to come in, humanitarian permission, and then applied for asylum once they got here.
Is there immigration caps on this issue of asylum?
Can we only let in a certain amount of people seeking asylum each year?
unidentified
There's not.
And that has been one of the criticisms of this, right?
Is that it's sort of open-ended, particularly at the border.
It became a huge issue.
And it's a debate in Europe and many other countries as well.
Is, you know, can anyone show up and ask for asylum and you have to process their claim?
The law says yes, but in reality, you know, both the Biden and now the Trump administration have found workarounds to stop that.
Inside the country, there's not a limit either.
What we have controlled in the past is the number of people who are resettled refugees.
So the third way of getting protection is, you know, the U.S. can determine that someone who's living in another country needs protection, bring them into the U.S. already with a refugee visa.
They don't have to go through the process in the U.S.
That has been, there were about 100,000 people in the last year of the Biden administration that came in.
We're looking at probably closer to 7,000 in the first year of the Trump administration.
Let me come back to that open-ended comment that you made.
The idea of a well-founded fear of persecution.
How do you determine that?
Is that open-ended?
unidentified
It is.
There's a lot of precedent on this.
There's a lot of law built up on this in the United States, as in most countries, because there have been cases litigated both in the immigration courts and in the federal courts around this.
You have to fit into one of five protected classes.
You have to show that your government wasn't able or willing to protect you.
Either they were persecuting you or there was another group like an organized crime group coming after you and the government wasn't willing to protect you.
Administrations do have some leeway over how they interpret asylum because the asylum is ultimately within the immigration court system that is part of the Justice Department.
So they do actually, the Attorney General has some ability to reinterpret what the grounds are.
We've seen some of that already in the Trump administration.
The first Trump administration limited the grounds.
The Biden administration opened it up.
The Trump administration is limited again.
What they can't do is get rid of asylum because it's both in international law but also in the Immigration Nationality Act.
Here's what we know about the alleged shooter of the National Guard members here in Washington, D.C. arrived in the United States in September of 2021 as part of Operation Allies Welcome and was granted humanitarian parole.
I want to come back to that.
In December 2024, applied for asylum, arguing that he would face persecution if he returned to Afghanistan.
In April of this year, approved his asylum application under the Trump administration, obviously.
The changes to the asylum system and the immigration since those events.
Let me just run down some of the actions the Trump administration has taken.
A pause on all asylum decisions for migrants currently in the United States.
A pause on immigration applications filed by immigrants from 19 countries around the world.
A reassessment of asylum approvals issued during the entire Biden administration and a pause on immigration applications filed by Afghan nationals and a halt on visas specifically for Afghans.
What is the universe of people that that will impact?
And how many people does it leave in limbo currently in that process?
unidentified
So there are, if I'm not mistaken, about 1.6, 1.7 million people in the pipeline to get a decision on asylum.
I mean, they're mostly waiting for their court case.
I don't know how many people have gotten it in the past four years.
If they're talking about the four years of the Biden administration, how many years they're going to review.
But there are about 1.6, 1.7 million people waiting for a decision right now.
So all of those cases, we assume, are being paused for now.
They've been very cautious in not saying that they're suspending asylum because legally they do have to carry on asylum in some way, but they are arguing national security grounds for saying that they want to pause, reassess, look at the vetting criteria.
They have done an executive order previously on the 19 countries, and they were able to establish different reasons around national security or around immigration policy.
These are countries that either don't take back returnees if they get a negative decision on immigration or asylum, or they're countries that are known sponsors of terrorism or there's some other specific concern.
So that's why they've chosen those 19 countries because they've already established some grounds and it'll be litigated in court.
All this will be litigated in court, but they already had previously in June established some reasons for those 19 countries.
The Afghans, though, are an interesting question because the Afghans that came to the U.S. were primarily people that served with the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, right?
Or they served with the U.S. government in some way.
And they're a population that's probably been more vetted than other populations.
So I think there's, you know, we're hearing now from some veterans groups and probably some voices of retired military officers who are expressing a bit of concern that that's probably not the group to single out because despite the terrible action of one person there, this is a group that we actually know a lot about because they're folks that served with the U.S.
Andrew Sealy's our guest in this 45 minutes of the Migration Policy Institute.
A very good person to ask your immigration, your asylum questions.
To phone numbers for you to call in, split as usual, Republicans, it's 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Independents 202-748-8002, as people are calling in.
I would just point to this piece in today's USA Today.
You were talking about who is being targeted here, and specifically Afghans, and whether it would impact those who worked with the United States in the past.
This is Bob Elston, a contributor for USA Today, worked in Afghanistan in 2013 on a U.S. Military base in a civilian capacity.
But this is what he writes, we cannot walk away from those who picked up a weapon on behalf of the stars and stripes during wartime in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere.
Along with being the right thing to do, supporting them speaks to our willingness to protect those who aid us.
If you want to read that piece, it is in today's USA.
Today, your phone calls.
This is Horace Up First out of Philadelphia Democrat.
Horace, you're on with Andrew Sealy.
unidentified
Good morning, young man, good morning sir.
As this immigration and all that stuff goes about.
I think it's a, it's a terrible thing what these people are getting Trump has.
Trump has made all immigrants and stuff enemies of America.
He should I'm saying he should have never ever, said that they was going to take care of the Afghanistan, and now you want to throw them all at the country.
I mean, you know, I think Somalians and Afghans are two of the best vetted groups, interestingly enough.
I mean, we have seen Somalians mostly came over as refugees who were resettled.
Many of them are citizens already actually, and so they were heavily vetted.
Refugees who are resettled are heavily vetted, usually during two or three years, and the Afghans, particularly those that served with the US, were vetted for their service with the U.S.
And then again when they came over and then any other application they made.
So they're fairly well vetted.
I you know, I tend to see this as a case much like many of the tragic killings that we've seen, you know, at schools of Charlie Kirk.
I mean, you know these are really tragic incidents but seem to be done by disturbed individuals and, as near as we can tell, That's the case of this person who was involved as well.
You know, he happened to be born in Afghanistan, but he's not a lot different than many of the people who are native-born Americans who've committed some horrific crimes and really because their mental health issues were not dealt with.
And it doesn't seem to be anything tied to being radicalized in Afghanistan.
It wasn't anything he brought with him.
It happened once he got here and slid down into a dark place, as near as we can tell from the reporting.
So I do think there's a question about, you know, do you treat immigrants differently than everyone else out there?
Do you know treat immigrants differently by their country of origin?
Historically, we haven't done that for the most part.
We assume people are here.
If they have gotten a legal visa or they've gotten asylum, we treat them equally, whether they're from Afghanistan or from Sweden.
We are seeing a differentiation, at least from the administration at the moment.
We are seeing that Afghans and Somalis in particular are a target of administration's concerns.
I've often thought, how do you vet people with no identity whatsoever?
Like these folks from Afghan, Afghanistan, or Somalia, or even at the Mexican border, they drop their identifications.
They show up with no identity.
How do you vet these folks with no identity?
As a manager, as someone comes to me with a resume, I can verify all those points.
But if you have no identity, I have nowhere to begin.
Even if you get into the biometrics, the time and the effort that it would take to vet these folks and compare them to the records in Somalia or Afghanistan, which may or may not even exist.
I just don't see any way to vet some of these folks at all.
What is your opinion on that?
Yeah, it's definitely harder for some countries than others.
In Afghanistan, because the U.S. was on the ground for so long, for over 20 years, there's much more ability to vet people, right?
There was extensive vetting of people, particularly those that served with U.S. forces, right, or served with the U.S. Embassy, because they were vetted in the process.
And the U.S. developed very extensive network analysis of who was tied in any way to the Taliban or other terrorist groups, right?
That was the subject of a lot of intelligence work.
So there it's easier.
Somalia, it's really hard, right?
But the people that were resettled from Somalia or who are Somalis, often resettled from other countries, from Kenya and other places, really went through two or three years of vetting before they came across to the United States.
So even if you can't find information from where they started out in Somalia, we knew a lot about what had happened since they've been in a refugee camp outside their country, right?
And so, and a lot of people don't make it to the vetting.
I mean, I say the people who get resettled as refugees, a lot of people, just because they can't get information on them, end up not getting resettled.
So that is a group that does have pretty heavy vetting.
And is generally asylum seekers a harder group to vet?
If you're fleeing for your life, I imagine it's harder to bring all the right documents with you.
unidentified
It is.
And this is, I mean, I do think actually where the caller raises the concern at the border is where there is a larger issue of being able to vet people, particularly at the time when the numbers got so big.
This actually happened in the first Trump administration and then much more under the Biden administration, where the numbers got so big that they started to let people in and they were doing really cursory vetting.
There wasn't no vetting, but it was cursory vetting.
And there are certain countries where, you know, you can't go back and check with the Venezuelan government where we have limited diplomatic relations, whether someone's in the criminal database there.
So I think that was, and some people showed up without identity documents.
They might not have given the right name.
So there was more concern.
Once people apply for asylum, however, then they do actually have to prove who they are.
And the U.S. government does a lot more due diligence.
So once people get into a, you know, so I do think the concern is people who came across the border and weren't sufficiently vetted, much less concern once people actually applied for some sort of immigration status or applied for asylum, because there the vetting does start and you have to prove who you are.
I hope you're on amend and I'm very honored to speak with your guest this morning.
And I have a comment and a question.
The question is for all the folks out there, but I'll make my comment first.
It's about immigration, asylum seekers.
I think if I'm not mistaken, during World War II, after during World War II, the United States made a commitment that we would never turn away a legitimate asylum seeker, people who are legitimately seeking asylum from this country.
And that's been on the law books and stuff.
And I think, you know, a nice medium like having more immigration judges and things of that nature around the border and stuff like that, more enforcement would be just fine.
But this administration in particular has taken a complete anti-immigrant stance.
Donald Trump right now says Washington is the safest place in the country.
Perhaps it is, you know, if you're a white male.
But if you're brown, if you speak with an accent, it's not a safe place at all.
And I would like to know just how these supposedly religious Republicans can say anything nicely religious about Donald Trump and what this administration is doing.
In New Hampshire, it might be a good time for you to talk a little bit through this recent report from the Migration Policy Institute.
Speaks to what the caller is talking about.
A new era of immigration enforcement is unfolding right now in the U.S. interior and at the border under Trump 2.0.
Explain what immigration looks like and what enforcement looks like right now.
unidentified
So I think we're seeing some real tectonic shifts with the Trump administration, much more than the first Trump administration.
And, you know, one of them is the enforcement side.
I mean, very much building up an enforcement apparatus to be able to deport people who are in the country illegally.
And in some cases, actually taking away status.
We saw this with a number of students early on who had been involved in protests or made statements or had criminal convictions, some of the minor, some of the major.
But there is, you know, there's a lot of money in the Big Beautiful bill, which is going into immigration enforcement.
We're seeing a huge increase in capacity over time.
Right now, the numbers are not as big as they seem.
The administration is definitely going out and targeting certain cities, but they are, you know, it's increasing from where it was under the Biden administration.
It's not yet probably quite back to where it was under early Obama and late Bush administrations, but it's getting there.
And I'm quite certain it'll get there by next year, right?
They will be able to detain and deport more people.
Are they going to hit the million person goal that they talked about?
unidentified
No, not this year.
They may in second year, third year, certainly, but not yet.
But it comes with a caveat, which is, you know, originally the idea, President Trump was saying we're going after criminals.
We're going after people who are doing damage to American society.
The larger they throw the net, the fewer and fewer people that they're getting actually have criminal records or any interaction at all with the criminal justice system.
So at the beginning of the Trump administration, most of the people who they were trying to detain and deport actually had criminal records or they already had an order for deportation that they hadn't obeyed.
Now we're starting to see more and more people who don't fit that.
The majority no longer have a criminal record, the vast majority and whatever they're doing.
Crime being simply being in this country illegally.
unidentified
Being this country illegally.
Some of them do have deportation orders.
most reasonable people can agree, you know, unless there's some extenuating circumstance, if you went through the process and you didn't, and you got a deportation order, you know, there are many sympathetic cases, but in the end, you know, you're probably going to have to leave the country.
So, but I, but we're seeing it go further and further away from that and increasingly, you know, getting up in the net people who in fact may not be illegally here as well.
So they do, there have been a number of people who've been picked up and then released eventually because they turn out to have legal status.
So I do think there's a there's not a lot of disagreement that there should be more enforcement in the past.
I think there is broad disagreement on how big that net should be and whether it really should be prioritized on criminals and people who've had their due process or you're really trying to get rid of everyone.
I just wanted to comment that as a Jewish woman, seeing ICE stop people and demand that they show their papers is an incredibly triggering thing to have to deal with on a daily basis.
It's incredibly depressing what is happening to this country, and it's enraging to think about the Statue of Liberty standing there saying, give us your tired, you're poor, you're huddled masses, and we're spitting in her face.
I don't know that I really have a question, but I just had to get that disgust out there.
Let me say a couple things based on what you said.
I mean, one is actually, as one of the earlier callers said, I mean, the asylum system and the refugee system really develops because of the failure of the U.S. and other countries to respond to the Holocaust, right?
That was the sort of triggering moment added to people wanting to leave Eastern Europe.
So there's a continuity in history, and there's been a history in the U.S. of wanting to make sure we give people fleeing for their lives some sort of protection.
Now, reasonable people can disagree about whether we can give it to everyone, how broad that should be, what the criteria are, but we have had a history of, and I'm not sure even the Trump administration completely disagrees with that.
I mean, they are continuing some refugee resettlement.
It's a pause to asylum.
I think we'll see a return to some asylum here.
But certainly, I think most Americans believe that the U.S. is a beacon of freedom and that there's at least some people who we need to let into this country and give protection.
I do think one of the issues on the table right now is: you know, if you're an immigrant to this country, are you always a guest?
Or at one point when you get legal status, are you pretty much part of the country?
And historically in the U.S., we've always had debates on immigration, but the sense has been if you're legally in the country, you know, once you get status in this country, you're here to stay.
And we can also revoke citizenship for people who obtain it dishonestly, right?
Who lie in their application.
But that's always been one person a year or one person every two years.
It's always been very small numbers.
I mean, it's a few people who are involved with the Nazi Party who lied on their application to get in.
It's been a very high standard to revoke someone's citizenship in the past.
So I do think we're at one of the debates that's going on underneath the policy decisions, underneath sort of the noise, is, you know, at one point do we say you're in this country to stay, we want you to be an equal member of the society, or you are on probation until you become a citizen, right?
And if you're on probation, what does that look like and how tenuous is your situation, right?
I mean, and look, that has huge implications in the future.
We're a country where about 15% of people are born in another country.
About one in four children has an immigrant parent.
You know, we all have an immigrant experience in this country in one way or another, right?
I mean, and we all know people who have an immigrant experience.
Immigrants are really diverse.
Most immigrants are legal here, by the way.
Most immigrants, three-quarters, have legal status.
Immigrants are often quite well off.
But I think we're at a debate a little bit about what does it mean to be an immigrant in this country right now.
And that's something that I think the American people will be debating for a long time.
I'm an Afghan who have served about six years with U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
And I came here about four years ago when Afghanistan fell.
I just wanted to say, I know there were people who called and were asking how these immigrants show up here.
For someone like me to be able to get a proper documentation, I have served six years with Americans.
I have been polygraphed at least four times and been through all this restricted bidding process that they had back in Afghanistan.
But then I just got my documents on January this year.
So for those of the callers and audience who doesn't know, it's just not an overnight decision for an immigrant to get their documentation.
And then I don't know what has happened, but for a country that is built by immigrants, why we want to get into a situation where we want to traumatize the whole population and people who have a dream, people who have a wish to come here and build a life with dignity and respect.
I mean, when I talk about myself and my experience, when Afghanistan fell, because of my service with Americans, I had no other choice.
I had no other choice.
I lost my father in that fight, and I lost many friends, many teammates, more than I could count.
And I didn't have a choice.
I just had got married and I couldn't stay because I knew that I would be hunted by those groups that take over Afghanistan.
And we came here.
We came here with the hope, with the dream that we will rebuild our life and will live in peace and with dignity and respect that we all deserve as humans, right?
And two years ago, we welcomed our first child, our daughter.
And every morning when I wake up, it's just a day with new trauma and problem that you see the system is causing to this whole population.
Yes, I know that there might be illegal immigrants here.
Yes, I know that there might be people with bad intention, but it doesn't mean that the whole population should be traumatized.
Yeah, and you have a U.S.-born child, I gather, as well.
I do.
Yeah.
I do.
That's wonderful.
Great.
I think it's very important what you said, actually, about feeling, I mean, when you saw this, your first reaction isn't the sympathy with the shooter.
Your first reaction is the sympathy with the person who is shot because these are the people you served with.
And I think this is getting lost in the conversation, right?
That most of the Afghans that came to this country served like you did with U.S. forces, right?
This was very much a deep relationship with the U.S. military and U.S. organizations and the U.S. embassy throughout and a deep bond.
And the U.S. responded by making sure that those who were in danger got out, or at least many of those who were in danger got out.
Khaled, thanks for sharing your story in Virginia this morning.
unidentified
Thank you.
That was great.
I mean, let me say one thing about, I mean, we're spending a lot of time in this country talking about the problems with immigration.
And certainly what happened at the border was the vast numbers of people that came across the border was a loss of control of the immigration system, right?
And it undermined the faith of Americans in immigration.
But we should talk about what works on immigration in this country because people want to come here.
People want to come and live in this country because immigrants do really well.
You know, the statistics tell us they're more likely to work than native-born Americans.
It doesn't mean there aren't criminals who are immigrants, but actually on average, they commit many fewer crimes than native-born Americans, mostly because they're trying to work and get ahead, right?
And again, it doesn't mean that if someone commits a crime, they shouldn't be sent back home.
But I mean, on average, immigrants came here to work to succeed.
The second generation does particularly well.
What we know is the children of immigrants do better, generally speaking, in terms of education and income than the children of the native-born.
If you look at the same starting level of the parents, children of immigrants do incredibly well in this country.
Mostly they are English dominant.
They often forget the language of their parents.
And a lot of parents get upset with that, but they become incredible.
We have an incredible ability to make people become part of this country.
It is a template we've had for 250 years, but really people do become American.
And about a quarter of patents in the U.S. have an immigrant patent holder, a big part of our innovation process.
Immigrants twice as likely to start a small business than native-born Americans.
I mean, this is, you know, we're getting a lot of the best of the world to this country.
People like our caller who just called in, and we're getting a lot of great people.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't take care of the problems.
Doesn't mean we should make sure people are coming in the right way.
And doesn't mean we shouldn't get rid of people who either commit a serious crime or have had their due process, came in illegally, had their due process, and were told to leave, because those are things we should be doing.
But we shouldn't forget how much immigration has been part of building the country we know and making us innovative, competitive, and a solid society.
And we all have the relationship with this in one way or another in our families.
Time for a few more calls with Andrew Seely of the Migration Policy Institute.
This is Adriana out of Baltimore.
Good morning.
unidentified
Yes.
Yes, good morning.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
And Andrew, it is an honor to speak with you.
I've heard you speak before on NPR.
So thank you so much, both of you, for taking my call.
I am a first-generation American.
My family was politically exiled from Cuba.
My mom was literally carried running into one of the last planes that left Cuba right before Batista Fel.
I am also born in Puerto Rico, which is very interesting that you guys were just a few minutes ago talking about the idea of when do you become American enough.
As a born Puerto Rican who is a United States citizen, I have constantly had to validate my Americanness, the fact that I am a United States citizen.
So, you know, I would really like to get an understanding from the general public, from people who feel like they are true quote-unquote Americans.
When am I American enough?
When is my family American enough?
And then finally, I really just want to add, I am a former social security employee.
I can tell you, it is extremely difficult for anybody, even just a regular citizen, to get a new social security card because you need to be able to prove your information.
And for an immigrant, it's three times worse.
They still need to be able to provide their information.
They still need to be able to provide their birth certificate.
And if they can't, they have to go through multiple hoops to be able to get it.
And even then, there's no guarantee they ever will.
So it's very frustrating to hear a lot of the conversations from, you know, a lot of the callers.
But I do also want to thank Caleb.
I think it was Caleb.
I do apologize if I said it wrong.
You're correct, caller.
Yes, Coleb, thank you so much for your service.
And yeah, like I said, it's very frustrating.
Oh, and finally, to our Secretary of State, Mr. Marco Rubio, espero cost pa que su familia, zoancestros famirando espanis perando.
I'm so sorry.
That was in Spanish, but I didn't even know his ancestors are watching him from the other side and are waiting for him.
I think it is one of the questions we're debating.
I mean, this is a country that, you know, immigration has been fundamental.
Certainly there were native inhabitants here.
Some people were forced to come here as slaves, and not all immigration was a beautiful story.
But almost everyone has an immigration story in this country, right?
I mean, this is a country that has been built through immigration more than many other countries around the world.
You know, you can name a couple others like Australia and Canada, but we're a little unusual in this, actually.
And we've made it work.
And it's part of what has made this country great.
And I hope what we don't lose in the conversation.
You know, right now we're at the moment of tightening up after some years where the immigration system wasn't seen as being credible and people were getting around it.
You know, we're in the moment of tightening up, but I'm afraid we might go down the road where we really start questioning whether immigration should be part of who we are.
And it is such part of the essence in the United States.
And it's happening, interestingly enough, at a moment where we're getting older as a society.
So the U.S., right, we are no longer, you know, like most industrial countries, right?
We're no longer at replacement rate, what they call replacement rate, where, you know, you have more than two babies, more than 2.1 is usually the statistic, right?
For family, per couple.
That's when population grows.
We're now at the point about 1.6.
That means our population, if we don't have immigration, will start to shrink.
It is not the end of the world if that happens, but we have seen the consequences of that, say in Japan.
Japan has managed to, you know, is now actually leaning into immigration because of this, because they realize that they spent 20, 30 years somewhat stagnated after an incredible rise.
They spent 20, 30 years stagnated in large part because their labor market wasn't growing.
And we're at a point we're going to actually have to think, you know, simply for issues of our labor market, for issues of competitiveness competing with China and other countries, you know, where does immigration fit into our economic policies?
And actually, you know, I think we have a good template for doing this.
We're a country that people still want to come to, and we're pretty good at people integrating and become part of it.
We want to tighten up the system and we don't want people to abuse the system, but we don't want to lose the good stuff in the meantime.
First of all, those people should be put, they should be tried.
If they're found guilty, as in Minnesota, they should be put in jail and they should serve their time.
But I think there's a legitimate question.
Is that the kind of crime for which we send people back?
I think many Americans would agree with you that that's something we do, right?
That if someone committed a major crime that is not a violent crime, but is a crime that really defrauded the American taxpayer, they probably have, you know, overstayed their welcome.
But I do think that will be litigated in the courts.
We'll see whether the first and foremost thing is the same as any American who, and there are lots of Americans who've committed fraud against the U.S. government.
They should be tried.
They should be convicted if guilty, and they should be, and they should serve their time, right?
In the final minute or two, immigrants on welfare, illegal immigrants, whether they get welfare.
Can you just address that issue?
unidentified
So illegal immigrants do not get welfare.
They have no access to welfare.
And actually, legal immigrants in their first five years of arriving also have no access to welfare.
The big cost, however, which the caller's point is, is not actually welfare, it's education.
And so what we do see, and with a large number of people that came in under the Biden administration, for example, is that many of them, because they're younger and they're working age, they're also in marriage and childbearing age, right?
And so often you do see then children entering the education system.
So the cost is really not on welfare.
That's actually immigrants don't have much access to that.
Native born, U.S.-born kids may have access to food stamps, but that's about it.
But education is costly and it costs, you know, particularly local jurisdictions in taxes.
Up next, we'll have a discussion on fentanyl use in this country as the Trump administration has focused on narcotics coming from South America.
Our guest will be Dr. Jeffrey Singer of the Cato Institute.
Stick around for that conversation.
unidentified
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He is a senior fellow for health policy studies at the Cato Institute, here to talk about the fentanyl crisis in the United States.
Dr. Singer, let's just begin with what is fentanyl.
unidentified
Well, fentanyl is a synthetic opioid.
In other words, it's not derived from the opium plant.
It's completely made in the lab.
It's been around since, I think, the early 1970s, and it's used very frequently, commonly in medical practice, both in anesthesia and pain management, and critical care patients.
But just like methamphetamine, which is also a legal drug that is prescribed for people with ADHD, people can make it on their own in a lab.
So in recent years, the drug cartels have taken to making fentanyl in the lab.
At first, they added it to the heroin that they were smuggling into the United States.
And then during the pandemic, when it was very difficult to transport opium, from which you need that to make heroin, and also it was difficult because of supply chain problems to get the chemical needed to convert morphine from opium into heroin, they just switched over completely into fentanyl.
So the people who were relying on the cartel to sell them heroin suddenly found that heroin pretty much disappeared during the pandemic and was replaced by the much more potent fentanyl.
That caused a big spike in overdose deaths.
But now the drug supply has kind of returned to the pre-pandemic type of supply.
And so the overdose rate seems to be coming down from the spike and possibly just resuming the normal growth trend that I was having before the spike.
What is the vehicle and the amount in a prescription drug versus an illegal narcotic?
unidentified
Well, it's hard to say how much, since it's illegal and therefore you're relying on people in the illegal underground market, you really don't know the dose.
But in common situations where we're either administering intravenously or even through skin patches, for example, we're talking about micrograms, whereas the doses that are being sold on the black market tend to be in the milligram range.
And many people think that something around two milligrams is enough to basically make somebody stop breathing and have an overdose.
Although some people over time develop more and more tolerance.
Yeah, because we've heard testimony on Capitol Hill before on fentanyl, where witnesses have said at the size of a grain of salt could kill you.
unidentified
Oh, yeah, you hear that a lot.
That's a way that people like to describe it.
The amount of, you know, on a tip of a pencil.
But, you know, that's really kind of not accurate.
It's not a scientific description.
It's a good way to try to make lay people sort of understand.
But the fact is, when you're buying something on the black market, you really don't know how much of it is fentanyl.
In fact, recent report, it was just recently reported that high dose of two milligrams of fentanyl has now been found in only about 23% of seized fentanyl by the DEA.
So because it's illegal and you're getting it on the black market, you really don't have a way of knowing for sure what the strength is.
A lot of it could be mixed with other things.
A lot of the fentanyl-related overdose we see today are because the fentanyl happens to be either intentionally or unintentionally mixed in with cocaine and methamphetamine that people are buying on the black market.
There's a common concoction called speedballing.
Prior to the advent of fentanyl on the black market, it was very common for people to want to mix heroin and cocaine.
I guess it's sort of like An underground drug version of Red Bull and vodka.
So, and there was that was very popular.
And then, when fentanyl replaced heroin, we started seeing fentanyl mixed with cocaine.
So, a lot of the fentanyl-related overdose deaths are actually when people purchased cocaine and they didn't realize it had fentanyl in it.
Some of it could have been in there because it got contaminated when it was being made, because this is what happens when things are made in the underground market as opposed to the legal market.
And also, some of it might have been that they didn't realize they were buying the concoction.
So, that's the problem when you have prohibition.
Just like when we had alcohol prohibition, you know, there's a lot of people who were buying out bootleg alcohol.
It turned out to be methyl alcohol, wood alcohol, was poisoning them.
There was a lot of benzene added into industrial ethyl alcohol that was smuggled.
By the way, I think it's important to mention today is December 5th.
It's the 92nd anniversary of the repeal of alcohol prohibition.
So, 92 years ago today, Americans realized that prohibiting a substance that people want to use only results in making using that more dangerous.
It results in destruction and death.
It results in corruption, and it enriches organized crime.
And you would think, you would hope that 92 years later, you know, we'd be able to apply those same lessons to our drug policy today.
Maybe we ought to spend more time on December 5th every year reflecting about that, as opposed to only people like me realizing the significance of today's day.
If you live in the eastern central part of the country, 202-748-8000.
Mountain Pacific, 202-748-8001.
If you or a loved one has been impacted by fentanyl, we want to hear from you at 202-748-8002.
And of course, all of you can text if you don't want to call at 202-748-8003.
Just include your first name, city, and state.
Dr. Singer, are you advocating for the legality of fentanyl?
unidentified
Well, fentanyl is legal.
I use it, I prescribe it.
There are many patients in America who have pain who wear fentanyl skin patches because, contrary to what the popular belief, you can touch fentanyl and you won't overdose.
In fact, we put it on patches.
One of the brands is called Durajesic that people wear on their shoulder, for example.
And 25 micrograms gets slowly absorbed through the skin over about three days.
So it is legal.
The problem is that you could also make it on your own if you have enough the right equipment, the right precursors, and the chemistry knowledge.
Just like methamphetamine is legal.
There's a drug called desoxin.
That's methamphetamine.
It was one of the earliest drugs prescribed for ADHD.
So I don't want to, so fentanyl is legal.
Now, as long as you're going to have prohibition, as long as you're going to have laws that prevent people who want to use certain drugs from getting it, you're opening up a market for smugglers who can make a lot of money on that.
And there's a thing in the drug policy arena that we call the Iron Law of Prohibition.
The Iron Law Prohibition is the harder the enforcement, the harder the drug.
So basically, prohibition incentivizes, let's say, the drug cartels to come up with more potent forms of the drug so that for the risk they're taking, they could, first of all, when it's more potent, it could be made into smaller sizes, easier to smuggle.
Plus, it could be subdivided into more units to sell for the risk you're taking once you get it smuggled into the country.
So, for example, in the early part of this century, the most common drug, the most popular drug for people to use recreationally was diverted prescription pain pills that found their way into the black market.
Then, as prescribing came down, and in fact, now the prescribing levels for prescription pain pills are at the level they were in 1992, that market dried up.
So, quickly, the cartels came in with heroin, and heroin was very easy to get.
Then, in about 2012, they started adding in fentanyl to make heroin more potent, which made it easier to smuggle in in smaller sizes.
And then, as that was working out for them, they added more and more.
And, like I said, during the pandemic, when they really couldn't make heroin, they just replaced it with fentanyl, which a lot of people who were using drugs weren't aware that it became replaced with fentanyl, so it made a spike in overdoses.
But now, heroin's back.
Recent reports show large amount of heroin, particularly in the western states.
So, it's important to understand that this is a kind of rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.
The more we kind of try to crack down, the more we're actually incentivizing the development of even more potent drugs.
In fact, there's a drug classification called nitazines, N-I-T-A-Z-E-N-E.
One of the most common ones is isotonitazine, which people on the street call ISO.
That's now showing up a lot.
In fact, there's been a big outbreak in the UK with nitazines.
That's about 20 times more potent than fentanyl.
It's a synthetic opioid, completely synthetic, and uses a completely different set of precursors than fentanyl does.
So, you know, if law enforcement tries to make it too difficult for the cartels to get fentanyl precursors from places like China and India and Myanmar, and there are a lot of places they get it from, well, then they'll just switch to nitazines, which it looks like they may be already doing.
And they're also adding in, you know, xylosine, the veterinary tranquilizer, to the fentanyl to enhance the potency of fentanyl.
One of the biggest group of victims in the current crisis are people in pain, because actually the University of Pittsburgh did a great study where they were able to look at data going back to the 70s.
And they concluded in 2018 that the overdose death rate has been on an exponential growth trend since at least the late 70s.
The only thing that's changed over time is which particular drugs are in vogue.
So in the early 2000s, when the drug used in vogue were prescription pain pills that found their way into the black market, and there were some unscrupulous doctors and pharmacists who were also kind of selling them.
But that's what happens when you have prohibition.
It gives an opportunity for, you know, dishonest people to make a lot of money.
Anyway, the people in the drug in the law enforcement world concluded that the problem was the doctors were prescribing too many pain pills, even though the government's own data show that the addiction rate to prescription pain pills has never been greater than 0.7% of adults over the age of 18.
And no matter how many prescriptions have been prescribed, there's never really been an increase in the amount of people who are non-medically using prescription pain pills.
So, but they like to blame that rather than prohibition.
So, they clamped down on doctors prescribing.
They arrested a lot of them, a lot of SWAT team raids, destroying a lot of doctors' practices and intimidated most of us doctors into either stopping prescribing or minimally prescribing.
And so, a lot of people who really needed it got desperate.
Some turned to the black market where they don't necessarily can't be sure what they're getting.
Some committed suicide.
In the meantime, the people who were wanting, relying on it for recreational use just switched over to heroin.
And now, you know, fentanyl and everything else.
So, it's really unfortunate because our law enforcement and the people in power, you know, there's a lot, the law enforcement industry, the prison industry, there's an awful lot of people who are benefiting from the status quo.
They don't want to admit that the overdose problem is due to the fact that we have drug prohibition, which is encouraging the development of these harder, more dangerous drugs that people are buying on the black market.
So, they wanted to blame it on doctors prescribing pain pills to patients.
So, now patients who need pain medicine are getting prescribed like Picune doses or Tylenol.
In the meantime, the people who are using diverted prescription pain pills, they've long since moved on.
In fact, the overdose rate, as you know, has been skyrocketing.
Jay, question or comment about the fentanyl crisis in the United States.
unidentified
I just wanted to hopefully, first of all, thank you for your time and the gentleman, but also just wanted to make an observation and had a question for the gentleman.
My observation is that kind of like the same way that we treat the immigration issue as, you know, blaming the folks who are coming out here where there is work available and they're being hired, as opposed to blaming the HR departments that are hiring them and paying them and clearly not being fined for doing so.
On the drug side, the issue is that there's an actual problem of drug use, right?
We have a serious issue that we have an epidemic of drug use, and then we're just like, oh, man, if, you know, if he'd really gotten the esotics that he thought he was taking, it wouldn't be such an issue.
It's by mistake that he got the fentanyl.
When do we get to the point where we have a serious conversation about the actual issue, which is drug use and that epidemic instead of issues?
Dr. Singer, let's talk about the demand side of this.
What is it like?
How do you characterize it in the United States?
unidentified
Well, the caller makes a very important point.
As long as there's a, if nobody wanted to use these drugs, then the cartels would get involved with some other form of criminal activity because there'll be no money to be made in it.
So as long as there's a demand, nothing you do is going to stop the demand from being met.
Now, many of these drugs that people are using illicitly are actually, from a medical standpoint, less dangerous than alcohol.
So for example, alcohol could damage the liver, the brain, causes encephalopathy, cardiomyopathy, pancreatitis, cancers.
Opioids, generally, if you take too much, of course, just like you take too much alcohol or Tylenol, you could have an overdose.
But generally, opioids cause constipation.
They may, long-term use may lower some of your gonadal hormones, which can cause osteoporosis, but nothing like alcohol.
Now, because alcohol prohibition was ended, number one, when I go to a liquor store to buy my favorite drink, which is bourbon, and I see on the label 45% alcohol, it never even dawns on me they may be lying to me.
That may be 80% alcohol or may have fentanyl in it.
That's because it's legal and regulated, which is what I think we should do with these other drugs.
But in addition to that, we also have over the years tended to less treat people with less stigmatization who have an alcohol use problem.
And, you know, there is, you can get addicted to alcohol just like anything else.
And in fact, the average, there's an average of 178,000 deaths per year that are alcohol related, which is about two and a half times the amount related to the illicit drugs.
So, but when a person develops an alcohol problem, you know, they can get help.
Their friends tend to be compassionate.
They don't treat them as some sort of subhuman person.
But when you, when you, somehow, for some reason, when you get drugs on the black market and you become addicted, you're treated as, in many cases, like a subhuman.
In fact, if you want to get methadone, you can't even go to a doctor to get methadone like you can in Canada, the UK, Australia.
You have to go to one of these segregated methadone clinics that are supervised by the Drug Enforcement Administration and line up outside every morning at the same time.
And there are so few of them because most people don't want them in their neighborhood.
But the main problem is always going to be that if people are wanting to use the substance, you're not going to stop them from getting it.
You're just going to make sure that when they get it, it's much more dangerous because they're not going to be able to be sure of the purity, the dosage, et cetera.
And they also can't even openly discuss if they have a problem.
Are you concerned, though, Dr. Singer, that these drugs, heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, become normalized like alcohol is, and then you see people doing it at all hours of the day for any type of celebration or gathering, and then what happens?
unidentified
Well, it's a realistic concern, but look what happened with alcohol.
That was a concern that a lot of people raised when in the late early 1930s, people were saying maybe we ought to repeal alcohol prohibition.
There's going to be a whole lot of alcohol addicts running around.
And in the very beginning, there was a slight increase in alcohol use when it was made legal, but then it kind of tapered off.
And now, of course, recent data is showing particularly people under 50 are not drinking alcohol very much.
When you make it legal, you're making it safer.
You're making it easier for people to share information about how to use things safely.
And just like with alcohol.
And yeah, you're always going to, you know, life is not perfect.
You're always going to run the risk that some people are going to have problems.
You know, gambling people, some people have problems with gambling, yet in several jurisdictions, it's legal.
That's life.
But in general, when it's legal, it's easier for people to openly discuss safe use.
The product is going to be safer.
And people can more readily get help and discuss their problems.
If anybody's interested, I wrote a white paper for the Cato Institute two years ago.
They could look it up at the Cato.org website called Cops Practicing Medicine.
And this is the problem.
The law enforcement and the drug policy regime is still not giving up this idea that we wouldn't have any problems if it wasn't for doctors over-prescribing pain medicines.
So, like I said, we're now down to 1992 levels of opioid prescribing.
And if you look at the data coming in from the CDC every year, the number of overdoses that involve prescription pain pills has been, first of all, the graph has been flat, but it's been almost, it's down to the very bottom.
It's not a contributor to this.
The latest numbers just out from 2024 had 48,000 overdose deaths out of the 80,000 were fentanyl-related.
And then the second most common cause of overdose deaths has to be, happens to be cocaine and stimulants related.
Then comes heroin.
Prescription pain pills have been near the very bottom and have not changed.
Meanwhile, they just don't want to give up the ghost.
They want to keep lowering prescription pain pills.
How's that been working?
We've been lowering prescription, the prescription rate has peaked in 2012.
That's almost 14 years ago.
What's the overdose rate done since 2012?
It just continues to go up.
It's because, unfortunately, most policymakers don't want to admit that the problem isn't doctors.
We're not creating a population of like addicted zombie-like people walking around looking for fentanyl.
We're creating a more dangerous environment for people who are going to continue to try to access drugs for non-medical use on the black market.
And we're enriching the drug cartels.
They're no longer even confined to places like Mexico.
These are transnational organizations now that coordinate with other parts of the world.
For example, the Mexican cartels partner with the Albanian drug cartels and the Balkan drug cartels.
And they're opening up shop in places like Ecuador with the Albanians.
This is what our prohibition is doing.
We're really helping to enrich these evil people.
And at the same time, we're making people who need medicine for pain suffer and people who just want to use recreationally, even if, you know, I'm not saying it's a good idea, but if they want to and they're going to, we're making sure that when they do, they're going to be more likely to die.
I'm a retired civil servant and a retired military.
And I want to say we had a war on drugs and drugs won.
And the reason is most of my time for taking medication, and I stopped, I reached the level of the fentanyl patch.
But again, I can clearly remember when I was in an accident in California and I was hospitalized for one day.
I was rear-ended.
And the doctor gave me some Tylenol with coding.
And he said, look, I know it says take one every four to six hours, but I would caution you, if the pain comes, try to manage the pain and not the codeine.
Why?
Because if you are always trying to get rid of the pain.
Now, I recognize some folks will have pain because it then becomes a compartmentalization thing.
When I say a thing, I mean it's how you handle the moments of pain throughout the day.
So I went from coding, and again, remember, I'm doing civil service, I'm doing military, I'm working 80 hours a week, reserved, active duty, getting deployed.
And finally, I realized one day, you know what, I'm an organ donor.
I want to be able to donate my organs.
So when I got to the fentanyl patch and I would go in to get the prescription, I was looked at like Frankenstein and held up for like forever.
My reaction is, first of all, I think when policymakers tell people who are suffering to just learn to manage the pain, that's very callous and it's also unrealistic because it's easy for them to say, so to speak.
But the caller touched upon a couple of points.
By the way, good morning to a fellow Arizonan.
One is out of the Tylenol with codeine, the most dangerous ingredient of Tylenol with codeine is the Tylenol.
Tylenol has been shown in many Cochrane reviews to have either none or very minimal effect on pain.
It's basically good for relieving fever.
But if you take too much Tylenol, you could damage your liver.
Codeine won't damage your liver.
So that's number one.
As far as the fentanyl patches are concerned, here's an example of somebody who's using fentanyl patches for pain.
And I'm sure many people have seen numerous reports in the press about how when law enforcement did a drug bust and a policeman touched fentanyl and suddenly became unconscious and they rushed him to the emergency room.
That's what we call the nocebo effect.
It's sort of like a hysterical reaction.
Because as you can see, touching fentanyl is not going to make you overdose because we actually put it on patches and attach it to people's skin.
And even then, it takes three days to gradually get absorbed.
So that's another interesting point he brought up.
And then finally, he mentioned how he's looked at like a criminal when he goes to fill a prescription.
And that's right.
That's what's happened because we've gotten so wedded to this idea that it's the prescribing pain pills that is responsible for this problem, not the prohibition, that people who really need pain medicine almost feel like they're being, you know, stigmatized for doing so.
And they're almost ashamed to get a prescription filled.
So as far as compounding pharmacies are concerned, the FDA has regulations regarding compounding pharmacies.
They don't, actually, the compounding pharmacies are regulated by the state pharmacy boards, not by the FDA, but they require that the compounding pharmacies use ingredients that are from FDA-approved manufacturers and meet generally regarded as safe standards.
And you're not allowed to manufacture something that's the equivalent of an essentially available product on the commercial market.
So there are certain restrictions like that.
And then if they're going to start getting into narcotic type compounds, that's going to come under also the jurisdiction of the DEA, which is part of the Department of Justice.
All right, Mike, two parts to your comments there.
Dr. Singer.
unidentified
Okay, the last part I want to say, I agree.
I never said that making it legal doesn't mean people aren't going to abuse it.
Gambling is legal.
People have gambling problems.
Alcohol is, in fact, life has full of risks.
And I'm just saying that making it legal is certainly going to make it a lot safer and reduce crime than the current situation.
And I don't think many people would like to go back to prohibiting alcohol, but it did make two big criminals like Al Capone, the warlord of Chicago.
So that's number one.
Number two, he's describing a side effect of fentanyl.
And many drugs, particularly in elderly people, could have side effects, oftentimes which affects your mental state.
And in some people who have like early dementia, the psychosis-like symptoms as a side effect might not completely go back to pre-taking the medicine level because they already had some underlying like dementia starting.
But the point is that that's really on the doctor.
When you're prescribing a medication, it's very important for you to tell your patients what the risks are and the side effects are and to be available if they have any questions.
I've seen patients of my own have psychotic-like reactions for much milder pain pills, particularly Tramadol, which is a mild synthetic opioid and from Schedule III opios from codeine.
I've seen elderly people get psychotic reactions from codeine.
So he's basically explaining that drugs have side effects and it's up to the doctors to make their patients aware of that and warn them and be responsive to it.
And then the other point he made is when he says he thinks that we have enough pain medicine available to us.
Well, I don't know as much as he does.
I don't know if we have enough different types of automobiles available to us.
I don't know if we have enough different types of smartphones available to us.
I don't even know if we have enough different types of breakfast cereals available to us.
I don't kind of have that omniscience.
I just wait to see what the market comes up with, what innovators come up with, and how people respond.
There's a couple of important points that we can gain from this.
Number one, she had, like a lot of different kinds of pain medication, different medications, not even pain medications, many types of medications, if you take them for a length of time, you could develop what we call a physical dependence.
And if you stop it abruptly, you could have a withdrawal reaction.
She was having a withdrawal reaction from stopping the OxyContin.
But you get that, for example, with beta blockers, which are prescribed for high blood pressure, for example.
If you've been on them a while and you stop abruptly, actually, you could have a fatal withdrawal reaction.
You could have a hypertensive crisis and a stroke.
You see that with tranquilizers, with anti-epileptic drugs.
If you stop them abruptly, you could have unrelenting seizures.
So that's called dependence.
And there's a difference between that and addiction.
So you notice how the caller wasn't saying, I'm still craving OxyContin.
I'm actually trying to go to doctors and faking pain so I can get an OxyContin prescription because that's addiction.
Addiction is compulsive use despite negative consequences.
And a lot of people tend to equate addiction and dependency, but they're two different things.
But she also points out why we doctors like fentanyl.
Because when we prescribe fentanyl skin patches, you have this very effective synthetic opioid that is slowly getting absorbed at a steady state over a few days.
And that's actually preventing withdrawal from the oxycontin because it's binding with the opioid receptors, but at a slow and steady enough level to prevent withdrawal, make it easier for you to get off of the opioids.
I'm glad to see Dr. Sanger on Washington Journal this morning.
I thought we were going to get some other kind of guy.
When it comes to addiction, I've seen both sides.
I've had a lot of friends pass away, but that's usually from black market drugs.
I myself am a chronic pain patient.
And finally, after 30 some odd years, I've got a doctor that's excellent now.
And we try to keep the pain under control.
I think you need to talk about how long opium has been used by mankind.
I mean, we've always had some kind of opiates floating around.
I'm sure there was a lot of people using opium in 1800, whether it'd be laudanum or morphine later on, that may not have been addicts, but they have been using these medicines for a long, long, long time.
What does recreational use of heroin look like in Europe?
And is there a demand, as much of a demand there, for fentanyl?
unidentified
Fentanyl is now a big, has made a big splash in Europe as well, although nitazines, like I say, are starting to come, starting to come into being and becoming a problem.
There's a couple of reasons why the overdose rate is nothing near the United States level in Europe.
Number one, the Europeans have embraced harm reduction.
In some places, like in Portugal and the Czech Republic, they've decriminalized drugs.
And rather than putting people in jail, they make available to them things like rehab programs, test strips to test to see if what you bought in the black market has fentanyl in it or something like that, needle exchange programs.
So because they've much more readily embraced harm reduction in Switzerland as well.
Switzerland was the first country in the 1990s to have heroin maintenance programs where you can come in and get pharmaceutical grade heroin in a safe consumption site and then people going to work and have productive lives.
That program still exists.
So that's one reason why we see less deaths.
Because the other reason is that in Europe, people have tended to smoke heroin or opium in general.
In the United States, people tend to inject it.
Although we're seeing a trend in this country now, and a lot of people that I talk to in the harm reduction space tell me this: more and more people are going to smoking fentanyl.
And when you smoke an opioid, you're less likely to overdose.
You still could overdose, of course, but usually when you inhale the opioid, as soon as you hit your desired effect, you stop.
Whereas if you inject it into your veins and it turns out it was more than you needed, you can't stop.
You can't bring it back.
It's too late.
So, in general, in fact, the CDC at one point on its website, I don't know if it's still there now, was saying if you must do this, try smoking rather than injecting.
And so, that also is a reason why we're seeing less overdoses in Europe.
Here are the lines on your screen: Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000, and Independents, 202-748-8002.
You can text us as well at 202-748-8003.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
Today on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, host Dasha Burns sits down with Democratic California Congressman Ro Khanna and Republican Nebraska Congressman Don Bacon for a bipartisan dialogue on the top issues facing the country.
including rising U.S. tensions with Venezuela and the future of ACA subsidies.
Bridging the Divide in American Politics.
Watch Ceasefire today at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific only on C-SPAN.
Book TV.
Every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books.
Here's a look at what's coming up this weekend.
At 8:30 a.m. Eastern, University of Georgia professor emeritus George Selgin, author of the book False Dawn, argues that many of FDR's New Deal programs were counterproductive and impeded recovery during the Great Depression.
And then at Noon Eastern, his new biography, Nicholas Boggs examines the life of famed 20th century writer James Baldwin.
And beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern, watch Book TV's coverage of San Francisco's annual LitQuake Literary Festival.
Since 2002, the festival has sought to inspire engagement with key issues of the day.
Hear from authors about racial identity, America's involvement in the Middle East, and more.
Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find the full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
We are in an open forum here for the remainder of today's Washington Journal: Any Public Policy or Political Issue That's On Your Mind.
We'll start with the front pages of the newspapers to get us going here this morning.
The Wall Street Journal with the headline, Admiral defends killing of boat strike survivors.
You can see in the picture here that Admiral Frank Mitch Bradley said in a House briefing Thursday that a second strike on a boat was warranted because the survivors meant to continue a drug run.
Democratic members said video shows the targets were in distress.
We can talk about that this morning as well.
There's a video on your screen of the Admiral in the House yesterday talking with lawmakers from both parties, both chambers as well.
And we heard different viewpoints from Republicans and Democrats who watched that video.
Related to this story, front page of the Wall Street Journal, is this headline, Trump's allies orchestrated the ex-Honduran leader's pardon.
The former president of Honduras was pardoned by the president, and the Wall Street Journal says the move wiped out this conviction with little explanation and sparked outrage from Democrats and some Republicans.
The pardon, which Trump announced in the run-up to elections in Honduras, was the result of a lobbying campaign months in the making.
It is said that Trump previously has told advisors that he granted the pardon after his allies in Florida, including longtime confidant Roger Stone and members of his Mar-a-Lago club pushed for it.
Trump told reporters that the people of Honduras asked him to pardon the former president, blaming then President Joe Biden for targeting the former Honduran leader.
Front page of the Wall Street Journal, and you can talk about that story as well.
And then from the front page of the New York Times this morning, the Supreme Court justices allow the Texas maps that favor the Republican to go through the ruling hands of victory to a norm-shattering redistricting push by the Republicans.
This follows what happens in California as well this November when the California voters voted in favor of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom's map.
Also, watch in Indiana today.
A vote is expected on their redistricting efforts, though it's in question whether or not it will pass.
Washington Times front page, FBI breaks pipe bomb case from 2021.
A Virginia man is arrested and accused of placing explosives near party headquarters.
And then there's also this in the Washington Post this morning.
A vote today on hepatitis B guidance is postponed.
Federal vaccine advisors selected by the Health and Human Services Secretary delayed until Friday.
That's today a vote to lift a long-standing recommendation for all newborns to get the hepatitis B vaccine in what would be the most sweeping revision to the childhood vaccine schedule under Kennedy.
So watch for news from that today as well.
We'll go to Pete, who's in Chicago, Democratic Caller.
We have gained no information on these strikes, where the boats were coming from, what port of entry they were going to, who was on them, who could be, you know, interrogated.
You brought up this Roger Stone situation out of Miami.
There is a documentary called Operation Odyssey, Operation Odyssey.
It was a documentary that showed kingpin families out of Miami that were involved in the cocaine drug form that was being sent in from other countries.
And if you watch this documentary, you will get an idea of how the DEA infiltrated into the families in Miami to follow the money laundering, to follow what countries they were dealing with.
And in fact, the guy that Trump pardon, Honduras president, they used to bring a lot of those drugs into Miami for the drug kingpin families.
Now, I've seen the documentary quite a few times on the DISH network.
They haven't played it recently, but this documentary is out there.
And if you can see it, you will get an idea of how to drug.
All right, Craig, what was in the newspapers yesterday, in all the national newspapers, front pages, was this story.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill were talking to reporters about that story ahead of the briefing today.
It wasn't something, and nor do any of the hosts of the Washington Journal, come up with a random story.
We're showing you what's in the national newspapers, what is being debated in Washington, so that all of you can join in the debate and lawmakers and the president and decision makers get to hear from you.
It's the only show that does that.
We'll go to Tom in San Jose, California, Democratic Color.
unidentified
Tom?
Morning.
I have a challenge for my Republican MAGA people.
I think that, you know, Trump is trying to be the ruler of this world.
He has no humility.
He has no humbleness.
And I would just like to ask my Republican friends, you know, name one thing in his own life that he has done that's Christ-like.
Very simple, very simple question.
And they won't be able to.
Also, this thing with Tom Cotton, he has, you know, it's like, don't believe your lion eyes.
We will see when we all see that video what's going on.
I mentioned this before what's happening in Indiana with redistricting today.
This is from the Indy Star.
House to vote on redistricting bill today.
Does it have the votes to pass?
The Indiana House of Representatives will vote on whether to redistrict Indiana mid-decade today, bringing the state one step closer to eliminating its two Democratic seats and helping the GOP keep control of Congress.
Leaders have said the House has the votes to pass the bill, though it's unlikely to garner unanimous Republican support.
At least three Republican representatives said they oppose redistricting, and another voted against passing the bill out of committee.
Meanwhile, Democrats and even Republicans have blimbasted the bill's proposed congressional map for the way it carves Indianapolis into four sprawling districts, which some fear will dilute the power of black voters and harm the city economically.
Democrats have also suggested the map could constitute racial gerrymandering, an accusation bill author Representative Bill Smaltz, Republican, has fiercely denied.
That's the Indy Star with their reporting.
Watch for that vote today.
Go to cspan.org for our coverage.
Another debate on Capitol Hill this week, and one that is continued from previous weeks in the government shutdown.
Here is Carl Hulse, a longtime reporter on Capitol Hill in the New York Times.
Another impasse over health care subsidies.
He reports that when a handful of Democrats broke with their party leaders last month to join Republicans in ending the longest government shutdown in history, they cheered a promise they had extracted from the GOP that Congress would soon have the opportunity to extend the expiring health care subsidies that had been at the heart of the fight.
But one week out from a Senate vote on the matter, there appears to be no viable path to doing so.
Instead, history appears to be repeating itself on Capitol Hill, where disruptive shutdowns often end with the promise of action on the contentious issue that caused them, only to tee up a failed vote that yields no resolution.
There is that story from the New York Times.
There's also this from the Washington Times.
Democrats opt for a partisan vote on Obamacare extension, senate to take up health care proposal next week.
And there is also this from the Washington Times, similar headline: enrollees struggle before Affordable Care Act Premium Spike.
According to a survey, the majority back extensions.
Let's listen to the Senate The minority leader, Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, he was on the floor yesterday talking about Democrats' plans on health care subsidies.
Republicans have one week to decide where they stand.
Vote for this bill and bring health care costs down, or block this bill and send premiums skyrocketing.
That's what's at stake.
when we vote next week.
It's going to be one of the most important votes we take because it's showing who's on the side of the American people and lowering their health care costs and who's on the side of the big special interests and is going to raise health care costs, allow them to raise health care costs for America.
People back home will be watching what Republicans do.
And the American people are running out of time before January 1st.
Make no mistake, our bill is the last chance Republicans will get before January 1st to prevent premiums from skyrocketing.
Taxes increase costs, so eliminating them should lower costs.
The people here, especially affected, are the self-employed, and they have to itemize up to 7.5% of their income in order to get the same tax benefit that a big company can get.
So what you're talking about is equalizing, leveling the playing field for everyone.
Republican Missouri Senator Josh Hawley on Wednesday at a hearing on Capitol Hill on the rising cost of health care.
As I mentioned, lots of debate in recent weeks on Capitol Hill over health care and what to do to lower costs.
Go to our website, cspan.org.
We've covered many briefings, hearings, negotiations, debate on the floors of both the House and the Senate.
You can find it all on our website at c-span.org.
Mike, we're in Open Forum in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, Republican.
Hi, Mike.
unidentified
Hi, I just wanted to draw a little attention to the billion-dollar fraud exposed in Minnesota and the Somali community regarding autistic children, housing, and fraudulent feeding programs, and the complicity of the Minnesota Democratic politicians to turn the blind eye.
It's not getting enough coverage.
Mainstream media is ignoring it.
And I haven't heard anybody really talk about it on C-SPAN.
And it's hypocritic to not acknowledge it and to see what's going on.
I mean, if you have an open mind, if you care about waste, fraud, and abuse, my goodness, pay a little attention to this situation because it's widespread.
It's across the country.
We talk about saving health care costs and welfare and all these other things, but the fraud and the waste is out of this world.
There is no evidence the 86 people charged so far for allegedly lining their pockets with taxpayer money flocked to the land of 10,000 lakes for low-yield bonds.
Their sights were set on the state's vast and unaccountable welfare programs, European-style entitlements that turned out to be shockingly easy to scam.
You might remember Walls as Kamala Harris's deliberately unsophisticated running mate.
He drank Diet Mountain Dew, bragged about never owning a share of stock, and exaggerated his military service record.
For seven years, he's governed a state of 5.8 million through a string of crises.
Minneapolis was set alight after the murder of George Floyd, and crime rates have never fully recovered.
He imposed onerous COVID restrictions longer than most states.
Despite his high disapproval ratings, he's seeking a third term in 2026.
That's the opinion of the editorial board of the Washington Post.
Yeah, well, you know, I learn a lot from watching this program, and I want to thank you for that, you and all the other holes.
But my comments this morning are unrelated to all that stuff.
I've been wanting to get this out there for a while.
That airplane that blew up, and I think it was a UPS carrier or something.
They were carrying a bunch of whatever they carry.
And it was full of fuel.
And I think it was in Kentucky or somewhere back east, and it was headed for the west coast, I guess, far away.
And so it had a big old load of fuel.
And I'm thinking, well, probably all the planes that are going to go far like that, you know, they get filled up with fuel, you know, and like I can see that in a car.
You know, cars, you know, if you're going to go far, you know, you have to fill it up.
All right.
But with a plane, you know, it seems to me that, you know, it's pretty dangerous to have all that fuel flying around in the air.
And, you know, they could pull over and go down and get more gas.
They don't have to fill it up all the way, you know, because that was a tragic, big accident.
And thank you so much for having Dr. Singerland because this drug issue is so complicated and he was really speaking some truth about things.
And I just wanted to make one key point is that almost every other country in the entire world has drastically fewer accidental drug overdoses or drug overdoses at all than the United States does.
And the simple reason is that they prescribe things like fentanyl patches and other opioids carefully, pharmaceutically pure, and followed by a doctor to make sure things are done right.
And that's why they have drastically fewer drug overdoses because people in need of medication for mental pain and physical pain can get it legally.
So they don't actually accidentally buy something off the street that is like a thousand times stronger than it was meant to be and just die by accident.
And I just want to say one other quick thing.
My best friend in the world had a horrible car accident about five years ago.
And he was left with a situation where his left foot has insane amounts of nerve pain and they can't fix it.
He's had surgery, they can't fix it.
So anyway, he was put on fentanyl patches about five years ago.
It saved his life and it saved all his friends and family's lives because he was at peace.
He could talk.
He was communicative.
He could even put his weight on his foot and be productive and do things around the house and even do some work.
But then they took him off the patches and put him on all kinds of other junk that just doesn't work that makes him numb.
It makes him tend to turn to alcohol to relieve the pain.
And now he can barely even communicate and he's not productive at all.
And he sleeps all the time.
But like I said, when he was on the fentanyl patches, he was a normal human being, even though he did have that disability.
They took him off because that's what has been going on in this country is that our laws have been, they've been pushing, pushing, pushing doctors to use fewer and fewer opioids, and especially the fentanyl patches.
And the doctor told him straight up, he said, I am being pushed to take everybody off of fentanyl patches.
We have a president who has been convicted of all of the above, and he is stealing from the American people at a rate that no one has ever seen in the world.
He's taking trillions of dollars from foreign entities.
He's taking a billion-dollar jet, and then he expects the American people to spend another billion dollars to rehab it.
I mean, I've never seen such grift anywhere in the world.