Economics professor Peter Morisi blames Trump and Biden for inflation—unchanged at 3% since 2017—citing labor shortages, deficit spending, and AI-driven energy demand, while dismissing tariffs as ineffective without local production. Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser warns mid-decade redistricting could swing up to 40 seats toward Republicans if the Supreme Court upholds Louisiana v. Cal A, despite legal limits and public backlash. Epstein files reveal bipartisan distrust of Trump’s elite ties, with independents and even some MAGA-aligned Republicans questioning his economic record amid declining approval (36% PBS poll). New York mayor-elect Zorhan Mamdani’s voter-first strategy contrasts with past partisan divisions, signaling a shift toward addressing affordability over ideology. [Automatically generated summary]
Back at our table this morning is Peter Morisi, columnist and economics professor at the University of Maryland, here to talk about the debate over affordability.
In your latest column, you write that Republicans may be getting a bum wrap on affordability.
Can you explain that?
unidentified
Well, inflation is certainly here, and for the president to claim that it's not as silly.
But there's a lot of pressure in the system that, frankly, no politician can control.
Let's look at the price of beef.
I mean, people are very conscious of that.
We've had a Western drought, and that has required cattlemen to basically thin their herds.
We have no more steers today in the herd than we did in 1950.
But the population is more than double.
We continue to eat about 44 pounds of beef a year, each of us.
And so, you know, there's not much the president can do to increase the supply of beef unless we go back to grain-fed beef, which gives us marbled meat, which is very not good for our health and so forth.
Now, some places you could go to import it would be Argentina, but on their planes, they've had flooding.
And I mean, the president, to your point, has reduced some of the tariffs on things like coffee, bananas.
He's also launched an investigation over beef and whether or not there is some price gouging amongst the individual sellers.
unidentified
You know, I don't know why AOC and Donald Trump don't like each other better.
Because if you're talking about the extreme of the Republican Party, which he is, or the extreme of the Democratic Party, whenever the price of something goes up at the grocery store, they say there's a monopoly out there that's conspiring.
I don't see it.
And I'm in the business of finding things like that to write about.
For example, one of the things I keep talking about is the monopoly grocers.
Consider how many grocery stores you can go to.
My wife does the food shopping.
And She named Harris Teeter, Safeway, Giant, Whole Foods.
She went down this whole list of places she goes.
There's a lot of competition there, and the margins in the grocery business are fairly thin.
Now, the president has talked a lot about affordability in the coming days.
Obviously, he gave a primetime address on Wednesday where he defended his administration, basically saying that they're digging themselves out of a hole left by the former administration.
But he's also called affordability or the discussion around affordability a hoax.
I wonder, to what degree do you believe that the president's assessment of the current conversation is accurate?
unidentified
He's wrong.
It's that simple.
When he took over, inflation was about 3%.
And probably when we get some better numbers collected for the month of December and January, it's going to be about the same.
So there's been no progress on inflation during his administration.
Now, he's done a number of things which contribute to inflation.
One of them is create shortages of lower skilled workers by deporting people who didn't do anything wrong to anybody.
You might not be aware of this, but the economy grew over the Trump won Biden years 2.5% a year, which is really, really quite impressive.
And we're adding about 175,000 jobs a month.
Indigenous population growth and the legal immigration regime we had in place during the Biden years can only give us 90,000 workers a month, additional.
The rest were basically illegal aliens or undocumented workers.
Use which language you want.
But the economy needs more immigrants to function and his extreme policies.
I certainly deport people who have committed crimes and seal the border and then let's have measured immigration where we let people come here who fill needs and we can do quite well.
But these extreme policies make it very difficult to run businesses, to build homes and so forth and push up prices.
Now I want to invite our viewers who join in on the conversation.
We're talking about the economy and affordability.
Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
Now, I want to ask you, because the president has been talking a lot about affordability in a speech, he talked about it on Wednesday, and then we heard from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responding to that.
But instead of giving Americans a plan on how we'll lower their costs, Donald Trump played the blame game.
That's so typical of him.
Instead of solving a problem, which is what a good president is supposed to do, he just points the fingers at other people.
And that doesn't do a bit of good to remove to get the American people back on the right track.
It's never a good sign when the president begins a speech by saying, I inherited a mess.
Because that's just another way of telling people, I don't want to be responsible for any of this.
Again, President Trump's speech showed he lives in a bubble, a billionaire bubble, completely disconnected from reality that everyday Americans are seeing and feeling.
I can remember the Obama people, the Obama Biden people, for two years they were blaming George W. Bush for their economic troubles and their problems in getting their program going.
It seems to be one of the stock things that new presidents do, and I guess Donald Trump is again a new president, is to blame the previous administration when they can't solve the problem.
The reality is the inflation that we have today was a joint product of Trump-Biden years.
They ran up the deficit, each for different reasons and different purposes, from 3% of GDP to 6% of GDP.
Those are approximate numbers.
To do that, the Fed printed a great deal of money, expanded its balance sheet, that got inflation going.
Once COVID came, Joe Biden didn't admit that it was a problem.
Neither did Jerome Powell.
So they let it fester and get worse.
Now we've had four or five years of heavy inflation.
Expectations by businesses and consumers that we're going to continue to have inflation is quite high.
It is very hard to crack the back of that.
But for Chuck Schumer to complain about Donald Trump blaming his predecessor, he was mighty silent when Barack Obama was doing that.
Okay, my last question to you before we turn to some callers is that you spoke a bit about the jobs numbers over the last four to eight years, basically saying they added hundreds of jobs when the economy was growing.
I wonder if we can take a look at the latest job support where we saw just 40, excuse me, just 64,000 jobs added in November, and the employment rate ticked up to 4.6 percent.
I wonder how concerning are these figures to you?
And talk about where wages are, particularly compared to last year.
unidentified
All that in three minutes.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, first of all, Donald Trump has not only tightened down on illegal immigrants, he's tightened legal immigration.
If you look at probably what we're going to inhale in terms of folks from abroad and what the Indigenous population can generate through normal population increase, we can only maybe add 50 to 60,000 jobs a month.
So in reality, the last two quarters, the second and third quarter, we're expecting third quarter growth to look like second quarter growth.
The economy has grown a great deal, but it has only added as many jobs as there really are there people to add.
One of the reasons the unemployment rate jumped, remember, is we just had this big federal layoff.
They came into the statistics in October because they were getting paid until October, and until they are no longer paid, they count as employed.
Now, that's a judgment BLS makes, but that's the rule they apply.
So that didn't alarm me very much.
I don't think the Fed needed to lower interest rates any further because I think that inflation continues to be a problem and that so far this year we've added jobs at about the pace that the economy is capable of given the constraints that Donald Trump has imposed on it.
Now how are we managing this?
Think about it.
You know it grew at 2.5% a year for eight years and we're adding 175,000 employees a month to do it.
Well, one of the things is that businesses have really been screwing down unemployment by applying artificial intelligence.
I mean, as a young person, or as a younger person than me, you probably have lots of ...
Thing you take from a car, I couldn't agree with you more on the fact that both presidents, Biden and Trump, wasted cahooties of money unnecessarily during COVID.
But the thing I really wanted to bring up is I do all the grocery shopping here at the house and have for the last seven, eight years.
The prices in the grocery stores just, I mean, I know they got to make money all through the line of getting everything processed and then the grocery store.
But when you take an item just say, for instance, mayonnaise, a quarter mayonnaise is $6.
At a gallon, that would be $30.
And a gallon of gas is $2.50.
Now, how much goes in to making mayonnaise compared to getting oil on the market?
Well, actually, quite a bit.
Mayonnaise is made of eggs mostly.
And eggs were very expensive last year.
And that pushed up the price of mayonnaise.
And you have to remember, the grocery can't buy mayonnaise for $5 a jar and sell it for four and stay in business.
If we look at the margins in the grocery business, they're not way out of line.
They're kind of thin because it's a very competitive business.
The other one is the meat processors.
It just seems, you know, I'd hate to be Frank Perdue's son.
I don't know his name offhand because it seems as though whenever there's trouble in the grocery store, they want to go after the meat packers, as if they're conspiring.
Unfortunately, we've gotten used to having conspiracy theories for things that have sensible explanations.
You can't change the fact that there is only as many cattle today on the range, so to speak, as there were in 1950.
And back in 1950, the population of the United States was maybe 120 million or something.
And today it's 300 and what, 50, 60 million?
And people still like to eat beef.
Now, we eat less beef than we used to.
We eat a lot more chicken, and chicken is grain-fed.
So the good thing about chicken is the abundance of grain in America permits us to have chicken at a moderate price.
The price of turkey has gone down, by the way.
That is true.
Trump pointed that out, and it has, simply because Americans are eating less of the big bird these days, and they're eating more chicken.
I wanted to know, given the push for unleashing AI and developing the data centers and the limitations on student loan backing from the federal government and the policies regarding health care, where do you see the American dream for the youth in the middle class?
Like, what fields should they be looking to go into?
Is this, you know, is the American dream now an illusion?
Or how do you see this panning out in the future?
Well, I think that I wrote a column about this one.
Americans are going to be working with their hands again more.
Throughout our history, the notion of technological progress has been to have fewer and fewer people with their hands on things and more and more people first going to high school in the 20th century, first half of the 20th century, and the second half then going to college.
High school only became the norm for a worker around 1960.
And that has to change.
Not everybody can go to college anymore.
But the reality is that you can get into an apprenticeship program out of high school where you get paid $15 an hour.
I know that's not much, but you're being paid to go to school.
And within a few years, get a job that pays you $80,000 or $90,000 a year.
And they're in all kinds of trades, and they're in all kinds of work.
Some of it is white-collar, some of it is blue-collar.
And I think we're going to have more people doing that sort of thing.
Now, if we had a reasonable immigration policy, something that neither AOC nor Donald Trump want to talk about, and that is we permitted people to come here where we have need.
We need people to pick lettuce.
We need unskilled workers.
But 20% of the engineering roles in the United States are, or STEM roles, are filled by immigrants.
40% of the people at the doctoral level are immigrants.
If we permit ourselves to welcome people in those skill areas, the economy itself would grow faster.
And then there would be more need for these displaced white-collar workers.
Because after all, if the economy is bigger, they may be running hotel chains with fewer bookkeepers than they were before.
But still, if you double the size of the hotel chains, then you're going to double the size of the bookkeepers that you need now.
And so there is a potential to do this, but it isn't like we're pursuing pro-growth policies in this country.
An open border, like Joe Biden had, created a lot of chaos and homelessness in New York and places like that.
And this business of throwing everybody out is just silly.
Andrew from New Jersey, an independent, you're next.
unidentified
Yes, thank you for taking my call, Cease Van.
I watch you all the time.
Thank you.
Now, as far as the jobs numbers created, is it not true that the Trump administration fired the woman from the agency that looks at the jobs numbers?
And as far as stability, here in New Jersey, they're building townhomes that are going for half a million to two million dollars a year.
The price of utilities are going up.
And I don't think Trump has a grasp on reality.
But as far as economics go, the prices in food stores are going up.
They're not coming down.
Well, they are going up, but they're not going up as rapidly as people seem to behave.
The average rate of inflation for groceries through September, because we know the September data was good, indicates it's about 2.7% a year.
Certainly, that's not as nice as zero.
But you've got to remember, in order to get to 2.7, there had to be a lot of stuff that was going up slowly if the price of beef was going up so rapidly.
So my feeling is that the grocery, these are a lot of different issues here.
Housing, we make it very difficult to build where the jobs are in and around big cities.
I mean, New York has got height restrictions.
It probably has fewer people living in Manhattan now than it did in 1900.
They make it impossible to get anything done.
And builders face these difficulties and it gets rolled into your costs.
It just does.
You know, I did an addition to my home about 40 years ago.
And then I had some work done subsequently to that addition, you know, about 25 years later.
I couldn't believe how many people were running through the place with clipboards this time, the second time.
And, you know, they seem to be retired firemen.
It seems to be the gig over in Alexandria.
You retire from the fire department after 25 years, then they make you an insulation inspection.
We had an insulation inspection.
I looked at my, I had the same contractor both times.
Charles Hall, bless his soul, has passed away.
And he said, Peter, I've never had a project fail an insulation inspection.
It's impossible to do that.
But we had one.
And that's the way our cities operate.
And it's really kind of sad.
And if you talk to people on the left about cleaning up all this nonsense, they behave as if you want to go back to the Stone Age.
There's such a thing as over-regulating something too much, and housing is a classic example.
And that's why we can't build houses.
Now, I don't hear Donald Trump talking much about that.
And he should.
It should be possible to start to form a national consensus by bringing together the governors to look at this problem.
The governor of New York tried very hard to initiate a program to build housing along the places where there are train stations on Long Island, because there's a lot of commercial land in those places.
And the villagers all went crazy because they wouldn't even know about it.
They didn't want to be able to see it if they had to drive through it to get the train.
That's the problem there.
Donald Trump denying all this stuff exists or that there's a problem.
And the president has said that he is going to look at doing some reforms on housing for next year, but that was basically as much detail as we got there.
unidentified
Well, we got a flip off-the-cuff answer, which seems to be his approach to making economic policy.
That and listening to Peter Navarro and Stephen Marin.
And I mean, they're the guys who told you that tariffs wouldn't make prices go up.
I mean, since I was a small boy, my father was a staunch Republican, because his father was a staunch Democrat.
That's how that used to work.
You did the opposite your father did.
But since I was knee-high, you know, 75 years ago, my father was telling me taxes always raise prices.
Tariffs are taxes.
That's been the Republican line for at least four generations.
All of a sudden, you impose taxes.
Anyway, he's getting his economic advice from places like that.
I was wondering, you mentioned about Trump kicking out unskilled labor of even illegal people that didn't do anything.
But isn't it true that they're going to be obsolete?
It's a waste of dragging them into this country, either legal or illegal, because AI, if they're unskilled labor, AI machines are going to take their place.
You already have AI machines working on farms.
You've got AI machines making buildings.
I mean, I've seen one robot making a wall within an hour.
X amount of bricks, they can make a wall.
Isn't it ridiculous to expect that these people are going to be able to contribute to society if they're unskilled?
And more focus should be on skilled laborers.
American citizens with plumbing, electricity, welding, and especially AI programming.
That's going to be the future.
Not dragging illegals in to replace unskilled labor.
That's ridiculous.
I'm glad to know that I'm a moron.
The reality is we need all different kinds of workers in this economy.
There's many things that AI cannot yet do and is not likely to do anytime soon.
The cost of having robots make sandwiches at sandwich shops in New York City is prohibitive.
That's where you find immigrants.
You find them cleaning our homes.
Half of the workers on a construction site are immigrants.
And I don't think that's going to, the need for labor in those areas is going to change.
What I'm advocating is that we look at the areas where we need people.
We need agricultural workers.
So a certain amount of unskilled workers we should permit to enter to meet the need that we have.
We need scientists and engineers.
We need software designers and things like this.
So fine, that's where we should be adding them.
We probably don't need any more economists, so I wouldn't necessarily say we would have a quota for them.
Taylor from Dover, Delaware, a Democrat?
Are you doing enough damage?
Your line is open.
Yes, I'm just calling in reference to how are they going to be addressing everybody losing their affordable health care.
And in our state, so many houses now in their neighborhoods are being bought by equity guys, and they're using them as group homes and things like that.
And a lot of the new developments are just rentals, basically.
They're not for home ownership anymore.
And with AI replacing everybody, it's like they're trying to, you know, just replace life with artificial everything.
And it's just so depressing because everything just costs more and more, and we're getting less and less.
Well, this is why it's so silly for the president to be making speeches that we never knew how good we have it or whatever it is, that there's really not a problem out there.
There are a lot of problems out there, a lot of very unsettling things happening in the economy.
After all, we're growing at a pretty significant pace, but we're not adding a lot of jobs.
That means the labor force has to change.
But there's a whole host of problems that just aren't getting addressed because economic policy in this administration consists of the president getting up in the morning, making a flippant remark, and then the Treasury Secretary having to find some way to map out a justification and a program to fix it.
I mean, he gets up in the morning, he doesn't like what's going on in Brazil, so he puts on a 50% tariff.
I wonder how much discussion there was in the White House of the efficacy of that move.
Now, that's not to say that the Biden administration was that their policies were any more rational, but we are doing things right now from an economic policy perspective that make inflation worse and that don't address the real structural problems the labor force now faces because of the rapid advance of AI and white-collar work.
I want to talk about the gas prices that's going down under $3 in 20-some states, and a couple states is under $2 a gallon.
And Trump's getting all these drug prices down, and pharmaceutical prices are going down like crazy.
And the supermarkets other than Delaware, the shop right in Delaware has real cheap prices.
Other stores like Acme and all are way higher.
And it's not that big.
And I don't understand what's going on.
You're supposed to be fair.
And yet, you're a Trump hater.
I'm not a Trump hater.
Hold on a second.
I do not hate the man.
I have a lot of trouble hating people.
But I do see problems with the policies that are being pursued in terms of solving the inflation problem, in terms of solving our basic labor force problems.
As for the price of gasoline, that's one of the places where, frankly, the world is awash in oil.
Part of that is slow demand in China because the Chinese economy exports, but domestically it's a mess.
It's got long COVID.
My feeling is that the price of gasoline can't go down much further.
There was an interesting graphic in the Wall Street Journal yesterday or the day before showing exports.
And the major exporters, of which the United States is one, are also exporting more oil, except for the United States.
Now, why is that?
Well, the United States has an abundance of oil if the price of oil is above $60.
If the price of oil in the national market goes below $60, which is about where you get $3 a gallon gasoline, then a lot of these shale oils fields start to become uneconomic to pump.
And the life of a shale well is fairly short, four or five years.
So they start to fall off production and they don't get replaced.
So what's going to happen is that if the price of gasoline goes down much further, U.S. production is going to start to shrink.
But right now, the world is awash in oil.
And I like telling my MBA students, if something good is happening and they compliment you for it, say thank you, even if you had nothing to do with it.
Because you're going to get blamed for so many things that you really didn't have any responsibility for anyway.
So it evens out.
And Donald Trump would like to take credit for the oil boom.
And compared to the Biden administration, he is doing more to encourage domestic production.
On the other hand, the price of electricity is going up.
Why?
Because these data centers for AI consume so much of it.
Now, we need to have a full court press on all our energy sources.
That means certainly, you know, drill for oil, drill for gas.
But we should also be pursuing renewables.
The data center people, the people that build these things and the big hyperscalers like Microsoft, Meta, Google, and OpenAI that are basically buying all this stuff, they prefer to have clean energy.
And discouraging clean energy is not a good policy.
So it is very hard to have low electricity prices in this country if you have one president who wants to shut down oil and gas production and then another president who wants to shut down green energy.
When a reality is we need energy from all sources to deal with this huge demand for electricity and we're just not, we didn't get that from Biden and we're not getting it from Trump.
David from Austin, Texas, a Democrat, you're next.
unidentified
Yes.
I want to ask you a question.
Now, Donald Trump is saying this is the worst inflation ever in the United States.
Is that true?
No.
He wasn't?
No, and he's my age about.
He's a couple years older than me.
When I was a young economist, we were living through the late 1970s and early 80s.
Inflation is what made Jimmy Carter a one-term president.
Inflation got up into double-digit levels, and the Fed had to put the country through a grinding recession to bring it to an end.
The mistake here was during the Biden years, the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, tried to convince himself that he didn't have to do anything about it, that these price increases were temporary.
They were caused by a surge of demand coming out of the COVID shutdown.
In reality, in reality, they had printed a lot of money to finance that.
It was very easy how they financed COVID.
They gave everybody all these big relief checks.
The folks couldn't spend it, so they put it in the bank until the shutdowns ended.
But they did that basically by the Fed printing money.
The Fed was printing money and it was buying Treasury securities, which essentially was monetarizing the new debt.
Now, Joe Biden spent a lot of money.
Donald Trump cut a lot of taxes.
So we went from a deficit that's about 3% of GDP to one that this year is going to be close to 6%.
Last year it was 6.4.
And next year, if the Supreme Court strikes down these tariffs, it's probably going to be near 7%.
Because one of the things that's happened is the big beautiful bill increases the deficit by about $330 billion a year.
Nearest I can calculate, by the way, I wrote my doctoral dissertation about tariffs.
If there's any aspect of economics that I understand, it's tariffs.
As best I can compute, these tariffs are going to generate about $300 billion a year in revenue if they stay as they are.
That's a big if because every time Donald gets out of bed, he seems to want to change the tariffs.
You know, that's another thing.
If you want to have more jobs, you have to have investment someplace other than AI.
And industries that he is favoring, like pharmaceuticals and automobiles, in reality, all the investment right now is in AI and AI data centers, all the growth in investment, I should say.
One of the reasons for that is the tariff situation is so unstable and is under a Supreme Court review and all that, but it's so unstable that businesses can't plan.
You can't have an erratic personality making economic policy and expect people to make investments that have to pay out over 10 or 20 years.
And later on, Vox hosts and editorial director Estead Herndon discusses the release of the Epstein files, President Trump's grip over the Republican Party, and other political news of the day.
But first, a look at congressional redistricting battles with Paul Steinhauser of Fox News and the Concord Monitor.
unidentified
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
Sunday with our guest Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate, Rita Dove, who has authored several collections of poetry.
Paul Steinhauser is a Fox News and Concord Monitor National political reporter here to talk about where the various congressional redistricting battles stand heading into next year's midterm elections.
I want you to remind our audience exactly where the status stands when it comes to who is in the lead in the House and who obviously is in the minority.
unidentified
All right, just I guess politics 101, as we all know, every two years, the full House of Representatives, all 435 seats up for grabs.
That's the way it works here in our country.
Right now, the Republicans hold a very narrow margin, a narrow majority in the House.
They are up 220 to 213, with two seats vacant right now.
Those seats are Democratic-held and will likely, once they have special elections early next year, go back in Democrat hands.
And then, of course, there's one Republican who's about to step down, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
So when she does that in January, it'll be back to 219 to 213.
Regardless, it's very close right now.
And if you look ahead to November, the Democrats basically need a three-seat pickup.
They need to flip three seats and that gain is three seats to retake the majority.
That's why this congressional mid-decade redistricting is such a very, very big deal.
Obviously, off-year redistricting kind of sounds what exactly it is.
Can you tell us about how unusual and how big of a deal it is this time around?
unidentified
A huge deal.
Is it rare?
Yeah, nowadays it's pretty rare.
It's not unheard of.
It has happened.
Back in the 19th century, it was actually more common.
But over the last 125 years, it has not been that common.
Traditionally, congressional redistricting is done after a census.
So every 10 years, right, we do that census.
And then there's congressional redistricting and also reappointments.
Some states gain seats if their population goes up.
Some states lose seats if their population goes down.
And then there's the redistricting, how those districts are shaped.
That traditionally happens every 10 years.
So there are times where it happens mid-decade.
Maybe there's a court order because a lot of these maps are often, you know, go through the legal process, obviously, and sometimes that takes years.
So you can see occasionally some mid-decade redistricting.
What's going on now?
A little unusual, not illegal, but definitely a little unusual.
Listen, President Donald Trump remembers what happened during his first term.
In the 2018 midterms, he lost control of the House of Representatives.
He does not want that to happen again in the 2026 midterms.
So there has been a very concerted push by Trump and his political team to head out to the Republican-controlled states to have them redistrict.
And that's what is going on.
The Democrats obviously are pushing back in many states as well.
So that's kind of the fight we're in right now.
And in December, we have two very, very big kind of cases.
One in the Supreme Court that upheld Texas, which drew new maps over the summer, and they were passed by the supermajority in Texas, signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott, the Republican down there.
That led to five more seats, Republican leaning seats in Texas.
There was a legal challenge.
The Supreme Court greenlighted those maps.
So they continue on.
And in Indiana, a Republican push in a very red state actually went down.
It failed in the state Senate there.
So two more Republican leading seats will not happen or take place in Indiana.
So that's kind of the big developments we just had over the last few weeks.
Yeah, we spent a lot of time last week talking about Indiana.
I want to show this full screen that talks about the six states that have new congressional maps.
I wonder what seat gains and losses are expected to come from these maps.
I know you talked a little bit about Texas already, and what districts are in play and most likely to flip?
unidentified
Well, let's take a look at the map.
And first of all, Texas, they were the first to do it.
So it's a red state.
They redrew the maps, and it looks like you'll have five more Republican-leaning seats.
California, Governor Gavin Newsom of California, somebody we look at as a potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender, led the charge in California for them to redo their maps.
But that first had to be passed by voters because California has a nonpartisan commission.
A bunch of these states have that now, nonpartisan commission.
Instead of a state legislature, the nonpartisan commission would draw up the maps every 10 years.
What the Democrats in California had to do was get a referendum on the ballot, which they were successful in doing, that would temporarily delay or kind of push that to the side, giving the state legislature the power to redo the districts again, at least for the next four to six years.
And that was overwhelmingly passed by voters in the left-leaning state back in November.
So California kind of cancels out Texas, right?
Five seats in Texas going right, five seats in California going left, kind of balances it out.
A couple other states, as you mentioned, have already changed their maps as well.
Missouri, and that picks up an extra seat for Republicans, although there is a referendum on the ballot will likely be going on the ballot in Missouri.
So that may be up in the air.
Voters may get to weigh in on that.
We'll see where it stands.
North Carolina as well, redoing the maps, giving the Republicans another seat.
Ohio, giving the Republicans two more seats.
And Utah, a Republican-dominated state, but the judicial process there kind of forced a new map that gives the Democrats a chance to win back a seat.
So if you look at everything right now where it stands, it's probably about a three, maybe about a three seat net gain for Republicans in this process.
But we still have a long way to go.
And these numbers could definitely change between now and obviously Election Day next year, which is over 10 months away.
Yeah, so actually you guys were just speaking about what I was curious to want to learn more about, which was gerrymandering.
Basically, if you could give me a sort of a quick succinct masterclass in the few minutes we have, basically, so what is the history of it?
Is there a way to combat it?
Do we combat it?
And yeah, if I could speak to Mr. Steinhausen directly.
Well, Dan, that's a great question.
Yes, it is legal.
A lot of people think it isn't, but actually it is legal nationally.
There are a few states that actually ban it.
One of them, Florida.
And that's one of the states that's still a Republican-dominated state, obviously.
The governor down there, Ron DeSantis, and the supermajority in the legislature will likely take action early in the new year to try to change the maps and maybe create another one or two right-leaning seats to help Donald Trump and the Republicans in the midterms.
But the state constitution down there does not allow.
So there, yeah, there are a few states, Florida is one, that don't allow political gerrymandering.
So it'll be interesting to see if that goes forward, what kind of legal challenges occur, and that could probably end up again in the Supreme Court, just like we saw the Texas case.
Now, there is a difference here between racial, between political and racial gerrymandering.
And racial gerrymandering is not legal in this country.
But what is happening right now is there is another case in front of the Supreme Court, Louisiana versus Cal A, and it's a crucial case that may overturn a key provision in the Voting Rights Act, which prevents racial gerrymandering.
If that happens, that could lead to a lot more rewriting, remapping of some districts that could give the Republicans a much bigger advantage in next year's midterms.
But again, all eyes on the Supreme Court to see when that case is decided and how it's decided.
Paul, that case would be huge if the Supreme Court did what I think some folks are expecting them to do, which is really gut the Voting Rights Act.
Some reports have said that by gutting the Voting Rights Act, that could lead to states redrawing, giving Republicans up to 25 seats.
Some other reports said up to 40 seats.
I wonder if you can kind of break it down.
Let's say that this happens.
I mean, obviously, we don't know when the Supreme Court is going to rule, but let's say that they have that, let's say that they rule at the beginning of next year.
Would there still be enough time for districts across the country who this would apply to or who would allow them to draw new maps?
Would there still be enough time for them to do that before the midterm election?
unidentified
Go state by state, right?
It depends on the states because the states are in control of their calendars when it comes to elections.
In Texas, like it wouldn't because Texas, but they've already made their moves.
But Texas has a very early primary, March 2nd or March 3rd, I believe, coming up in the new year.
So their process is already underway.
But in states where the voting takes, the primary elections take place much later, then yes, depending on when this case is settled, depending on what the opinion is by the Supreme Court, yes, some of these maps could take effect in November of next year.
And of course, if that was the case, give the Republicans a much bigger advantage going into the midterms.
Anthony from Detroit, Michigan, an independent, you're next.
unidentified
Good morning.
Merry Christmas.
I am pretty disgusted by the partisan gerrymandering that's happening.
And I think the best thing Americans could do if you want to push back against this elitism and political choosing their own seats is you could vote for a third party or independent.
If all Americans did that, it would throw your equations out the window and we'd have a lot more than 30 competitive seats.
Paul?
No, that's an argument we've heard a lot of over the years: that the two-party system does not work well for this country, that it is way too partisan, that the major political parties are looking after themselves and not after the American people.
And we have seen in the past some success for third-party candidates, no doubt about that, especially not at the national level so much, but more at the state and local level.
But let's be honest, this country remains to a great degree a two-party system, the Democrats and Republicans, and it is hard for third-party candidates to crack that system.
Mary from Columbus, Ohio, a Democrat, your line is open.
unidentified
Hi.
I heard another gentleman from Ohio, so I'm on the other side of this issue.
As an Ohioan, we voted on fair districts more than once.
And there was a court case that went to the Ohio Supreme Court, and our maps were found unconstitutional to the Ohio due to the voters.
Our voting board here in Ohio basically raised their middle finger to our voters and said, not going to do it.
And we still are voting on unconstitutional maps in Ohio.
And I'd like to know if you have really any advice for people like me who are just so disgusted.
So I will just take your comments offline.
Thank you.
Paul?
The caller there makes a good point.
Ohio was already underway.
Redistricting was already mandated by the judicial system in Ohio even before the Republicans, before President Trump decided to kind of make this concerted push, which really started late last spring and early into the summer.
So Ohio is already underway because the judges in Ohio had already deemed the previous maps unconstitutional.
But there is a lot of disappointment, I think, by those in Ohio who are hoping to see a different set of maps than what they got because again, it is a Republican-dominated state.
They control the legislature and they have the governor's office as well.
It is frustrating for a lot of people.
You know, the best avenue, of course, is your vote, which they'll get again next November.
I'd like to ask the gentleman about the redistricting going on in Texas.
Are there any black or Hispanic districts left in Texas?
And if so, which?
Excuse my voice.
Yes, there are.
There are.
I don't have the specifics.
They're obviously in some of the urban areas, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, and so on.
What the remapping in Texas does is take a state that already had a lot more Republican than Democratic-leaning congressional districts and give about five more right-leaning districts.
This was the first target for the Republicans.
I remember the president asked about this back in, I believe, early July, said Texas would be first, and we hope to get five seats there.
I'm paraphrasing here, but Texas was the first big target for Republicans.
And after Texas made its move, that's where you saw California Governor Newsom and Democrats in the left-leaning state kind of counterattack.
And it was a tough push for them as well because they had to go through the referendum process.
But California basically canceling out Texas.
But overall, again, when you look at where things stand right now, and again, this is a very fluid situation.
But right now, the Republicans maybe have gained about two to three more seats due to redistricting.
You know, I believe the Constitution begins with the words, we the people of the United States, not we, the corporations, not we, super PACs, not we, gerrymandering.
It says we the people, and that's been taken away from the people as a democracy.
We now live in what I call a corporatocracy where corporations actually control everything, and people have no longer have a say or a word, and it's only through referendums like they're doing in the state of Missouri,
where they collected 300,000 signatures to do away with gerrymandering in this state, and also the right for a woman to have whatever care she needs for us when she's pregnant.
So, we're going all the way back to 1787 and that Constitutional Convention back in Philadelphia, that there would be congressional redistricting and reappointment of the states every 10 years after a census.
So, that was laid out in the Constitution.
Remember, at the time the founding fathers put that together, we had parties, but it was nothing like what it evolved into, right?
So, the political party process really gained a lot of strength after all, after our Constitution was created.
And the parties have controlled this process and it is legal.
Again, we've talked about this before.
It is legal.
What can voters do?
Again, certain states prevent, ban gerrymandering, political gerrymandering.
And maybe someday down the road, that could happen at the national level.
But right now, these are the rules that we have when it comes to redistricting.
Gerrymandering by political gerrymandering is legal, and the political parties obviously take advantage of that.
It's like having a football team agree to the rules together that we're going to play 11 each side and that footballs.
And at halftime, one team says, well, actually, we're going to take two of your players, despite all of the agreements ahead of time and tradition, and we're going to put them on our team.
Hey, can you kind of tell us what the percentage of voters are in the state of California versus how many representatives they're going to have for each party?
My understanding is it's been done for so many years and so much that it's completely out of balance in a lot of states as far as representing the actual voters and how they vote.
And Texas may have done it some, but not nearly as much as like California and a lot of these other states that have done it for years.
Well, California is a great example, right?
California, a state where Democrats have dominated for sure.
It's a left-leaning state.
So, gosh, I got to go back about what, 17, 18 years ago when we had Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of his signature moves as governor, and it was passed by the legislature, was to create a nonpartisan redistricting commission that would do redistricting not only for Congress, but also for their state legislative maps.
and that was one of his crowning achievements and that's why we saw schwarzenegger uh as one of the opponents of newsom when this process began just a few months ago in california to to and what the voters did there was they're not scrapping the redistricting the nonpartisan commission altogether in california It's just being put on hiatus for the next, what, four cycles, I believe, the next three election cycles, at least through 2032, I believe.
And then it comes back.
Yeah, so California, by doing this, is by with their new maps, they're adding five more left-leaning congressional seats.
Is that a little out of whack with the, I guess, the overall percentage breakdown between Republicans and Democrats in the state?
Of course.
But that's also on the flip side, that's the case in Texas as well and in some of these other states.
Another one of the arguments against redistricting, and we saw this in playout in Indiana, the opposition to the maps in Indiana were saying, well, wait a minute, you're redrawing the maps.
My district now is going to extend from one part of the state to the other.
And it just, you know, it doesn't seem right.
It doesn't seem like my interests in my area will be kind of a centerpiece for my representative in Congress that these maps kind of take away local power.
And that has been another argument against them.
Indiana was a fascinating case.
It was also one of the few times where we've seen President Trump's clout with Republicans tested and actually go down to defeat because the president, of course, has a very strong sway over his party.
But Republicans in Indiana, at least enough of them in the state senate, were opposed to this map.
My question is: why can't we do representation by percentage in all states?
Let me give you an example.
State of North Carolina is pretty much a 50-50 state.
Right now, state of North Carolina, I'm not sure on the exact number, but three-fourths of the representatives of that state are Republican, and a quarter of it is Democrats.
But yet, you have a 50-50 voting block.
So, how is that fair?
How is that fair at all to the Democrat voter when they're going out to the poll and 50% of them are voting Democrat, but yet their representation is 25%?
I'd like to hear what you got to say about it.
It's a great question.
And you hear that in a lot of states, right?
Think Illinois.
Republicans would say the same thing in Illinois that it's not fair to them.
Or in California, Democrats would say the same thing in Texas.
North Carolina, as you just mentioned, they redid the maps.
And it looks like you'll have another, probably one more right-leaning seat in the midterms next year due to the redistricting in North Carolina.
So, yeah, this is you're hearing this from a lot of voters in a lot of states that it just doesn't make sense.
And unfortunately, I keep coming back to the same thing, the same answer.
And it's not one I think your listeners and your viewers are going to like, but it's the law right now.
It is legal.
Political gerrymandering is legal.
And that's why we have this situation that we are in right now.
Yes, I wanted to ask you again, like, who's going to be representing the black minorities in Texas?
And also, does Bobby Pulido have a chance in the southern region of Texas?
I live in far Texas, and I know that Monica de la Cruz is running, but a lot of people don't like her.
So, what are the chances for Bobby Pulitzer to gain some traction?
I wish I could be more helpful.
I'm not that familiar with that race.
I cover a lot of races across the country.
That one I'm not familiar with, so I don't want to speak out where I'm not up to date.
But yeah, there is a concern by a lot of people in Texas that their representation is disappearing.
There are some, there still will be, you know, Democrat districts, especially in the more urban and inner suburban areas of Texas.
But these maps, again, basically lead to five more Republican-leaning seats across the state.
And as we talked about, Texas was the first state to take this action.
Others obviously have followed.
And this is a moving process here.
So these maps could change in other states going forward.
We talked right now where things stand.
It looks overall, if you look at all the changes, the six states that have already changed their maps.
Right now, it's about a three-seat pickup for Republicans.
And why does this matter?
Because every seat is so important with not that many in play, with the Democrats only needing three to flip to retake the majority in 2026 in the midterms.
In my lifetime, there's always been a process to nullify the black vote.
And this is a smokescreen in terms of redistricting because we've always had to redistrict in order to even get black people to be able to vote or have their own representation.
So they're calling it one thing, but primarily it's to nullify the black vote because we are making an impact on the electric process.
Paul?
I'm so glad you spoke up and 90 years young.
Happy holidays, my friend.
That's God bless.
But I'm glad you spoke up because let's put the spotlight back again on the huge wildcard that we've briefly talked about earlier.
And that's the Supreme Court case, Louisiana versus Calais, which could lead to that key provision in the Voting Rights Act being overturned, which would then allow for remapping in a number of states, which could dramatically change the situation.
So that again, sometime in the new year, we don't know when the Supreme Court is going to rule.
We don't know which way their opinion is going to go, whether it upholds the Voting Rights Act or not.
But that is going to be a huge blockbuster ruling when it occurs.
Paul, I just want to ask you to, you know, the previous guest used the word moron, and I feel like I'm kind of a moron right now as I listen to you because I think a lot of Americans don't really understand the political process.
unidentified
We have, we're supposed to be a democracy, but there's just this battle between being a democracy and a republic.
And I'm not sure we really understand what the difference is because a democracy is supposed to stand for we the people.
But a republic, to my understanding, is where we allow elected officials to stand for us.
And I'm really not sure if we are changing from a democracy to a republic or what the difference is.
So I'll just stop there and I'll just ask you to just give us some political one-on-one so we can have a more effective conversation because this whole thing about gerrymandering really makes me feel like this.
It's a great question, and he is expressing the frustrations of a lot of Americans because it just, to them, this doesn't seem right to a degree, right?
But this is the process.
We elect our officials and that is part of the Republican process of a republic.
But redistricting is laid out in the Constitution and it does not prevent mid-decade redistricting.
And that's kind of the situation we're in right now.
And next up, we have Vox host and editorial director Estet Herndon discussing the release of the Epstein files and other political news of the day.
unidentified
Starting next week through the new year, the C-SPAN networks will present a series of marathons highlighting the most consequential moments, conversations and coverage of 2025 across C-SPAN, C-SPAN 2 and C-SPAN 3.
Revisit speeches that moved a nation, hearings that shape debates, and the authors, leaders, and thinkers that define the year.
Our highlights include key speeches with this year's most impactful speeches from elected leaders and influential voices.
Book TV book fairs featuring author conversations and interviews from our book fairs across the country.
Memorable moments with some of this year's most watched and talked about C-SPAN programming.
President Trump and foreign leaders with key coverage of events both at home and overseas.
America's Book Club, featuring a special lineup from our new weekly series of thought-provoking conversations with host David Rubinstein and leading authors.
America 250 highlights the events, conversations, and reflections marking our nation's semi-quincentennial in Memorial.
Remembering the political figures, public servants, and other influential people who've passed away in 2025.
Key congressional hearings that sparked debate and captured public attention.
Voices of 2025 with book TV and American History TV's compelling interviews and discussions with historians, scholars, and authors who shaped the national conversation.
Watch our in-depth look at the people and events that defined 2025, C-SPAN's year-end marathon, starting next week through the new year on the C-SPAN Networks.
For our complete marathon schedule, head over to our website, c-span.org.
This year, C-SPAN brought millions of Americans closer to the work of their government and to the heart of our democracy.
As you consider a year-end gift, your tax-deductible support truly matters.
C-SPAN is a nonprofit with no government funding.
Our independence is sustained by citizens like you who believe in open government.
We're there for major legislation, executive decisions, and pivotal Supreme Court cases so every American can witness their democracy in action.
Your support keeps this unfiltered, independent access strong.
I want to talk about the Epstein files release last night from the Justice Department.
I wonder what your reaction was and what to what was and what wasn't released.
unidentified
Yeah, I think that, you know, we were looking to see the scope of information that would be released.
And I had a lot of skepticism going in simply because of how the White House has chosen to handle this.
And I think from what we saw, people are still going to be looking for more information.
I mean, I understand the kind of process of privacy and redacting.
I think a lot of Americans do, but the reaction is overwhelming.
I mean, think about this, Jasmine.
There are very few issues that actually cut across DR and independent like this.
Polling would tell us that upwards of 70% of Americans want to see the Epstein files released.
And, you know, I don't think that last night's dump is going to get, is going to change that much simply because we know that there is much more information, particularly a focus from the estate, focused on Donald Trump's involvement, that I think Donald Trump's possible, I should say, overlap should is what I think a lot of people are really focused on.
And, you know, there's been some good journalism.
There were some stories this week by the New York Times about how Epstein got rich.
I think answers some of the questions that some people have.
But really, there's a need for firsthand documentation.
And that's really right now.
But I think people are still looking for the White House to follow through on.
And our early reaction that we heard from the administration was basically saying that this is the most transparent administration of all time because they moved to release these files, despite the fact that they were basically compelled to buy that federal law passed by Congress 30 days ago.
I wonder, though, just looking at the shifting arguments from the White House and from President Trump himself, do you think that he could still sustain damage from this, not just because the release wasn't as fulsome as people thought it would be, but just on the issue itself?
unidentified
I think the issue has already been quite politically damaging for Donald Trump.
When we think about this year, there's a couple of things that have really broken through the noise.
Know tariffs being one.
And I think his kind of inability to focus on prices, what most people brought him to the White House for, is a big reason that we have seen things like approval rating and others fall.
But when we think about Epstein, I mean, Lord knows that when we talk to voters, including voters who voted for him, kind of the undecided group who chose him over Democrats last cycle, Epstein comes up all the time.
You know, I tell people that there are very few issues that cause Donald Trump to feel inauthentic, that kind of place Donald Trump in the club of wealthy insiders rather than kind of fight for every man.
I remember being with Trump supporters, you know, years ago who kind of saw him as their champion for things against kind of an insider cabal.
There was a kind of QAnoni crowd really thought that Donald Trump was going to be their hero in terms of transparency, in terms of openness, in terms of fighting back against what they felt was a group of elites who were kind of conspiring amongst themselves.
As we've seen this morph, it turns out Donald Trump is not on the side that a lot of folks expect.
And I think that's really caused some political damage already.
You know, it is, you know, it's clear that whether it's Attorney General Pambondi or whether it's Trump himself, there has been a trained eye from MAGA back to them saying, hey, on this issue, we're expecting more.
And so there's been very few things actually cause a rift between Donald Trump and his base.
But that's why I go back to that kind of overwhelming upwards of 70% number, because you only get to that if that means it's genuinely bipartisan.
If it was just Democrats or just Trump haters who wanted these files released, we wouldn't have seen this level of pressure.
You know, we did an episode at Vox and today explained about the Epstein files and the pressure Congress was under to even lead to this law.
And the reporting was that members of Congress were receiving upwards of 100 phone calls a day.
These are Republican members about releasing the Epstein files.
In a gerrymandered era, in a moment in Congress where very few things cut across aisles, this issue itself has forced the White House's hand simply because it's unique.
So not only do I think it threatens to have a longer kind of political tale because we haven't seen the fullness of those documents, I think it's already had an effect and really, I think, impacted perceptions of this White House.
You mentioned your Vox Today Explained podcast where you dived into this.
Obviously, there have been some problems with the base on this and some problems in Congress.
I wonder if that leads you to a different consensus of how the president is able to maintain a grip on his party, particularly lawmakers, as you head into the midterm season.
unidentified
Yeah, it's really interesting because one of the things we explored is the distance between the way that Donald Trump has had a kind of total grip on Congress versus some of the cracks that we've seen emerging on the local and state level.
Like think about the ways that he has kind of molded Mike Johnson and his image.
Mike Johnson's taken heat from his own members simply because of his willingness to stand so close to Donald Trump.
And I think even more than that, Trump has really convinced Congress to abdicate their own power.
I mean, when we think about what the real goals of this administration have been, it's been a drumbeat of expansion of executive authority and really the bulking up of the role of presidency at the expense of Congress.
And a lot of Republicans in Congress have gone along with that.
But we continue to see some inability for the White House to get that level of buy-in from the state level.
I'm thinking about some redistricting efforts.
I know your last guest talked about that, but think about places like Indiana, where there was real pushback against the White House and their attempts to redistrict.
And you're seeing that grow more and more from some lawmakers who think that Donald Trump is going to be a net negative for the midterms.
One of the things that happened in those elections that we saw last month is it really changed the focus from being, and I think amongst both parties.
You know, there was such focus about the Democratic failures after the presidential election.
And Lord knows Democrats still have some problems when we think about the national electorate at large.
But when we think about midterms, about these off-year races, Democrats have been performing well.
And it's Donald Trump and the Republican coalition that has been fractured.
And so I think that that has really emboldened people, particularly on the state and local level, to see him as a lame duck that they don't necessarily have to fall in line with directly.
That's not necessarily true when it comes to Congress.
And we've basically seen Congress members have two choices, fall in line or resign.
And so we've seen some of those Republican members increasingly make noise about leaving Congress, about not enjoying their role, things like that.
But the vast majority have simply signed up for their own, I call it abdication of their own power, an expansion of executive authority that's been driven by this White House.
Before we continue our conversation, Istead, I want to invite our viewers to join in on this conversation.
Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
Estead, another place that we've seen Republican lawmakers really try to distance himself from the White House and from President Trump itself is on healthcare.
I want to take a listen to Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican from Pennsylvania, in kind of a vulnerable seat this week, talking about how he signed onto the Democrats' discharge petition to force a vote on extending those Affordable Care Act subsidies.
unidentified
Take a listen.
Only thing worse, extension with no anti-fraud, no income tax is the cliff.
So I'll just left with a Hobson stress.
We all.
But we report to people, we report to our constituents.
We do not answer in person or part of this time.
And we will continue our conversation with Speaker.
So something that for us is very, very time sensitive and very existential for people that we care about, people that need help badly on a very important issue like health care.
unidentified
This is a very personal, very sensitive issue to a lot of people.
So there was Brian Fitzpatrick talking about signing on to that discharge petition.
We also have a notice article with the headline, these House Republicans won't commit to running in 2026.
As retirement rumors swirl, notice asked dozens of House Republicans whether they plan to run again by my colleagues.
And they list about over 120 members who some of them weren't exactly gung-ho about saying whether or not they were going to run for re-election.
I wonder if you put Brian Fitzpatrick and these Republicans who are talking about retiring, as you said, together, what does that tell you about the concerns heading into November from the Republican caucus?
unidentified
Yeah, it tells us a lot.
I mean, Republicans aren't having a good time in Congress.
I mean, in all honesty, Congress itself, DNR, have really been struggling with where their role is.
I mean, we've seen, I mean, Donald Trump has deeply expanded this.
So I don't exactly want to say it's one-to-one, but we've seen president after president kind of methodically minimize Congress.
And I think as kind of gerrymandering has broken that institution, there is an increasing kind of question about whether that's the best place for legislating to happen.
And for a lot of these people, some would feel like there's more money to be made or more power to be had outside of that institution rather than in it.
But specifically to your question, I think we should see this as signs that Republicans are somewhat thinking that next year might not be a great year for them.
And that's on a couple fronts.
Not a great year at the ballot box, but also not a great year kind of taking on the White House's mess.
And I think that we have seen that really drive the rumors of Republican resignations.
Of course, we've had high-profile ones, thinking about Marjorie Taylor Greene, some of the kind of other folks who have made their brand kind of last night announcing she wouldn't run for re-election dropping out of the gubernatorial race.
And I think that speaks to a kind of structural break from Congress.
It used to be the place where you would make your own name, that you would grow your own reputation.
But now I think there's an ability to raise small dollars elsewhere.
There's a ability to grow your voice elsewhere.
And there might be even a freedom of voice that exists further outside of the institution rather than in it.
But to the kind of first point that you were mentioning about healthcare subsidies, I think it's a really important issue.
Democrats have succeeded in elevating the rising health care premiums and the expiration, those Obamacare subsidies during this shutdown fight.
That was successful in terms of bringing that into the public consciousness.
And it's really put pressure on Republicans on what they're going to do on that front.
Now, I think that kind of both sides of the party have an open healthcare question when it comes to the next presidential race.
Where will Democrats fall on issues like Medicare for All?
Where will Republicans fall on not just repealing Obamacare, but actually coming up with a vision of their own?
There's a kind of universal recognition that our healthcare system could and should be improved, but we haven't really seen an outlying vision about how to do that.
I think that comes in the next couple of years, but in the short term, Democrats have succeeded and we're boxing Republicans in on the question of cost.
Well, the truth is that, you know, it really hasn't been Democrats or Republicans, I think, to push it.
This has been a bottom-up kind of grassrootsy effort.
I think there's a lot of interest, whether it be among individual people on social media, that feels as if this is emblematic of the type of small group of people who have had outsized power and have used it kind of badly.
I don't think this is coming from pure ideological lines.
Of course, this is something that is already roped in Democrats, Republicans, other kind of cultural figures, intellectuals, academics.
And so it's not necessarily, I think, a partisan-driven thing, more so than an anti-elite thing.
And so I can totally see someone making the argument that maybe this doesn't have material effects for people, or maybe this isn't the most important issue in the world.
And I'm actually sympathetic to the argument that Democrats have been searching for a way, in my opinion, to kind of one easy trick to get rid of Donald Trump.
I can think you can certainly stake that case for some of for some of the things he's faced previously.
I don't think that's what's happening here.
I really think this is a more grassroots, people-driven effort against what they view as a cabal of elites.
Now, you can disagree with that, but I don't think that's driven by the Democratic Party more so than I think the Democratic Party has been swept up into trying to reflect it.
But it hasn't been necessarily been something that has started as a Democrat play to oust Donald Trump, partially because it's going to wrap up some folks that they know and love.
Like Bill Clinton, who was featured a lot in those Epstein photos that were released last night.
Roger from Carbondale, Illinois, a Republican.
You're next.
unidentified
Yeah, I've heard all this morning from this gentleman, Mr. Herden, how he thinks that the Republican Party is a mess and that they need to change this and change that.
There's not a thing they need to change, buddy.
I mean, when we talk about the change that took place since the mess that he inherited from Biden, you know, look at the border.
Look at the guy when he was in the, I was in Missouri yesterday.
The price of gas was $2.31.
It was $5.10 in 2020.
I remember that.
So that's a big thing.
You got to give it time.
10 months is not a lot of time to change everything.
But I think when it comes to what Trump is doing, he's on course to make changes like I've never seen.
And we just need to hold on.
The Democrats right now, they don't have a plan at all.
All you do is rip Trump all day long on all the Hulk stations, CNN and MSNBC and all that.
You know, let's get together and work together and go across party lines and help this country grow instead of just saying that the Republicans are not going to ever, ever have anything done right.
I don't think the Republicans are never doing anything right or anything that I'm saying.
I'm saying that there is a legitimate break with how Donald Trump has conducted his second term and some of his own supporters.
Now, clearly, that doesn't include this gentleman, who seems fairly happy with Donald Trump's focus and his agenda.
I guess what I'm saying is when, you know, saying that, you know, it's just been 10 months is the argument that the White House makes.
But for a lot of people, they feel like this is no longer Joe Biden's economy.
This is the Donald Trump economy that he has imposed chaos on through his own actions, specifically tariffs.
And that is the number one reason we have seen Donald Trump's approval rating go down is because people have flipped on his handling of the economy.
And that is not just Democrats who didn't really like him in the first place.
That is mostly Republicans and independents.
Some Republicans and mostly independents.
That is just the fact.
The fact is also that the things like handling of Epstein have really driven.
The fact is also that people think the focus on things like ballrooms and unexplained strikes in Venezuela are not as important as some of the agenda items that he laid out and has not followed through on.
And so there has been an air of incompetency that has infected Trump's second term.
And you see that reflected in the kind of voter reaction to him.
Now, does that mean that Democrats get to win because of that?
Absolutely not.
We still have another year before the midterm elections.
And I think to the caller's point, Donald Trump wants to shift the focus of that before we get to next November.
He very well might.
The other question is when we get to things like a presidential race, it becomes vision versus vision.
And I think that's a big difference.
When we go back to voters, even some of whom are disappointed with Donald Trump's actions right now, they don't necessarily say that that means that they wish they voted for a Democrat.
That just meant they were disappointed with what he was doing.
And so I think Democrats still have an onus on them to come up with a competing vision on a lot of issues that can speak to what Donald Trump has spoken to.
And so that's still a challenge for Democrats, even as Donald Trump has created a governing problem of his own.
Now, I want to put the president's most recent approval ratings on the economy on the screen here from PBS Mara's poll taken December 8th through 11th of this year.
36 approve of the job that the president is doing on the economy.
57 disapprove and 8% are unsure.
I want to take a listen to the president who this week gave a primetime address, basically defending his economy and saying that it is that he's basically digging himself out of a hole left to him by former President Joe Biden.
After years of record-setting falling incomes, our policies are boosting take-home pay at a historic pace.
Under Biden, real wages plummeted by $3,000.
Under Trump, the typical factory worker is seeing a wage increase of $1,300.
For construction workers, it's $1,800.
For miners, we're bringing back clean, beautiful coal.
It's $3,300.
And for the first time in years, wages are rising much faster than inflation.
Remember that wages, just look at it.
Wages are going up much faster than inflation.
How big is that?
Very importantly, there are more people working today than at any time in American history.
And 100% of all jobs created since I took office have been in the private sector.
Think of that.
100% of all jobs have been in the private sector rather than government, which is the only way to make a country powerful and great.
This historic trend will continue.
Already, I've secured a record-breaking $18 trillion of investment into the United States, which means jobs, wage increases, growth, factory openings, and far greater national security.
Much of this success has been accomplished by tariffs.
My favorite word, tariffs, which for many decades have been used successfully by other countries against us, but not anymore.
Companies know that if they build in America, there are no tariffs.
And that's why they're coming home to the USA in record numbers.
They're building factories and plants at levels we haven't seen, AI, automobiles.
We're doing what nobody thought was even possible.
That was President Trump in his primetime address on Wednesday.
But instead, I wonder if you couple the president's rather rosy message on the economy, coupled with those approval numbers, 36% approval the job he's doing on the economy.
I wonder if you feel that there needs to be some sort of message shift there from the president to his own base.
unidentified
I mean, listen, it reminds me of what Joe Biden was trying to do in 2021 when there was rising inflation, but he kind of insisted amongst Americans' concerns that things were going well.
It's not exactly the same because we have seen some inflation slow, particularly in recent job numbers through government shutdown.
But the key word in what I heard from that sentence is Donald Trump reinforcing his favorite word of tariffs.
That puts him at odds with most Americans who correctly understand that tariffs has not driven up jobs and has driven, and in the short term, has been a cause of price increases.
And the biggest thing is their private companies are busy telling them that, you know, this is due to concerns about tariffs.
This is, you know, and so I think the legal chaos that was imposed this summer, that was imposed even by Donald Trump's own actions, let's remember it caught, you know, some of the freak out around tariffs caused him to pull back from his initial kind of set of numbers.
I mean, that itself, I think, isn't a concession from the White House.
We should not just ignore.
This policy focus has not succeeded.
However, this is his obsession.
And so he is trying to make it succeed over the concerns of Americans.
And so that's why I make it the comparison back to Biden is because it reminds me of the dangers of when you do not reflect people's concerns and respond to them, but simply try to re-impose your own view to that.
I haven't really ever seen that work.
And so like, I guess that to me is the hard hill the White House is trying to climb.
I guess I would suggest the messaging shift simply because I would say that your best role always is to be where the people are.
And on tariffs and on the economy, he is not.
And so that's been true for his life.
But in the first term, he did not go down this road.
And to be honest, a lot of the closest people around him really regretted that over the last four years.
And so that's why I think it's a very interesting tension about the remaining years of this White House.
Do they care about public reaction?
Do they calibrate themselves to blowback in sentiment?
Or do they feel like, hey, the plan is not to run again?
Donaldson, you know, whatever, whoever comes next in Republicans has to make their own way.
Trump is going to do what he wants.
And so that can be true no matter what happens in the midterms.
And I think that's really the question in front of us.
Why do all the people that say trillionaires in these big corporations should pay their fair share?
And then when they have to pay for tariffs because they're getting all their stuff made by horrible labor conditions in China, you know, and other places where they have nuts on the sides of the building so that people don't kill themselves.
Okay, these are big corporations paying these tariffs.
And guess what?
Those are trillionaires and they should pay their fair share.
I think if Donald Trump was raising taxes on wealthy individuals or on corporations, that would be the argument.
That's not what he's doing.
These companies are passing those on to Americans.
And he's also creating carve-outs for companies to individually bypass some tariffs if they give the government money.
And so the combo of tariffs plus, I think, cronyism is partially to this response.
And to the point about polling, I do think that there is problems with electoral polling when it comes to Trump space.
But you really can't say that in terms of last year, where Donald Trump's ability to win was pretty seen in polling.
But also, I would say when we talk about issue polling, which is what we're talking about here, you're right that they did say that Donald Trump was the best, his best issue on issue polling has been the economy over the last several years.
And so even if you have some skepticism of said polling, the fact that that has gone belly under in the last six months should give fans of Donald Trump some concerns, fans of the Republican Party some concerns.
And so I guess I'm not like here to tell you what you need to believe or not.
I'm telling you for a fact that some of Donald Trump's own supporters, many of them, do not like what he's doing on the economy.
I've talked to them.
And so whether you, what you want to do with that information, what the White House wants to do with that information is simply up to them.
But the polling reflects a shift in sentiment that is true among the American people.
I do think that speech was a recognition of a White House that needs to recontrol a narrative.
I think that Donald Trump has often been used to dictating kind of where, you know, kind of discussion starts and ends.
And on a couple of issues, I would say the economy currently, but also Epstein, as we've talked about, and a couple of other things, they have not been able to do that.
And so, again, like, you know, I really see this as a White House that has that has made a priority of power and has basically backfilled explanations to the American people as convenient.
How many different things did they tell us for the reasons why we have an escalating conflict with Venezuela?
You know, it wasn't about Fentanyl first.
It's also been, it's been about 10 other things.
Before it's actually been an admission for Donald Trump about like the extraction of oil and having a government in there that would allow American companies and businesses to grow.
That's something they had denied for weeks until he kind of said so this week.
And so I'm saying on the Epstein files, how many exclusives have we have in this White House?
On tariffs, how many explanations have we have from this White?
There is not a consistency in terms of giving the American people a why behind their actions.
But I would say that falls into line with a group of people whose goal has been the explicit expansion of executive authority.
When we think about the most important people in this White House and around Donald Trump, I think about Stephen Miller.
I think about Russ Vogt.
I think about the people who saw this as a project about power.
And so even things about, even things like DOTE were oftentimes seen as individual pet projects for Elon Musk or such.
Those were intentionally created organizations that targeted the exact orgs that Project 2025 was laying out for the purposes of creating a legal framework that could expand executive power.
These are intentional decisions.
And so one of the things I think is important to understand about this White House is that there is a legal and political framework that is working at the same time as the policy one.
And so, yes, that can be confusing.
Yes, that means there's a waterfall of things happening.
And yes, that somewhat means that from a public perspective, I think the options of pushback are fairly limited.
Because even if they were to say lose X amount of seats in Congress or Democrats would gain control of the House, I do not think that stops the Donald Trump and Stephen Miller agenda overnight.
I think that that is the reason why the executive authority has been such a goal is somewhat to insulate the White House from those concerns.
And so that has been what they've wanted to do.
And they've said that publicly.
And so I don't think we should try to overinterpret their desires.
And to put a point on your point, Estead, you tweeted this week the Steven militarization of the White House is a big reason it's been a political it's been a political flop so far.
Maybe he and Russ Vogt, who is the OMB director, view everything through the lens of their ideological project or the goal of expanding presidential authority, but that's not even true of the MAGA voter.
Jay from Loveland, Colorado, an independent, you're next.
unidentified
Hey there.
I have more of a comment than a question.
Isn't the release of the Epstein files more about morality and what's right and wrong?
We don't want to see these girls being exploited and raped by anyone.
I mean, that's why I say it's a bottom-up grassroots public thing.
What happened to those girls is horrible.
What happened, what Epstein has been accused of and proved to have kind of coordinated for years is horrible.
The people who have hung out with him after those accusations were public and litigated in court, horrible.
And so I think that's what the interest is, is because there is legitimate questions for both the people who ingratiated themselves to him and were relying on him, the financial institutions who supported him.
So I'm saying, like, I totally agree with that caller because I think it is a, I think it is really, I think it's insulting to the American people to act like this is only seen through the lens of partisan politics or by Donald Trump.
I think the facts of this case are horrible.
And I think that's what's motivating people to want transparency.
Turning the conversation, Estead, you're in New York City and you've done a lot of work profiling Mayor-elect Zorhan Mamdani.
You had a piece in New York Times before the election.
That headline is inside the improbable and audacious and so far unstoppable rise of Zorhan Mamdani.
I wonder if you believe that he is setting new expectations for what Democrats should expect from their leaders.
And also, what do you make of his relationship with President Donald Trump?
Obviously, he was here in the Oval Office in Washington, D.C. last month.
unidentified
Yeah, I'll take your first question first.
I do think that Mamdani has tried to model something different in terms of campaigning for Democrats.
I think there works on two fronts.
There's a kind of process and how he campaigned, and there's the kind of policy front.
On the why and how, I think it kind of speaks to something I was talking about earlier.
That is a campaign that has really been molded in response to people's concerns.
So things like affordability became a focus because they have been doing such door-to-door housing or door-to-door door knocking and canvassing that they recognized that housing was central to people's concerns, even though some polling said that things like public safety and other things were more important.
I remember Mamdani telling me that he understood that people had just lost faith that government would do anything about affordability.
And so that's why he wanted to focus his campaign on that.
I think that is also the kind of social media aspects, the way he reached voters where they are.
Those are certainly things you're going to see Democrats and Republicans on the like start to model.
We've even seen that in terms of like the places they're willing to go on podcasts, even some of the YouTube videos they've been putting out.
A lot of that is very Mamdani coded.
But, you know, they would say that you can't separate that kind of performance of politics from the substance itself.
And even when I was out on the trail with him, it's not like he would mention of, you know, Israel Gazo or things kind of outside of affordability concerns consistently on the trail.
But it was in the air and it kind of was a reason why a lot of the people trusted him.
He was seen as someone who has consistently fought for his values, no matter kind of who was on the other side.
And I think that's really served him.
And so I think it's going to be an open question for Democrats about can they get the glitz of Mandani without the substance that was bringing particularly progressives and young people to him?
That's going to be an interesting thing.
To your point about Donald Trump, you know, it was interesting because I think when he came to the White House, I expected them to get along.
You know, Momdani has been doing this charm offensive across New York City.
He's willing to meet with anybody, friend, foe, everyone in between.
And his goal is simply to find one place of shared common ground and to focus on it.
And he's been doing that across a lot of different sectors of New York in the last several months.
And so when I heard that he was going to the White House, I imagined he was going to try to execute the same thing, you know, focus on the commonality rather than the differences and let his kind of charm do the work.
Now, I didn't necessarily expect Donald Trump to be like looking at him like favorite son, but I do think it reflects someone who, you know, Donald Trump is a New Yorker who has a respect for someone who climbs that ladder.
But I think there is a willingness to make your politics work with anybody.
And for so many Democrats over the last several years, there was a little bit, I would say, of a snobbery about who they were willing to be in coalition with.
I think that was including some snobby Republicans or people who may have previously voted for Trump, but even their kind of base poor Democrats who were who maybe didn't love the party's nominees or people who were upset about the actions that the party was seen to be supporting in Gaza.
I think one of the things that Mamdani did is open up his campaign to all.
He would say it stops.
We are not going to say Republicans can't be here.
We're not going to say Trump supporters can't be here.
There's places of overlap for all.
I think that's a lesson that served him well in the Trump meeting.
Estead, you joined Vox in October after covering politics and elections at the New York Times and hosting the podcast, The Run Up.
I wonder if you can describe to our viewers how will your reporting be different across all of the platforms at Vox Now?
unidentified
Yeah, I appreciate you asking.
You know, one of the things that has really motivated me not only to join Vox, but was to really evolve my journalism.
You know, I was really excited at the times to be able to do magazine stories, to be able to do the run-up podcast, also be able to report in text and on audio with the daily.
But I wanted to make sure I wanted to build a kind of home and podcast that all of those things can kind of exist in one.
And I actually, I wanted to be someplace that I think was primed to be the ideas, I would say, the ideas town hall for the upcoming elections.
And so one thing I think is really exciting is we're going to be launching a podcast over the next couple of months that really seeks to do that, to take the voices who I met along the way, covering Trump up close over the last eight years, but also really to put the focus and the priority on regular Americans, things that you do here on C-SPAN, giving the voices of people who are driving the changes of the country from the bottom up rather than the top down, you know?
And so as Estead, we've got to go, but I want to say thank you so much for our time.
That's Estead from Vox, host and editorial director.
That's all for our program today.
Another Washington Journal comes to you tomorrow at 7 a.m.
unidentified
All this week, watch Washington Journal's Holiday Authors Week series, featuring live conversations with a new author each day.
Coming up Sunday morning, Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow discusses his book, Breaking the Law, Exposing the Weaponization of America's Legal System Against Donald Trump.
Watch Authors Week Live during Washington Journal, Sunday morning, beginning at 7 Eastern on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org.
Get C-SPAN wherever you are with C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app that puts you at the center of democracy, live and on demand.
Keep up with the day's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the U.S. Congress, White House events, the courts, campaigns, and more from the world of politics, all at your fingertips.
Catch the latest episodes of Washington Journal.
Find scheduling information for C-SPAN's TV and radio networks, plus a variety of compelling podcasts.
The C-SPAN Now app is available at the Apple Store and Google Play.