C-SPAN’s Washington Journal (12/09/2025) dissects Trump’s $12B farmer bailout amid tariff-driven market collapse—soybean sales plummeted from $12B in 2024 to near-zero by mid-2025—while critics like Schumer and callers cite rising costs, court overreach, and immigration chaos, including Cuccinelli’s warnings on unvetted Afghan/Syrian arrivals and the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship case. Legal scholar Whaley slams Trump’s pardon abuse as a systemic threat, while callers rage from "browning of America" conspiracy theories to AI apocalypse fears. The episode exposes deepening polarization, with even Pelosi’s GOP detractors admitting her pragmatism—yet all agree unchecked power risks eroding democracy’s core safeguards. [Automatically generated summary]
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Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, we'll talk about the Trump administration, first with former Trump Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli, now a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America.
He'll discuss immigration policy and current deportation actions.
And later, author, law professor, and ABC News legal contributor Kim Whaley on the use of executive power.
The Senate returns at 10 a.m. Eastern, and we're with you for the next three hours on the Washington Journal.
We begin today on tariffs and trade.
It was yesterday that President Trump announced a $12 billion assistance plan for struggling American farmers using money, he said, that was brought in by tariffs on foreign goods.
Opponents of the president's trade policy say that it's those same tariffs that have put farmers in the position where they need a bailout.
So this morning, we're asking you, do you support or oppose the president's tariff policies?
If you support the number to call, 202-748-8000.
If you oppose, 202-748-8001.
You can also send us a text, that number, 202-748-8003.
If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on X, it's at C-SPANWJ.
On Facebook, it's facebook.com slash C-SPAN.
And a very good Tuesday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in now as you're calling in.
Here's the headline from the Wall Street Journal this morning.
Trump unveils $12 billion bailout for farmers.
The sub-headline, the financial aid comes as the agriculture sector grapples with the fallout from the president's tariffs.
The picture there from the president's meeting at the White House, this was the president announcing that aid.
I'm delighted to announce this afternoon that the United States will be taking a small portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars we receive in tariffs.
We are making a lot of money from countries that took advantage of us for years.
They took advantage of us.
Like, nobody's ever seen our deficits are way down because of tariffs.
I guess because of the election, because without the election, you wouldn't have tariffs.
You'd be sitting here losing your shirt.
But we're taking in billions.
We're only taking in trillions of dollars if you think about it, Scott, because the real numbers, you know, when you think of all the money being poured into the country for new auto plants and all of the other things, AI.
So what we're doing is we're taking a relatively small portion of that, and we're going to be giving and providing it to the farmers in economic assistance.
And we love our farmers.
And as you know, the farmers like me, because Based on voting trends, you could call it voting trends or anything else, but they're great people.
They're the backbone of our country.
So we're going to use that money to provide $12 billion in economic assistance to American farmers.
This relief will provide much-needed certainty to farmers as they get this year's harvest to market and look ahead to next year's crops, and it'll help them continue their efforts to lower food prices.
President Trump from the White House yesterday, meanwhile, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue here on Capitol Hill, the President's tariff policy is also subject to discussion.
It was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on the floor of the U.S. Senate in his opening remarks yesterday talking about the President's tariff policies and this $12 billion for farmers.
A one-time payment for farmers is cold comfort for all the headache and anxiety and losses they've endured because of Donald Trump's trade war.
Farmers do not want a handout.
Ask them.
They want markets.
But Donald Trump's policies have killed the markets our farmers rely on to make a living.
This is especially true for soybean farmers.
China went from buying more than $12 billion in American soybeans last year to virtually nothing by the middle of this year.
That Chinese need for soybeans didn't disappear.
Contracts went to other countries like Argentina, which Trump then bailed out at U.S. farmers' expense.
And producers in those countries, Argentina, Brazil, have now locked in new long-term deals that will shut American farmers out for years and which a one-time check can't alleviate.
A one-time check isn't a solution.
It's a band-aid over gunshot wounds.
And again, ask our farmers.
They want long-term contracts.
Unfortunately, they're not going to get them because when we cut off China, China went to Brazil and Argentina.
And those soybean growers said, yeah, we'll give you soybeans, but not for a year, three years, four years, five years.
Finally, the American people are being punished twice for Donald Trump's costly tariffs.
Families have seen the cost of beef, produce, and other groceries skyrocket over this year because of the tariffs.
And now they're told their taxpayer dollars must be used to clean up the mess that Donald Trump and his tariffs created.
Senator Chuck Schumer on the floor of the Senate yesterday, we're asking you this morning on the Washington Journal, do you support or oppose President Trump's tariffs?
202, 748, 8,000, if you say you support 202, 748, 8001, if you say you oppose.
As Ceaseman viewers know, there's been plenty of polls on this topic over the first 11 months or so of the second Trump administration.
Here's one of the most recent ones from the end of November, a Yahoo YouGov poll.
52% of the 1,700 respondents saying that tariffs have done more immediate harm than good.
43% said that they've had longer-term negative effects on the United States.
32% of respondents saying that they had a positive long-term effect.
And just 26% saying that tariffs have done short-term good.
Some of the latest polling numbers on it.
We want to poll our Washington Journal viewers this morning.
Do you support or oppose President Trump's tariffs?
202, 748, 8,000, if you say you support.
202748, 8001, if you say you oppose.
Roy's up first out of California.
Roy, what do you think?
unidentified
Yeah, I definitely oppose this.
He's destroying the total economy.
Hey, where's this money?
He doesn't have the right.
It's supposed to be Congress's right to approve the tariffs and not approve them.
So I don't understand why he's doing this.
I hope his bought off Supreme Court finally puts a stop to them.
Then he has to reimburse all these people.
And by the way, I got one more thing.
Are you going to touch on the fact that he blasted this reporter and called it fake news when he said 75 days, and now he claims he never said it?
So I wish you would address that so we can have all the galactically gullible and intellectually deficient, morally challenged MAGA nuts call in and try to give some kind of explanation about that.
That's Roy in California on the tariff question that we're asking this morning.
That tariff case in the hands of the Supreme Court, awaiting a decision on President Trump's Liberation Day tariffs, it was a Supreme Court argument day yesterday up here on Capitol Hill, and it's a Supreme Court argument day again.
Today, our program on programming on C-SPAN 1 is going to head over to the Supreme Court at 10 a.m. Eastern.
There's a Supreme Court case today on whether limiting coordinated political party expenditures violates the First Amendment.
The name of the case is the National Republican Senatorial Committee versus the Federal Election Commission, the FEC, political party advertising and First Amendment speech will be the subject of those arguments.
Again, live at 10 a.m. Eastern.
If you stick around here after the Washington Journal, that's where we're going to be going.
You can also watch on c-span.org and, of course, the free C-SPAN Now video app.
Back to this question about tariffs and whether you support or oppose Mountain Home, Arkansas is next.
And Joel, we'll have a conversation about immigration, specifically asylum policies in this country coming up in about 45 minutes on the Washington Journal.
Ken Cuccinelli formerly served in the first Trump administration in the Department of Homeland Security.
He's going to join us for that conversation.
So stick around for that if that's a subject you want to talk about.
We're talking about trade and tariffs, though, in this first segment of the Washington Journal today.
It's the topic of several op-eds in today's papers, including the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal.
It's Republican Phil Graham writing in, along with Donald Boudreau, is a professor at George Mason University here in Washington, D.C.
This is what they write about world trade, saying the damage of Mr. Trump's trade war will be borne primarily by the U.S. and its workers.
America's economy will become increasingly isolated to our detriment by these policies.
They end by saying expanding world trade built the modern world.
It liberated Eastern Europe.
It won the Cold War.
And it expanded America's prosperity and influence.
Building a tariff wall around America won't stop trade.
It will simply divert it.
If tariffs remain high, America's wealth and power will wane, while that of other countries will grow.
Just part of that op-ed, if you want to read it today, it is the Wall Street Journal.
Taking your phone calls, asking you about trade and tariffs, whether you support the President's trade and tariff policy.
Debbie, Madison, Wisconsin, good morning.
Where do you stand?
unidentified
Yes.
I don't approve of anything he's done.
My household insurance, my car insurance, if something happened to my house, all the supplies have gone up because of all the tariffs he's imposed.
If he doesn't like you, he raised out the tariffs.
Now suddenly, when people are giving him peace prizes and everything like that, then he's all in glory.
If you say something nice about him, he'll lower the tariffs.
Debbie, have you seen it during the holiday season at all?
unidentified
Yeah, a little bit.
I think people, just sometimes some people don't want to buy stuff, or they can't afford it.
You know, the same thing holds true for the health insurance.
You know, that's gone up, and it's going to go up.
And just so you know, I did work for a health insurance company, and you don't want to go back to where it was before the Affordable Care Act was in place.
If you have diabetes, or if you had a heart attack, if you had cancer, or something catastrophic, say you had a child that was born premature, and sometimes babies, when they're premature, they have a lot of things wrong with them.
The policies.
And if you have any of those pre-existing conditions, they won't pay for anything.
They'll say you do, but your premium keeps going up and up and up.
And most people buy insurance to get the coverage.
Before I went on Medicare, I had the Affordable Care Act for a year.
I had the same coverage that I had through my employer, but it's only $64 a month.
You know, ACA is not perfect.
But, you know, you need to work together and improve it.
And just so you know, if it was Trump care, Trump would fix it in a minute.
Do you mind talking about the price impact for you?
unidentified
That lady that was talking before, you know, she wasn't on Medicare, but I was in the insurance business a long time ago, and it wasn't as bad as it is now.
You know, everything is going up, and nobody is doing anything to bring things down.
Nothing is being brought down.
And it's horrible for people that need care.
Cancer, all kinds of other problems that people have, and nothing is being done.
It's about 7.15 on the East Coast asking in this first segment of the Washington Journal about your support or opposition to the President's tariff policies.
Again, it back in the news yesterday in the announcement of that aid, $12 billion, the president said, going to American farmers and that taking place at the White House also yesterday, considering the White House.
It was Politico's White House bureau chief and host of Ceasefire, Dasha Burns, who interviewed President Trump yesterday.
Here's a portion of that interview where they spoke about the President's tariff policy and his plans to bring prices down.
President Trump and Politico-White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns yesterday.
Dash Burns, of course, also the host of C-SPAN's ceasefire that you can watch on Fridays on the President's comments about how much revenue is being collected from his tariff policies.
The numbers out there, there's differing numbers.
The nonprofit Tax Foundation is one of those nonprofits here in Washington, D.C., one of those think tanks that specifically focuses on tax and revenue policy.
Their estimation is that it was just over $200 billion through the first third quarter of this year through the end of September, $200 billion.
There's also the U.S. national debt clock, which tracks U.S. spending and prices.
They try to keep it up to date and up to the minute.
Their estimation is that it's about $370 billion in tariff revenue since President Trump first instituted his tariffs back in January.
Again, you'll find separate numbers.
The president's talking about net effects in the trillions of dollars.
Just trying to give you some of the numbers out there.
Here's the numbers.
If you want to join this conversation, do you support or oppose President Trump's tariffs policies?
202-748-8000 if you support.
202-748-8001 if you oppose.
Dan in Connecticut, what do you think?
unidentified
Hi.
I support for now, I'll say the president's tariff policy, just because I feel like people in this country are forgetting that we have a huge national debt.
And until Congress actually is able to pass a budget that is somewhat balanced, this is one of the only knobs I think that the president has the turn to kind of get revenue in to potentially eat away at this.
You know, it's the type of thing where, you know, we can take our punishment or our pain, you know, with prices increasing on tariffs, or we can cut costs other places.
Dan, if those tariffs, as opponents of tariffs argue, lower GDP, then it's going to lower tax revenue in this country.
There's less money to tax in terms of the entire U.S. GDP.
So that's one of the concerns, even though it's bringing in tariff dollars, it would lower GDP, and by doing that, lower tax revenue.
What do you think of that argument?
unidentified
I mean, I think that's a possibility, but I also think, you know, he hasn't even been at this for a year yet.
So people need to give this time.
It remains to be seen, you know, whether or not he's right or wrong in doing this.
But honestly, it's like I really think Congress needs to do their job and balance a budget.
And then, you know, arguably the president wouldn't have to be doing something like this to get costs under control for the country, if that makes sense.
These tariffs have created some short-term pain, but we also think they're creating long-term gain.
And by that, what I'm talking about is long-term trade agreements.
When Kansas farmers make money is when we turn corn into beef, when we turn soybeans into pork, when we turn sorghum into ethanol and sell those value-added products.
But this year, this particular year, is really the end result of four years of poor policy under Joe Biden.
We saw a record drop in net farm income.
We saw our input prices go through the roof, whether it was the cost of fuel or fertilizer or interest rates.
And Joe Biden did zero trade agreements.
So is it enough?
No.
But these new trade agreements, we're very, very optimistic about, especially trade agreements where we're going to be selling more beef and more ethanol.
Appreciate the call from Ohio this morning on rebates.
Lots of numbers have been tossed about.
If you go back to the U.S. debt clock and their estimation of $370 billion in tariff revenue, if you divide that by just taxpayers in the United States, the right blue box towards the bottom, that comes out to about $3,250 per taxpayer if you were to divide that entire tariff revenue since the beginning of the year.
Again, that's just the numbers from U.S. debt clock, and there's been lots of numbers thrown around.
This is Al in Bloomington, Indiana.
Good morning.
You're next.
unidentified
Good morning, John.
Hey, thanks for my call.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone.
So I'm against the tariff.
I'm surprised I don't see more damage, but maybe because I'm in a bracket that won't really get affected by the tariffs.
But I do say one thing.
I'm still against it.
But one thing I do notice that now I buy less from China.
And in fact, I just closed my eBay account and my PayPal account, which I primarily used to buy things overseas.
And I do that because I don't want to pay the tariffs.
And although I'm against it, now I want to buy local.
I want to buy America.
So everything has unintended consequences.
Band-aids hurt when you peel them off.
And I still think it's going to do more damage than good, but I do see the shift in buying America.
Al buying less from China, though China's industrial production is doing quite well, according to this story on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
Chinese industrial production broke records this year as its factories turned out more cars, machinery, and chemicals than ever before.
Despite the disruptions of tariffs, the country's trade surplus in goods has set a record as growing shipments to Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa offset the hip from President Trump's levies on direct sales to the United States.
The Chinese manufacturing juggernaut shows little sign of slowing, they write.
China reported a goods trade surplus of more than $1 trillion for the year through November, while manufacturing output in the first 10 months of the year was up 7% compared with the same period in 2024.
China's on track this year to post a surplus in manufactured goods of about $2 trillion, a huge sum, they write, that is on par with the annual national income of Russia or Italy.
That's the front page story of the Wall Street Journal today.
One more call here on trade and tariffs, then we'll shift over to Open Forum for you and let you call in on any topic you want to talk about.
Lisa, though, in California, go ahead.
unidentified
Hey, there's no way we can know whether or not these tariffs are going to work out, but Trump campaigned on lower prices, so he knew the people were hurting.
Why in the world didn't he give us a year to build up our savings and prepare for the tariffs and see what kind of deals he could have made during that year?
In Fieldbrook, California, our last caller in open forum, but we'll shift now over to our last caller in the first segment of Washington Journal, I should say, on tariffs.
We're going to shift over to Open Forum and have you call in on any public policy, any political issue you want to talk about.
We can still talk tariffs as well if you want to do that, but want to give you the opportunity today.
It's a packed show later in our program.
So some open forum for you now: 202-748-8001 for Republicans to call in.
202-748-8000 for Democrats.
Independents, it's 202-748-8002.
And we'll take this conversation to the top of the hour at 8 a.m. Eastern.
As you're calling in some news on the midterm election front, Texas has been a state to watch amid a redistricting effort on the House side and now in the Senate, a change up in who's running in the Senate.
It's Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who announced her Senate bid on Monday at a Dallas campaign event, reshaping the state's Democratic primary race.
She's running for the seat held by Senator John Cornyn, and she is joining state rep James Tallarico in the Democratic primary.
It was a primary that was already very closely watched as a seat that Democrats could take in the midterms.
It was Colin Alrid, who ran for that seat before and was running in the Democratic primary.
He has since switched back to try to run for reelection to his House seat.
Jasmine Crockett, now jumping in for the Senate bid, and Jasmine Crockett, a well-known face on Capitol Hill and at congressional hearings, she released this announcement video yesterday.
Jasmine Crockett's campaign announcement again for the United States Senate of the Lone Star State running against Senator John Cornyn.
202-748-8000.
If you want to call in an open forum for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans.
Independents, it's 202-748-8002.
John in Florence, Mass, Independent.
You're up first in this open forum.
unidentified
Hello, thank you, John.
I'm just wondering, the Democrats sure love oversight when Republicans are in charge.
Where were they when Joe Biden was in charge and he was brain dead?
Or they talk about all these illegal aliens not getting food stamps.
You know, I live in Massachusetts here, and they're not willing to turn over the records because they're lying about who gets food stamps.
They're going to cut off food stamps for American citizens because they don't want to turn over the records here in Massachusetts because illegal aliens are all over the food stamp program and every other program, and they won't turn over the records to the Trump administration like they're supposed to.
What happened to oversight?
And I remember when Joe Biden was in charge and people wanted to talk about inflation, they said, Well, we can't include housing or food or energy because those things are too volatile.
And the president doesn't have much control over those things.
And now you're all over it.
They see boogeymen around every single corner when Republicans are in charge, but they didn't see anything when Joe Biden was in charge.
They just put any of the illegal money.
And why aren't we talking about the Somalians?
You guys go on and on with all these different Trump and the double tap when Biden killed, I mean, Obama killed 3,200 people, 376 civilians, and nobody said a word about it or wanted to talk about it on the mainstream media.
With your criticism of Democrats, and it seems like you support the president.
What makes you an independent?
Why do you consider yourself an independent?
unidentified
I live in Massachusetts, and there's never a choice in Massachusetts.
There are zero Republicans, and that's because the Democrats have gerrymandered all over the country in every Democrat state that they could to begin with.
And now they cry when the Republicans want to even the playing field.
There's absolutely no Republicans allowed here in Massachusetts.
If I wear my MAGA hat on the street, I get accosted and screamed at.
I went to say thank you to all the policemen in Northampton during the George Floyd riots, and I got called a Nazi Hitler and Satan and spit at by these people.
It's ridiculous.
Democrats are violent and not willing to compromise with the other side ever.
Do you think she can appeal to the swing voters, to the independent voters, that a Democrat needs to win statewide in a red state like Texas?
unidentified
I do.
And I'll tell you why.
Because Trump pulled so many independent voters and he pulled Democrats.
He pulled black vote.
He pulled a black vote.
And the way he did it was he pointed out all of the problems that are going on.
And I think that Jasmine Crockett is going to take advantage of the fact, like we were talking about the terrorists.
She's going to talk about the fact that he's trying to run a government without Congress.
I think she's going to point out All of the uh, you know, the fact that he tore up the White House, and people are just frustrated with Trump and all the antics that he's pulling.
And I think that's going to be her cue to pull all those people back to her side.
As you continue to call in an op-ed released yesterday in the New York Times by Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace, the Republican Congresswoman having a lot to say about what's the point of Congress.
That's the headline of her piece.
Plenty of criticism for her own party in that op-ed.
Here's some of what she has to say.
Here's the hard truth Republicans don't want to hear.
Nancy Pelosi was more effective as a House speaker than any Republican this century.
I agree with her on essentially nothing, Nancy Mace says, but she understood something that we don't.
No majority is permanent.
When Democrats hold the majority, they ram through the most progressive policies that they can.
They deliver for the coalition that elected them while they were in power.
Republicans do the opposite.
She writes, we get the majority, then become petrified of losing it.
We pass the most moderate policies we can pressure conservatives to accept, betraying the coalition that delivered us here.
Miss Pelosi was ruthless, but she got things done.
The current House is restrictive and ineffective, control with barely any results.
Republican leadership seems intent on replicating her model of consolidation without her bold vision to push through the policies that won them the majority.
Speaker Mike Johnson, she says, is better than his predecessor, but the frustrations of being a rank-and-file House member are compounded as certain individuals or groups remain marginalized within the party.
She says women will never be taken seriously until leadership decides to take us seriously.
And I'm no longer holding my breath.
Since 2013, the Republican conference chair position has gone to a woman.
It's the token slot, she says, the designated leadership role for the top women in the conference while the real power lies in other offices.
Nancy Mace with a new op-ed in today's New York Times.
What's the point of Congress is the headline of that piece if you want to read it.
Back to your phone calls.
It's Wendell in Laurel, Delaware, Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
How you doing?
Doing well.
I want to know why nobody never talks about the health problem that's going on now with the health insurance.
And nobody never said nothing about it.
They wouldn't have had that problem if the Republicans hadn't kept lying when they was doing it, say they wasn't going to cut none of the healthcare and kept saying it wasn't.
They said, No, we ain't going to mess with none of this.
And Trump said the same thing, too.
You know, and they always saying everything that always happened.
And the administration, it's the first president I ever seen that never know nothing about it.
Every time you ask him something, babe, did you know what?
Greg, in terms of what people say on this program, I imagine if you listen long enough, you're going to hear a lot of different comments about a lot of people.
I've heard you express these frustrations before when you call in, Greg.
You don't think we're getting any better in addressing your concerns or creating a forum here for people to be able to talk back?
I voted for her once in 35 years or more of opportunities.
I voted for a gay man, Harry Britt, in the primary in 1987.
I've seen her.
I voted for a Republican once because she annoyed me so much.
I vote for a right-wing nutbag flower dealer, Harold Hughesian.
Nancy Pelosi serves the rich.
She helped the billionaires take over the Democratic Party.
She's done some good things.
But anyway, back in the 90s, it was Fast Track.
We were talking about tariffs.
Fast Track was to allow the president to negotiate a trade agreement, and then so it could be passed without any input or control on the negotiation by Congress.
But now we got one man making the decision, and he's able to extort.
And it's a tax.
It's worse than a flat tax because it's a tax on the poor.
So you think all tariff decisions should go through Congress?
unidentified
Well, yeah.
But here's the thing.
People are saying, oh, well, we got to balance the budget.
Well, we've got to balance the budget by taxing the rich because the rich have money is power.
They're exerting control over us.
And it's like a grab monkey elite tribe, which has focused all their attention on distributing discord, dividing conquer.
They get everybody talking about race or Ethiopians or whatever.
And they're making out like bandits.
AI is taking over people's jobs.
And anyway, one of the tariffs was on because Trump didn't like the way Brazil's jurisprudence, jury system, the court system was prosecuting their bolsonaro.
I looked out my bedroom window, and there were five planes right in my face that turned to me to wave on the split second.
And it seemed like right across the street from me.
And I want to thank the president for that.
Another thing I want to mention, am I the only one who remembers that the economy, Trump said that the economy would be fixed roughly in 12 to 18 months, not immediately.
He said you got to give it time.
That's what I remember.
And I noticed sometimes, you know, I hate to mention this, sometimes people are hung up, and it seems to me that the freedom of speech is being hung up on.
I imagine this is one of the places on television where we have the most freedom of speech because it actually allows people to call in and talk, Lewis.
It's kind of a point of pride for us as creating a place for people to come and do this every day.
unidentified
True, but there are times when a person will give a half a sentence and boom, they hang up.
But that's okay.
You do what you want.
And I just wanted to thank you for listening.
But I'm hoping the president, I have to see the president on something.
I just don't know how to go about it.
You know, I'm going to have to find out.
I want to show him something that I have an idea on.
Newman, what do you think about Jasmine Crockett jumping into the Senate race in your state?
unidentified
I'm glad for her, but I don't think she has a chance on winning, though, because Our politics right now to me is going to hell.
I don't think either side is really representing the people because every morning I wake up faithfully just to listen to C-SPAN, to listen to all these people's opinions about everything.
And each side, all they do is criticize each side and what they're feeling to understand.
We are here fighting amongst each other over crap that they're doing in DC, and neither side is accomplishing anything for the people.
And I just wake up every morning just really to hear the people on your, I watched, I'm listening this morning, how these people are attacking you.
And some mornings I'll be sitting there frustrated with what y'all be letting people say, but I sit there and I say in my mind, I get it now.
These people have a right, but when they do go over the line, I don't blame you from cutting them off.
But I get frustrated some mornings when I be hearing y'all let people go on and on with certain crap.
It's more of an art than a science on trying to conduct this conversation here each morning, but we couldn't do it without our viewers.
And so that's why we are glad they call in every day.
It'd be a real boring show if we didn't have viewers calling in each and every day.
About 10 minutes left in open forum.
And as you keep calling in for open forum, one more event from here in DC yesterday as we move into the holiday season.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was at Reagan Airport here just across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia, announcing new investments to improve the airport experience in the United States.
I'm announcing at DOT that we have $1 billion in funding for grant programs to make the experience better in airports.
And it's pretty wide open on what airports want to ask for a grant.
But it might be, I want to expand the play areas for kids.
I want additional nursing pods for nursing mothers.
Maybe I want a workout area where people might get some blood flow and doing some pull-ups or some step-ups in the airport.
But it could be any range of things.
Maybe you want to work.
I know this is TSA, but we're going to help on this as well.
Maybe you want to have a different lane for families to get through TSA.
How can we make the experience better as you come through an airport?
$1 billion is going to go to that.
But in addition, people have said, well, what are the airlines going to do to make the experience better?
So today I reached out to a majority of the CEOs of our major airlines and said, you know, what can you do, airlines, to make the experience better for the traveling public?
And I'm looking forward to hearing back from our airlines on what they have in their future plans to improve the experience when we get on their airplanes and fly safely through the national airspace.
I think it's important for us to recognize that we're all in this together, right?
The traveling public, you have to do your part.
The FAA, the DOT, we have to do our part.
The airports have to do their part.
And then the airlines have to step up and engage as well.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, yesterday, he was standing there with the Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. at the end of that press conference.
They both ended up doing pull-ups on a pull-up bar.
If you want to watch the entire press conference and the pull-ups as well, you can watch it on our website at c-span.org.
A few minutes left here in open forum.
We'll have a little bit of time at the end of our program for open forum as well.
But we head to the land of opportunity.
This is Lida in New Mexico.
Republican, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
I have one question.
I watch way too much TV, I'm sure.
Anyhow, I heard somewhere someone said Congress has not had a pay raise in quite some time.
I don't remember how many years, but at least a decade.
Do you feel just as do you think people feel just as disenfranchised as what you're saying when it comes to their congressional elections, their representatives and their senators?
unidentified
All of them.
And then also limit contributions and stop lobbying.
Just to what the counter argument would be, they'll say that when they're home in the district, they're doing constituent services, they're attending the opening of various businesses to try to celebrate and gin up publicity for new businesses.
They'll say that they're very busy, even when they're not here on Capitol Hill voting.
That's Alberta and Maryland, our last caller in this first hour of the Washington Journal.
Stick around.
Plenty more to talk about this morning.
Later, we'll be joined by author, law professor, ABC News legal contributor Kim Whaley.
We'll discuss the use of executive power by the Trump administration and the Supreme Court cases this week.
But first, it's former Donald Trump Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli, now a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America.
We'll discuss the Trump administration's asylum and immigration policy.
Stick around for that discussion.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series, Sunday, with our guest best-selling author, Arthur Brooks, who has written 13 books about finding purpose, connection, and cultivating lasting joy.
His books include Love Your Enemies, Build the Life You Want with co-author Oprah Winfrey and his latest The Happiness Files.
He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
He previously served as acting deputy homeland security secretary in the first Trump administration.
Currently studies immigration issues at the Center for Renewing America.
And Mr. Cuccinelli, the National Guard shooting in D.C. last month, has put a pause in asylum decisions, as we know as the United States undertakes a review of the vetting process here in this country.
As the Trump administration undertakes that review, what advice would you give them on what should be studied?
Well, some of this we've known for a while, so there are a lot of things that don't require a great deal of study.
And for viewers, just to give you an example, we talk about vetting people coming into the country.
That's to make sure, first and foremost, that they're not a security threat or an espionage threat.
That's a much smaller fraction of people, but also that they will, to the degree reasonable, assimilate or fit into the United States, that they'll land well, if you will, and in some community.
But most people I observe in the United States assume that we can do this for anybody in the world, and we cannot.
And I'll use some examples.
We'll start with Afghanistan given the shooting last month.
What are you going to do?
Ask the Taliban if Joe immigrant has behaved and what his background is and so forth.
And even if they answered your question, would you believe the Taliban, which is who is running Afghanistan right now?
So we, our military in particular, and a few of our intelligence agencies, the CIA in particular, do have some information on an extremely small number of people from Afghanistan, but we fundamentally cannot vet the vast majority of people from Afghanistan.
So as a matter of protecting America, that would suggest that we shouldn't let people in from Afghanistan.
And if they want to leave Afghanistan, they should go to a different country, either, for example, Pakistan or Iran, which are bordering countries.
And we can go around the world and recreate that same problem.
Syria, for example, is another place.
Venezuela in our own hemisphere and Cuba present very serious problems, but we have other ways.
We have a lot more information about people there.
We can get it from people we trust and rely on.
So these 19 countries, really 30, depending which subjects we want to talk about, that the Trump administration has identified as putting a hold on asylum from those countries.
This is really facing a problem that we've had for a long time and haven't faced up to.
And Americans aren't used to this, but there isn't really a solution for some of these problems.
You don't work through things with the Taliban about sharing information on their own people for two reasons.
One, we wouldn't believe them.
But two, any time you ask a question, I'm an attorney, I do trial work and so forth.
When you ask a question, you give away that you're interested in that particular information.
Even that sort of backhanded providing of information, we wouldn't want to do with Syria or Afghanistan or a number of other countries, Venezuela again, because that could endanger the very individuals we're asking about or their families and so forth.
So this is a real pickle.
It's not one that really can be solved.
And up to now, as a country, we have made the decision to ignore the threats posed by the inability to vet people coming in from a good number of countries around the world.
So we do have a legal process to strip people from asylum.
And it's actually simpler to do the earlier in the process you are, obviously.
The biggest hurdle in the U.S. immigration process is not asylum, it's getting a green card.
Once you get a green card, you're more or less on cruise control to citizenship unless something unusual happens.
The vetting and the effort that goes into deciding to grant a green card is very significant.
It's very high.
A lot of manpower hours at the USCIS, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which I was the acting director of before I became the acting deputy secretary at DHS.
And they're the agency that handles all of these questions and processes all these questions.
With one exception, to your question, what about monitoring people and re-vetting them?
ICE has a substantial role to play.
And one of the things ICE agents do a good bit of is the re-vetting of people, the monitoring of people who are in this country.
They have been utterly and completely overwhelmed for a long time.
They are so far outstripped.
You could multiply ICE in manpower by 10 times, and maybe they'd be able to vet and monitor people in this country, non-Americans, of course, in the manner people expect and that's been prescribed over the years under both Democrat and Republican administrations.
And that is just not happening as a simple matter of a lack of resources.
So the commitment by the Trump administration to go back, commit the resources, which is manpower primarily, to re-vetting people in this country, particularly given the massive numbers of people that the Biden administration let in with effectively no vetting, is an enormous amount of work.
It is an enormous amount of work.
But if you have a limited number of resources to do vetting with, frankly, it makes sense to stop new people coming in from those countries that are so difficult to vet and put those resources on effectively for the first time vetting people who have been let in primarily under the Biden administration.
And we're talking about enormous numbers of people, hundreds of thousands from Afghanistan and millions from around the world.
Well, you know, one thing we haven't talked about since about February is the border.
And the simple reason is, and I've been on your program, you know, in years past and predicted that Donald Trump could close the border, by which I mean more or less solve the illegal immigration problem at the border in six weeks.
And he did.
And so we've heard nothing about the border.
So whatever else, whatever other judgments people may pass on the Department of Homeland Security and its leadership, they have gotten better control of the border than at any other time in yours and my lifetimes, not counting COVID, when we literally just turned people around at the border.
But in ordinary times, I'll say they have better border control now than ever before.
Okay, so that allows you to turn your effort and resources toward the kind of vetting of people who are already here that you and I were just talking about, as well as deportation.
And I think, I don't have inside knowledge, but I suspect that what the president is most upset about is if you remember when he was campaigning, he made a variety of different statements.
He did say they were going to prioritize security threats, people who've committed other crimes.
They have done that.
The recent data release from ICE shows that two-thirds of the people they're picking up have other criminal records.
To me, as somebody who was an engineer before going to law school, I'm an efficiency nut.
That's incredibly inefficient.
The ratio shouldn't be that high.
And that sounds funny to people, but a priority which Donald Trump has followed through on making people who've committed additional crimes a priority makes absolute sense.
But there may be somewhere between 2 and 5% of the total illegal population here.
And he also set goals for himself of deporting a million people a year during his term.
And that, they are nowhere close to reaching those kinds of numbers.
They're not even close.
And even with the monetary infusion they got this summer, they have not built out the infrastructure necessary to even make a run at those kinds of deportation numbers.
Well, look, Christy Noam is focused on deterrence.
You see her on television a lot.
And DHS is a very difficult management challenge.
The comparison I make to people is the Department of War.
You know, they break things and kill people in five ways: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and now Space Force.
Very unified set of missions.
Lots of overlap in resources and manpower and training and so forth.
And then look at the Department of Homeland Security, which was formed after 9-11.
And let's be honest about it.
It was formed on a bipartisan basis to look busy.
The only joke I have of my old Italian pastor is: what do you do when Jesus comes back?
Look a busy.
And Republicans and Democrats alike were terrified of their voters because of the incredible failures, plural, that went into 9-11.
And so they built this whole new department and turned to their voters and said, look at us, we've created this whole new department because we're so busy solving this problem.
And really all they did is reshuffle a lot of authority, create new communications challenges.
They divided immigration responsibility from one agency, INS, into three, ICE, CBP, and USCIS, made them less efficient, structurally less efficient.
And that was a rather random decision.
And also in the Department of Homeland Security, you have Secret Service, you have CISA, you have FEMA, you have TSA.
And yes, you can argue all of them have some role in homeland security, but even the name Homeland Security is misleading because really the Department of Homeland Security's jurisdiction is strongest at the border.
And it is the FBI who is responsible within the United States as a legal matter for Homeland Security.
So it's a very messy management arrangement.
As you probably know, I was the lead author of the Project 2025 effort to write out proposed policies with this incoming administration.
And on page one of what we wrote for DHS was to dismantle DHS because it is such a difficult management challenge.
And I say that to say this.
It is very difficult to build the kind of pipeline for deportations that Donald Trump wanted to build and wants to build.
It's not over, of course.
He's in his first year.
But it involves an awful long line of effort, resources, time.
There are timelines legally built into processes.
And all of this is done in the face of courts that all over the country try to stop and interfere with the work of the Department of Homeland Security.
So I think his fundamental frustration is that they are not deporting anywhere near the numbers of illegals here that he had intended.
They are, in fact, on track to come well below the numbers, less than half, I think, of the goals he wanted to set.
So I think that's what's driving the president's frustration.
And I don't see a lot of activity changing that would increase those numbers substantially.
Well, I've got a long line of callers who want to chat with you, as usual, when you join us on the Washington Journal.
Sal is up first in Bayo, New Jersey.
Republican, Sal, you're on with Ken Cuccinelli.
unidentified
Hello, Mr. Cuccinelli.
I would like to ask you, what do you think about Chip Roy's idea of closing the border permanently for 10 years and then sorting out all of the illegals and then opening them up after we sort them out, take them out, and then open up our borders again?
So I fundamentally agree with the concept, Sal, that we need to catch up.
My comments earlier about vetting so many of these people who came in under the Biden administration really on an open borders policy.
And the president, who's obligated to follow the law, volunteered to not follow the law, President Biden.
And so now we have an enormous amount of work to do with literally millions of people who came into the country illegally.
And I do agree with Chip Roy.
I wouldn't set a particular time.
I would set out the job and get about doing it of finding and deporting the people who entered illegally and then properly vetting the people who had any legal basis to stay here.
And look, we have the highest percentage of foreign-born people in this country that we've had in a very long time.
That is not, you know, and America has been the most generous country in the world when it comes to allowing immigration.
Legal immigration, we're very, very generous.
And we have been taken advantage of.
And that has been in part a political decision, primarily by the Democrat Party or parts of it.
You know, both Presidents Obama and Biden, Biden much more so than Obama, accelerated that process.
There used to be a fairly bipartisan, I don't know, agreement on the subject of immigration right up through Bill Clinton's presidency.
There was a balanced approach by both parties.
And in the 2000s, it began to become much more political.
And it has been so much more difficult internally for us to manage this subject because it's been such a political hot potato now.
And I agree fundamentally, Sal, that we have to catch up on our vetting and the review of people who are already here.
And we need America to be able to have the time to absorb and assimilate the people who can be absorbed and assimilated.
I would just like to say, as a fellow Virginian, Ken, very disappointed in you that you would knowingly and willingly worked for such a cruel, self-serving administration.
You complain how the Finn, the Finn budget is causing problems with our immigration department, but yet you failed to say how Trump fired hundreds of immigration lawyers.
And this is just to keep the backlog going and keep people from having fair access to our laws.
Why don't you also tell us, Ken, how many business people have you arrested for knowingly and willingly hiring illegal immigrants?
You all want to put the onus back on the illegal immigrants, but yet we never hear about the rich white businessmen that knowingly and willingly prosper off the back of these illegals.
I don't appreciate the delivery necessarily, but I agree with your basic point.
And one of the areas that there is bipartisan agreement still in immigration is enforcement against American companies who are exploiting people illegally.
So no one watching should mistake this fact.
Yes, we're talking about people who broke the law, illegal immigrants, and so forth.
And so I believe they should be treated as people who have broken the law and they and their families should be removed from this country.
But they are still human beings.
They still deserve the treatment and dignity that every human being deserves.
We see this in our criminal justice system.
Just because you've committed a crime, and I'm going to go all the way to letting them, you know, assuming guilt, even when you've committed a crime, we treat you with basic dignity.
And that should never escape.
And I don't agree with Amanda's comment that certainly when I was there nor now does anybody want to avoid treating people with dignity.
That doesn't mean they won't be aggressive about doing their job and so forth.
But in the first Trump administration, we really only had one, one big work site enforcement effort where the company was prosecuted.
It was Mississippi Chicken Plants.
This was in the summer of 2019.
And to Amanda's point, in addition to removing the 650 or so illegal workers who were there and processing them for deportation, we also prosecuted the people in that company who the evidence demonstrated were clearly intentionally using illegal aliens, were exploiting them.
You know, if you're hiring an illegal knowingly, part of the reason you're doing it is because they can't complain, right?
They don't have anywhere to go.
So there is real exploitation that goes on on both sides of this.
So I agree with you, Amanda, that we should be more aggressive in prosecuting this.
And I would note for you that unlike the first Trump administration, this Trump administration has actually prioritized work site enforcement, and they are building cases even today against companies, not just deporting the individuals involved, but against companies.
And we've seen this of all kinds of sizes, right up to, I think it was Hyundai at a construction site.
So that is a very important component.
The vast majority of people who come here illegally, break our laws, and break into our country, are coming here to work and get paid more than they can work and get paid in their home country.
I understand that.
We can all understand why somebody might do that.
But we have to control our own country.
And if we let businesses, frankly, cut their own costs and abuse the human dignity of people who are here illegally and not be prosecuted, then they're just going to keep doing it.
So I think it's very important, the change in direction under the second Trump administration to actually engage in enforcing the law against those businesses that are exploiting illegal aliens.
So, you know, Amanda, I've always believed with my fellow Virginians that I have yet to find a person I don't agree with on something on.
And you and I obviously agree on this point, and I'm happy to share that agreement with you.
Yeah, there's a much more general one, but I mean, the government is supposed to represent the people to the extent it controls the country, including the borders.
But the people are ultimately, meaning American citizens, let's be very specific given this discussion.
It isn't just who happens to be here.
It is American citizens that are supposed to control the U.S. government, which in turn represents us in exercising its limited control of our territory.
And by limited control, I mean keeping us safe and at the borders, only allowing people in who have a right to enter.
So the conventional wisdom has grown up over the years that anybody born here is a citizen, but that's not consistent with the 14th Amendment.
That case will zero in on one part of the 14th Amendment where, and I'm paraphrasing, that people born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, that phrase is going to be the centerpiece of the case.
That's going to be what's debated.
And when you're a citizen of another country, including at your birth, when you're born of two citizens, say, of let's just take our neighbor Mexico, you're a Mexican citizen.
Frankly, when you turn 18, you're subject to the draft in Mexico.
You're not subject to the jurisdiction exclusively of the United States, and so you don't get citizenship that way.
We'll see what the Supreme Court decides, but I would point out to people who followed this that the law in the 1800s was relatively clear and in the other direction than our current conventional wisdom.
I mean, the Supreme Court decided a case in 1882 called Elk v. Wilkins, which involved American Indians, Native Americans, and that were born here, obviously, in the United States, and were not U.S. citizens.
And they were absolutely legally present in the United States.
They lived here with us.
They were allowed to live here with us.
And we'll set aside the Indian War history, but that was a legal decision.
A few years later, in Wong v. Ark, another case that you hear most about, Wong was a Chinese, he was born of Chinese parents in the United States who were here legally under what we would now call something like a green card.
So they were legal permanent residents.
And Wong left the country and came back.
He went to China to visit family and came back, and they blocked his entry and said, You're not a citizen.
That's where that's where that fight began.
And the Supreme Court said, No, he is a citizen.
And I would distinguish that case for folks because he was born of green card holders.
We would say today, even those of us who have my position on birthright citizenship, that someone born of green card holders in the United States, they're legally present, they're subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
That child is a U.S. citizen.
So there's a significant split in the two cases that exist in the Supreme Court.
They're both from the 1800s, and this hasn't been litigated in the Supreme Court since the end of the 1800s.
So over 125 years.
So we'll see what the Supreme Court does.
I think if they're true to the text of the 14th Amendment, that you will see Donald Trump's position prevail and that the anchor baby strategy of people entering the United States and pregnancy tourism, birth tourism, which is a real thing, believe it or not, it's an industry in California, will come to an end.
January 20th is when we're expecting the arguments for that case, and we'll, of course, show you those arguments here on C-SPAN.
Let you listen to them live.
This is Barbara in Bedford, Ohio, Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
unidentified
Yes, my name is Barbara Mobley.
I'm a first-term caller, and I thank you for my call.
I'm calling because this whole thing is about browning of America.
I heard this years ago.
And this is why immigrants are being sent, low-paying immigrant jobs are being sent back out of America to put black people in their place for low-paying jobs, which means they cannot afford white women.
Yeah, I don't think there's an ability to convince people like Barbara that people like me that want strict immigration enforcement want it because it's our law and it's important that we control our own borders and who lives here regardless of what color they are.
And, you know, we can, this is almost like a first grade argument.
Uh-huh, uh-uh, uh-huh.
You know, so if I'm sorry that Barbara believes that, and I imagine there are some people who make decisions based, they'll always will be, based on the color of their skin.
And those people are every color too, Barbara.
And, you know, I've experienced that in Virginia.
So we've seen that play out in all directions.
We obviously have a history with black Americans that's unique because of slavery.
And we have, you know, we fought a civil war and had a civil rights movement, two of them actually, one in the 1870s, which failed, and one in the 1960s, which succeeded.
And we've come a long way.
And that history is, you know, something that's obvious to think about whenever we talk about who are we letting in and why.
We just talked about birthright citizenship.
The 14th Amendment was passed to make sure that freed black Americans who had been slaves would have every benefit of citizenship that everybody else, at that time it was, that would be just white people, had as Americans already.
And the 14th Amendment is still a foundational element of maintaining that protection.
But for people like me, the issue of immigration is about, you know, interestingly, she talked about low-paying jobs and keeping black people down, her words, not mine.
In my view, one of the biggest economic harms, and I've written on this, of large-scale immigration is that it limits opportunities for American poor people.
And American poor people are disproportionately minorities.
So make no mistake about the fact that people like me are trying to create economic opportunity for poor Americans who are disproportionately minorities.
So I'm fighting for those what she called brown people in America that Barbara seems to be confused about in terms of who benefits from what.
Large-scale, and I said it earlier in our conversation, large-scale, actually maybe I said it on a different show last night, large-scale illegal immigration, low-skill immigration hurts American poor people the most and the worst.
And there's evidence of this, there's plenty of evidence of this, but the most recent evidence was how the economy was doing at the end of 2019 before the pandemic hit.
It was a roaring economy, but you know who is doing the best?
Who is having the biggest percentage increases?
It was the bottom quintile in our economic structure, the bottom 20%, because not only did Trump cut taxes and regulation, critically that happened at a time when meaningful enforcement happened against or to stop unskilled, massive immigration at the low end of the economic scale.
So our poorer people had more opportunities with higher paying jobs and it was reflected in the numbers.
So the people involved would be the Department of Homeland Security.
The Department of State actually plays a lead role in this kind of a decision because of their regular interaction with these other countries.
Those are the two key players.
But others will have a say.
The intelligence agencies will have a little something to say, not critical, but they always pay attention to this.
And the Department of War, because they are kind of their own mini Department of State, they interact with an awful lot of countries.
But the lead two will be the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security coordinating with the White House.
And the rationale here is what I mentioned earlier is the near impossibility of actually vetting people from many countries around the world.
And the administration will be working with the ones they can work with to establish reliable vetting processes, which will probably mean Americans alongside fill-in-the-blank country as systems get put in place so we know what's going into that system reliably.
And so we thus know what we're getting out of that system.
You know, you only get information of the quality put in out of a system.
So, and we're banking a lot.
We're relying a great deal for our own security on what comes out of those systems.
So I expect you'll see some of that going on while there's a travel ban on.
That is not going to be a permanent ban, though there are some countries that it's hard for me to foresee how they get off of that travel ban list.
Now, that doesn't mean that particular individuals who we know a lot about won't come through actual asylum, you know, when asylum was for political prisoners coming from the Soviet Union and Cuba and so forth, as opposed to just a due process excuse to stay in the country when you've been caught here illegally.
And if, you know, hopefully this will be part of getting asylum back to what it really ought to be, and that's protecting people who can assimilate into the United States who are threatened by their own governments for various reasons.
I just wanted to thank the Trump administration first and foremost for the action that is going on right now.
unidentified
And then I have some points of view.
My point of view about this whole immigration and homeland security, first of all, this is our homeland and they are securing it.
We have the best agencies in the world for intelligence and for operations.
And they're not just plucking random Mexicans and random Chinese and random, you know, random races that don't have their green card.
They have some sort of knowledge as to, you know, as to their money situation, as to their connections in other countries.
And what I feel is happening, what I see happening from my point of view, is we are securing our country.
We're stopping the flow of illegal money and our money leaving the country to allow foreign entities to come back in.
You know, we're actually stopping domestic terrorism.
And Stanley corrected if I'm wrong, but there's things that we as the public probably should not pry into.
9-11 hasn't happened again, have it?
You know, I mean, there are so many things that lawmakers are trying to pry into and politicians, you know, and their money is actually coming from foreign entities, as to my supposition, you know, to be able to curb the laws, to allow the flow of illegal money and enterprises and being funneled into our country for the purpose of whatever the purpose is.
I have to say, I find it very offensive on behalf of the agents doing this work when so many news outlets, I'm Catholic, the Catholic bishops recently put out a statement, and they started off with a phrase like indiscriminate enforcement.
And that is offensive and wrong.
The enforcement done by DHS is not indiscriminate.
It is not, you know, they're human beings, so mistakes are always going to be made.
That's always true.
But the fact of the matter is, we have almost one and a half million people in this country who already have removal orders.
They've all been all the way through the due process, the extensive, overly extensive, in my view, due process that people get to try to stay here when they're here illegally.
There's almost 500,000 people who've committed additional crimes in addition to coming into the country illegally.
And we just saw recent ICE data that about 150,000 of those, roughly, have been removed.
So that's about a third of the, what I'll call, additional crime committers that have been deported.
That is an incredible proportion under any circumstances.
That shows you that it hasn't been indiscriminate at all.
If I have a complaint, it's that that's not efficient.
We should always prioritize people who commit other crimes.
And Trump promised to do that, and his administration has done that as the numbers bear out.
But you also need to use the opportunity to get your numbers up.
It isn't just because you commit two crimes that you should be deported, but you're here illegally.
That's enough.
And when a criminal alien, we'll call him, is found in his house and he lives with his family, who's also here illegally, they should all be removed.
And not to do so is wildly inefficient.
So you've put the intelligence and enforcement effort into this one person.
You've come across, let's say, five.
Then you should remove all five.
And it's, again, it's just inefficient and slow not to do so.
And this is a one-way ratchet.
When a Joe Biden opens the borders, millions of people come in in four years.
Different estimates, but certainly about eight or 10 million cross that border.
And we're not going to remove, at the pace we're going under a Trump presidency, maybe if they accelerate it, they'll remove 2 million of those people.
So you'd never even get close to removing the people Joe Biden let in.
So that's my not random enforcement point.
Her comment about domestic terrorism is correct.
We have never had another event like 9-11.
We have had small-scale domestic terrorism.
I do want to make the point, since I'm here, that domestic terrorism is not the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security.
It's the responsibility of the FBI.
Now, when things cross the international border that may have a role in terrorism in the United States, then the Homeland Security agents of ICE also have jurisdiction alongside the FBI, so they work together, as you would expect, to identify and remove those kinds of threats.
And when the joint terrorist task forces that exist all around the country with local, state, and federal law enforcement actually move to seize and remove people, over two-thirds of the time they use immigration authorities brought by the HSI agents to do that because it is the most efficient way to protect America.
And so those are my comments on the lady's point of view, as she called it.
And happy to take other questions if we have time.
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Democrat, you have a quick question?
unidentified
Not really quick, but I'd just like to ask him if he means that the American military in a declared war against Afghanistan-Taliban could vet,
I mean, could vet 15-year-old kids to be assassins and many other Afghani citizens to help them with the promise that they could be U.S. citizens or at least get asylum and on the road to citizenship in America,
that then America can say, no, I'm sorry, we can't vet you, after they've already been vetted in a third country and vetted again by the military, vetted over and over again by the military and the CIA.
Look, a lot of those folks who primarily the role was translators, they worked for both sides.
And, you know, to Mary's point, you know, she said, oh, they were vetted to come work for the U.S.
I guarantee you, those U.S. soldiers kept a very close eye on those translators because, as we know, there were plenty of incidents, even after vetting, where folks inside the wire, as they would say, were an obvious threat to American and Allied forces.
So vetting in a country like Afghanistan is an extremely imperfect undertaking.
And I, unlike Mary, am not willing to risk American security even for our generosity.
Now, if we made the explicit promise, and I don't believe that, you know, I think people like Mary have been lied to as if we've just promised everybody in Afghanistan who worked with us, if you work with us, you can come to America and be an American citizen.
That did not happen.
That did not happen at large scale.
So, you know, don't think we're breaking promises with an awful lot of these folks.
And again, a lot of them also worked for the Taliban at various times.
So, you know, if you want them living next door to you and you're willing to risk it, you know, I'd be really curious, Mary.
But I'm not willing to risk it for my family and my community.
And I don't think you and many other people would if we personalized it like that and made you own the consequences of that security decision.
So I think we come down in different places on that, but that's why we have a constitutional republic and we get to debate these things.
Coming up this morning a little later on, we'll have some more time for your calls in open forum.
But up next, it's author, law professor, ABC News legal contributor Kim Whaley joining us to discuss executive power in the Trump administration, the recent Springford arguments, and White House pardons.
We'll have that conversation right after the break.
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Back at our desk now, it's Kimberly Whaley, law professor at the University of Baltimore, ABC News legal contributor, author of several books, including Pardon Power, How the Pardon System Works and Why.
Before we get to pardons, though, there was a Supreme Court case yesterday that was argued here on Capitol Hill.
This is the lead story in today's New York Times, the headline, power to fire likely to grow for the presidency, protections at risk for independent officials in the FTC case.
Why is this case important?
unidentified
It's important because federal agencies don't just operate like executive branch actors, that is, law enforcement officials, prosecutors.
They also regulate.
And when agencies regulate, that's basically like legislation.
It operates the same way.
Congress gives agencies power to legislate.
So what this case is really about is consolidating complete power over agencies, not just executive branch power, presidential power, but also all that legislative power in the president and not allowing Congress to put restraints on how people in the executive branch are hired and fired.
If we just go back to the three branches of government, where do independent agencies fall?
Are they in the executive branch?
Are they in the legislative branch?
Are they in the judicial branch?
unidentified
They're technically in the executive branch, but they're created by Congress.
So Congress passes laws making these agencies.
And the theory is if they're going to make the agencies, they can dissolve the agencies and they can put some details on how the agencies actually work.
It's that question, that is, can Congress say, listen, President, you can control the agency, but for certain people, you can only fire them for cause, neglect, malfeasance, something like that.
For 90 years, the Supreme Court has said, okay, that's okay because there's actually nothing in the Constitution that gives the president the power to remove anybody.
It's only appointment.
It's that 90-year precedent that now, after the fact, the Trump administration is arguing that that infringes on presidential power, and therefore all of those limitations on removal have to go.
The only difference between an independent agency and a department-level agency is they tend to have these commissions.
There won't be one person in charge, like the Secretary of Defense, for example.
There'll be like the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Federal Trade Commission with multiple people in charge.
And the idea, again, with that is to sort of dilute power so it's not concentrated in the political system.
A term that has come up with this case yesterday and the arguments around this case, unitary executive theory.
What is that?
unidentified
It's a theory.
And the idea, and I say it's a theory because we talk a lot about textualism, originalism.
This is a gloss on the Constitution that essentially says once presidents get power, there's no limitation.
So the argument here, it's a one-way ratchet.
So there's about 3 million people in the executive branch.
And the idea is, okay, if it's presidential power, the president effectively operates like a monarch, and that Congress and the courts cannot push back on that power.
This was a big argument during the second Bush administration with the torture memos and the war on terror.
The argument back then was, as commander-in-chief, he cannot be constrained by the other branches of government.
Now the argument is morphed to as president, period, and all the powers of the presidency, he can't be restrained by the other branches of government here when it comes to firing certain officials.
On the powers of the presidency, let me shift to pardons because pardons have very much been in the news.
What are the limits people are asking right now?
What are the limits to a presidential pardon?
unidentified
Well, just like the other powers in the Constitution for the president, there aren't any express limits except that they're for federal crimes and he cannot pardon impeachments.
Historically, there aren't a lot of cases that have come up around pardons.
People don't really have standing to challenge pardons.
The court has pulled back to some degree, said, listen, once somebody has paid a fine into the federal treasury, presidents can't give that back because that's Congress's power.
But beyond that, it's been really treated like a king-like power with no limitations on the pardon.
Now, where does it come from?
It goes back to even before the New Testament.
Famously, though, in the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth was denied a pardon, and that's why he was crucified.
The idea really behind pardons is mercy.
That back in common law England, there wasn't a well-developed criminal justice system.
There weren't criminal defense rights.
There wasn't a jury trial for a long time.
And so the idea was the king needs to be able to step in and sort of have a fairness element in a system that was kind of a bit of the Wild West.
Now we have a well-built-out criminal justice system.
We have a lot of laws.
We have constitutional protections.
We have appeals.
So as I argue in my book, the pardon power isn't needed today the way it was then.
But even then, before the ratification of the Constitution, the framers had debates on whether the pardon power could be abused.
And just to put it in context, so how does Donald Trump's use of the pardon power in his second term, how's it going to pair to the first term and to other modern presidents?
unidentified
Well, you know, you could say, why do we have a criminal justice system at all?
Like, why do we put people in jail and put them through these processes?
It's to keep the public safe.
It's maybe to make certain people whole that were criminalized.
So Donald Trump, first day in office, pardons, you know, 1,600 people that were, many of whom were violent at the Capitol, puts them out into the public.
We're seeing pardons that look like there's close relationships between the presidency, his sons, his businesses, and the people that are seeking pardons.
So this idea of it's kind of this goodie that you can give out to loyalists, I don't think we've seen that kind of pardon, abuse of the pardon, frankly, not legally, technically, but the sense of it is improper.
And we're seeing, you know, we're seeing a cottage industry.
You know, since January, lobbying disclosures demonstrated over $2 million being paid to people to lobby for pardons.
I mean, this undoes the entire criminal justice system, and it undoes the laws that Congress enacted, and it undoes the jury process and all the criminal process.
That is historically the case for pardons, but one other point on that, when Bill Clinton pardoned Mark Rich, which was a big scandal, he was a tax evader and had ties to a Clinton Foundation after the fact his wife gave money.
Congress did an investigation.
The Southern District of New York, the U.S. Attorney's Office did an investigation.
They didn't produce any kind of criminal actions, but that I think stands in stark contrast to today, where we all just assume there are no limits whatsoever on the pardon power.
That's not been the case, except, I think, in the last few years.
Kimberly Whaley is our guest, University of Baltimore law professor, author of several books to help you understand your government and legal issues related to, including the pardon power book, also what you need to know about voting and why, how to read the Constitution and why.
She's been on this program in the past to talk about all those books.
If you have questions about the pardon power or some of the cases before the Supreme Court, now would be a very good time for you to call in.
She's with us for about the next half hour or so.
202-748-8001 for Republicans.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Independence 202748-8002.
Just before we leave pardons, if you were to recommend to Congress how to fix the pardon process, one, can Congress do it or would it require a constitutional amendment?
And two, what would you recommend?
unidentified
Well, I'm on record as thinking we should really abolish the pardon power.
If there are problems in the criminal justice system, there's no way to fix it.
With fairness, then we should fix the criminal justice system.
There's no ban on disclosure laws, so there could be a requirement that the files and the internal documents relating to the pardon be made public so people can see if there's lobbying for pardons, if there's quid pro quos for pardons.
Congress could create, right now the recommendations are supposed to go through the Justice Department.
That's not happening with this Trump administration as robustly as it was.
Congress could create a mini agency with cross sections of the community, people representing different interests, to make recommendations.
And Congress could certainly beef up the lobbying for pardons.
Because right now it looks like if you've got money, a lot of money, and you have access and power already, you can get this get out of jail monopoly card.
Whereas regular people who don't have those things are not able to have that kind of goodie from the president.
That seems to be a distortion of how our criminal justice system works.
Did George Washington use the pardon power when he was president?
unidentified
Whiskey Rebellion.
So yeah, he pardoned rebels that were upset about the king putting taxes on liquor.
And that kind of gives rise to the other traditional use of the pardon power, which is amnesty, the idea the country's gone through a trauma, will pardon people to move the country forward.
And in theory, presidents get pushback from that, like Jimmy Carter pardoning people that dodged the draft in the Vietnam War.
Some say he didn't get a second term for that.
So in theory, every power under the Constitution should have accountability to the voting public.
There should be a way that the voting public can say, I don't like this.
This is my power.
It's not the power of a king.
It's the power of me collectively.
And right now we're seeing the pardon power get outside that scope.
Historically, was there a president that was known as the pardon president?
If you think pardons, you think this president?
unidentified
Well, I mean, I think Donald Trump is on record as pardoning more people than ever, historically any other president in history.
There have been presidents, I mean, Barack Obama did a widespread commutation order that, you know, for long drug sentences, for example, those were lessened.
Joe Biden issued pardons for people that were convicted of marijuana crimes.
So I want to put a pin in one point, which is, you know, as I said, I think we should get rid of the pardon power because it's now become a tool of corruption, but it could be used actually for justice.
George Bush, the second George Bush, when he left office, he made a statement I'm paraphrasing that, listen, we should rethink the pardon power because there's so much pressure for outgoing presidents to hand out these things in ways that aren't consistent with the system.
And why would a president, and I'm not talking Donald Trump or Barack Obama specifically, why would any president choose commutation versus pardoning?
What's the legal logic?
unidentified
Well, I don't know if there's any legal logic.
Again, it's supposed to be around a gestalt sense of whether, in fairness, this person should get the pardon.
You know, it's hard to say, except that commutation is a lesser relief.
So there have been instances where a sentence was commuted and then later the same president or a different president decided to give a full pardon.
The full pardon, in theory, is a sense of forgiveness.
Like this is a crime that I, President, am okay with the underlying behavior.
And this is, I think, if you unpack some of the things that's happening with President Trump, for example, pardoning ex-Hondoran President Hernandez, who was a narco king, according to the Department of Justice.
400 tons of cocaine brought into the United States, 4.2 billion doses of cocaine used the military allegedly to protect these shipments coming into the United States.
I think many Americans would say that's not the kind of activity that should be forgiven by a United States president.
That's just one of the arguments that are being made in critique of that particular pardon right now.
Well, I actually agree with Glenn's general assessment that people talk about Donald Trump's threatened threats in the past to suspend the Constitution.
There are provisions of the Constitution that have been effectively suspended by the Supreme Court.
The Fifth Amendment due process clause sending eight people to South Sudan where they could be tortured and killed without basic due process.
The Fourth Amendment, I know Ken Cuccinelli was talking about how these ICE detentions are functioning.
There was a case in which it was clear the department is using race and skin color and whether you speak Spanish to pull people aside in the Supreme Court in these emergency shadow docket rulings are greenlighting that things, that kind of thing.
Creating the department Doge Department, that's actually a power of Congress, dissolving USAID, that's a power of Congress.
Giving Elon Musk, a private billionaire, unprecedented power over multiple agencies.
He's not accountable at all to the Constitution, to the American public.
All this stuff is happening under our noses.
The Supreme Court is in these emergency petitions without full briefing oral argument is overriding the lower court judges that are just putting pauses on this stuff.
They're kind of wait a minute orders, like, whoa, let's just wait and see.
Can I just see what's going on here?
The court saying, no, we're going to let Donald Trump go forward.
So I agree that we're seeing a very new construction or understanding of the Constitution.
And I would argue it's kind of what the framers are exactly what the framers rejected.
Yeah, so typically when you're talking about litigation, it goes through the district court, it goes to an appellate court, then it goes to the Supreme Court on what's called a redistricori.
Both sides will brief things.
Amicus briefs, friends of the court that have different ideas all file.
And there are some cases that will then show on C-SPAN.
unidentified
Exactly.
We're talking about them at the top of this conversation.
And then you'll get big, long opinions.
And so that the public can know what's going on.
There's this emergency docket.
For example, historically, if someone's going to be executed the next day, and the person's lawyers are saying, listen, my client was convicted or put on death row for the wrong reasons.
He's innocent or there's some problems in the process.
The Supreme Court might say, okay, we're going to stay the execution order under this emergency process because once this person's executed, we can't fix the problem, right?
So Donald Trump's lawyers are coming in and saying, okay, this is an emergency.
And the emergency time, again, is the president's being slowed down in implementing his agenda.
Traditionally, that's not the kind of argument that would be an emergency that would allow any litigant to leapfrog over all the other processes.
So the shadow docket is issuing orders in that way.
And the Supreme Court's doing it in ways like the Department of Education really taking a sledgehammer to the Department of Education.
Lower court said, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait.
We've got to see if this is okay.
Supreme Court said, no, go ahead and do it.
And then we'll adjudicate it after the fact in a full process.
What about this concern that the Trump administration has and that the court has spoken out on on lower courts putting stays well beyond the specific case that they're being asked about, that they become these national stays that do slow down the Trump administration beyond the scope of the case that the lower court is being asked to decide about?
unidentified
Yeah, so that's been called universal injunctions in the first iteration of the birthright citizenship challenge.
The Supreme Court declared those unlawful, so those are no longer something lower courts can do.
But just, you know, I thought that was kind of a distraction in a way, because if you think about any kind of lawsuit, you sued company ABCD, company ABCD has offices all over the world, but you've got, you did, they did something wrong to you.
The court will issue an injunction against company ABCD saying, don't do that anymore.
And that's what these universal injunctions were.
Listen, government stopped doing that.
It just means you stop the behavior.
The fact that other people might benefit from that stopping the behavior, not just the plaintiff, is just beside the point.
What this Supreme Court said is government can now only do something that binds that plaintiff or that helps that plaintiff.
So it's created a system where it's much harder now for regular people to stop bad government behavior because everybody has to have, in theory, their very own lawsuit.
And it's very expensive in the United States to hire lawyers.
I know the pardon of his son, Hunter, got a lot of pushback.
But that wasn't the first time that a president has pardoned behavior that hasn't been yet adjudicated and charged with a conviction or a plea.
I mean, famously, Richard Nixon was pardoned by Gerald Ford for all conduct relating to Watergate, and there had not been an indictment against Richard Nixon.
So there is that history.
You know, with respect to the Biden pardon of his son, the argument there was that Joe Biden was concerned about vindictive prosecutions under the Trump administration against political enemies.
And many people would argue we're seeing those happen.
I mean, Donald Trump has not been shy about identifying his political enemies, about being clear that he believes the Justice Department is a personal arm for himself.
He's very upfront about these things.
And Joe Biden did allow his Justice Department in two separate cases to prosecute his own son during his administration.
He could have called up the Justice Department and said, call off the dogs on my child.
He did not.
And so I perceive that particular pardon as Joe Biden anticipating what was coming down the pike, which has come down the pike, and basically deciding my son has been through enough.
You know, we can argue with whether that was a good decision, but I think that's of a different color and character than pardoning a former head of a country that was using the power as the president of Honduras to facilitate drug trafficking into the United States, which involved probably hurt many, many Americans.
Let me stay on that particular pardon for a second.
Let me go to the White House briefing room.
Carolyn Levitt, defending the president's pardon of the former Honduran president.
This is about a minute and a half.
unidentified
A separate question.
The president several days ago said it was his intention to pardon the former president of Honduras, who was a convicted drug trafficker.
And yesterday on Air Force One, the president said that if someone sells drugs in that country, that doesn't mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life.
How is that different than what the administration is accusing Benezuela's Nicolas Maduro?
You're cherry-picking the president's statement a little bit yesterday, as he also said yesterday.
The people of Honduras have highlighted to him how the former president Hernandez was set up.
This was a clear Biden over prosecution.
He was the president of this country.
He was in the opposition party.
He was opposed to the values of the previous administration, and they charged him because he was president of Honduras.
There were some other egregious facts that came out during this trial, and I would encourage you to report on them.
His court-appointed lawyer was only given three weeks to prepare for trial.
He shared that his conviction was lawfare by the leftist party, who, quote, struck a deal with the Biden-Harris administration.
Hernandez has highlighted there was virtually no independent evidence presented, and many of his conviction was based on testimony from many admitted criminals who hoped that cooperating would reduce their own penalties.
So the president heard the concerns from many people, as he does, and he's, of course, within his constitutional authority to sign clemency for whomever he deems worthy of that.
Really Raleigh, what do you think about those arguments from Caroline Levitt?
unidentified
Well, the problem, and people have said this with the arguments that someone like Mr. Hernandez should be pardoned, they ring hollow given the Trump administration's position on people in the Caribbean who are alleged drug traffickers that are being killed.
And so there's an intellectual inconsistency or dishonesty there that I think is something the public should hold this administration accountable for if they decide that that's important to them.
But she really does an excellent job, I think, of laying out the problem with pardons in general, right?
So typically, there's a whole process of investigation, indictment through a grand jury or through an information, exchange of discovery, facts to both sides, presentation before a jury, the jury deliberates, the jury issues a decision, the judge issues a sentence, the sentence is appealed.
I mean, that's how the whole process is supposed to work.
There's a lot of people involved, and there's a lot of law, rules of evidence, defense mechanisms under the Constitution that are supposed to get it right.
And then you have someone coming in and saying, you know what, I'm looking at all this and I think it was all wrong.
And that's in theory the problem with the pardon.
It undoes all the work of the other two branches.
And I think it also now is creating this question for prosecutors, do I go through all of this?
I mean, Trump has pardoned people that were prosecuted by his own Justice Department.
Do I go through all of this knowing that at any point, a pardon could be lobbied for?
The president thinks there's a reason that probably benefits him for issuing the pardon, and all that work goes out the window.
And so we have to ask ourselves as Americans, is this making the country less safe, this use of pardons?
And I should say I was speaking to a group of high schoolers in Austin, Texas after my book came out last fall, and a teacher raised his hand in the back and said after Trump's first pardons, which involved a lot of hip-hop artists and really well-known people, his students were saying, listen, I can just commit crimes and get pardons.
Of course, they don't have money and access to be really reasonably have that process available to them.
And the DOJ requirements actually put that way off after they've served their sentence.
But it just is an anecdote that demonstrates it.
It creates potentially an incentive.
Listen, I can commit crimes so long as they're okay with the president.
If mercy is a foundational principle of our legal system, if we get rid of the pardon process, where's the place for mercy?
unidentified
Congress could pass laws that change the place for mercy.
I mean, habeas corpus in theory, it's a parallel way of challenging a sentence.
And that is that you're being unlawfully detained.
And the Supreme Court has held that even if you are on death row and there's evidence of your innocence, the court has not been willing to expand that law because there's always this escape valve known as the pardon.
Is this handing more power to the justices, the judicial branch versus the executive?
unidentified
Yeah, I think this was Glenn who mentioned what's happening right now.
We're not only seeing an expansion of the Belt and suspenders of the White House, we're seeing an expansion of the Belt and suspenders of the United States Supreme Court.
Every time they reverse this precedent, and they're doing it very robustly, they're essentially amending the Constitution.
For us, we the people to do it, it takes supermajorities in the Congress and in the state legislatures to do this.
So, yeah, I think on many levels this is problematic, but I want to put a pin, again, well, a different pin.
And what I just said, we've got many pins on the table.
unidentified
There's a lot that Congress can do.
Congress is kind of kicking back and saying, well, you know, we're polarized.
We're in crisis.
We can't get anything done, pointing fingers.
Many of these problems could be resolved through our representatives.
And I would say, if people are upset about this, fire the people you don't like in Congress that aren't doing their job, hire people that are willing to do the work of the people.
Anyway, Professor Whaley, Wash, I got two questions.
They're going to be quick.
You two can choose to answer the second one if you want.
I just want your opinion on this.
Do you feel like we're getting enough information on the reason why he is, the president is making all these pardons of these, I'll be kind on this questionable people?
And the second question is: do you think we're going to see the Bears and the Bills in the Super Bowl?
So he really put his finger on something important to me.
My family, my grandmother had a Jim Kelly shrine in her little house in Buffalo, New York.
On the first point, the Justice Department historically, when you use the Freedom of Information Act to get the details behind a pardon, right?
I mean, a criminal record is on the record.
We know what happened for a jury.
We know what evidence.
They've used the deliberative process privilege.
They said, listen, this is internal deliberations of the president.
In many cases, you can't have it.
So I think Congress could amend that, could amend the FOIA, Freedom of Information Act, and say pardon records have to be made public.
That could go to the Supreme Court under this new unitary executive theory.
But I absolutely agree.
You know, sunshine is the best disinfectant, and the American people cannot know how to vote if we don't even know what's going on.
And so information is power.
I say that information is power.
And I absolutely agree that particularly if people are lobbying and paying a lot of money to fancy lawyers and lobbyists in Washington to get themselves or someone within their network or a loved one out of prison, and there are millions of Americans that don't have access to that, we should know what's going on.
I'll tell you, Bobby, you're talking about a topic that we covered in our first segment of the Washington Journal, the announcement from the president of the White House yesterday using tariff money.
Not sure if it's the subject area we want to focus on here.
We have Kimberly Whaley, who's an expert in legal matters, and I've got a bunch of people waiting to talk about that.
So can I go to Shelly in Springfield, Virginia, Democrat?
unidentified
Good morning.
Hi, Kimberly.
This is Shelly.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Hi, Shelly.
Morning.
Hi.
I was one of the people who was affected by a court ruling by the shadow docket of the Supreme Court.
I worked for the U.S. Department of Education.
I was one of the people who worked in the statistical arm of the federal government that happened to be housed in the U.S. Department of Education, actually existed before there was a Department of Education.
And they basically fired almost everybody in the unit due to the doge cuts back in March.
And eventually, the shadow docket, after an injunction, stayed the injunction and they allowed us to be whipped while they figure out whether this was legal.
So my issue with that is now that this has been done, a lot of decades of work has been basically destroyed by stopping it mid-collection.
I don't see how you put the genie back in the bottle that there will be no recourse.
Am I way too pessimistic about this?
That's my question.
With respect to the Department of Education and these other shadow docket rulings, you make, I mean, I think the point you're making is important, which is that who's being harmed here?
The emergency rulings are supposed to stop harming the president.
And I think what the Supreme Court isn't acknowledging is that they're harming, it's allowing harm to go forward for thousands of regular Americans.
Same thing with pardons in a way.
Some of these pardons are freeing the obligation of restitution to victims, victims of Ponzi schemes, victims of fraud.
We talked earlier about the unitary executive theory.
I think with this case, the slaughter, Trump versus slaughter case involving the firings of the firing of one of the FTC commissioners, I think this could morph into an argument that, listen, the president's power to fire means people like Shelley and the caller, and that there's really nothing the law could do about it.
I am very concerned that if we were to get this back on track, back to lawfulness, we have a lawless White House right now.
It's lawless.
When I say that, it's just not adhering to laws.
It's not being made to hear to laws.
We will speed unless we get a speed ticket on the, you know, because there's a machine hiding in the bushes.
It's all basic human incentive and disincentives.
There's no incentive right now for the government to abide by the law.
If that were to change tomorrow, a magician or genie were to come down and put us all back in that system.
I agree with the caller that there's so much damage done to the federal government right now.
It'll take a long time to put it back together and to populate the government with people who adhere to the rule of law and believe that that actually matters.
So Republican, Democrat, Independent, what I've been out here saying now for almost 10 years as a public-facing academic who wants to translate these things to regular people, these things affect everybody.
They affect every single American.
They affect what your taxpayer dollars are being used for.
They affect individual liberties.
We haven't even talked about free speech in the First Amendment, which is under assault.
This is something everyone needs to care about, and we need to reach across the aisle and identify what are our values as Americans.
About a half an hour, 40 minutes ago, Ken Cuccinelli was on this program, and he gave his take on the birthright citizenship case.
It's being argued on January the 20th before the Supreme Court.
What do you think is going to happen in that case?
What should happen?
unidentified
What should happen is, in my view, they shouldn't have even taken the original emergency ruling where they created that ban on universal injunctions.
I mean, this is clear under the Constitution, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
These justices pretend to be textualists.
What's a textualist?
If it's in the Constitution, we can't mess with it.
It's black and white.
It's a short document.
There aren't many things that are really clear.
Birthright citizenship is one of them.
And he mentioned the case Juan Kim Ark.
The Supreme Court rejected the very argument that the Trump administration is making, which is that, listen, whether you get birthright citizenship depends on your parents' citizenship status.
Then the question is, how far back do you go?
How many generations back?
Who makes that decision?
Is it the nurse in the hospital?
I mean, how does that even function?
That is really one.
If we don't like birthright citizenship, that's just like pardon.
You might need to come together as Americans and actually amend the Constitution.
The fact that the Supreme Court took that case to reconsider the plain language of the Constitution, that is troubling for me.
My expectation is they'll do something like tinker with it, which they've been doing in many cases under the radar of most Americans.
Do you think this Supreme Court is interested in expanding the powers of the judicial branch?
Is that the end goal for taking a case like this?
unidentified
Well, they're doing, they're using the power of the judicial branch, which back in 1803 in one of these landmark cases, Marbury versus Madison, the Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution to give itself the power of judicial review.
So that's not even in the Constitution.
And sure, we're seeing, you know, what keeps Supreme Court justices in their lane?
Precedent.
The idea that you have to have a really, really good reason to overrule law.
They're doing it willy-nilly, arguably, on very shaky grounds.
You know, tools of interpretation, the language is the language.
We can't tinker with it.
It's doing that.
So I think they understand that they don't have any meaningful checks and balances.
And there are many arguments for why or speculation as to why.
One is that under Mitch McConnell, when he was a Senate Majority Leader, for reasons having to do with a Democratic precedent set for lower federal court judges, he lifted the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations.
What does that mean?
You used to have to get a supermajority in the Senate to get a justice on the Supreme Court, which would motivate presidents to find someone who's more moderate because they would have to get someone from the other side of the aisle.
For Donald Trump's three justices, that was lifted.
So their argument is we're seeing justices that are more politically affiliated with one party over another because the Senate only had to persuade their own party.
And these justices have powers because they're there for life and they're not democratically elected that no one else in government has.
And it is really a problem and it's something that in the aftermath I think the American public should demand some accountability.
Running short on time with Kimberly Whaley and I've got a couple folks who've been waiting for a while.
Jeffrey in Ohio Independent.
Thanks for holding the line.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Yes, yesterday, Mr. Sauer, when he argued in front of the Supreme Court, as I read it in the newspapers, he suggested that the president needs executive authority to fire the FTC commissioner in order to help maintain our democracy, because without that authority, regulatory agencies have too much independence and they are left unaccountable to anybody.
Well, I didn't vote for Donald Trump.
Therefore, I don't give him the authority to fire the FTC commissioner.
How does what gives the president the authority to do that?
Because I didn't give him that authority in my vote.
Yeah, you know, there's a lot to unpack there.
I think there's a mythology that agencies are run amok.
There are many statutory restraints on federal agencies.
The Administrative Procedure Act from 1946, after FDR created all these agencies to deal with the Great Depression, Congress passed this law that has a lot of oversight mechanisms through the courts.
And in fact, when the agencies make regulations, there's a comment process.
Regular Americans can literally log in and say, This is what I want with this law.
This is the problem with this proposed regulation.
We don't have this when it comes to the United States Congress.
You've got to have an expensive lobbyist in the United States Congress.
I also think that argument about these agencies run amok ignores the massive private contractor apparatus that operates.
The number of private contractors that the government has hired over the past several decades has vastly exceeded the number of federal employees.
And the argument being the president has no firing power over the CEOs of those private contractors.
unidentified
Yeah, it's all through a contract.
And then you've got Elon Musk.
Again, I mean, this is, I think, for me, one of the most egregious and staggering extra-constitutional actions.
Elon Musk had no accountability to any voter in the entire country.
That should be something that outrages everyone.
So I kind of think this is finding an elephant in a mouse hole: that the FTC firing is somehow, as Mr. Sauer said, an infringement on individual liberty.
What's an infringement on individual liberty is suspending due process.
What's an infringement on individual liberty is suspending Fourth Amendment.
It's suspending parts of the First Amendment.
That's really an infringement that can affect regular people.
Well, Victor, it's hard to go over a case on the air through a phone call, but I want to take your topic of checks and balances that you originally talked about.
If something is being done wrong in the judiciary branch, what can be done about it?
Your book from a few years ago is about reading the Constitution.
How do we get this checks and balances system right back into the proper balance?
unidentified
Yeah, I have a chart in that book that has the three branches and the checks on the three branches.
Don't ask me if something's okay.
Whether something is okay depends on whether the other two branches are checking it.
So if the Congress has to step in if the president overreaches, the courts have to step in if the president overreaches.
You can do that with each of the three branches.
I think right now when it comes to the presidency, the court is not stepping in to deal with excesses, and the United States Congress is not stepping in to deal with excesses.
So we're seeing the emergence of a king, and we're even having those discussions.
That's going to haunt us.
Even if you support the current president, you're recreating the office.
And why did the revolutionaries fight against a king?
Because they did not want arbitrary power, someone who could pick and choose winners and losers based on political loyalty and ideology.
They wanted fairness.
They wanted accountability to the people.
And we need to stop this soon.
We need to stop this train from going over the cliff.
And I'm a mother, and that's why I care so much about this, because I want my children to have the same rights and freedoms in this country that I did in my parents and grandparents.
Coming up for our last 25 minutes or so this morning, it is open forum.
Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, phone lines are yours to do so.
Numbers are on your screen.
Go ahead and start calling in, and we'll get to your calls right after the break.
unidentified
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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 C-SPAN 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.
As we end our program today in our last 25 minutes or so, it's our open forum.
Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about.
Now is the time to call in.
As you're calling in, here's what's happening on Capitol Hill today.
The Senate is in at 10 a.m. Eastern.
You can watch that over on C-SPAN too.
If you stay here on C-SPAN at 10 o'clock, we're going to take you to the Supreme Court.
Oral arguments today in the case of the National Republican Senatorial Committee versus the Federal Election Committee, a case about limiting coordinated political party expenditures and whether it violates the First Amendment.
You can watch that here on C-SPAN, C-SPAN.org, and the free C-SPAN Now video app.
10.15 a.m. Eastern today over on C-SPAN 3.
It's a Senate hearing about child safety on the internet.
Parents of child victims, advocates, and lawyers set to testify before the Judiciary Committee.
3 p.m. this afternoon, again, Eastern time, KISSES.
Gene Simmons and music business CEOs are on Capitol Hill to testify on legislation that would require radio corporations to pay performers to play their music.
That also before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
3 p.m. Eastern is when that happens when it comes to Gene Simmons.
He is, of course, one of this year's Kendi Center honorees.
It's the 48th iteration of the awards gala.
President Trump announcing the honorees.
It's the KISS band, Gene Simmons being one of them, along with actor Sylvester Stallone, Michael Crawford, George Strait, the musician Gloria Gaynor, as well, all named as this year's class of Kendi Center honorees.
And now time for your phone calls in open form.
Pat's up first out of Dallas, Texas, a Republican.
Pat, good morning.
What's on your mind?
unidentified
Thank you so much.
Yes, I'm a public health nurse professional.
And as you might have noticed in many publications coming out and news sources, that for the first time in decades, childhood mortality of under five is actually rising.
And it's attributable quite clearly to the dismantling of USAID, the message to other countries to also cut back on foreign aid.
And so I'm very concerned about that, along with kind of the upending of public health overall, not only internationally but domestically under the leadership of the current administration at HHS.
And Pat, you say all this as a Republican, you're calling in on the Republican line?
unidentified
Absolutely, because I know that might sound strange, but and maybe I don't represent Republicans right now, but I'm representing more my profession and my passion as a public health nurse of what's happening on the foreign aid scene.
And I was just in Liberia.
I've seen Kawashiwarkora Merasmus firsthand.
Obviously, what's happening in Sudan.
We don't have an Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance anymore, for example.
So even when there's disasters hits, our country's ability to help and even reputation is completely upended under this administration.
So I'm calling in as a very upset Republican for sure.
Yes, I kind of went there partly to save my own public health mind because I went there as a volunteer.
There's a little hospital there called the Jesus Loves Me Children's Center.
It's a 35-bed, very small clinic, but malnutrition is rampant in that area, Bong County in Liberia.
And I was formerly with Murphy Ships, World Vision, USAID.
Actually, I was a former employee of USAID.
So even there, I know firsthand all the good that it did.
For sure, if there's stuff going on that needs to be fixed, fix it.
But to throw the baby out with bathwater, which is essentially what happened.
But yeah, to see it firsthand and to know, I mean, even our budget at USAID, as I'm sure you know, was less than 1% of our total budget for the United States.
And yet, because of the size of our budget, we were the leader in foreign aid.
And now it's dramatically changed.
And they're predicting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives are affected.
I mean deaths caused directly by this.
And, you know, in the circles I run in and what I'm reading in the news, it's catastrophic for public health, not only internationally, but domestically.
They quit funding of Gavi, which basically allowed for vaccines to be provided to low-income countries free or at a very big discount.
And so you're seeing increased cases of measles.
You're seeing kids dying of whooping cough in our own country.
We're about to lose our status as a measles-free country because of the leadership and undermining of the public trust in the safety of vaccines.
And, you know, I remember back in the day in New York City, you know, Giuliani, and, you know, he made a name for himself.
What I'm getting at is the pardon system in general.
And then later it kind of boomerang came back on him down in Georgia where they brought up charges against him.
The bottom line that I'm seeing here, your former guest that was just on here from Baltimore, Maryland, charming lady, is each side keeps calling the other out.
You're the criminal.
No, you're the criminal.
No, you're the criminal.
And using the system to do that.
And then finally, the bottom line, the pardons come in down the line.
And basically, that's what I, it's like a gut feeling that I see from growing up in the Northeast.
It's just what I, my interpretation of it.
It's like both sides are calling the other criminal.
You know, unfortunately, using the system many times.
And, well, that's pretty much it.
It's just a kind of a gut feeling that I get from living and growing up in the Northeast from Washington to New York.
Yes, I wanted to get to talk to your first caller on the immigration.
My son has been teaching in Japan for 14 years now.
And when he first went there, his first day, he was told you have your visa with you at all times, you have your work permit, and you have your card to show that you're legally in Japan.
Now, why can't we do that in the United States?
I don't think we'd have all these problems if we did.
And I don't know why the people are so strung out on ICE arresting these illegals when you wouldn't get away with it in Japan and probably several other countries.
And in specific about the election that just happened in New York City, where we're just stunned.
I am absolutely stunned that they would put a man like Mamdani in office.
I really am, I was so shocked that I just, you know, I woke up and found out, I just assumed that Cuomo would make it.
I mean, of all of the candidates that were there, he definitely was the best.
And now I'm looking at, I mean, just looking at those debates, and I want to just touch that for one second.
In the first debate that they had, you know, Cuomo did us a favor by letting us know about the bill that this man, Mamdani, is backing, legalizing, you know, prostitution for women who, he said, are desperate.
I'm, as a Christian, I'm a Christian black woman.
As a Christian, and as a black woman, actually, I am very shocked that none of us picked up on what he said.
Now, he was saying, oh, no, I don't want to, you know, he was shocked, actually, that, you know, Cuomo brought that up.
I'm sure that's not something he thought that he would bring up.
But then he was like, oh, no, no, I want to decriminalize prostitution.
Oh, yeah, right.
There's no difference.
And again, looking at his, let's just talk about him being a mayor.
This is the kind of solutions he would bring to desperate women who need help.
That you're telling me that this is the only way you can help them by telling them to commit one of the most just a woman's, I mean, anyone's body, but could you imagine that this is all you have to offer a woman who's in a desperate situation that she should sell herself in order to get help?
I was just calling to say that the Right to Life March this coming year is going to be on January the 23rd, and I'm asking Washington Journal to have a representative from them this year versus last year they had a pro-abortion person on, so it wasn't a true representative.
And I've got one more thing.
A couple of weeks ago, you had a discussion on faith on Sunday.
Folks are actually involved in topics, and producers are involved in topics.
We just try to find topics that will start a discussion.
But I remember that Sunday.
I believe the question was: how important is faith in your daily life?
unidentified
But on a Sunday, that is the time when you're going to, a true Christian is not going to be calling in because on Sunday, they're getting prepared to go to their Christians worship Jesus every day.
The difference is we're getting ready to go to worship service.
So Washington Journal is the last thing on our mind on a Sunday morning.
To get a true response from a true follower of Christ, you're going to have to pick a different day because Washington Journal is not the most important thing on our docket on Sunday morning.
We are getting prepared to go to a worship service that, like I said, we worship Christ every day, but on Sundays, those are the days that we have a time that a set time that we worship together.
Good morning, as we are about five or ten minutes here from the Supreme Court getting set to have oral arguments this morning.
Jim, go ahead.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
I just, I was lucky enough.
I'm 71 years old.
I was lucky enough to travel most of the lower 48 my business career.
And I just had an opportunity to hear people all over this country say one thing that just kept ringing out everywhere I went, that their parents or their grandparents came to this country with nothing.
They were fleeing something.
They didn't speak the language.
They worked hard.
They tried to do all the correct things.
And a lot of them were persecuted, even people that we wouldn't think of persecuting now.
But those people admired so much their parents for fleeing with nothing, coming here.
And here we are all these years later, just picking on people that are really, they saw that this country was phenomenal.
And they came here.
They've tried to live up to the standards.
And we're persecuting a lot of people that don't deserve it.
And that's all I wanted to say.
And I wish everybody was a little bit more open-minded and remembered or looked back on the history of either their family or their friends' families, saw what it was all about.
Oh, well, I was, you know, I had to stay at a lot of hotels.
I went to a lot of places that were nearby and just sat with people and listened.
Of course, went to restaurants.
And I would listen to people's opinions.
But I also grew up in an area that was full of first and second generation immigrants.
And again, it was the same.
It was what I grew up with.
Everybody's, you know, my grandparents came here around 1900.
And, you know, my mother and father both served in, well, my mother was in the Army, my father was in the Navy.
But literally, they couldn't have been better citizens.
But again, they came here with nothing, and they were scared, and they were fleeing either the lack of opportunity in their countries or things that were a little bit crazy over there.
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett jumping into the Democratic primary for the Texas Senate seat, currently held by John Cornyn.
That news happening yesterday, and plenty of headlines in today's papers about it.
Two minutes left here before we expect the Supreme Court to come in.
It could be a few minutes after that.
They don't always start right at the top of the hour.
We'll stay with your calls.
Until then, though, phone lines for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, as usual.
This is Jodi in Bushkill, Pennsylvania, Republican.
Jody, good morning.
unidentified
Yes.
Hi.
Good morning.
I have a few concerns about the way health care prices have been escalating and prescription prices.
I'm just wondering why we can't go even as a Republican, as a conservative, why can't we get together and say that health care should be not for profit?
I'm not comfortable with insurance companies being on the New York Stock Exchange.
I'm not comfortable with pharmaceutical companies being on the New York Stock Exchange because the incentive is to make profit, profit, profit.
And it's, you know, I really believe that we should have cost controls on these agencies, much like we had on the utility companies in the seventies before deregulation came in and they opened up competition.
Opening up competition was supposed to bring prices down, but all it did was escalate everything.
Everything's on the stock exchange.
We can no longer afford our utilities.
We can no longer afford our medical.
We can no longer afford our prescriptions.
And I don't think it would be considered socialism.
I think it would just be considered a good policy.