C-SPAN’s Washington Journal (12/06/2025) dives into heated debates: callers clash over Trump’s birthright citizenship order, Texas redistricting, and vaccine policy shifts like the CDC’s delayed hepatitis B birth dose, now tied to anti-vaccine committee influence. Zelenskyy’s Ukraine strategy contrasts with U.S. bipartisan tensions, while AI risks—from algorithmic bias to military autonomy—spark warnings of societal disruption. Skepticism over AI’s cognitive harm and regulatory gaps clashes with calls for human oversight in warfare. Amidst accusations of media bias and political corruption, the episode underscores how divisive policy, tech, and immigration remain in 2025’s fractured discourse. [Automatically generated summary]
In Comments Live, The Hudson Institute's Aaron McClain discusses recent U.S. attempts to get Russia to sign a plan that will end the Russia-Ukraine war.
And Lauren Gardner of Politico covers this week's meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
And then the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Kelly Schroeder talks about the Trump administration's approach to regulating artificial intelligence.
We start the program with you telling us what you think was the top story of the week.
The Supreme Court came into the forefront as the week ended with the decision to hear a case on President Trump's approach to birthright citizenship and also a decision to allow Texas to continue with its plans for redistricting.
President Trump himself also called for the CDC to examine the schedule for childhood vaccinations in the United States.
You can pick these or other stories that you deem are the top stories of the week and tell us why you think that is.
202-748-8001 for Republicans.
202-748-8000 for Democrats.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
If you want to text us your thoughts on a top story, you can do that at 202-748-8003.
And you can always post on our social media sites.
That's facebook.com slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
The story on the Supreme Court and birthright citizenship was something that happened just as the week ended.
Here's Fox News reporting on it, saying that the court on Friday agreed to review the legality of the president's executive order to end birthright citizenship in the U.S.
A landmark case that stands to profoundly upend the lives of millions of Americans and lawful U.S. residents.
At the issue is the executive order the president issued on his first day back in office.
The order seeks to end birthright citizenship for nearly all persons born in the U.S. to undocumented parents or parents with lawful temporary status in the country, a seismic shift that critics note would break some 150 years of legal precedent.
Mr. Trump's order would reinterpret the 14th Amendment, which states, quote, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside, a provision that the administration officials argued has been misinterpreted.
Again, this took place towards the tail end of the week.
You can talk about that as well.
The court also made some news with the decision taking a look at allowing Texas to resume its efforts to redraw its districting map, allowing that earlier this week.
This prompted a reaction that's reported today by the Hill by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, saying that she warned in her dissenting opinion that the court's approval of Texas's congressional map could violate voters' rights enshrined in the Constitution in that dissent.
With fellow liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Katanji Brown Jackson, Justice Kagan wrote that the High Court intervening, quote, based on its perusal over a holiday weekend of a cold paper record.
She went on to say, today's order disrespects the work of a district court that did everything one could ask to carry out its charge, that put aside every consideration except getting the issue before it right.
Going on to say, and today's order disserves the millions of Texans whom the district court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race.
That's the Hill.
The president himself yesterday, when taking a look at the topic of childhood vaccinations, called for the CDC to investigate whether there are changes needed to that.
This is Politico, a story by Lauren Gardner, who, by the way, will join us later in the program to talk about this decision.
The story is saying that the president is all in on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy's plan to scrutinize the list of vaccines American children get.
He directed Secretary Kennedy on Friday to review the childhood vaccination schedule and potentially revise it to align with those in other developed countries, most of which recommend fewer shots.
The directive, in the form of an official presidential memo, was issued hours after the federal vaccine advisors downgraded decades-old guidance urging new-born immunization against hepatitis B, a virus that causes severe liver disease within the first day of life.
So, those are just some of the stories that you can consider when you tell us your top story.
The price of admission is easy.
Pick the line that best represents you: 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, and Independents, 202-748-8002.
And also be ready to tell us an actual story that you think is worthy of consideration as a top one.
This starts off with Andrew in Virginia, Democrats line.
Your top story of the week.
Andrew, go ahead.
unidentified
Good morning, Pedro.
The top story of the week, and I wish C-SPAN had properly covered it, probably made the entire one-hour show about this, because I really think it flew under the radar for whatever God knows reason.
My top story was that the fort, that Donald Trump, pardon the former president of Honduras, who was found guilty of funneling transporting 500 tons of cocaine into the U.S. and was found guilty by a U.S. jury in New York and sentenced to 45 years in U.S. federal prison.
I thought Trump and Republicans were so concerned about the scourge of fentanyl and cocaine being brought in to this country by these so-called boats.
Let's follow up with Paul, who joins us from Massachusetts, Independent line.
Again, what you think is a top story.
Paul, go ahead.
unidentified
Well, I mean, as far as what's going on with my life and my family, was last night we were hit by an illegal alien in a car that was drunk, and he told him inside of the car, and then he took off.
And then he tried to cross on another side of the road and come back in the other direction.
My wife had called me in this accident, and I was there immediately because I happened to be close by, and I chased him down, and he tried to get away, and I boxed him in.
And, you know, this morning we're all messed up.
My car's wrecked.
And I'm saying, why did they do this?
They brought all these people in and they were like a playground with money.
Okay, Wellen there in Houston, Texas, bringing up the redistricting issue and other issues as well.
Again, all falling in within how you define a top story of the week.
They're the lines.
If you want to post your story or tell us your thoughts on a story, Paul in Los Angeles, Democrats line.
Hi, you're next up.
unidentified
Hey, good morning, Pedro.
Good program.
I want to agree with your last caller from Texas first off that blacks are turning to Donald Trump.
The best example is the suspected Washington bomber.
I believe he is African-American and he was a Trump supporter.
So I'd like them to get to the bottom of that.
And also, Paul from Massachusetts, the independent line caller with his incredible story of his accident.
It almost came out of a Hollywood movie that was produced by Fox Television.
That's clearly just what I wanted to say about that.
But in any event, my top story of the week is the story of the week that's been going on for quite some time, and I don't know why I can't get an answer to it.
Why was that Jelaine Maxwell, the woman convicted in the Epstein sex case, given preferential treatment in her sentencing to serve out her term, her sentence in a lighter state of incarceration than what was originally given?
Doesn't make any sense to me.
And I would certainly be very, very upset if at some point in time, whether now or before the end of this president's term, if she gets a pardon.
I mean, that was, I mean, I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican.
It just makes no sense.
And I think it deserves an explanation, and it deserves an explanation by somebody pretty soon.
Paul, there in Los Angeles, California, it was two days ago that this story was filed by the New York Times saying that Ms. Maxwell, the longtime companion of Jeffrey Epstein, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking, plans to ask a court to release her, according to a letter filed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court.
The letter submitted by her lawyer offered no details about what grounds Ms. Maxwell will cite in her filing, known as a habeas petition, but the letter indicated she would file the request shortly and it would be done without a lawyer representing her.
Her lawyer, David Oscar Marcus, declined to comment on Wednesday when asked about the letter.
And this story adding, Ms. Maxwell has already been moved from a federal prison in Florida to a minimum security camp in Texas.
The move occurred about a week after she was interviewed over two days about the Epstein case by Todd Blanche, the Justice Department's second in command and one of the president's former lawyers.
Mel is in New York, Independent Line.
Top story of the week.
Hello, Mel.
unidentified
Pedro, I feel a top story that's kind of been ignored by the national media is what's taking place in Minneapolis regarding the Somali community ripping off taxpayers by making autism claims that really weren't so and the vast amounts of money that have been stolen from taxpayers through schemes like this.
I think it's very disconcerting because I feel like we as Americans need to ask ourselves, are we more concerned about the Islamification of America or Islamophobia in America?
Pedro, I feel like the left would have us believe that we're all Islamophobes when we speak up to something like this.
Whereas what we're watching in Dearborn, Michigan, Minneapolis, and the recent election of the mayor in New York City indicates an Islamification of America in such a way that Islam and the U.S. Constitution are not compatible with one another.
Annie Anihorowicz did Men on the Streets interviews with Somali people saying they wish we would have Sharia law rather than the U.S. Constitution.
Now, if these people are not American citizens, they should be deported right away.
Sharia and the U.S. Constitution are incompatible with one another.
Mel there in New York, the Wall Street Journal, even in a story today, highlights those events that he alluded to in Minnesota.
Here's the headline, Minnesota Somalis in Spotlight Abid Probe saying that the probe by the Republican-led House Oversight Committee deepens scrutiny of the scandal in Minnesota where federal prosecutors say the fraud exceeded $1 billion and that dozens of people bill taxpayers by setting up scam social service companies.
Close to 60 defendants have been convicted, and the federal prosecutors last week charged the 78th person in a prong of the cases that authorities call, quote, the largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country.
The story goes on to say the sprawling fraud cases began in 2022 under the Biden administration.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis charged 47 defendants with allegedly exploiting a federally funded child nutrition program during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Much more there in this story that you can find in today's edition of the Wall Street Journal if you're interested in reading it for yourself.
Republican line, Ronald joins us next.
He is in North Carolina on this top story of the week.
Ronald is from there, and then Barney joins us from Florida.
Democrats line.
Hi, Barney.
unidentified
Hey, how are you doing?
My biggest story is the Supreme Court with Judge Roberts.
I noticed that I seen articles that he was in dealing with Epstein, and we wonder why every time Trump takes a case to the Supreme Court, it passes.
The Supreme Court is more compromised than Donald Trump.
I don't understand why anybody's not investigating Trump for all the money laundering and all the shit, the side deals that he's been, the pardons that he gets paid for play.
He did bring up the boat situation, actions by the Defense Department when it comes to those boats in the Caribbean.
Earlier this week, it was in a cabinet meeting on Tuesday that the Defense Secretary Pete Hegset said he watched part of that September 2nd boat attack, said he did not see those survivors.
You can see the whole event on our website at cspan.org.
But here's that portion featuring Secretary Hegseth.
The first couple of strikes, as you would, as any leader would want, you want to own that responsibility.
So I said, I'm going to be the one to make the call after getting all the information and make sure it's the right strike.
That was September 2nd.
There's a lot of intelligence that goes into that building that case and understanding that a lot of people providing information.
I watched that first strike live.
As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do.
So I didn't stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive side exploitation digitally occurs.
So I moved on to my next meeting.
A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the, which he had the complete authority to do.
And by the way, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.
He sunk the boat, sunk the boat, and eliminated the threat.
And he was the right call.
We have his back.
And the American people are safer because narco-terrorists know you can't bring drugs through the water and eventually on land if necessary to the American people.
We will eliminate that threat and we're proud to do it.
unidentified
So you didn't see any survivors, to be clear, after that first strike.
I did not personally see survivors, but I stand because the thing was on fire.
It was exploded and fire is smoked.
You can't see anything.
You got digital.
This is called the fog of war.
This is what you and the press don't understand.
You sit in your air-conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill and you nitpick and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about kill everybody phrases on anonymous sources not based in anything, not based in any truth at all.
And then you want to throw up really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment that they made.
I wrote a whole book on this topic because of what politicians and the press do to warfighters.
President Trump has empowered commanders, commanders to do what is necessary, which is dark and difficult things in the dead of night on behalf of the American people.
We support them and we will stop the poisoning of the American people.
Viewers, you should know that later on this morning on C-SPAN, Pentagon officials, current and former lawmakers, industry executives will talk about military strategy at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum that takes place in Simi Valley, California.
As part of that, around 2.50 Eastern Time, the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will be part of that conversation.
What he'll be asked, don't know.
It may be the events that you heard from earlier.
But if you're interested in hearing the thoughts of the Defense Secretary on defense issues, C-SPAN, the main channel is where you can watch it at 2.50 this afternoon.
Also on our app, C-SPANNOW and C-SPAN.org.
Top story of the week.
This is Delaware Democrats Line.
We'll hear from Jared.
Hello.
unidentified
Hey, good morning.
How are you?
Pedro, I just wanted to say every time I listen to your show and I listen every day, which is kind of a lot, I realize how much of an oxymoron this Trump presidency is.
If it's from, you know, oh, you know, I'm going to be the man of peace and now he's striking boats off the side of Venezuela and potentially committing war crimes.
Or if it's, oh, I'm going to lower the prices and now prices are higher than they were before.
Or if I'm going to give you a rebate check and I'm not, he goes around in circles.
He throws things at the wall, see what sticks.
And if you're one of the morals that follow him, everything sticks and you can justify everything if you're not.
So be more specific then and nail that to a top story that you think took that place this week, even if it involves the president.
unidentified
Okay, prime example.
Oh, you know, we got to stop all the fentanyl from coming in.
Okay.
Statistics, anywhere you Google, there's not much fentanyl coming in from Venezuela.
Oh, the boats from Venezuela are going to, they're bringing drugs to America.
Guess what?
Those boats, the sizes of those boats, they cannot reach America.
They would need to stop two and three times the refill.
It's all BS.
It's all fake.
It's all a smokescreen.
If he was trying to stop the drugs from coming in, why would you then free the Honduran president who was convicted for smuggling drugs into the United States?
No, no, no Republican wants to answer that.
No MAGA person wants to answer that.
Or they'll tell you that, oh, he's trying to cut deals.
You don't cut deals with people who you say, you know, killed 100,000 or hundreds of thousands of Americans.
You don't cut deals with them.
You bring them to justice.
But it's not the United States justice system.
Now the Trump justice system.
And if you have something that he wants or he could use, whether it be minimal rights in the Congo or whether whatever it is, if he could use you, then he'll look the other way when you do the nonsense.
Of follow-ups to the things that the Defense Secretary referenced earlier.
This is CNN, their headline saying that the boat, sorry about that pop-up, boat at the center of the double-tap strike controversy was meeting vessel headed to Suriname, according to the admiral who testified on these issues and talked to lawmakers about it earlier this week.
That's the story from CNN.
Angela in Virginia, Republican line.
Hi there.
unidentified
Hi.
It's almost difficult to even go behind the guy from Delaware because he's so unaware.
My top story is the story that come out of Minnesota and the billions of dollars being stolen from the American people.
And I am just so sick and tired.
You know, I'm black.
I'm not an African American.
My family been here longer than these people calling me an African American.
Their family haven't even been here as long as my family been here.
I have two top stories, both with international implications.
And then I have a quick comment at the end.
Number one top story for me this week, and I hope you read about it or throw some images up online.
Modi, the prime minister of India and his visit with Putin this week.
He's buying all Russia's oil, which is what's keeping the Ukrainian war going on.
And supposedly, India is the largest democracy on the planet.
I believe it's close to 1.5 billion people in India.
And he's very cozy with Putin holding hands, I believe.
You know, these callers to C-SPAN just frustrate me to no end.
You're worried about petty internal stuff.
The big picture, folks, is the international stuff and how one day India and Russia, or India, Russia, and China, are all going to say, hey, America is fighting amongst itself.
We're going to take them down.
Which leads to my second top story.
I guess it hasn't been approved through the regulators yet, but the fact that Netflix won the bidding war for the Warner Discovery Group, that is how people get their information in this country.
Yeah, so the CNN television network will be broken off because Netflix only wants the movie studio and the HBO Max streaming services.
And CNN and the Discovery Channel and all their other TLC or whatever they own channels will be broken off.
And that leads to the problem of more misinformation of this public.
And the final comment I would just like to make, and I've been complaining about it a lot lately, I wish C-SPAN, not CNN, C-SPAN, would do something to mitigate the preponderance domination of male callers to this station.
We get so few women in because every man thinks they need to be heard and they hog up the lines.
Here's the headline from the Wall Street Journal about that Warner Brothers deal that she referenced, that $72 billion deal, which still has to go through approval, including approval from the federal government.
She mentioned the president of Russia meeting with the head of India.
That took place.
The fuel was the discussion there.
And that's the picture from the BBC.
Again, we'll also talk about those issues when it comes to Russia and Ukraine after at 8 o'clock this morning.
If you're interested in finding out, especially the events this week, talking to negotiators and where that process is.
And you can even mention it as a top story internationally like our previous caller did.
Donna in Maryland, Democrats line.
Hi there.
unidentified
Hey there.
My top story is this obsession that Trump has with receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
I find it very strange that he keeps bringing it up and keeps bringing it up and keeps bringing it up.
Out of all the recipients that have ever received a Nobel Peace Prize, I'm pretty sure none of them kept bringing it up or was obsessed about it.
I mean, I don't even know how it goes.
I would assume it's a board of dignified scholars that decides who actually deserves this award.
The fact that he keeps bringing it up, saying that he needs it, it says a lot about his character.
Number one.
Number two, the striking of these votes, that's, I'm just not surprised what this administration does anymore.
Donna there, in Maryland, it's not the Nobel, but it was yesterday here in Washington, D.C. that the president was the winner of the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, which the soccer organization awarded during its World Cup draw in Washington.
Quote, this is truly one of the great honors of my life, he said.
The president's saying as he accepted the award, the award winner was hardly a surprise.
The president had him in the assumed victor since FIFA announced the creation of the prize a month ago that said it would, quote, reward individuals who have taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace.
Derek is next.
Derek in Pennsylvania, Republican line.
Top story of the week.
Good morning.
unidentified
Tough story for me this week is the story of Tim Walz and Omar Lan, stealing money from people and there's other people involved in it.
Looking back at all the corruption that's been done, stolen from the American people, the reason American people don't have money is because of all the money sent abroad and sent to the wrong people.
It's been a problem in our nation for many, many, many years.
And with the amount of money that the Biden administration sent over to people in other countries for war and to kill, it's just absolutely absurd.
There's people in the streets that need money.
There's people living day to day that need food and good water.
And we have mainly poison and stuff in a lot of our food and water.
So that's like one of my main stories because once we start taking care of that corruption, add voter identification, we can get rid of all this corruption and the American people can have more money.
So that's one of the main topics I think people should be concerned about.
International affairs is huge, absolutely.
But at this time, you can see Trump's been doing everything he can.
Eight wars stopped and continuing to do more.
My general concerns in the nation are a couple things.
Mental health facilities have been overrun with people that just want to give drugs, drugs, drugs.
A lot of our drugs come from China, 90% of them.
And they're made from petrochemicals, which are very bad for the human body.
There's more natural remedies and a lot more other things that could help people in a better way.
And not to mention the geoengineering that's being done.
They use silver iodide, which they omitted to using burning flares in the sky.
And silver iodide causes cancer.
And as you see, cancer has been running rampant in our country.
So these things like bad food, bad water, bad air, and bad medicines can cause all these cancers and issues, not only health issues, but mental health issues as well.
So I think we need to focus on America, like the last Democrat said, and really care about our people.
Because if we don't do that, then we're going to lose all the people and the fighting.
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.
The 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.
And if you go to our app at C-SPAN Now on our website at cspan.org, you can see some of the reaction from members of Congress when it comes to the boat strikes.
Well, Susan, don't mean to interrupt, but do you have a specific story you want to talk about?
unidentified
Yes.
I am glad that the education is being dismantled.
Our children are suffering.
They cannot count change.
They don't know how to read.
And we have big problems.
If Trump brings in all of these industries, these high-tech, we have no one to work on except bring them in from another country because our children don't have no education.
How can we ever sustain ourselves if we are dumb and the rest of the world is getting smarter?
If I may ask, how do you think the dismantling or what will happen to the Education Department will ultimately help people or children in other states?
unidentified
Well, I think that they should be sent back to each state.
And I think that the teachers need to be evaluated.
I think that even our politicians need to be evaluated.
I think you should take a test like we did back in the day to see what mental capacity you have and your personality.
There are people out here teaching our children that are not teachers.
So tell us out of all the things that happened this week, what rises to the top?
unidentified
Rise to the top, the Minnesota story about the corruption.
The other thing is, you know, for the whole time the government was shut down, you guys were chasing left-wing talking points, the Epstein files, many other things.
Again, folks, if you call in, pick the line that best represents you.
We've put them on the screen.
And if you called in the last 30 days, hold off from doing so today.
And also, if you have a specific story you want to talk about and bring to the table, so to speak, when it comes to issues, it could be a national story.
It could be a localized story.
Whatever's important to you.
Top news story of the week.
One of the stories that came out yesterday takes a look at the progress made on the White House ballroom.
This is the New York Times saying that the Trump administration hired a new architecture firm to oversee the design of the ballroom, the White House saying, a move that comes after he had multiple disagreements with the original designer.
The president chose the firm of Shalom Barnes Associates, a Washington-based firm that's designed other government buildings to oversee the next phase.
According to a White House spokesperson, he said the firm would join a team of experts to carry out the president's vision on building what will be the greatest addition to the White House, saying that this firm is an accomplished architect whose work whose work has shaped the architectural identity of our nation's capital for decades, and his experience will be a great asset.
This also has a story or a photograph in the New York Times this morning about where the East Wing formerly stood as part of the construction project.
As you look at that, let's hear from Roxanne at Democrats Line, South Carolina.
unidentified
Hello.
Hello.
I was wanting to call the piggyback on Pennsylvania and Maryland about the top story being with Tim Walsh, the governor.
Did he or did they say that him and Elon Omar stole any money?
I do think they did.
It was some Somalians, but when I seen it on TV, it was a white woman.
So it was people along with not all of the Somalia people.
And another thing, going back to a lot of the callers, well, not a lot, some of the callers who love to say that Trump is a wonderful president.
A wonderful president would not go twice before the Supreme Court to get the snap food stamps cut for children.
If that's what you're saying, being a good president is, that says way more about your lack of empathy.
And I hope to lighten your load this morning and show my true independence by saying that I thought the top story of the week was about the raccoon that broke into the liquor store, got drunk, and was found passed out in the bathroom.
And I think that happened.
It went viral.
It was not fake news.
And I think the poor raccoon had just been overloaded by all the news in Washington, including the two and a half-hour cabinet meeting that the president held this week.
One of the people that the president did part this week, by the way, is Henry Gueyar, the Democratic legislator from Texas.
The president's decision, Representative Queer spoke about the president's decision to pardon him and his wife in a federal bribery and conspiracy case.
unidentified
First of all, I want to thank President Trump for this action that he took on behalf of my wife and my family.
I want to say thank you.
I think the facts have been very clear about this.
But I would also say I want to thank God for standing during this very difficult time with my family and I.
Now we can get back to work.
Nothing has changed.
We will continue working hard.
In fact, right now I got another congressman where we're working on some legislation.
But I just wanted to, for now, that is my statement.
From John, John joins us in Florida, Democrats line on our top story of the week.
John, hello.
unidentified
Good morning.
So, you know, my concern is, you know, the health insurance for the folks, CDC now changing the immunization policies.
I mean, is this just another way for them to fast forward a genocide of the less fortunates, the poor, and the other, you know, communities that can't afford the health insurance?
You know, is this where we're heading in this country?
The CDC panel, which you're seeing there, one of the panel that deals with immunizations, they decided yesterday to endorse an idea of the idea of changing up hepatitis B vaccines for children.
The president following up on that, saying that the vaccine immunization schedule for children should be re-examined.
We're going to talk about that at 8:30 this morning.
If you're interested in learning more about the events of that committee there on Committee on Immunization and some of the after effects of those decisions, you can join us at 8:30 for that.
Ben, Ben in California, Republican line.
unidentified
Hi.
Hello.
How are you?
I just wanted to make a point that the Somalian people, they have like this culture of pirateering.
You know, they go and they send boats to do damage and try and take over vessels.
You know, so that's a pirate.
And I think that culture has inculcated itself into Ben.
How does that apply to any top story that you might bring to the table today?
unidentified
Well, the PHEXA story, I feel like those people that are being killed are merely pirates, and they are getting what they deserve as being pirates on the high seas.
I'm assuming that's the top thing you're concerned about.
unidentified
Why do you think that is because he's throwing that off?
Those people there are not coming to the United States.
You're bombing people that sit like they say the Constitution says, Hey, listen, pull them over, give me a ticket, or haul me in, but they're not doing that.
All they're doing is destroying.
And like they said, no evidence.
So, how can you bring some people in?
And plus, not talking about the other two people that they let go.
Nobody went to those people and brought them up because, well, I'll let it judges for itself.
First, to those people about raving about the Minnesota deal, the reason they know about it, and it's only common sense, I don't know why they don't use it because the Trumpers always say common sense.
The reason they know about this is because they got caught.
There's hundreds of them going to jail.
So, why is it such a big deal?
The big deal is that they caught them.
Now, back to the next thing I had to go is the boats.
If they knew that this boat, which had the survivors on it, was getting rescued by other boats.
I'm no West Point graduate or anything like that, but you would think that they would set up a trap and let the boats come and then blow up some more boats.
I don't know why they didn't do that.
Second thing, they know the heading of the boats.
They already admitted that.
So, if they know the heading, why are they not going up to the boat that they're going to take the drugs to and blow it up if they have no place to take the drugs to?
And then, second, another thing: if they know the heading, they can trace backwards on the heading and find out where they're loading the boats.
And they could blow that up if they don't have any place to get the drugs from and they don't have any place to take them.
What are they going to do?
And finally, I believe this is if this is a lost leader, the boats.
If you know what a lost leader is in stores, they give you something for free, and then you go in and buy more.
This is exactly what they're doing.
They're sending out boats.
We're chasing them around in the Atlantic.
Meanwhile, they're sending drugs in by every other way they can.
And I don't remember us catching anything coming through the ports of entry or anything.
I think what happened to that young man, like what happens to most black people in this country, he found out how hypocritical the white people are in this country.
unidentified
You know, man couldn't find a job, you know, couldn't do nothing.
And plus, they put him in a state with 80% white.
You know, so expect the rest of them that they got in this that they live in this country from Afghanistan to act the same way until this hypocritical white man in this country straightened up his act and really be truthful to the people that come in here.
And furthermore, the place where he came from is all Afghans.
You know, he didn't know what discrimination was, so he got here where people call himself white people.
Okay, Carl, there in West Virginia, and when it comes to legal affairs, it was earlier this week that the Attorney General Pam Bondi spoke about the Justice Department's work leading to the arrest of the January 6th pipe bomb case.
A couple of you mentioned it during the course of the morning.
It was on a news conference on Thursday that the Attorney General elaborated on next steps.
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 Pierrow 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.
Let's hear from Lydia in Maryland, Democrats Line.
unidentified
Hello.
Hi.
Thank you for taking my call.
The top story for me this week was the fact that Christy Noam was looting the coffers for her campaign ESA.
Also, the Minnesota corruption and looting of funds, which should go to veterans, because the logic for not funding H.R. 6023, 118th Congress, Title 38, which covers, which would have provided for back pay for MST victims in the military back to date of injury.
But the reason that didn't pass with, although it enjoyed bipartisan, widespread bipartisan support, is because they said they didn't have enough money to fund it.
And I'm, you know, I have to call BS on that because if you, you know, take into consideration what Christy Noam is doing in taking funds, what Kash Patel is doing in commandeering planes and FBI personnel to guard his girlfriend and shuttle them on dates.
It's disgusting.
And it's, you know, when you have homeless veterans who actually need that money, we need that money.
It's not that we want it to go on joyrides or dates.
Homeless veterans need support.
Support should have and could have started with passing H.R. 6023.
Okay, okay, I'll leave it there and we will leave that as the last call for this round of top news story of the week.
We will focus on specific subjects as the day goes on.
Later on this morning, we've talked about a little bit, but Political's Lauren Gardner will join us about this week's meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, its vote on administering the hepatitis B vaccine and other related stories.
That's later in the program.
But first, we'll talk with Hudson Institute Defense Strategy Senior Fellow Aaron McClain about recent attempts by the United States for Russia to sign on to a plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war, where the status of that effort is.
He'll join us next when Washington Journal continues.
unidentified
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
This Sunday with our guest, best-selling author Jody Pico, who has written 29 books about a wide range of controversial and moral issues.
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.
Boston-based writer Doug Most's new book is called Launching Liberty.
Subtitled, To Build the Ships That Took America to War.
Most, who spent 15 years at the Boston Globe, writes, and I quote, in total, American shipyards produced 2,710 Liberty ships in essentially four years, peaking in the spring and summer of 1943, when almost 800 ships were built in seven months.
A lot of the credit is given to Henry Kaiser, who produced half of all Liberty ships, 1,490.
By 1943, average time per ship was down to 42 days, the fastest month recorded.
Author Doug Most is currently working at Boston University.
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Author Doug Most with his book, Launching Liberty, The Epic Race to Build the Ships That Took America to War.
On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb.
BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins.
Politico Playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns is host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue.
Ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides.
Fridays at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
Well, we seem to be, as of this morning, at the end of a chapter that began back in the middle of October.
If you think back to that moment, and I realize a lot has happened since then.
It seems like every week this year is about a year's worth of news.
The president had just succeeded in getting the living hostages out of Gaza.
He was giving a speech in Israel to the Knesset there.
And at around that same time, the current movement towards the most recent effort at peace in Ukraine was getting underway.
The president was contemplating giving tomahawk missiles to the Ukrainians, was on the verge of issuing some pretty strong sanctions on some Russian oil companies.
And at around this time, he fields a call from President Putin, and a round of conversations picks up between Americans led by Steve Witkoff and Jerry Kushner and Russian representatives.
And over the course of October and into November, this proposal, you know, composed in 28 points, comes together.
It leaks towards the end of November, which creates an enormous media and diplomatic firestorm.
And at the same time, it's delivered to the Ukrainians as something close to an ultimatum.
I don't think it turns out not to have been an ultimatum, but at the moment it sort of felt like it.
The Ukrainians politely declined to accept these terms, which were pretty close to a request that they surrender.
That slightly overstates it, but only slightly.
A round of talks came past in Geneva, led by now by Secretary of State, Marko Rubio.
And then what we've seen this week is the revised proposal, which we don't actually know, it's not been reported precisely what's in the proposal as it currently stands.
That was taken to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner.
They had long talks there with Putin and have been meeting for the last couple days with the Ukrainians in Florida.
That's where we stand.
We don't know exactly what the content of the new revised proposal is, except I think we can fairly infer that it's less radical than the 28 points that were delivered to the Ukrainians a couple of weeks ago.
It's been a kind of wild ride.
It's not clear to me we're closer to peace than we were six weeks ago.
And I think you see a lot of the tensions that are driving action in this administration sort of evident in the back and forth of the last six weeks.
They're just competing visions of what to do about Ukraine, what to do about this world, really what to do about the question of world order.
You have, most importantly, obviously, the president himself.
His priority is peace.
And his priority within that category is speed.
He wants the war to end.
He wants everyone involved doing business.
He especially wants America doing business.
He wants good deals for America, not bad deals.
He doesn't understand in some way.
This is what the vice president said about his views.
He doesn't understand why these two countries keep fighting.
Why can't they stop fighting and do business?
You have parties in and around the administration who are quite hostile to Ukraine, who see Ukraine as part of a complex of liberal powers like some of the European countries that are aligned with liberal forces in America that in some ways are their enemy and they would like Russia actually to have the upper hand over Ukraine and a conclusion of the war that's superior to Russia and a kind of vision of world order where the United States and Russia cooperate to set terms in that part of the world.
And then you have parties in and around the administration who have a much more traditional Republican view of this, much more favorable to Ukraine, want terms of the deal that are more favorable to Ukraine, even if they accept that this is also likely to end in some kind of negotiation.
So those are at least three of the forces.
There's more.
And those things are all kind of competing and in tension with one another.
And it explains, I think, some of the back and forth you see.
One of the statements that came out from that shuttle diplomacy that you speak of is with the United States and Ukraine.
They say this.
In recent days, both parties agree that real progress towards any agreement depends on Russia's readiness to show serious commitment to long-term peace, including steps towards de-escalation and cessation of killings.
If that's the linchpin, what's the probability of that happening?
Yeah, the Russians seem to show no interest in that.
And look, I mean, I think that that's a pretty responsible formulation, and that does seem to sum up the pendulum seems to have swung back to a, in my view, slightly more responsible, slightly more pro-Ukraine vision of the situation.
But the problem is, the Russians are getting all kinds of signals that actually we're not really going to demand those things of them.
One, obviously, there's no way they can't have been encouraged by those 28 points, and the fact that we were willing to deliver those 28 points to the Ukrainians, that's one element of encouragement for them.
There's the National Security Strategy, which just came out, which has, it's itself a document that I think reflects a lot of these tensions I was talking about.
In its section on the Europeans, it is quite harsh and critical.
That's got to be encouraging to the Russians.
You also saw reports this week that the Pentagon, the Department of War, is communicating to our European allies that in two years, essentially, they want the United States' role in NATO to be significantly reduced in a variety of important ways.
If you're sitting there in Moscow watching all of this, why would you then conclude from all of these signals, oh gosh, we better come to some kind of deal or otherwise things are going to get worse from us?
I think they think exactly the opposite, and that seems to me to be a key flaw in how the administration is pursuing this.
Well, I think the view of the president is that any effort for peace is worthwhile so long as it's got a shot.
And so I think you're going to see more of this.
You're going to see more attempts.
What I would advise the administration is they had tremendous success in the Middle East.
Not only are things a little quieter than they were earlier this year in terms of ground combat, but critically, and frankly, I mean, really remarkably, they deserve nothing but praise for this.
They were able to get all the living hostages out of Gaza from Hamas.
That was an extraordinary diplomatic achievement.
They achieved it by largely aligning themselves with America's traditional ally in the region, Israel, keeping the pressure on Hamas and keeping support flowing to Israel.
What you see with regard to Ukraine is much more ambiguous and much more shifting.
And it doesn't seem to me that there's the same consistency or same embrace of the kind of strategy that was successful in the Middle East.
The Hudson Institute believes in American strength.
It believes in the importance of preserving our Republican experiment.
And it believes in understanding the nature of war and international political competition so as to advise administrations and policymakers of both parties about the path ahead, about what will work and what won't work.
It has its roots in thinking about difficult questions during the Cold War, about nuclear strategy and the nature of warfare there.
And those kinds of questions, even though the details have all changed, remain just as relevant today.
The nature of war is changing day by day, week by week, even as human nature and the fundamentals of international competition stay the same.
So we are here to help Washington policymakers understand what it is that they're dealing with and think through the best ways to defend America.
A lot of people are inspired by President Zelensky and the efforts of the Ukrainian people to defend themselves.
I'm inspired by those efforts.
This is one of the problems that this administration has when it prioritizes speed in terms of settling this war one way or the other.
If speed is your priority, at some point it's going to occur to you, as it obviously has to this administration a couple of times this year, that the fastest route in the face of Russian recalcitrance is going to be to put pressure on the party in the war that is dependent on you.
And in that case, that's obviously Ukraine.
So if speed is your priority, faster it's easier to go to the Ukrainians and say, guys, it's time for you to accept a deal that maybe you don't love to bring this to a conclusion.
But the problem is precisely this fact that people are inspired by President Zelensky.
I think a lot of Americans support the Ukrainian cause.
A lot of Republicans, despite all the tensions on the right about this stuff, are still very pro-Ukraine.
And I think on some level, this administration recognizes, the president recognizes, that a world in which some sort of de facto surrender, surrender on terms, is imposed on the Ukrainians, and or, frankly, more likely, we attempt to impose some sort of surrender on terms.
The Ukrainians essentially decline to accept it.
We, in a huff, say, we're out, you're on your own, which has been threatened a couple of times now.
That's a world in which I think Ukrainian battlefield losses start to accelerate in the absence of our support, where European unity, such as it is, already pretty tenuous, starts to fracture even more dramatically.
It's a world that starts to feel less safe pretty quickly in a world in which it seems, and there are some in the administration who reject, they would reject what I'm about to say as a sort of simplistic moral view of the world, but it seems as though we're on the side of the bad guys as Ukraine falls and Europe falls apart.
That is not a world that feels safe to the average American.
And I think the recognition of that political fact is why every time the administration comes up to this line where it feels like it really is going to pull the trigger this time, it's going to force the Ukrainians to do this or it's out, we actually stop.
We've backed off of that line a couple of times now, very dramatically in the last couple of weeks, because I don't think the political consequence of that is positive for the administration.
Republican line, you're on with the Hudson Institute.
Sarah McLean, good morning.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
I would just like to say that in World War II and excuse me, in World War I and World War II, we backed Europe and we also pushed back on Hitler to the point where he was destroyed.
And Germany, we killed lots and lots of civilians.
And so I don't understand our president.
I support our president mainly, but in this case, I think Putin is just walking away with a sly grin that he's going to go in after the president's out of office.
He's going to take over more of Ukraine if he gets his way now.
I really, really support Ukraine's efforts.
I wish we would back them to the hilt and drive them out like we did in Afghanistan.
We drove the Russians out of Afghanistan with the help of the Taliban.
And that didn't end too well in the end because of our weak President Biden, the way that that was a disaster, how that ended.
And look, I think you could debate the extent to which we're backing Ukraine to the hilt, but we are back in Ukraine.
This administration is back in Ukraine.
We are supplying support.
We are in a variety of contexts.
And again, every time we sort of walk up to this line where it seems like that's going to be over, we've not actually crossed the line.
You know, this question of what are the parallels between the present moment and World War II, that's a sort of debate that's alive and well on the right.
You may have noticed, Pedro, there's a segment of what I like to call the podcast right that is sort of relitigating the Second World War right now in ways that I personally find quite alarming.
I mean, there's a long-standing trend in sort of right or far-right conversation about whether or not World War II is actually properly decided, whether or not the United States actually navigated that correctly.
That element of the conversation on the right has largely been shunted off into kind of a corner that nobody really wants to go to for some decades now, but it's sort of resurged in the last couple of years.
And in that vision, where the United States was sort of entangled in European affairs in the 1940s in ways that it shouldn't have been, it's funny.
If you go back actually to the rhetoric of the original America First movement, not President Trump's conception of America First, but the 1930s conception of America First, their rhetoric about Britain in 1939 and 1940 at the start of World War II sounds very, very similar to the critical rhetoric about Ukraine today.
It's the same sort of ideas.
It's the same arguments, sort of like my point about the Hudson Institute earlier.
As much as change in terms of technology and details, some of the fundamental aspects of these political questions actually never change.
I would like to remind everybody how we got into the Ukraine-Russia war.
There was a democratically elected government some years ago in the Ukraine, and we overthrew it.
At that time, the president of the Ukraine wanted to develop closer economic ties to Russia, which we disapproved of.
He didn't want to turn his back on us, but he wanted to develop closer ties economically to Russia.
There was an election coming up, and he offered to move the date of the election up so it would be sooner.
That was not acceptable to us.
We overthrew that democratically elected government, and those that we put in power there were photographed, and these pictures were cast, broadcast worldwide, of them running through the streets carrying American Confederate flags and Nazi flags.
Then we were told that Russia moved their tanks into Crimea and took it over.
No, Crimea voted in a referendum to join Russia because they watched us in Ukraine and they were afraid of us.
They were afraid they might be next.
And so that referendum, that vote that took place in Crimea was covered by international poll watchers and observers from 12 different countries.
And every one of them concluded that it was a fair, honest vote.
We're not on the right side of anything in history.
We weren't right in Vietnam.
We were not right in Iraq.
And I'm just going to wrap this up with one thing.
After we got done in Iraq, I was online and I read an editorial that compared what George W. Bush did in Iraq to what Hitler did in Poland.
No, useful that call is a useful reminder that there's a lot of hostility to the Ukrainian call in parts of the left as well.
So, you know, it's a bipartisan affair.
Look, I reject a fair amount of the characterizations of the fact from the caller.
To the extent that there was upheaval in Ukrainian politics a decade ago regarding whether that country was going to trend westward or trend in the direction of Russia.
And regardless of whatever the Obama administration felt about it at the time, there were a lot of Ukrainians involved.
The United States didn't overthrow anything.
There's Ukrainian politics, and Ukrainians were masters of their own fate there.
The characterization of Crimea is, I think, completely off.
In fact, the caller sort of reverses, I think, the situation.
Nothing was overthrown by the United States in Ukraine prior to the 2014 seizure of Crimea.
The Russians absolutely seized Crimea in 2014.
And any referenda or political actions occurred downstream of that and under their control.
So I guess that's my best swing at that one, Pedro.
Mr. McLean, it was Vladimir Putin himself saying in recent days when it comes to this idea of land saying either and Donbass the region there saying either we will liberate these territories by force or Ukrainian troops will leave these territories.
And I'll just say this about what Putin's objectives are.
I remember a conversation with friends of mine on Capitol Hill early in 2022, just before the Russians went back in in force into Ukraine.
And some of the members of our conversation were skeptical about whether or not this was even going to happen.
They couldn't understand why Putin would do this.
What does he want?
It's obviously going to be a quagmire.
The Russian economy doesn't need this.
The Biden administration was, by the way, saying sort of similar things at the time.
What could he possibly want?
What could possibly be his objective?
And a colleague of mine deathlessly offered in that moment.
Guys, his objective is Ukraine.
He wants Ukraine.
In some ways, it's no more complicated than that.
In other ways, it's a little more complicated than that.
But this is, by the way, I think this fact that that's the Russian objective is in fact kind of the core problem with this effort to rush to some kind of peace agreement.
The president, President Trump, clearly sees the world in terms where peace is better than war.
We ought to stop fighting.
We ought to do business.
We, the Americans, ought to do well in that business.
The deals ought to favor us.
And let's just stop all the nonsense and get to the kind of work that's mutually beneficial to all parties.
And the Russians sort of lean into that with some of their diplomatic outreach.
They dangle sort of attractive business deals that are going to be available to Americans in the aftermath of a peace agreement.
You saw the lead Russian negotiator, this guy Kirill Dmitriev, who's the head of the Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund, post this video on X this week, a sort of AI-generated video of a tunnel that's going to be dug between Alaska and Siberia, sort of of all the ridiculous ideas, flashy video.
This is the kind of stuff they're dangling.
And by the way, I think to a receptive audience in some level with the administration.
But then, you know, they get in the room with Putin.
We don't actually know what was said earlier this week with Witkoff and Kushner in the room with Putin.
We do have some reporting out of the Alaska summit earlier this year, which in a way was sort of a similar round with a similar conclusion.
Putin gets in the room and he starts talking about Novo Rossiya and the Russian right to Ukraine and this and that duke from the 18th century and what they agreed to.
And it's a completely different conversation coming from a completely different place.
This is a man who is deeply, ideologically committed to having Ukraine and other stuff too.
The restoration of the Russian Empire, which helpfully, which would be facilitated by the splitting of NATO.
There's other stuff.
But the man wants Ukraine and deals that don't give him Ukraine are not very attractive to him right now.
You mentioned the national security strategy earlier.
It was published and it had this section which mentions Ukraine saying the Ukraine war has had perverse effect on increasing Europe's, especially Germany's external dependencies.
Today, German chemical companies are building some of the world's largest processing plants in China using Russian gas that they cannot obtain at home.
The Trump administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectation for the war purchased in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy and suppress oppression.
The message, I guess, overall, but particularly to those countries he calls out.
Yeah, no, the national security strategy did not go lightly on the Europeans.
It also did not go lightly on quote-unquote American elites.
Those are some of the enemies out there as far as the authors of the national security strategy are concerned.
And again, I mean, to my point, look, I don't agree with everything that you just outlined there in that quote.
There are some elements of it that I think are probably undeniably true, and other elements that I think are a mischaracterization.
That said, if your goal is to get to a negotiated settlement of the war with the Russians that are going to definitionally need to be on terms acceptable to the Ukrainians, so it's going to have to be a compromise that the Russians feel some level of pain in.
Why would you signal over and over again that actually the Russians' enemies in Europe are, if not our enemies exactly, people we are exasperated with?
Why would you signal that you're willing to force down the Ukrainian throats or at least attempt to force down their throats terms that are unacceptable to them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?
It doesn't put you in a position of great leverage over the Russians, which is precisely what you already have leverage over the Ukrainians.
We need leverage over the Russians if you want to bring a deal to pass.
In my mind, I just see a little bit of an analogy.
Maybe the guests you have the expertise could touch upon this.
But in my mind, NATO was a response to Warsaw Pact or Warsaw Pact response to NATO.
When Joseph Stalin built the wall and enslaved half of Europe for almost 50 years, America, United States, Western Europe did what they could, but also it served their purposes in a twisted way economically.
I have to ask why the focus on Ukraine.
I support the noble Ukrainian people.
My heart is with them.
However, there were European nations for 50 years that had to resist on their own, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia.
When you had a Soviet Socialist Republic and communism, it was a different story.
I'm just kind of curious.
I'm not a scholar.
Maybe you could explain why this is so critical today.
Yeah, I actually think this is an excellent question.
It's kind of the key question on the right.
What are we doing here?
What is our ultimate purpose or vision of world order that leads us to be supporting the Ukrainians?
Look, there are some on the right, just sort of spooling out the logic of that question, who would like to abandon the sort of post-1945, post-Cold War American network of alliances, which, of course, NATO is one of the cornerstones, perhaps the cornerstone of that system, and switch it out for a world in which world order is determined by great powers, perhaps operating within spheres of influence, the United States and Russia.
Obviously, two candidates for that.
You might even add China in somehow.
And in that world, where great powers sit together and determine the course of events, countries like Ukraine just kind of have to suck it up and settle with what we decide amongst ourselves.
That's a revolutionary change with how the United States has done business, really, since 1945.
Among the problems, so that's, I think, in a way the question.
The main problem with that vision is, one, there has to be a kind of revolution in affairs before you could even get to that kind of world order.
I predict that that is going to be a very messy and violent revolution.
Two, this kind of balance of power politics where the great powers settle things and the little powers just have to figure it out, setting aside all moral questions and just speaking in terms of the American interest purely.
It's premised on the notion that these other powers want a balance of power, that they actually are happy to just draw lines and let the United States have its place and they're going to have their place.
And when our interests are colliding, we're just going to settle it peacefully.
That's a pretty big premise to swallow.
And by the way, I don't think the Chinese have any interest in a balance of power.
You know, I think we need to take considerations of pace and sort of demote them.
These things take time.
The United States got to a negotiated settlement, or at least an armistice in Korea.
It took two years.
The United States got to a negotiated settlement in Vietnam.
That also took years.
In some ways, the quick resolution in the Middle East is a bit of a red herring here.
It's sort of misleading.
I think it drove this last round.
I think the president was feeling rightly successful about what had just happened in the Middle East.
And the direction from him reportedly was: let's get this done or let's do the same thing.
Same team goes in, does the same thing.
I think that that was highly optimistic.
What you need is leverage.
You need the Russians feeling pressure, which they could be feeling more of right now.
If you want to have any hope of a deal that is mutually acceptable, or at least put it this way, mutually disagreeable to both parties, as opposed to a deal that's just as agreeable to the Ukrainians and the Russians are patting each other on the back.
Later on in the program, we'll talk with Electronic Privacy Information Center's colleague Schroeder.
We'll discuss the Trump administration's approach to the regulation of artificial intelligence systems.
But after the break, we'll talk with Political's Lauren Gardner about this week's meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and its vote on administering of the hepatitis B vaccine to babies.
We'll have that discussion when Washington Journal continues.
Why are you doing this?
This is outrageous.
unidentified
This is a kangaroo quarter.
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Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A, former NASA flight director Eugene Kranz shares stories from his 34-year career, beginning with the Mercury program through the space shuttle era, including his work on landing men on the moon in 1969.
Deal Armstrong then flew the spacecraft searching for a landing point and we were counting on seconds of fuel remaining.
Normally we landed with about two minutes of fuel, 120 seconds.
But my controller has now started counting 60 seconds.
And then pretty soon it was 45 seconds.
Then it was 30 seconds.
And about the time that we said 15 seconds, we recognized the crew had just landed.
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A committee meets this week to discuss childhood vaccinations.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, it seems obvious, but what does it do?
What's it responsible for?
unidentified
Yeah, it's a federal advisory committee.
So their purpose is to just offer advice to the CDC on who should get certain vaccines, when, how, just kind of provide that general guidance.
And then the CDC can accept or reject their recommendations.
And then once that becomes official CDC policy, it is up to the states to decide how they incorporate that into their, you know, various requirements for school and daycare entry and their own kind of tailored guidance for their populations.
So historically, it's been a range of scientists and experts in vaccination.
So, you know, they've had vaccine inventors, epidemiologists, pediatricians, doctors who specialize in infectious disease.
Those are the types of figures you typically see on these committees.
And these are volunteer positions, too.
In this iteration, under the second Trump administration, there are a handful that are pediatricians or pediatric specialists, but the new chair is a pediatric cardiologist.
There is a longtime board member of the National Vaccine Information Center, which sounds straightforward, but is historically an anti-vaccine group.
All told, the collection of people who are on this committee now, the majority of them have a history of vaccine skepticism.
One of the topics on the consideration was hepatitis B, if it should be administered to babies.
Put some context to that.
What was the question there?
unidentified
Yeah, so this has been a major target of anti-vaccine activists and also some figures in the so-called Maha movement, the Make America Healthy Again movement.
And they've been arguing, so to back up, the hepatitis B birth dose, it's been recommended in the U.S. since the early 90s.
Over the years, it's become a universal recommendation.
So anyone who goes to the hospital and has a baby within the first 24 hours of life, most doctors will come to you and ask, you know, we recommend that you get this vaccine, that you start this series here in the hospital before you leave.
Do you consent to that?
And then typically babies receive second and third doses at starting, usually around two months.
And then I believe my daughter got it around six months.
It goes, you know, first year of life.
Even some public health experts say that this is kind of the, this can be the gateway for vaccine hesitancy because it's a vulnerable time.
You're a new parent, you're in the hospital, you've just had a baby, and they're asking you all these questions about medical interventions.
Can we do this?
Can we do that to the baby?
And some people want to wait.
So some of these activists have really seized on this and they're saying, well, hepatitis B is largely a sexually transmitted infection or it's acquired through intravenous drug use.
Why is a little tiny baby getting this?
Which kind of belies the whole reason behind why the CDC adopted in the 90s a universal recommendation.
It's not that cut and dry.
There are lots of other ways you can acquire hepatitis B.
So the committee hears from everybody or those who present, made presentations.
What do they decide ultimately when it comes to the shot and when it's administered?
unidentified
So the vote they took yesterday centered on mothers who are hepatitis B negative.
And their recommendation for those mothers was to essentially you don't have to get the birth dose.
We suggest that you don't get it before two months of age.
So by having that language in place, it essentially leaves the status quo.
It's up to individuals who are in the hospital making these decisions with their health care provider.
It doesn't touch insurance coverage.
That's another thing this committee does.
Their recommendations tend to be tied to what insurers will pay for.
And also, the other interesting thing about this particular vaccine is that the birth dose is just hepatitis B.
It just covers that germ.
The subsequent doses are typically administered as combination shots with other vaccines targeting illnesses like pertussis and what have you.
So it doesn't disrupt the status quo when it comes to the products on the market.
What public health experts fear is that it injects confusion into the discussion by having this suggestion out there that's kind of been rubber stamped by a federal body that, you know, maybe you don't need to have this at birth, but you can wait, but you should maybe think about not starting it until two months.
It just creates confusion where the public health establishment in the U.S. says there really is none.
This vaccine is very safe and effective.
It has caused the number of cases of childhood acquired hepatitis B to plummet.
And this is a disease that if you acquire it in childhood, you have a 90% chance of it becoming a chronic infection and causing cirrhosis and potentially liver cancer and death later in life, but not as long of a life as you would have had had you not done it.
We'll pause there for a second to invite viewers in if you want to ask questions about this decision by this committee and what the implications are.
202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
And you can text us your questions to it: 202748-8003.
There was a woman, one of the presenters yesterday, Cynthia Nevison.
She is with the University of Colorado Boulder.
Her specialty is at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.
She's an associate there.
I want to play a little bit of what she had to say about her thoughts about the schedule for hepatitis B and then get your, ask a question about that for.
unidentified
I've been tasked with walking you through the burden of disease data.
And for each of my three topics, I posed a question which examines the rationale for universally vaccinating all newborns in the U.S. against hepatitis B.
And so I'm going to try to give you a short answer up front for each of these questions, and then we'll dive into the data and you can judge for yourself.
So first we'll look at the morbidity trends, and I'm going to ask what has the universal birth dose accomplished compared to more targeted measures, which could include selective vaccination of at-risk populations or non-pharmaceutical public health programs.
And the answer there, surprisingly, is that it's the more targeted measures that have had the biggest effect in bringing down cases of hepatitis B. Second, I will look at vertical, otherwise known as perinatal or mother-to-child transmission.
And the question here is, should we be trying to target the vaccination of the approximately 0.5% of American newborns who are truly at risk for perinatal transmission, or should we be universally vaccinating all newborns?
And the answer to that question really depends on whether you have more confidence in the surveillance data or in the models, which the models suggest that more babies are falling through the cracks, whereas the surveillance data provide a more reassuring picture that targeted measures are working.
And then finally, I'll look at horizontal transmission in childhood and ask what really is the evidence for this, and has the risk to the average American child been overstated?
The answer is there's very little evidence that horizontal transmission has ever been a significant threat to the average American child, and the risk probably has been overstated.
Essentially, this is one of the presenters, but what do we get from that?
unidentified
Yeah, so a lot of information there.
You know, questioning what effect the universal vaccination recommendation had on hepatitis B transmission.
The reaction from public health experts who were monitoring this meeting was it's been established through CDC data that the vaccine is why the level, the burden of disease has dropped so drastically.
It isn't that the risk of transmission has gone away.
It's the fact that vaccination has been so widespread that it's protected these kids from acquiring it, whether it be from a positive mother or from others in their life who may transmit it to them.
Let's start with Keisha in California Democrats line.
Thanks for waiting.
Go ahead.
You're on with our guest.
unidentified
Yes, good morning, Kaijo.
So I work in education.
I'm a mom and a grandma.
I also have a friend that has a brand new baby.
And I would say that if the vaccinations have been working, why not let them continue?
There's lots of moms out there that sometimes don't even complete the vaccination schedule.
So what about those children that don't get a complete vaccination schedule?
Also, newborns are so susceptible to everything.
And even if we, okay, say if they forego the vaccination at birth, and let's say we're having a holiday party, like right now we're in Thanksgiving, and I bring my newborn baby over.
I don't know whether or not the other people in the room are vaccinated.
I don't know whether or not they have hepatitis A, B, or C.
And then I looked it up.
It's passed in so many ways through fecal matter, through food contamination, from bloodborne.
And I thought that I remember back in the day they said you could even possibly get it through sweat.
So there's no way to protect our babies.
The best way to do it is with these vaccinations.
My other point is that I don't like that the Trump administration doesn't like any ideas that are contrary to theirs.
They are not using ideas that are based on facts and science.
And as an educator, I watch how one kid comes to school and next thing you know, everyone's sick.
So these things spread so fast, there's no way to stop it.
And I just feel like, you know, vaccinations, they've been working.
Yeah, so Keisha brought up the point of horizontal transmission.
So that is when you can catch something, you know, not from mother to baby, but from the environment.
And that's where a lot of the discussion kind of, there was a lot of tension yesterday and Thursday, because there's still a lot we don't know in terms of like what the burden is when kids who are unvaccinated do get hepatitis B, how exactly they got it.
The reason why universal, part of the reason why universal vaccination was recommended was because so many children who did acquire hepatitis B, they could not figure out where they got it from because the mother was negative.
So it means they got it from somewhere in the environment, whether it was a caregiver or a family member who they came into contact with early in life, whether, you know, open cuts or what have you.
Even something just a razor or nail clippers in the house that might have microscopic bits of blood that are contaminated with the virus that a child comes into contact with.
There are lots of microscopic ways you can get this, and it's highly transmissible.
It's more infectious than HIV.
Just because someone isn't a drug user or a healthcare worker doesn't mean that they might not be positive.
And with mother-to-child transmission, too, mothers can acquire the virus at any point during pregnancy.
So they may be tested and come up negative at one point, but unless they're tested right before they give birth, their status is technically unknown.
Anecdotal evidence for sure, but at least that probably reflects some thinking when it comes to this topic.
unidentified
Yes, and that's definitely that a flavor of that came through in some of the discussion over the last two days.
You know, yeah, some people grow up and they have the experience of not getting sick very much or just getting a cold and what have you.
When it comes to public health, and this is what, this is the tension that's really coming through in this administration and under Secretary Kennedy, is kind of the tension between individual health and individual health choices and public health, which is population-level health.
And, you know, individual choices, while everyone has the freedom to consent or decline to different medical interventions, they can have an effect at the population level when it comes to infectious disease.
So when public health experts make these vaccine recommendations, they're thinking of the greater good, the broader population, and situations that individual people end up in throughout their lives, particularly for children, daycare, school, congregation-like settings where diseases can spread easily, depending on how they're passed.
One of the reactions came from Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a medical doctor himself.
He said this on X saying, as a liver doctor who has treated patients with hepatitis B for decades, this change to the vaccine schedule is a mistake.
The hepatitis B vaccine is safe and effective.
The birth dose is a recommendation, not a mandate.
Adding that before the birth dose was recommended, 20,000 newborns a year were infected with hepatitis B.
Now it's fewer than 20.
He goes from there.
But to have that kind of reaction, what's that kind of reaction?
What is it like to have that kind of reaction from him?
unidentified
Yeah, I mean, he's like, like you said, he's a liver specialist, so this is quite personal to him.
Also, just given the debates that have been going on around vaccine policy in the United States, hepatitis B was probably always going to be one of the, besides COVID vaccines, one of the first things that was looked at really, really carefully.
I think his point on mandates is another really important one because there was a lot of discussion about mandates and informed consent and pediatricians essentially firing families for not adhering to the vaccine schedule yesterday.
A lot of these topics, you know, informed consent aside, while they are ramifications of the decisions that this committee and then the CDC make, they're not in their remit.
They're supposed to be looking at the science behind these vaccines and what they judge is best for different subpopulations within the American public.
Mandates are the authority of the states.
States are who decides who has to have what vaccine to do X thing in their society.
While they do typically follow ACIP and CDC recommendations to make those mandates, it's not uniform.
It's up to the state.
So looking at the original universal birth dose recommendation and calling it a mandate is not true, but those who are more skeptical of the vaccine would argue when you're in the hospital, people feel like they have to say yes.
It feels like someone is standing over you telling you what to do to your baby's body.
And so that's where this kind of tension arises from.
Lauren Gardner from Politico joining us for this conversation.
Let's hear from Anthony New York Democrats line.
unidentified
Thank you.
You know, it all comes down to trust in government.
And our leadership over the last 10, 15, 20 years have exposed themselves to be nothing but charlatans for Wall Street, K-Street, and a cabal of corporate elitists who want to control the world and the global market.
So now, I just ask you, and I don't know that this guest is going to be honest, so perhaps C-STEN and future programming will have someone on to truthfully tell, but I would ask your guests to articulate why Marion Gruber and Philip Krause both resigned in protest their jobs at the FDA because of the Obiden administration's overreach in mandating vaccines for children.
So they had left their careers over 30 years combined as very renowned professionals and they got no airplay.
You have not spoken about it.
And then Lara Logan has been blacklisted for exposing Fauci's crimes.
Gain of function is illegal in this country as of 2010.
And yet you offshored it to China and released it on the world.
We're going a little further than the topic at hand, but you can respond to it as you wish.
unidentified
Yeah, I mean, well, so he was referring to two FDA scientists who resigned during the COVID pandemic.
It was reported that they disagreed with decisions made by senior FDA officials and then eventually, you know, the broader administration to broadly recommend COVID-19 boosters for everyone.
They wanted to take more of a risk-based approach.
So all that to say, the COVID pandemic really, the aftershocks of that is what is seeding a lot of this that's happening right now on the ground with things like a hepatitis B vaccine recommendation.
They are two completely different diseases.
One's a respiratory virus, one is bloodborne and what have you.
But it's kind of, you know, different sides of the same coin.
After the decision yesterday, it was reported that the president's asking the Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to fast-track a vaccine schedule review.
What does that mean?
unidentified
Yeah, so another topic that was on the books yesterday was just a general overview of the vaccine schedule and how it's grown over the preceding decades.
And yes, we got that Truth Social post from the president late last night saying that he wants this looked at and if it's decided to that it would be better for the U.S. population to maybe align it more with those seen in other countries.
And what they're referring to and what came up in the discussion over the last couple of days was immunization schedules in many European countries, which were referred to as peered nations during the meeting, they tend to not recommend as many vaccines for children.
A few of them really don't require them at all.
They're just kind of suggested, but they still have high uptake just due to population, high population level trust in public health and in vaccines.
But what members of the panel were getting into and they were getting some pushback from the scientific liaisons who were participating were that these countries have completely different health care systems.
Most of them have socialized medicine.
So there's better record keeping, better adherence to actual doctor's visits, better surveillance of what diseases are going through a population.
Whereas here in the United States, after, and this is what people like Senator Cassidy are saying, once a baby leaves the hospital, you can lose them.
You don't know if they're going to continue to avail themselves of the healthcare system or not.
And from what I can gather, I only received about six to eight vaccines.
There's so many more today.
And as a parent of three children, you know, I'm just wondering why is there so many today and there was so little back then, yet most of us from my generation never got sick.
I mean, we love our children and we're concerned about this, yet we're painted as people that are anti-vax and somehow we're dirty.
And, you know, it's really gotten out of control.
So I think that's the main concern for my generation anyway.
Yeah, and I think that this is kind of what's coming to the fore is that there are a lot of people, just average Americans, who are saying, hey, like, there have been a lot of changes in the last few decades.
We have some questions and we want to learn more about it.
And this kind of came through during the COVID pandemic, too.
Many people felt that they were shamed for asking those questions and for, you know, for having those safety concerns.
And that has pushed some, at least, to say, well, maybe I shouldn't trust anything.
If you're going to have this reaction to me, you know, asking if this is really necessary for my child or for myself, and you're just telling me it's safe and effective, it's safe and effective.
I don't know what to believe.
And people can get information from lots of different places nowadays.
And to what an earlier caller said, there is a significant decline in public trust in not just government, but also in science.
And with respect to why the schedule has exploded the way that it has, there are several factors there.
I mean, the earlier diseases that did have vaccines invented for them, like smallpox, which we now don't have to get because it's been eradicated, polio, these were things that were very, you know, kind of front of mind of the American conscience back in, you know, earlier decades of the 20th century.
And then as time went on and there was more scientific discovery and we discovered vaccines against measles and now even like chickenpox.
I got chickenpox as a kid.
The vaccine wasn't available.
My younger brother got the chickenpox vaccine because it was available when he was young enough.
There's been a level of scientific discovery and development.
And now there are things that our children don't have to be subjected to in terms of diseases because they can be protected.
And why do the committees vote in light of the president's request to take a look at futures?
Because what's the next steps?
What are you watching for?
unidentified
Yeah, that's a great question.
And I think a lot of people have these questions because people want to know, are things going to come off the schedule?
Are they going to recommend that vaccines be spaced out more?
That's been a lot of what just kind of the average American has been talking about.
Why are things timed the way they are?
Why can't we just spread them out?
And even the president himself has weighed in on this, saying that the shots are too big, it's too much for a little baby's body in contravention of scientific evidence.
But there is that desire to give parents more choice both in how the timing of these shots and also to pick and choose.
Maybe they don't want a combination shot.
Can they get individual ones for their babies?
A lot of them aren't made anymore because these combination shots have gone through rigorous testing for both safety and efficacy.
And then that raises some ethical questions too.
Want to go back to a time where babies are getting multiple jobs at a doctor's visit or spread out through several different doctor's visits.
It raises lots of questions.
Ethics, public health, also manufacturing industry.
Will drug companies go there and create those kinds of products when they don't know what the uptake would be and how long it would take to get through the regulatory process.
Coming up, we're going to talk with Electronic Privacy Information Center's Callie Schroeder about the Trump administration's approach when it comes to regulation of artificial intelligence systems.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
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Not just the coverage that we get of both chambers on one and two, but programs like Washington Journal that allow policymakers, lawmakers, personalities to come on and have this question time during Washington Journal.
unidentified
So it's a huge benefit.
I hope that all these streaming services carry C-SPAN as well because it's an important service to the American people.
I'm actually thrilled that this time in Washington Journal, I'm getting a lot of really substantive questions from across the political aisle.
Our country would be a better place if every American just watched one hour a week.
They could pick one, two, or three.
Just one hour a week, and we'd all be a much better country.
When it comes to the general approach of the Trump administration to artificial intelligence, how would you describe that as far as regulation is concerned?
unidentified
The Trump administration is extremely proactive on encouraging AI innovation.
The method they have chosen to approach that is to try to curtail as much regulation on AI as possible.
So we've seen that twice now that there's been text introduced into bipartisan bills that really need to be passed.
First, it was the Big Beautiful Bill.
Recently, it was the NDAA.
And this text would have imposed a moratorium on states.
And that means that it would have prevented states from being able to pass any laws regulating AI for 10 years.
Their argument for that is that if they pause regulation on AI, it allows for unfettered innovation.
It'll let us get an edge on the AI race.
I disagree with that approach, but it's also failed twice in the two attempts so far.
And the most recent that we've heard is that because it has failed to pass through regulatory methods, President Trump is considering an executive order that would do the same.
When you see that state approach, what general direction does that approach look like?
And has it chilled innovation when it comes to the technology itself?
unidentified
The approach typically operates along consumer protection lines.
So it's just things like saying your AI has to actually do what you're claiming it can do.
You have to have audits.
You have to have tests.
You have to make sure that people are able to opt out.
You have to explain how your system comes to its conclusions, or someone has to have liability if those conclusions are wrong or discriminatory or deny people jobs, deny people housing.
It falls along the lines of most Attorney General consumer protection, but I have yet to see it stifling any innovation.
And frankly, in most spaces, I don't think that regulation stifles innovation.
In cars, you have to have airbags.
You have to meet basic safety checks.
I don't think anyone would argue we've had no innovation in motor vehicles in the past 100 years.
Not long ago, but some time ago, Congress had to deal with the regulation of the internet.
Are there lessons there that could be applied to something of this technology of AI?
unidentified
I think there are some lessons there.
Some of them are that you just have to soberly evaluate what the risks are and compare those to the benefits.
AI has a lot of talk about potential benefits.
We don't see them actually come to fruition all that much.
We do see a lot of harms come to fruition already.
And I'm not talking about the big science fiction harms of AI is going to become super intelligent and take over human life.
I'm not super worried about that one.
I am worried about things like AI's effect on teenagers' mental health.
We've already seen several tragic cases of AI actively encouraging mental health problems to the point of suicide in some cases.
We've also seen AI that's resulted in discriminatory results when it comes to job applications, to education, to loan applications.
And even in education, we've seen situations where students are using AI to write their homework and teachers are using AI to grade it.
So there's a lot of impacts there that we're tracking and trying to address.
And I think that when you're looking at regulation of a technology, you have to realistically look at what are the benefits, what are the harms, and how can we try to get as many of the benefits as possible while preventing as many of the harms as possible.
Tell people how NVIDIA's role in AI and what it means for him to be on Capitol Hill talking about these things.
unidentified
This is another example of AI companies and tech companies in general having quite a lot of access to lawmakers and the administration in this case.
NVIDIA is a great example.
NVIDIA is involved in essentially every part of the AI development cycle.
They supply chips that power the AI systems.
There's data centers that are involved in the AI systems.
NVIDIA has a hand in virtually all of that.
And the fact that they had access to Capitol Hill and they were speaking with the administration, I think, speaks to where this big push is coming from, particularly since it's been extremely unpopular with both Congress members, state attorneys general, and the general public in every poll that we've seen.
State-by-state AI regulation would drag this industry into a halt, and it would create a national security concern as we need to make sure that the United States advances AI technology as quickly as possible.
I think that there's been so much investment in AI and so much motivation to continue in developing AI that I really don't see a patchwork causing a halt on AI.
I don't see virtually anything causing a halt on AI development.
However, I can sympathize that a patchwork approach of laws in the states is challenging for companies to comply with.
I used to do compliance for companies, and it is very hard when you have to track multiple individual laws.
However, frequently what will end up happening in these patchwork systems is there will be some sort of standout regulation at the states and then other states will come to meet that threshold.
Sometimes there are dueling models, but frequently it does coalesce in a baseline of everyone can agree on these principles or these protections.
And I think that's much more likely than something that is so messy and so disorganized that it's impossible to comply with.
I really don't see that happening.
And frankly, if it did, I think that would be a really strong impetus for a federal law to pass that would preempt those state laws.
We work on privacy law and privacy rights for people.
So we are a nonprofit and we focus on privacy and human rights.
Privacy, people don't realize until nerds like me start talking about it, really, really applies to every area of life.
So there's privacy issues in your healthcare, in your education, when it comes to surveillance, policing, when it comes to platforms and how they're tracking your information.
All of that plays into it.
And AI is another component of that.
AI uses quite a lot of personal data in its training data sets that it uses to build its algorithms.
How has it changed as far as the day-to-day things that you're concerned about with?
unidentified
I tend to track a lot of how these systems are being built and how they're being trained and whether there are ways to do it in a way that is more privacy protective and a little more safe for people and really just ways where people have a little more control over their data.
This isn't to say that you can't use information or that people may not decide to volunteer it.
Some people are extremely interested in AI and may have no problem with their information being fed into these systems.
But it would be nice to make sure that it's not like a scan of a biopsy that you had at the hospital that's being fed in as opposed to like your name and your occupation.
Yes, I wanted to ask, is this question for the general public, meaning how would the general public know if AI is being regulated versus not regulated?
It's a good question.
I would say that you can depend on news for that, and sometimes you can.
But it's also a very, very complicated structure.
And AI companies are very good at using very technical terms to obfuscate what happens.
When it comes to regulation, there's a lot of discussion and not a lot of action right now at the federal level.
At the state level, there are multiple things happening.
You can certainly look up your individual state and whether there have been bills proposed, whether there's something that's passed, and what your rights are.
But I'm not sure that there's been enough motion that we'd know for sure without a large announcement of a federal law.
I'd like to pick up on a comment that actually Pedro made about any parallels between AI and the internet when it was first in its first incarnation and we gave it immunity from liability.
We should learn, I believe, that that was a mistake.
The internet was going to take off.
It didn't really need the encouragement, economic incentives of not having liability.
It would have happened anyway.
We should learn from that, first of all, which means that the same would happen with AI.
But the difference would be is if we were to not give, to insist that there would be liability for harm, we would incentivize the AI companies to make safer products.
I'm going to just leave it there.
I completely agree with that.
I think that if you're profiting off of a product like AI companies do, you should also be liable for the harms that product causes.
And certainly you have to be able to directly tie the harm to the product, or you, in tort law, if we're getting very nerdy with it, you'd have to assign a percentage of liability.
But I agree with you that AI does need to be held accountable and AI companies need to be held accountable for whatever harms their products do.
And that is a great incentive for them to make safer products.
How much of that potential harm is tied to the fact that you have to feed a great amount of data into AI systems for order them to operate?
unidentified
That is a huge risk component, especially because a lot of the training data has been just mass scraped from the internet.
So no one's actually checking it before it's fed into the system.
No one's checking to make sure that it's accurate, that it's not conspiracy theories, that it's not completely made up or libelous, or that it's legal information, particularly when it comes to things like image generators.
If you're scraping things on the dark web, you're going to come across images that you really should not have, that shouldn't exist, period, but you really shouldn't have in a database or be feeding into a system.
And we've found in several studies of AI systems that you can make more accurate AI systems by actually having less training data if it's carefully curated for a specific purpose.
How savvy would you say is Congress currently to deal with this kind of issue, especially if they want to put rules on it?
unidentified
Congress is very interested in this issue, which is great.
It's a solid motivation for them to do research, consult with experts.
I think that's excellent.
A problem that we're having is that AI is one of those technologies where it's very easy for people to make what are actually fairly simple concepts sound wildly overly complicated.
It's very easy for AI companies to get into the weeds of a bunch of very technical language and technical jargon to essentially convince Congress people that they don't really understand how the technology works.
And the core of the technology is not actually that difficult to understand.
I think most people, if you do a little bit of reading about AI, you fundamentally do understand how it's put together and how it operates, at least well enough to regulate.
And if there are issues, there's also lots of expert technologists that are willing to talk about how a bill can be adjusted to apply to a technology.
Jason is from North Carolina, Independent Line with Kylie Schrader.
unidentified
Go ahead.
Good morning.
My question is, two questions actually, is that how does it really benefit most people, average people, other than billionaires, that this AI thing, because it's going to put a lot of people out of work.
And I see a big problem with that.
You could have a, pretty much you could have a collapse of most of society if that was.
And the second is, if AI can be manipulated by the people that own it so much, because they've had people ask, I think, Elon Musk rock AI, like who's more and better shape between Elon and LeBron James, and everything comes up in favor of Elon.
So these algorithms can be manipulated.
And what do you think about the bubble?
I mean, do you think this thing could be possible to be a bubble and it's going to, it's not really well with what it's said to be?
Remember a couple earlier this year, China had that deep thing that pretty much could do AI for a couple million dollars versus the billions and billions that are being pumped in this thing.
And they're being pretty shady about what's going on with the financials of this.
Great question, Jim.
That's a great question.
I do think that AI has a bubble problem right now.
There has been unfettered investment in it.
And the outputs that we're seeing and the applications that we're seeing in it are that people are realizing general purpose AI is not really useful for a lot of specific applications.
What's most useful for AI is when you build an AI that is for a specific purpose.
So for example, if you're building an AI system that is supposed to be mapping out flight patterns, let's say, you would feed in just flight plans, like historic flight plans that you've checked that you're sure are accurate, that you're sure are still up to date, and you would have it do that one specific purpose with human oversight that is reviewing the results.
That's a good use of effort.
That's also something that we're seeing in like pharmaceutical research where they're feeding in peer-reviewed academic research and lab results in that.
They're making sure everything's accurate, they're making sure it's all applicable to the purpose, and there is human review over what the AI generates then.
That's where I see AI being useful.
The problem is that's not where we're seeing the application of AI in a lot of cases.
We're seeing general purpose AIs fed into housing, finance, education, lots and lots of things.
The chatbot issue is all over the place.
We have chatbots that are pretending that they're therapists, that are licensed.
It's a different world right now.
I would argue that many of the applications don't actually benefit people.
They benefit AI companies.
I'm not saying that it's impossible for AI to benefit people, but the current structure that we have incentivizes companies to make as much money as possible, and it doesn't have a lot of meaningful checks on whether the AI is actually being helpful or not.
To what degree do you think the general public is embracing AI or is it only certain sectors?
unidentified
Certain sectors are more excited than others, but most polling that we're seeing shows that at least half the population is deeply skeptical and distrustful of AI, sometimes more than half.
I don't think that it's been generally embraced.
I think that the caller made an excellent point that it is already contributing to job loss in an economy that already has quite a lot of job loss for many reasons.
And I don't see this level of investment without some clear return for society being sustainable in the long run.
I just want to know the difference between AI and quantum computing.
And is there a competition between the two?
And would quantum computing actually take over AI?
Thank you very much.
That was a really excellent question that gets to a problem with the AI discussion, which is we say AI and a lot of times don't clarify what we mean by that.
In this conversation, I've mostly been referring to generative AI or agentic AI, which is something like ChatGPT, where you plug in an input and it generates an output.
And that output is a combination of a bunch of patterns that it's detected from its training data and information that's been fed into it.
So typically, that's what I'm talking about in this discussion.
But a problem that we run into with legal discussions is that AI also theoretically includes the text prediction on your text messages.
That's pretty basic.
And usually we're not so worried about that particular risk.
It can include, this is where we get into the area where I'm a lawyer and not a technologist.
So I will caveat all of this by saying that this is my understanding, but I am very open to researching more and could be wrong.
I do think that there is some parallel to quantum computing and some carryover there.
My understanding is that AI typically tends to be more locked into the prompt and generation structure of things, and quantum computing has a little more variance in how it can expand.
But again, I think that technologists are going to be much smarter about the answer to that question.
If a technology grows and you're trying to regulate it, how do you keep up with it?
unidentified
Huge challenge, especially because law moves so much faster or so much slower than tech development.
Sorry, that was almost really wrong.
It's a huge problem.
And in many cases, I think that's part of the reluctance to regulate because they're worried that the regulation will already be outdated by the time it's passed.
I think that the way that you get around that is go with principles and go with impact.
So you can regulate according to does your technology have this effect, this effect, this effect.
If it does, it has to meet these standards.
And it doesn't have to get highly technical for that.
It just has to get into safety.
And I think that's how you can approach regulating very fast-moving technology.
And for me personally, trying to keep up with AI developments, I do so much reading and I'm so boring at parties.
Listen, I guess you're talking about the limits of AI.
And I'm thinking about not about necessarily what it does to people and so on, but military applications.
We have missiles and we have F-35s making, and the AI makes the decision of how to maneuver.
But it can actually, and when it comes to it, doesn't it have the ability to pull the trigger?
We've heard some reports of that.
It's very hard to get confirmation on anything about military operations because, of course, of levels of national security concerns and confidentiality there.
But yeah, we have heard some reports that there is AI that has capabilities of making those kinds of critical decisions.
In that application, as in any other application, I would say you really have to have human oversight before any major decision is made.
We cannot be leaving decisions like that to AI.
I would say that when it comes to reviewing job applications, I would certainly say that when it comes to whether or not to eliminate a human life.
Are there any working on Capitol Hills that take a look at this?
unidentified
There are multiple bills that are looking at AI issues on Capitol Hill.
A lot of them are very specific, though.
So I've seen some bills that are specific to chatbots.
I've seen some that are specific to harms to teenagers and access to teenagers when it comes to AI issues.
I've seen some that are specific to housing, some that are specific to education.
I haven't seen a lot of bills that are trying to address everything, but I do think that's because AI is now embedded in so many different sectors that trying to write a bill that addresses all of it at once is almost an impossible ask.
One more call, and this will be from Steve Steven, Ohio.
Go ahead, Democrats line.
unidentified
Yes, hi.
My point about AI would be that it is a logarithmic nuclear bomb.
That's what AI is going to create because it is going to be ingrained into children's psychics.
And children cannot add, even grade level or high school children cannot add three plus six.
Okay, it's all in the background, and AI is in the forefront.
But that's a nuclear catastrophe to happen.
What do you think?
I think that you make a really great point about concerns of how AI is impacting people's skill development and education.
This is a concern that we've been discussing quite a lot, partly because we've already seen multiple examples of chatbots impacting children's mental health.
And there's a lot of studies going on looking at how it impacts children socially, how it impacts their ability to write, to form complex thoughts and patterns, some of their other academic abilities as well.
And it's not just children.
We're actually also seeing studies that are showing that prolonged use of AI development actually lowers adult skills when it comes to putting together arguments, outlines, drafts of things.
I think in general, skills are a muscle.
And if you don't practice using them or if you offload that use to something else, you do lose that ability.
So I think it's a valid concern.
I cannot imagine that this will stop being studied.
People are very concerned about the safety of children, as they should be, and impacts of new technology on children's skill development, brain development, and what's going to happen in the future, I think is going to continue to be a hot topic.
Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins.
Politico Playbook chief correspondent and White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns is host of Ceasefire, bringing two leaders from opposite sides of the aisle into a dialogue.
Ceasefire on the network that doesn't take sides.
Fridays at 7 and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN is as unbiased as you can get.
You are so fair.
I don't know how anybody can say otherwise.
You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country.
I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices.
You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds.
I absolutely love C-SPAN.
I love to hear both sides.
I've watched every morning and it is unbiased.
And you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments.
This is probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country.
You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions.
And if you want to participate, again, the numbers 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
Right after this program, it's our ceasefire program.
This week, C-SPAN sat down with Democratic Representative Rocana of California and Republican Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska to discuss various issues, including the rising U.S. tensions with Venezuela.
Part of that discussion that they had dealt with the SignalGate report that was released earlier this week from the Inspector General of the Pentagon.
The official response from the Pentagon Press Secretary Sean Parnell is that the Inspector General review is a total exoneration of Secretary Hagseth and proves what we knew all along.
No classified information was shared.
The matter is resolved and the case is closed.
They're saying that he has the authority to declassify.
That and other topics on our ceasefire program again right after this program.
Let's go to John, John in New York, Democrats line on this open forum.
John, you're first up.
Go ahead.
unidentified
You know, my thing is it's disturbing how we got ripped off by these Somalis in Minnesota.
The only reason I voted for Trump was because of immigration.
I don't support him on vaccines in Ukraine.
I don't support him on a lot of things.
That I definitely support them on immigration, ICE raid, the ICE deportations, everything that has to do with this Somali thing is the icing on the cake.
I can't believe what went on there where they defrauded America.
You got people out there that are living paycheck to paycheck in Minnesota.
And these Somalis come in and rip off this country like this.
I'm a Democrat.
This disgusts me.
I mean, anyone that supports open borders and defunding the police, that's not Democrat.
That's not Democrat.
Go somewhere else.
Don't stay in the Democrat Party, if that's what you believe.
I want to give a shout out to my brother New Yorker there, who's a Democrat.
He sounds a lot like the Republican.
Wow.
I want to talk about the amount of nitpicking that goes on in the media.
And I think that there should be full political disclosure of every broadcaster, of every reporter.
I think that would be great for them to have and say, Peter Smith, Republican, ABC News.
Because what happens is everything is being filtered through the lens of this political nitpicking that takes place.
For example, the drug votes.
Okay, everybody's up in arms because two guys got killed who were bringing drugs to God knows where.
These are not good people.
They knew what they were doing.
They're being stopped.
They're enemies of the people of America or wherever they may be because today somebody's kid didn't OD on drugs because the drugs never got to them or nobody started drugs today because the drugs never got to them.
It's this constant nitpicking.
Ice taking people out of the country because they're illegal.
Oh, you're cruel.
It's mean.
Well, you broke the law.
I go into a bank.
I ask for $500 and I walk out and I get arrested.
It's so cruel.
It's so mean.
How many people are sitting behind bars today who have kids at home?
The constant nitpicking and the shifting morality is just very frustrating.
I think we need to pass a law where you're a Republican, Democrat, Independent, and you're a journalist, you need to report that.
Well, let me smile as I say that I'm grateful for all of my colleagues who join me at this desk day by day to do what we do and engage with you, the viewer Sophia.
Thank you for that.
Shelby, Shelby in Pennsylvania, Democrats line.
Hello.
unidentified
Hello.
Good morning.
I have three questions.
The first one is ICE.
Are they who are they and where did they come from?
Are they the people that the President released from jail from January the 6th?
Then there is Cash Mattel.
I was watching a television program and his picture come up and it talked about his wife being murdered.
And he went to a pizza parlor and ordered a pizza.
Then he went back home and that pizza wouldn't be ready for 20 minutes.
And he went back home and I think he murdered his wife.
Allegations aside, what's the third point, please?
unidentified
The Supreme Court, all this has from them giving the permission to Trump to do whatever he wants to do, I think that is the basis of our country's problem.
I just wanted to comment on what happens when conservatives use DEI as a political boogeyman.
And the example I'm going to use is the Boeing 747 crashes.
Elon Musk tweeted, do you want to fly on an airplane where they prioritize DEI hiring over your safety?
And after that, the conservative media amplified this message, turning it into a question of taking your life in your hands with unqualified minorities.
But the actual cause of the crash was a design flaw and corporate executives deciding not to use the money to train the pilots to use this new software.
And I just want to point out that the real damage to women and minorities who are pilots and engineers when they're wrongly accused of being unqualified is a debt they should not have to pay since historically these groups have always suffered under being thought of as less than.
Later on this afternoon, the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has set to address the Reagan National Defense Forum.
We're going to show you a lot from that presentation, all of it today.
But at 2.50 this afternoon, you can hear specifically from the Defense Secretary as he talks about various issues, perhaps issues of the news this week.
You can see that on our main channel, C-SPAN.
You can also follow along at C-SPAN Now, our app, and then you can also follow along at c-span.org.
Later this evening, the president will welcome the recipients of the 48th annual Kennedy Center Honors Dinner at a dinner at the White House.
The President will present medals to his guests.
That's actress Sylvester Salone, Michael Crawford, the rock band Kiss, singers George Strait and Gloria Gaynor.
The coverage of that will start at 5 o'clock this evening or this afternoon on C-SPAN, C-SPANNO and c-SPAN.org.
Let's hear from Mark.
Mark in South Dakota, Independent Line.
unidentified
Good morning.
I'm calling about drug boats being blown up.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s when the U.S. had drug wars with Columbia and Coast Guard did those operations.
And I don't remember ever hearing of them ever blowing up a drug boat.
They always showed trucks or boats full of cocaine that they downloaded.
Wouldn't that be more cost-effective than dropping million-dollar missiles on drug boats?
And if you weren't blowing up them boats, wouldn't you be able to find out what was on this boat?
So, you know, I don't think that they should be blowing their boats up without knowing for sure what is actually on those boats.
Okay, Max in San Antonio there, the Hill reporting this morning that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said that the president was furious with her after she signed that House petition compelling the release of all government files related to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Quote, we did talk about the Epstein files and he was extremely angry at me that I signed the discharge petition to release the files.
She said in an interview with 60 Minutes that is set to air on Sunday, going on to say, I fully believe those women deserve everything they're asking.
They're asking for it to come out.
They deserve it.
Going on to say he was furious with me.
He said it was going to hurt people, she added, referencing the president's comments about the release of the files.
Mr. Trump originally indicated during his presidential campaign that he supported releasing the Epstein files, but reversed his stance after entering office.
That's from The Hill.
You can see other places about that forthcoming interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene on 60 Minutes.
Let's go hear from Robert in Alabama, Republican line.
unidentified
Hi.
Well, everybody's talking about Epstein.
Whatever happened to him, well, that's 61 and a half dozen or another.
But you're never going to get to the bottom of all this.
There's people up there that probably are higher than Trump.
That's never going to be released.
And he promised the Kennedy files and Trump then the Epstein files.
And if you're going to do something about the Kennedy files, just go to the source, Tom Robot Jr., and ask what happened in that situation because I'm sure he knows a little bit more than we'll ever know, and that's for a fact.
I appreciate the time you give to the American public on your forum here.
It's refreshing to know that you give all angles of what goes on in our society.
I'm going to try to make this brief.
I live in New Jersey.
I commute every day into New York through mass transit.
For the life of me, I'm trying to find out, not being reported that much.
This past Thursday, I witnessed going into Manhattan to my job, a man set on fire, okay, and released on fire out into Times Square.
I wish, I wish that somehow politicians, lawmakers will take into the quality of life that hardworking people who do an honest day's work have to be subject to stuff like this.
I don't take any position.
I'm an independent.
But when your way of life is disrupted and you see what's going on in some of these cities, people have to wake up.
That is why people are fleeing to places to raise a family because they do not want to see and deal with this.
They saw what their parents went through, how they struggle to help their children achieve the better way of life.
And you can see how things are just decaying.
So I wish that there are more politicians and I wish more congressmen, whoever it might be, elected officials, will take more time into realizing quality of life matters in these cities.
We love our cities.
We want to stay here.
But to stay here with high taxes, with high interest rates all over, with high food prices, we just want a normal quality of life.
Yes, I'd like to bring attention to a posting by Heather Cox Richardson.
Last night, the Trump administration released the 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States in America.
And it really shows a total change in our approach as we separate ourselves from Europe and associate our control or concentrate our control over South America.
Here's the Washington Post story talking what the viewer had brought up.
Trump strategy criticizes Europe seeks stability with Russia and the release of the strategy and the reporting by Michael Birnbaum and others saying the plan amounted to a distillation of nearly a year of President Donald Trump's foreign policy efforts as he taken an approach to world affairs that prioritizes business deals and narrowly defined U.S. interest over shared values.
And it focused on what it said was a threat to the ethnic composition of European nations, saying that because of migration, it was likely that, quote, within a few decades at the latest, certain NANDO members will become majority non-European and that Europe faced quote civilization erasure.
That's more there from the post this morning on the release of the National Security Strategy.
In Texas, Republican line, we'll hear from Robert.
Hey, I just got a couple of things I want to comment on.
And one is about a lot of people talking about them boats being blown up.
You know, there's a couple of channels where you can watch the Coast Guard making those stops and getting those people, but what they're not showing is the ones that got away.
We got a blockade over there across them across those countries and everything with drones that are actually picking up.
And you know what?
Just like they just showed the other day, how they can pick up cell phones from thousands of people at one time, they're picking up those phones.
They're making sure that they got the right people.
The problem is they're putting it on TV for people to see.
It's not really a good thing to see.
Okay, that's the one thing.
The other thing is AI.
AI is artificial intelligence.
Okay, they got ChatGPT and they got Grok.
Those can be controlled.
What you cannot control is a GI, artificial general intelligence.
When that one comes out, they'll just take all the blocks in the fire guards down, and there's no telling what that'll do.
Okay, that's just kind of all I wanted to rant about a little bit.
Dave on this open forum in Massachusetts Democrats line.
Hello, you're next.
unidentified
Hi, good morning.
I'm a little nervous.
I wanted to say when the Italians came to America, they had a stigma.
They were considered mafia.
When the Irish came, they also had a stigma.
And it was a horrible thing to do.
And now you guys are continuing that same behavior.
How could you call someone, a whole entire country, worthless sets of people?
Where is your humanity in you?
And the next question I have to say: the guy from New York, this guy who claimed that he was a Democrat and he finally agreed with Trump because of immigration.
A broken clock is right twice a day.
That doesn't mean that it's work.
And I think you just use that as an excuse.
You guys are heartless people.
Y'all are not human.
I'm sorry.
And the president saying the words that he said, calling about another talking about people, if we were decent people, we would be embarrassed and disgust of those language.
Those are tug behavior, mafia behavior, gangster behavior.
The bad but not disastrous job picture is what Axios has on their website, taking a look at new data saying that ADP, the payroll processor, reported that private sector employment fell by 32,000 jobs in November, fueled by losses at the smallest companies.
The three-month average of that survey, negative 4,700 jobs, essentially flat in an economy with 160 million jobs.
Chicago Fed's real-time estimate of unemployment rate based on a mix of public and private data was also essentially flat for the most recent reading at 4.44%, down from 4.46% in October.
And the most recent official unemployment reading from September was 4.44%.
Translation: Unemployment looks to have been steady this fall, albeit a notch higher than it was as recently in the spring.
David, up next.
David in New York, Republican line.
unidentified
Yeah, good morning, Pedro.
I just wondered if there's any chance you could either get either Amy Klobuchar or Tina Smith, the senators from Minnesota, on your show to answer some of these questions about what the situation is there.
I've been watching, the silence is deafening.
This has been going on for quite a while, all the problems in Minnesota.
And they've been silent about it.
And it is their party that's at the heart of this situation.
So is it possible that you could get either one or both of those senators on your show?
This will be from JR in California, Democrats line.
You have about a minute, JR.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Yeah, my name is JR from California, and I'm calling in.
I got two questions.
One about Trump pardoning all these criminals.
I mean, he just pardoned the president from Honduras, the biggest drug dealer.
And here he is bombing boats.
And now he's going to probably pardon that guy that was bombing the wanted to bomb the Washington, D.C. area for thought the election was stolen on immigration.
This will be the last call from Lauren in North Dakota, Republican line.
You got about 45 seconds.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
Good morning.
I'd just like to say a thing about the drug boats and the drug dealers.
Those people are animals.
They behead people.
We don't even hear about it over here.
Several people have been beheaded, and they put their heads on posts in Mexico or wherever.
And they're animals.
And there's no better way to send a message than to put this on television so these drug dealers are aware when they hire innocent people to drive these boats or sub-innocent people to drive these boats.
They're aware.
They can see on television what might happen to them.