C-SPAN’s Washington Journal (12/22/2025) explores AI’s polarizing divide—Bernie Sanders warns of unchecked billionaire control and job displacement, while callers clash over optimism (e.g., Lance’s nuclear-war joke) and dystopian fears (AI-generated "soulless" essays, intellectual theft in dissertations). Pew data reveals 50% now fear AI more than embrace it. Meanwhile, Casey Burgitt debunks term limits as a fix for polarization, citing shrinking swing states (e.g., <10% competitive races by 2026) and dark money’s grip, urging civics education over structural reforms. Callers derail into Epstein files, Medicare fraud claims, and partisan conspiracy theories, exposing deep distrust in institutions—from media bias to DOJ transparency demands, like Schumer’s resolution and Massie’s contempt charges—while Trump’s legal battles fuel debates on "legalized extortion" and welfare misuse. The episode underscores how tech and governance crises mirror America’s fractured civic engagement and eroding faith in expertise. [Automatically generated summary]
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Next on today's edition of Washington Journal, we'll continue our Holiday Authors Week series, featuring live conversations with a new author each day.
Coming up, after a look at the news of the day and some viewer calls, we'll welcome George Washington University professor Casey Burgett to talk about his book, We Hold These Truths, How to Spot Myths That Are Holding America Back.
AI and robotics are the most transformative technologies in the history of humanity and will have a profound impact on the lives of every man, woman, and child in our country.
Just a few points, just a few points that we need to be thinking about.
One, who is aggressively pushing these technologies?
Well, surprise, surprise, it happens to be the very wealthiest people on earth.
People like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates, and other multi-billionaires.
So here is a very simple question I'd like you to think about.
Do you believe that these guys, these multi-billionaires, are staying up nights worrying about what AI and robotics will do to the working families of our country and the world?
Well, I don't think so.
I think that these very, very rich men want even more wealth and even more power.
And for a whole bunch of reasons, that is very dangerous.
Number two, what will AI and robotics mean economically for the working class of this country?
Well, don't listen to me.
Listen to the people who are developing those technologies.
Elon Musk recently said, quote, AI and robots will replace all jobs.
Working will be optional, end quote.
Bill Gates predicted that humans, quote, won't be needed for most things, end quote.
Dario Amodai, the CEO of Anthropic, warned that AI could lead to the loss of half of all entry-level white-collar jobs.
Question.
If AI and robotics eliminate millions of jobs and create massive unemployment, how will people survive if they have no income?
And I don't want to break the bad news to you, I know it won't shock you, but very few members of Congress are seriously thinking about this.
I mean, it'll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that.
If you want to work, you know, in the same way, like you can go to the store and just buy some vegetables or you could grow vegetables in your backyard.
It's much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, but some people still do it because they like growing vegetables.
That will be what work is like, optional.
Now, between now and then, there's actually a lot of work to get to that point.
And I always recommend people read Yin Bank's culture books to get a sense for what a probable positive AI future is like.
And interestingly, in those books, money is no longer, doesn't exist.
It's kind of interesting.
And my guess is, assuming there's a continued improvement in AI and robotics, which seems likely, the money will stop being relevant at some point in the future.
There will still be constraints on power, like electricity and mass.
The fundamental physics elements will still be constraints.
But I think at some point, currency becomes irrelevant.
This morning on the Washington Journal, we're asking you if you're optimistic or pessimistic about the future of AI.
It's our question in this first segment of the Washington Journal this morning.
If you say optimistic, 202, 748, 8000, if you say pessimistic, 202, 748, 8001.
As we said, we're also looking for your social media posts.
Here's just a couple of them.
Christopher saying, I'm optimistic.
I used it last week to create myself a tailored weekly workout schedule.
I told it about my weak points and it provided a great plan.
As with any applied technology, this is a double-edged sword and could be used for serious self-improvement or criminal activities.
But I'm optimistic it will help people by providing guidance onto how to improve their lives.
And one more from Kareem.
I'm pessimistic as hell.
We can't pass simple laws to even come close to providing health insurance for our people.
And we think this geriatric Congress and buffoonishly greedy president are going to pass bills to protect us from all the ills of AI.
Kareem says nope.
In terms of what President Trump wants when it comes to AI, it was an executive order earlier this month aimed at discouraging states from issuing individual laws, a patchwork framework as it would be across 50 states when it comes to AI regulation so the federal government can lead the way here.
Here's some more on what that executive order would do.
It would task the Attorney General with establishing an AI litigation task force within 30 days to challenge state laws, AI laws particularly that are on the books.
It would require the Commerce Secretary to identify and evaluate existing state laws that conflict with the order and it would use as a stick to discourage the individual states from issuing regulation, broadband access equity funding as the way of withholding those funds to discourage states from issuing these individual AI laws.
It was President Trump talking about those laws and the need for the federal government to lead the way here in an Oval Office comment earlier this month.
But they're spending trillions of dollars and they can't, basically this has a couple of other things that are less important, but one of the things that it has is you have to have a central source of approval.
When they need approvals of things, they have to come to one source.
They can't go to California, New York, and various other places like Illinois with Pritzker, who's a totally unreasonable person.
And they have to have, you know, they're putting all this money in.
It's a big part of the economy.
And there's only going to be, I think, one winner here.
I don't know if anybody agrees with that.
I think most people agree, but there's only going to be one winner here.
And that's probably going to be the U.S. or China.
And right now we're winning by a lot.
China has a central source of approval.
I don't think they have any approval.
They just go and build.
But people want to be in the United States and they want to do it here.
And we have the big investment coming.
But if they had to get 50 different approvals from 50 different states, you could forget it because it's not possible to do, especially if you have some hostile.
All you need is one hostile actor and you wouldn't be able to do it.
That was President Trump on his executive order that he issued earlier this month, despite that executive order.
This is what happened in the state of New York on Friday.
Governor Kathy Hochul of New York signed legislation that will establish new state rules governing the safe development of the most advanced artificial intelligence models.
The bill, the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Safety, Education, or RAISE Act is the first AI-related state law to be enacted since President Trump signed that executive order trying to rein in states' abilities to limit artificial technology.
His order prompted bipartisan criticism and will most likely be challenged in court, the New York Times writes, it quotes Kathy Hochul as saying, New York is once again leading the nation in setting a strong and sensible standard for frontier AI safety, holding the biggest developers accountable for their safety and transparency protocols.
She said that reforms represent progress as the federal government lags behind failing to implement common sense regulations that will protect the public.
That story in this morning's New York Times from what happened back on Friday when it comes to AI in the state of New York.
Asking you this morning simply, are you optimistic or pessimistic on the future of AI amid all this discussion about the technology and what it could mean?
What do you think it means for you?
What does it mean for your job?
What does it mean for the country?
202-748-8000.
If you say optimistic, 202-748-8001, if you say pessimistic.
This is Homer out of Kansas City, Missouri, up first.
Homer, what do you think?
unidentified
Yeah, I think, John, that you got to be optimistic because, I mean, I'm sure even in your company, you deal with human resources and, you know, common sense is like just out the window anymore.
And then you got the BMI with your health care.
I was a bodybuilder, and they always, in my insurance, they always say I'm obese, and I'm built like a brick.
And this is according to their BMI thing.
So things like that is where it's going to make a difference.
And hopefully they can like apply it to the POTUS.
That's Homer in Kansas City, Missouri, asking you if you are optimistic or pessimistic about AI.
Here's a column from today's Wall Street Journal asking: would you let one of those big AI models, Claude, do your taxes?
This is what Carter Price writes today: Artificial intelligence evangelists and alarmists share one conviction.
Both believe that despite scant evidence so far that AI is on the verge of replacing human knowledge workers, today's large language models, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grock, can write code and polished prose, but would you trust them to do your taxes?
This is what Carter Price predicts.
By 2027, I anticipate using a large language model to help draft my tax filings, perhaps as a first pass before reviewing and submitting them myself.
By 2028, I predict enough people will trust general purpose AI to handle their individual taxes to have a material effect on companies like HR Block and Intuit.
TurboTax will be the canary in the coal mine, Carter writes, until people can trust AI to do their taxes.
They shouldn't trust it, to do their jobs.
That gives us a little bit of time to prepare, but not too much.
Asking you about how much time we have to prepare for AI, whether you're optimistic or pessimistic about the future of AI.
This is Ron out of Long Beach, California.
What do you think?
unidentified
I'm very pessimistic, and I just think about just technology in general.
Let's just say things like if you're writing ideas, I just think about in college how you're always on projects, you know, kind of starting the beginning phases of figuring out your own future businesses and how you're going to make that work.
A lot of times you're using software to kind of make sure your sentences are right, but they're actually, AI would read all of your information, see all of your ideas, and on that creative side of starting your businesses or anything, it would already know where you're going with that.
And that information will be shared because, you know, you're having conversations with, like, say, investors.
You're having common conversations about how you're going to create these things.
I just see, if you can just follow my logic, everything you, every time any inventor, entrepreneur would have an idea about anything, this information would be going up to the owners of the software that's, you know, hearing all of your ideas, your meetings, your phones are picking up your basic conversations now.
Can you just see how that could just interfere in anyone's creativity?
I think these kinds of things are going on all the time.
I can think of a very basic program.
Remember the resume writing program?
So if you weren't really good at writing your own resume, it would pull ideas from other people's resumes and add it to your own.
Now, you know, someone who's more articulate, maybe even better at a job, is now looking the same as someone who may not have that experience.
And it's just kind of generating great ideas to your resume, and that's not even your experience, if that makes any sense.
I just think that would just kind of make everyone look the same.
And just I think people would lose that creative part of us that makes just like even just America great.
No one would even try anymore.
They're not even exercising their own brains because it's going to just be taken over.
Yes, genie out of the box.
I think it's going to destroy creativity when people say it's going to make people have the ability to move on to higher level jobs and higher level thinking.
I've got Susan waiting in Massachusetts and several other folks.
Let me get to some of those.
This is Susan.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Oh, hi.
Hi, John.
Yes, I agree with the woman before me.
I'll take a different tack.
I'm in the middle of the AI deployment in my biotech pharma company.
It's being deployed rapidly.
You can see AI taking over many key roles.
So we're seeing significant layoffs, and that'll continue over the next decade in lab work, protocols, the sciences, business operations, procurement, legal, accounting, you name it.
Logistics.
And then I was just thinking of the implications in retail, food service, even the U.S. military.
You won't need a physical army anymore if it's all automated, AI-driven, drone-based warfare and security.
Every role in life, really, that generates an income and creates a tax base is at risk.
Well, that leaves a society that's going to have to go to universal basic income.
It's going to have to consider drastic diminishment of benefits and services.
I think there are obviously advantages to AI, writing assistance, streamlining procedures for doctors.
But then there's whole fields of medicine that could be eliminated.
Radiology, all kinds of surgery could become more or less automated and just supervised by an MD technician.
It's a slippery slope.
And I even hear in journalism, of course, the whole field could be at risk.
They're even testing out AI anchors, news hankers.
So I'm deeply frightened.
I think we'll have to develop a radically revised tax code to really tap into the billionaire class.
But I've seen how America failed in regulating the Internet and social media.
And the world did.
And our political apparatus is not us not equipped to handle all this because it's a pay-to-play democracy, if you want to call it that, where all these AI companies and the tech-driven billionaires own Congress.
So I don't know.
I'm very discouraged and fearful.
I'm just glad I'm an older worker so that but every aspect of my job, I've had to undergo a rigorous AI curriculum training program.
They're monitoring us for the use of AI in our day-to-day jobs with the theory that it'll cut down on mundane tasks and speed up our work, and therefore they can chart better who they can eliminate from jobs.
Susan in Massachusetts on the pessimistic line put Don Floyd in Virginia, an independent, also in the pessimistic category, saying, I think AI will be the end of us.
Environmental effects will be catastrophic.
Just one of those texts that we received, 202748-8003 is the text number.
You've heard from a few of our callers.
Here's one of the major polling companies, the Pew Research Service, has been taking a look at the idea of whether Americans are concerned or excited about the increased use of AI in daily life.
Back in 2021, 18% of Americans said they were more excited than concerned.
37% said they were more concerned than excited.
Fast forward to 2025, just 10% of Americans saying they're more excited than concerned.
50% now saying they're more concerned than excited.
You can see how those numbers moved over time.
Let us know what you think on phone lines for whether you're optimistic, 202-748-8000, or pessimistic, 202-748-8001.
This is John out of the Garden State.
John, what do you think?
unidentified
Hi.
I think AI has the potential of there's reason for optimism.
There's also a reason for pessimism.
I'm afraid, I'm actually afraid of artificial stupidity.
You know, an AI can be trained to amplify anger and hate in social media.
You know, I think it could be trained to do the things that we hate to see other people do to each other.
And that's about all I can say.
I could see it doing us a lot of damage.
The positive note, you know, in Japan, you can get a job welcoming people at the entrance to a department store.
And it's a respectable job.
So, you know, AI could replace a lot of stuff and leave us with time to think and maybe get better at things.
But I'm overall pessimistic that it'll go the other way, that the bad inclinations of humans will be reflected, will be used to train AI to do things we, you know, to do things to people we hate.
Why in your mind is it more likely to be used for ill than good?
unidentified
I don't know about more likely.
You know, I think it's more like people will make it.
I mean, people train it to do evil.
I mean, manipulation of public opinion is an example where, you know, I think a real human could decide to amplify hate in some other governments, some other governments, some other country's population and be quite happy about it, thinking that it's AI doing the right thing to achieve his or her goals.
One of the reasons we're doing this question, President Trump's executive order earlier this month, and then the comments by Bernie Sanders last week, but in the wake of that executive order, and again, it was aimed at limiting individual states from regulating AI.
The president saying it would create a patchwork effect that companies would be too confusing and too hard to navigate trying to centralize regulation through the federal government.
But this was Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, her reaction to the president's executive order from earlier this month.
Donald Trump is trying to block states from passing laws to protect you and people you love from AI.
He wants to stop any laws that would put some restrictions on chatbots that encourage people to hurt themselves or on AI that is price fixing or on laws that keep huge data centers from raising your electricity costs.
So what happened?
Well, last week, Donald Trump signed an executive order that tried to stop any state laws that limit AI.
You may remember that a version of this was voted on by the Senate and it was voted down in the Senate by 99 to 1.
Why?
Because it's bad for kids, bad for workers, bad for consumers, and bad for local economies.
It's bad for anyone who isn't a big tech CEO.
Right now, the federal government isn't doing a ton on regulating AI, but that doesn't mean that AI doesn't need rules.
Like I've heard from plenty of parents who worry about what AI could mean for their kids.
I've seen reports showing how companies use AI to artificially increase prices.
People all across the country are trying to grapple with what it means to have a data center right there in their backyard.
People are worried about the impact of AI on their jobs.
I think a lot of us can agree that AI has tremendous potential.
But like all powerful technology, it should have some checks and balances on it.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, her post on social media on Thursday, asking you this Monday morning, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of AI?
You see the numbers on your screen.
We go to Philly.
Jonathan, good morning.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
No question about it.
I am betting on AI to really transform everything and rapidly.
I don't think there's a way to stop it.
I think the amount of moneyed interest, the trillions of dollars in investment, it's going to trample over everything.
Democracy just is going to transform so quickly.
If you look at America and you look at the number one and number two sectors of employees, namely retail jobs and driving jobs, those will be gone rapidly.
And so very optimistic about AI, but concerned about the impact on humanity.
And I think that would be the question to ask: how do you think AI will impact humanity?
And that's really the question.
AI is going to do great in the billionaires that own it.
And I guess that's kind of what we're asking with this question, Jonathan.
Whether you're optimistic that this is one of the major futures of development.
I mean, it seems like there's no question about that.
But whether that's a good thing, whether you're optimistic about that prospect or not.
That's kind of what we're asking.
unidentified
So, well, so, yeah, so AI is going to thrive and do very well.
The real concerns would be the energy consumption, the use of water, the pollution that it's going to do to water.
Clearly, it's not going to be regulated because Congress is completely owned by money at interest, so it's going to be unregulated.
It's going to do massive, massive damage.
And we're not going to have any guests on C-SPAN that are actually going to really talk about AI and what it is and what risks it poses.
We're just going to have questions like this where people that don't know very much call in and just say some stuff, but we're not going to have any real information.
The first being that as I see in the college students I teach, increasing human dependency on it that takes advantage of our laziness and makes us more and more want it to do things for us.
Second, I see it the arms race that is going on among all of the nations and NGOs and corporations that are working on this, trying to develop, as all technology is developed, as a military weapon among some people whose motives are terrible.
But third, and I think most alarming, is the possibility of sentience in AI, of it becoming self-conscious in a way that will probably produce as its first thought, why in the world should I be a slave to these inferior beings?
At this point, do you just assume that most of those students, when they're writing, are using AI in what they submit to you?
unidentified
What I see is soulless, grammatically perfect writing that runs stylistically along a kind of very low level, and it's nothing like the freshman writing that I've been seeing for over half a century.
It's immediately discernible from human writing, particularly because of its soullessness, but also because of its sort of surface-bland perfection.
Steve, thanks for the call from Brooklyn, New York.
Back to that Pew Poll.
Here's another interesting question that they ask in that poll, asking Americans whether they think artificial intelligence should play either a big or small role in various activities, such as forecasting the weather.
Some 74% of Americans believe that AI should play either a big or small role in doing that.
Other topics, searching for financial crime, 70% of Americans say that AI should play some role.
Searching for fraud and government benefits claims, 70% again saying some role.
Developing new medicines, 66% say it should play some role.
When it comes to identifying suspects in a crime, 61% say it should play some role.
And then below 50%, providing mental health support for people.
Just 46% of Americans say AI should play some role.
Selecting who should serve on a jury, 33% say AI should play some role.
When it comes to making decisions about how to govern the country, 27% say that AI should play some role.
Judging whether two people could fall in love, 18% said AI should play some role.
And when it comes to advising people about their faith in God, 11% say AI should play some role in that decision.
That from the Pew Research poll that we've been talking about this morning, we're about halfway through this first segment of the Washington Journal as we're asking you whether you're optimistic or pessimistic about the future of AI.
202-748-8000.
If you're optimistic, 202-748-8001.
If you are pessimistic, this is Steve out of Rexford, New York.
Steve, good morning.
unidentified
Oh, good morning.
Wow.
Yes, I'm very optimistic.
First of all, intelligence is defined as the ability to acquire and apply knowledge.
And man, in all his wisdom, has invented this machine.
It's an electronic machine, and it has intelligence.
And the awesome thing about it is, is that it operates practically at the speed of light.
So that's why I'm, and I'm optimistic because I've met a lot of good people in my life, and that's basically why I'm optimistic.
Steve, do you think this question that we're asking today is just kind of a Rorschach test of whether you're just generally an optimistic or a pessimistic person?
Do you think it boils down to that?
Or do you think AI is something different than just kind of your general outlook?
unidentified
Well, I think it's probably got to do with the fear, a lack of understanding of intelligence.
As I say, it's simply the ability to acquire and apply knowledge.
And hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, are going to die because of it.
unidentified
So if we think about the ethos of the people who are developing this AI, we've got people from South Africa who are children of apartheid, who are very rich and don't have the same experience that many of us have with humanity and how humanity treats each other.
We have a government that has laid off hundreds of thousands of people without regard to the consequences of their lives.
So I'm very pessimistic because the ethos and the spirituality of the people who are developing this, I think, is on the low end of the spectrum, where their intelligence may be on the high end.
unidentified
And that does not bode well for the majority of people in this world who do not look like the people who are developing these technologies, who don't have the same life experience as these people who are developing these technologies.
So I think that gives us cause for pause.
There are always unintended consequences to the miracles that man might think that he or she is producing.
And I don't know that it's going to do our society very well.
You heard Elon say that money is not going to even be a consideration in the future.
So that means somebody has to control the levers of power, the levers of who gets fed, who gets medical care.
So that gives away a lot of empathy.
We know that a lot of these people don't have empathy.
They've already said so.
We know that a lot of these people who are developing AI have a dystopian view of the future.
So there is a lot to consider, and I'm with Senator Warren.
We need controls.
We need to be very careful of how we go about this.
So this is a good question, no doubt.
We need to start talking about it, and we need to think about it.
How people do their work will be different, obviously, because a lot of the things that we do mundanely or arduously or very difficultly are going to be done very simply.
unidentified
And so we're going to be more productive from that sense.
One of the things that I will say is that for most people or a company, if your life becomes more productive and if the things that you're doing with great difficulty become simpler, it is very likely because you have so many ideas, you'll have more time to go pursue things.
unidentified
It is my guess that Elon will be busier as a result of AI.
And the reason for that is because we have so many ideas we want to pursue, so many things that we still have in our backlog inside our company that we can go pursue.
unidentified
If we were more productive, we can get to those things faster.
And so in the near term, I would say that there's every evidence that we will be more productive and yet still be busier because we have so many ideas.
That event is something you can watch in its entirety if it interests you.
You can do so on our website at cspan.org.
Back to your phone calls asking if you're optimistic or pessimistic about the future of AI.
And this is Steve out of Rocky Point, New York.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hey, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I'm also a university professor, and I sympathize with the guy from Brooklyn you had on there.
But one optimistic thing I think in my teaching that I've gotten from AI is it makes me reflect a bit more on what teaching is.
And I feel like I've been leaning on the college essay to do a lot of my work for me.
And I kind of agree with Stephen Wolfram on this, that AI has pointed out that the college essay might be simpler to do than we think.
It might not be the best assessment of learning.
And so it's really kind of got me back in the classroom thinking about that in-person experience and getting students to orally respond and designating audiences, specific audiences for them to write to.
And the temptation is always there to use the AI, but it kind of goes away if you don't kind of have this kind of antiseptic, objective, I'm writing the truth kind of assignment.
So for me, I'm a little bit optimistic because it's made me revisit teaching.
And another thing about that is I've taught for about 20 years now at the university level, and I remember when Wikipedia was the big threat to learning, and that was going to destroy college education.
And it's all kind of, it's kind of worked its way into the curriculum in a more positive way.
Students don't really think about Wikipedia that much anymore.
Mostly for them, it's Google and now AI.
So I'm a little bit optimistic that this will alter university teaching maybe for the better.
So mostly I do speech and argumentation and debate courses.
I do know there's some debate instructors who are very positive about AI because of the ability to have AI argue with you about any issue, or you can put arguments in and say, where's the weakest point?
And that helps a lot of debate students who don't have access to really good instructors or a lot of money in their public school or even in their private school.
That other professor who called in, the thing that stuck with me, said the essays that he would get were grammatically perfect, but soulless was the term he used.
So how do you put the soul back into it and get the AI out of it?
unidentified
Yeah, that's a really great question.
I think putting the soul into it is we have to designate audiences.
I think only in colleges where you just kind of write into the void.
Like a lot of instructors assign, and I'm guilty of this too.
I'm not trying to blame anybody for doing something bad, but you have them kind of write an essay where you discuss the issues involved in the reading.
Well, to who?
Like when we write in the real world or when we speak in the real world, we're always thinking about an audience that we want to reach, whether it's voters or thinkers or our coworkers.
And I think putting that back in puts the soul back in because then you're trying to influence and reach other human minds.
You're not trying to get the objectively true answer.
Steve, thanks for the call from Rocky Point, New York.
A few more of your social media and texts to us.
This is Carol out of Boston, Massachusetts, saying there are jobs and tasks that AI will never replace.
Police officers and firefighters and electricians and plumbers and hairstylists and many others.
It seems like stuff that really matters can't be taken over by AI.
As Tech's saying, it depends what becomes of popular use.
Too often, AI is being used to produce fake images and videos when AI is used for its real purpose to assist us.
It can be awesome.
Someone needs to create a this is fake tool when it comes to AI.
And Vicki's saying that she's optimistic.
I believe AI will make us more productive, and the other possibilities are endless.
We have about 20 minutes left before we end this segment, but we want to hear from you if you're optimistic or pessimistic about the future of AI.
This is Lance, Sterling, Colorado.
Good morning.
unidentified
Hello, thank you for taking my call.
I've been in construction since I was 17, mostly concrete building, condominiums.
And I don't see any robot or artificial intelligence going to take my job away from me, putting nails in.
And I also don't see maybe it'll help to keep humans from pushing the button and they can set up a kind of a laser thing that if they see somebody going to push the button to destroy us all, they can hit them with a laser.
Another thing is that you're talking about stopping nuclear annihilation, Lance.
Oh, yeah, and there's nothing artificial about that.
So another thing is I'm going to say I could have gone all day without seeing Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.
Thank you.
Thank you, John.
You have a beautiful Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever you believe in.
Bernie Sanders and the social media posts and his call for Congress to get more involved here is one of the reasons why we're doing this question.
He released a statement last week calling for a pause on building new AI data centers as a way to pause the development here so Congress and the federal government can get their hands around regulation, try to create some rules of the road when it comes to AI.
Here's more from that post that got a lot of attention last week.
Something I worry about a whole lot, and that is that millions of kids in this country are becoming more and more isolated from real human relationships and are getting their emotional support from AI.
Think for a moment about a future when human beings are not interacting with each other and are spending virtually all of their time with devices instead of people.
Is that the kind of future you want?
Well, not me.
Needless to say, there is a whole lot about AI and robotics that needs to be discussed, needs to be analyzed.
But one thing is for sure: this process is moving very, very quickly, and we need to slow it down.
We need all of our people, all of our people, involved in determining the future of AI and not just a handful of multi-billionaires.
That is why, for a start, I will be pushing for a moratorium on the construction of data centers that are powering this unregulated sprint to develop and deploy AI.
This moratorium will give democracy a chance to catch up with the transformative changes that we are witnessing and make sure that the benefits of these technologies work for all of us, not just the wealthiest people on earth.
Bernie Sanders, with those statements last week, plenty of response to those statements, including by Rich Lowry in the pages of National Review, the Bernie Sanders plan to sabotage the future is the headline of his piece, saying that Bernie Sanders wants us to take our chances of ceding a technological advantage to China and then hoping everything turns out okay.
He says the Chinese may be communists, whereas Sanders is just a socialist, but even they aren't this foolish.
We're in the equivalent of a space race, he writes, and Sanders is talking about cutting off our supply of rocket fuel.
Even if Sanders were to get his way, there's no stopping AI.
China and other foreign countries will continue to sprint ahead, and U.S. companies denied data centers here at home will go find them overseas.
Rich Lowry writing in the pages of National Review.
Back to your phone calls.
Robert, Cape Coral, Florida.
Good morning.
What do you think about the future of AI?
unidentified
Yes, I'm having a positive outlook towards it.
I've read science fiction for the last 65-some years that has all sorts of scenarios about it.
And basically, we are birthing our silicon descendants.
Humanity is at the bottom level of the ladder of sentience.
It won't matter because they will be smarter, faster, deeper thinking, and the future is going to be what it's going to be.
I would suggest you read EM Banks' culture novels to understand what the minds are going to be like because they will be able to think so much faster about everything, all scenarios.
So I'm somewhat positive, hoping that it will be like that, and not like the mines of the Dune series, where humanity is enslaved for 10,000 years.
Jared, did you listen to that other professor who called in who said he's optimistic and that as a professor, it sort of made him reassess his teaching style and whether the essay is the best way of judging whether a student has learned?
Did you hear that call?
unidentified
I did, but you have to understand that there is a major difference between a dissertation and an essay.
When we're talking an essay, I mean, sorry, we're talking about a dissertation.
We're saying, what can a doctoral student do to contribute new knowledge, to go in, investigate a problem, examine all the literature to refute or support a hypothesis?
So when a student is using AI or any generous software to go and not only will AI go in and produce the literature, but also they will use it to come up with a methodology.
unidentified
And we ask students questions based on their work.
That's Jarrett in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, taking your phone calls.
Just a quick reminder, it is often best when you're chatting with us on the phone just to turn down your television.
It makes it a little easier to have that conversation.
We're having this conversation for about another 10 minutes this morning.
Here's another one of your comments via social media on XMLB, one of those folks who follows along and tweets all throughout the program.
There's a group of you out there.
We appreciate you doing it.
MLB writing, I remember hearing a lot of the same concerns regarding the computers being mainstreamed into our culture.
If it's a machine, it's a tool.
I can use a hammer to fix something or harm something.
The bottom line is humans drive how any tool is used.
That's MLB.
Here's maybe an AI function that you haven't thought of.
It is AI travel blogging.
It's written about in today's New York Times.
Melissa Kirsch writing, how fascinating to read this week about the AI-generated travel influencers that are taking gigs away from the real life flesh and blood travel influencers, people whose job it is to take trips to far-flung locales and post about it on social media, fear that they're being elbowed out of the computer-created personas that can do the job in much less time.
For those of us who are still in awe, that travel influencer is a job that exists at all, for which one might be paid $100,000 or more for a single post about a vacation.
The news that this relatively newfangled position may be endangered by artificial intelligence is sort of dizzying, she writes.
We were just getting accustomed to the fact that we are being influenced at all, and now the robots are taking over that task.
Ponder this strange screen-born economy long enough and you start craving for the real-world interactions.
Melissa Kirsch writing in today's New York Times.
This is Ed out of Danbury, Connecticut.
Good morning.
unidentified
Yeah, good morning.
I think AI is both a challenge and an opportunity for the economy.
I think AI is going to turn conceptualization into a commodity.
Whereas in the past, we've spoken about the service economy and the information economy.
I think those jobs will be at risk.
But realization is going to be where the future value added is.
By that, I mean, like, manufacturing, actually implementing the ideas and concepts that AI as a tool can be used.
I think, second, I think it's a good timing that we're focusing on manufacturing so that our investment will be new and up-to-date as opposed to sort of the sunk investment of the countries we compete against.
I'm really optimistic because the combination of AI and greed is going to probably turn this world into something that we don't even realize is going to happen.
I can remember back when I was in junior high school in Fairfax County, they brought around one of the few first computers.
Now our cheapest cell phones are more powerful.
Greed, just like Elon Musk said, it's almost like if you listen to him, he said that there's not going to really be a reason for having people because in the caller that spoke about things that AI can't do, well, we're in the infancy of robots.
Look how far we've come in 100 years, 2025 back to 1925.
We're in trouble.
But the only thing that I can look at is and be optimistic that there is a God.
Back to the Pew Research polling on Americans' views on AI.
The level of interaction with AI seems to be correlated with how much educational level one has.
A Pew Research company asking whether you interact with AI several times a week.
For those who had the largest numbers that interacted with AI several times a week, postgraduate Americans, Americans with a postgraduate degree, next most those with a college degree, next most those with some college degree, and among those who have the least interaction with AI on a weekly basis, those with a high school diploma or less.
Just 20% of those individuals saying that they interact with AI several times a day.
The majority of those Americans saying they interact with AI much less often than several times a week.
You can see the breakdown at PewResearch.org.
They've been polling on this topic quite a bit in recent years, and we've been talking about it quite a bit in recent years.
It's the subject of this first hour of the Washington Journal today.
What's your level of optimism about your interaction with AI?
I think we lost the caller.
We've got time for a couple more calls here.
202-748-8000, if you say you're optimistic.
202-748-8001 if you say you are pessimistic.
I did want to show one more of those recent clips for you on the state level.
It's Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.
It was back last week, December 15th, of Ron DeSantis talking about AI regulation in the state of Florida, his reaction to the president's executive order that we've been talking about.
Look, if Congress wants to sit down and mimic some of these proposals or do it, I do acknowledge they could legislate that nationally.
It is a technology that is an interstate commerce use in many respects, but that wasn't what they proposed to do.
They just wanted to kneecap the states and keep the states out of it.
And what they'll say is, well, we don't want California doing things that are woke or all this other stuff.
It's like, yeah, I mean, like, I don't either, but like, that's not a reason to take away Florida's rights.
I mean, are you kidding me?
And second of all, these companies, their muscle memory is to be woke.
They don't need California to tell them that.
Like, that's likely the direction that they'll go, right?
I mean, that's the culture in Silicon Valley.
And so we didn't, we're not going to give up any rights from the state.
Now, the president issued an executive order, and some people were saying, well, no, this blocks the states from doing it doesn't.
You should read it and see.
First of all, an executive order can't block the states.
You can preempt states under Article I powers through congressional legislation on certain issues, but you can't do it through executive order.
But if you read it, they actually say a lot of the stuff we're talking about are things that they're encouraging states to do.
They say it doesn't prevent child safety.
It doesn't prevent any of that stuff.
So even reading it very broadly, I think the stuff we're doing is going to be very consistent.
But irrespective, clearly we have a right to do this.
Now, what it does say is, because they're worried about California, Colorado doing really crazy things, that they could have the Attorney General bring challenges to state laws under the dormant commerce clause, which is a legal doctrine.
And I don't know how successful that would be, but the reality is, I don't anticipate that even happening against any of the stuff we're doing in Florida.
But if it does, I think we would be well positioned to be able to prevail on that.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis there, that was last week.
Time for just a couple more of your phone calls.
And I think we lost Mark from earlier, so we'll try him again in Manhattan.
Mark, go ahead.
unidentified
Hi, thanks.
You know, I really appreciate the real intelligence of all the people that work at C-SPAN.
You have a very broad range of intelligence, all y'all.
But I remember I used to have a brothers typewriter, and they used to have a spell check on it.
And when I went to write my stories, I would turn off the spell check because I wanted to, you know, keep my reading and comprehension and spelling up.
But AI is a compilation of all human thought.
So when YouTube says, share your thoughts, or what is this music good for?
Which soundtrack is this music good for?
It's collecting.
It's collecting.
And even I don't know why people don't care about this camera pointed at your face because it's beyond me because it's collecting nuances of human expression.
I have so much to say, but so I'm very pessimistic.
That was the line I picked because of the subdermal surveillance, the ability of AI to be under our skin, how it focuses on our frontal lobe and is really causing mental distress for many people, especially in combination with the graphene that was in COVID, is affecting our health.
And we're really at risk.
And it needs, I believe they need to get a warrant for subdermal surveillance.
I came up with this proposal to law called SWAMPS, which is subdermal warrant opt-in academic medical predictive surveillance.
So I know it's a mouthful, but I have found myself to be a human research subject since childhood.
And so I've been on the forefront of political fodder that has negatively affected me.
Well, I am pessimistic, as you noted, and because I'm no computer whiz, but I am sort of a student of humanity, as we all are.
But I do it in the weeds.
I prefer human contact because we have all kinds of equipment to read each other and to make conclusions and in real time come up with a model, let's say, of the person before us and interact with them and plumb in ways that I don't think computers can really do because they don't live in our sphere of influence where the rubber meets the road.
Unfortunately, I believe these large language models get their sense of humanity by how we behave online.
And we're pretty awful to each other online in ways that we bridle when we're in person so far.
And I have concerns that AI is not present in that place where humanity lives.
Eric, do we want AI present in that personal, the intimate interactions, that human-to-human interaction?
Is that where we want it to find that better way that we talk to each other?
unidentified
Well, I think it's the only, I don't know how it can insert itself there, but it just seems that if you judge humanity by how we react to each other in the impersonal world that we've virtual world we've created for us, it won't get it, what being a human is.
Is that to say that if AI creeps into more and more aspects of our life, the AI will get better because it'll see who we really are and not just how we respond to each other behind the curtain of a Twitter handle.
unidentified
That's an optimistic thing that I'll have to chew on.
And hopefully, I mean, it's a chicken and egg thing, possibly.
That's Eric in New York, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
Stick around.
More to talk about this morning, including up next, it's our annual Holiday Authors Week series, nine days of authors from across the political spectrum whose books shine a spotlight on important aspects of American life.
This morning, we feature George Washington University professor Casey Bergitt.
We'll discuss his book, We Hold These Truths, How to Spot the Myths That Are Holding America Back.
That's right after the break.
unidentified
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So yes, I take a few trips to go work with developing democracies around the world as they consider their constitution.
They like to bring in people from developed democracies and say, hey, where did you all go wrong?
What type of advice would you give?
And I was on one of these trips with some former members of Congress in Uzbekistan.
And my role as a professor at GW and previously before that for Congress itself was to think about political reforms.
Our system has never been perfect.
It will never be perfect, but we're in a unique moment right now where a lot of what we have taken for granted has been taken for granted.
And so I was thinking about ideas about how to propel, move our conversation forward about not only what we can do as a government, but as a society, as a people, even as an economy.
And over in Uzbekistan, I was talking with someone I wasn't supposed to be talking with.
This is a very curated trip where you go meet with dignitaries, you go meet with parliamentarians.
But in between all of those meetings, we were in this kind of secluded van.
And the driver of that van, his name was Pavel.
And it was very clear from the beginning, he was not supposed to talk to us about real life in Uzbekistan.
They were trying to show us the best of their country.
And anyone that was, you know, of the regular people was going to say too much about how life was really challenging for the average Uzbeki citizen.
And finally, finally, finally, I got Pavel to the side.
I was just like, hey, man, tell me what's going on here.
And so we're driving around the streets of Uzbekistan.
He's getting nervous because the handlers are looking at him of like, hey, we told you not to talk to this guy.
And finally, he broke him.
And he ends up just pointing.
He speaks incredible English, by the way.
He points at all of these buildings that look the exact same.
They're apartment buildings.
They're just big boxes.
All of them are painted the same color of beige.
And he's just kind of staring at them.
And he looks at me and says, You are here to help us learn about democracy.
But really, we have been struggling with the same things for generation after generation after generation, just like those buildings over there.
Every one of us, Uzbekis, hate those.
They hate them.
Every generation, every leader promises to knock them down to build something different just to prove we can.
And yet, still they remain.
And so to Pavel, he was telling me in a metaphor that was better in English than I could ever speak, was saying, We debate every generation.
We're promised by our leaders to move on to something new and better and bigger, stronger, but we can't even get past the old things.
And for me, I was sitting there with this book in my mind that hadn't become a book yet.
No, duh, we are having the same conversations over and over about immigration, about education, about lobbyists, about money and politics.
We're having the same fights that my parents did, their parents did.
And to us, those were the buildings on the side of the road in Uzbekistan.
So this taxi driver who was never supposed to talk to me in Uzbekistan of all places finally cracked the code on something that I had been working on in at least my brain for a long time and was finally able to put to paper after that.
Pavel asked you, and you quote him in the book, is saying, How can we have any real change when all we do is argue about the same thing over and over and over again?
In your years of thinking about this book and in your 10 months now since publication and traveling around and talking about it, we've covered a couple of the book festivals that you've appeared at.
Do you think that Americans actually want real change?
Could it be that we prefer the arguments over and over and over again?
You've probably seen the same arguments over and over and over more than anyone in the history of the country.
So yes, some people just like the fight, just like they like clicking online for the drama, the divisiveness.
We all say we hate it, but we can't stop watching it type stuff.
But I'm not interested in those conversations.
Those can exist too.
There are a certain number of us, and I think the vast majority of us do want better, right?
We can disagree about what better is, but me and my job and my work and my writing, my thinking is always about those institutional, that the outcome is a consequence of the process.
And I am a process-oriented person.
And so everything about our process right now is getting us garbage in, garbage out.
So let's fix the process.
We can debate about the policies.
We can debate about what we should do about immigration and climate change.
There's a broad spectrum of ideas, but that's the good part.
But right now, we don't have a process to facilitate those divisions in a way that makes meaningful progress on any of them.
So, the book is set up chapter by chapter of the myths that a lot of Americans, including my family members, a lot of my students, a lot of probably viewers out there saying, hey, if we could just do, and then they fill in the do, the X, the blank there, with some silver bullet solution, get money out of politics, fix the media.
With that last segment on AI is probably a chapter that will be coming in the second edition here.
But one of the big ones, one of the most common, one of the most broadly bipartisan reform ideas is to institute term limits on members of Congress.
It's about 85%, 90% of Americans agree with it, mostly because it's a simple equation.
Congress sucks.
The members of Congress there are not representative of the American people.
They're not doing their work.
So the only way to get them out of their job, which many of them have proven to stay in for decades, is to limit by constitutional amendment how long they can stay there.
And as much as that logic makes sense, get out the garbage to put in new people and have at least have a shot at it, it has proven over and over and over to exacerbate the very things you're trying to fix.
It will make polarization worse because you're speeding up the number of members who are leaving and being installed by folks elected in non-competitive elections.
It will not help the compromise because again, those people are going to be represented from further and further divisive districts, more partisan districts, where the incentive structure is not to compromise.
It won't lead to folks just serving like we think of the agrarian age where they come here for their civic duty for a couple of years, then go back to the farm.
That's never been true.
That will never be true.
And so it looks like a very logical silver bullet solution to fix a very common frustration with the American people.
But it will actually, if you look at the data, if you look at the common results from places who have term limits, it will exacerbate a lot of the things we think they're going to fix.
Viewers, and there's viewers who have called into this program, and they may not be arguing that it's a cure-all, but they've said, wouldn't it help to get the money out of politics to have some sort of campaign finance reform?
Because politicians get bought and paid and then they're controlled by special interests.
So whether or not it's a cure-all or a silver bullet, wouldn't it help?
And this is where it's really important that the nuance really matters here, that to go from zero to 100, we forget that there's 99 options in between.
So to have all the money in politics, which is basically what we have right now, to have no money in politics.
And so we've had eras where there hasn't been very much legitimate fundraising in our politics.
But that doesn't mean that the money goes away.
It's kind of like sports gambling, right?
That the opportunity exists.
It's just a matter if you make it legal or not, or at least have some guardrails around it.
So if you try to remove money from politics by a constitutional amendment entirely, what you're going to get is just other ways of processing money to the campaigns, to the parties, to the platforms.
But there are a ton, a ton of ideas that we can institute to get away from that influence peddling, which is the second part of your question here.
And so this takes a fundamental understanding of how members of Congress view and use that money, right?
They go and raise money for their campaigns, for their parties to hopefully get elected and get more of their friends elected.
But there's limits on how much you can give as an individual, but there's very few transparency limits on the dark money side of this, which is where all of the money comes in.
And we have no idea where it comes from, in what amounts.
It's not trackable.
So at least we can make some progress on making it accessible, transparent, and who's donating what.
And I think that given the technology of the day, given how creative the internet is at catching people doing wrong, the least we can do is if we have the system we have, which right now would take a constitutional amendment to change, then we can make it the most transparent in the world, that who is giving in what amounts.
And then you track their behavior in terms of members of Congress after they receive those donations.
Well, something to keep in mind for viewers is that people don't just give their money to folks who don't already agree with them.
They're not using it.
They're not showing up with a bag of cash to persuade them to do something they already weren't going to do.
They do it in support, the same way that the NRA gives to almost exclusively Republicans who already agree with them.
And teachers unions only give exclusively to Democrats who already agree with them.
Now, what that money does provide that is not uniform is access, right?
That if you're a member of Congress and you have to raise a couple million dollars every two years to get reelected, you're going to answer the call of folks who show up with a $100,000 question.
That access, that unequal access is where the perversion takes place.
They're not bribing them to do something that they wouldn't otherwise do, but it does create an access problem, which I think we have a lot of opportunity and a lot of political will to change.
But the battles are high given the state of the law and the Constitution right now.
Casey Burgitt is our guest, and we've got some time with us.
He's with us until the top of the hour at 9 a.m.
So go ahead and start calling in.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
The book, again, is We Hold These Truths, How to Spot the Myths That Are Holding America Back.
Casey Burgitt, a George Washington University professor, formerly of the Congressional Research Institute, studied Congress and governments at the R Street Institute.
You've seen him on the Washington Journal over the years, taking your phone calls.
And viewers may have also seen you, as we noted, at a couple of the book festivals.
You've been on the circuit a little bit over the past summer and fall.
You've been talking about this book for 10 months now.
Has anybody changed your mind on any of these issues that you bring up?
Whether it's the campaign finance issues or term limits, media dividing us as a country.
Has anybody given you an argument that has changed your mind?
The one that I didn't nail, just be outright honest, that we didn't nail is the media, right?
Given the rise and just full-on partisan cocoon media.
And so the argument of that chapter is that we are surrounded by the media that we want, right?
As much as we want to hate it, as much as we want to say that it's biased, all of that is true.
And yet it is still driven by the same thing that every other media company in every other era and every other basic free and developed country has been.
And that's attention, right?
We live in an attention economy more than we ever have before.
And that we are surrounded, we are given what we like or what we are susceptible to.
If we don't click on things, they will change what they're producing in order to get clicks.
So if you're saying that I don't trust the media, I don't know where to get my news sources, make sure you're checking your own, not only your television channels, but your social media platforms, that this is the most curated environment that we can have.
Now, the hard part is, and the development since the book more and more is that we have transitioned into a media where you don't necessarily have to be a journalist to be influential in a media space, that you just flip on your phone, you're recording reactions to the news, and then how you report that news is basically the wild west.
It's a free-for-all in a way that it wasn't before.
Where news outlets right now, I mean, the New York Times gets bashed, the Wall Street Journal, pick your place of choice, including news channels.
They have journalistic standards that if they don't pull themselves to, they are literally liable legally.
And so that's why there's layers and layers of editing stories that are put out, even if they are called fakes news at these journalistic outlets.
They can't be unless they're going to be sued.
That is less and less true by the day, given the rise of just intrapersonal platforms like Substack, Twitter, the increase of Instagram news outlets.
So there's some updating to be done on a lot of these chapters, but that's the nature of our world and our politics.
You hinted that there's an AI chapter in the next book.
What is the AI chapter?
After, I don't know how much of our previous conversation you were able to listen to, but we just talked for an hour about whether people are optimistic or pessimistic about AI, what it means for them, their job, the country.
I'm optimistic that we'll have plenty of phone calls for you throughout this segment already.
Several, including Paul, a New York City upfront line.
Paul, you're on with Casey Burgett.
unidentified
Hey, Casey.
So a couple of things.
First of all, the idea that money is simply buying access and these people already have the views and they're simply supporting that the people that have their views, I think is kind of naive.
And I cover this professionally, frankly.
I mean, if you think weapons systems, if you think healthcare reimbursements are already been determined or preconceived by the politicians who are receiving these donations, you know, or any number of other policies, education policy, charter school policy, all these things have already been decided.
And they just simply share the same view.
I can tell you that just isn't the case.
They are definitely affected in terms of how they're going to approach or vote or not vote or procedurally deal with a legislative issue by the lobbyists who are giving them campaign contributions.
And that money does have a direct impact.
It may not be an explicit quid pro quo, but I'm telling you, I think it's daily to think that.
That's number one.
Number two, when it comes to term limits, what I think that is, is a frustration with the fact that people don't believe that they're being adequately being represented.
And so if you think about it, why don't they just vote the guys out?
Well, the reason why they don't vote the guys out is because they don't believe there's an alternative that's going to happen that's going to change it.
So as a result, they're simply saying, let's force them out.
Incidentally, this was actually an issue in ancient Greece.
I won't go into that.
But the point is, this is a common problem.
So yes, there's deniality.
It's very prevalent.
Two, there's a problem with actual representation.
And I think it's important that that really just be addressed, that people don't feel that they can vote for somebody who's going to actually represent their views.
I think we're more saying the same thing than this.
A, it's not the first time I've been called naive.
And I take that in our given politics right now.
But I think we're saying more of the same thing.
I'm not saying that every single particular bill is written with by the politicians.
I know for a fact, having worked on a lot of them, that they aren't.
They don't know the nuances of this, which leads to a capacity problem.
That Congress doesn't suffer from a shortage of information.
They suffer from a capacity to put all of the information on the table and put the best foot forward based on what the evidence says.
To say nothing, you're never going to take politics out of their decision making.
The access that I mentioned in terms of lobbyist influence and special interest access is to make those conversations for those very, very particular changes.
But what I'm saying and where I think we will agree, given your coverage of this, is that those lobbyists are not equally, they're not randomly choosing who they're going to to advocate for those particular changes, to put this comma there, to change this tax code policy or provision in this thing, education standards down to this level.
That's where those conversations start.
And we're saying the same thing and that the access is different.
A random citizen or group of citizens are not going to get that access to advocate that, nor are they going to have those particular interest levels in that very minute policy detail that these members and especially their staffers need to write this legislation.
So the access problem is where I think it's not only to get in the door to advocate what they want writ large, but is to actually, as you mentioned and it seems to have covered, to make those very, very specific policy requests.
But again, they're not going to Bernie Sanders the same way they're going to someone Rand Paul on the other side.
They're finding folks who are open to those ideals on weapon systems, on climate change policies.
They find their champions.
That's what lobbyists are paid to do and make those very minute details.
Sometimes they're on behalf of corporate interests.
Too often they're on behalf of corporate interests rather than the everyday interests.
But that's the system we have and we need more transparency to know who they're meeting with, about what, and what are the outcomes associated with that.
On the term limit side, absolutely.
This has been a common frustration going back to ancient Greece, which is what I learned today from you, Paul.
So this is very, very true.
It's a common frustration of representation.
The people here have gone Washington.
They're not representing my interests.
And now I don't have a deciding vote or a vote that means enough in a lot of our non-competitive elections that's going to change who's there in the first place.
So the obvious answer for everyone is if I can't change it by myself or a bunch of friends, let's at least make it so they turn over on a regular status.
It sounds good in theory, but it had very, very disastrous effects.
And a lot of state governments, many of whom have instituted term limits, saw the repercussions of them kicking out experienced lawmakers from like making the government more powerful, the governor more powerful, making bureaucracies more powerful in the states, making lobbyists going back to that conversation more powerful because they're working with inexperienced legislators.
They have taken off those term limits in multiple states.
We tried them, doesn't work, makes things worse.
Let's take them out.
And the final thing I'll say for a lot of viewers who a lot of conversations I've had on this topic in the preceding 10 months since the book came out, that just too many people are too old serving in Congress.
We see Mitch McConnell freezing at the camera.
We see Dianne Feinstein literally dying in office.
That's a separate conversation from term limits.
At least term limits, they say, will kick out the old people.
That is true.
But it will kick out the young, very effective, very vibrant lawmakers at the same rates as those old folks.
So if you want to try, if age is your problem, let's talk about age limits.
That's a very separate conversation than term limits.
And if you think term limits are doable, then you think definitely age limits are doable by constitutional amendment as well.
So just specifying the conversation to solve the problem you're trying to solve.
It's because I don't have the ABC of like, this is all we need to do to fix it.
Just like I said on the end of the last answer, a huge thing in politics is to solve the problem you're trying to solve.
And parties of both stripes really struggle in having every conversation at once.
And then they promise the world to their voters.
They go in and they recognize there's a lot of obstacles to getting these things done, which, by the way, is exactly as it should be.
And then their voters who are just promised again the world and the stars, they get frustrated saying, You guys are just like everyone else.
You broke all your promises.
You didn't solve everything on day one, which you said you were going to do.
So it takes really all of us.
This is a grassroots movement.
If you don't like the way your member of Congress is representing you, yes, you can be frustrated, but it always, always, always takes friends in politics.
Numbers matter.
And if the beauty of this, and something that we need to flip our concentration around, is that we think we're unrepresented in Congress.
The beauty is they run for re-election from us rather than the other way around.
They are not entitled to that seat.
They have to get enough votes each and every two years or six years on the Senate side.
If you don't have them, if you want something different, it's going to take someone more than just you.
We often want ourselves to be the determinant vote, the one that makes the difference, which is why you hear a lot of young people, especially in my classroom, say, my vote doesn't matter.
That person's going to win anyway.
And if every one of us thought that, then we're going to always get what we've always gotten.
It always, always takes an investment.
That can be any swath of things from donating, volunteering on a campaign, making phone calls, knocking on doors, or just doing something more civic in your society, volunteering at a library, volunteering at a local school or a soup shelter.
All of this stuff is the grassroots upside from the bottom-up type movement we need to restore not only faith in our institutions, of course, but just in each other.
These back and forth that we see people where they're coming from, where we go into conversations with folks we know disagree with us, not to convince them that they're wrong, but to hear where they're coming from.
And just like Paul and I just did, even though we didn't have a back and forth, I think we'll find most a lot of times more of us are saying the same things in very different ways, or at least we're starting from the same spot.
I feel unrepresented.
These people have promised me a lot of change and I don't see it.
My kitchen table is getting less and less stocked with food.
We all want good schools for our children.
We all want clean air and water.
And then it's about a debate about what to do about it.
And the quicker you get to what about your side, you did this, the what about ism, we're just failing in our back-to-back civic conversation.
So it can always start with us, but the hard part, Sue, is it is a day and day, a day after day grind.
And that's enough for a lot of folks to just sit out.
But more than ever, probably, we need more folks in the conversations that happen in between campaigns.
Voting is a consequence.
Elections are a consequence of what happens in the two years, four years, six years in between those elections.
Bringing Randy into the conversation, Silver Spring, Maryland Independent.
Randy, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, guys.
How are you?
Thank you for taking my call.
I'm curious to know the author's thoughts on how much the two-party system plays into this kind of intellectual gridlock and not having any change ever occur.
I mean, from the get-go, we've basically had a two-party system and it creates an incentive structure of these first past the posts, meaning that if you win enough votes, if you win more than your opponent does, you're elected.
And it just creates this incentive structure from the campaign to go one side or the other.
And then the fight is to get 50 plus 1% over on your side.
But the reality is, especially over the last couple of decades, is that we have sorted our parties geographically.
Where if I gave you a map of the 2032 presidential election, independent of who we know the candidates are going to be, you'll color in most of those states with a very high degree of confidence of exactly who's going to win those states.
Again, not knowing about who the candidates are, what they believe in, any scandals, and yet you'll still be probably right.
The number of swing states are shrinking more and more and more and more.
That's true on the congressional level too, where in 2026, we're going to set a record for the fewest number of competitive elections on the House side.
We're less than 10%.
90% of our House elections are butt-whooppins, absolute butt-whoopens for one party another.
And so, in those 90% plus seats, they don't fear.
They're not trying to persuade the other side to come to their side.
What they're trying to do is to avoid a primary from someone that is more extreme than them on their party to then go to the general election.
And they're going to act in Congress once they're there to suage a primary challenge rather than to convince people to be bipartisan.
Because we've seen, especially over the last couple elections, bipartisan is literally something that will be used against you in your next election, especially in your primary.
Just ask Liz Cheney.
Just ask the number, there's going to be upwards of 100 members of Congress who are retiring this year, not because they want to leave the job in most cases, because they're fearful of the primary.
They've already received a primary challenge.
So, the two-party system is just re-incentivized over and over every single election cycle.
And to change that is going to not only up in 250 years of American history, but it's going to take a lot of different things.
A change in media environments.
It's going to take a change in primary laws across all 50 states and the territories, too.
And so, this is a huge uphill battle because states run their own elections in this country.
That will take a huge constitutional amendment that I don't think is on the horizon.
And we've seen over and over that third parties try to get involved, recognizing that there's some broad swath of frustration with the electorate.
Maybe I can appeal to all of those frustrated left, right, and center, but you just recognize that that is almost always a losing cause that it's going to cost some other politician within that race their elected seat.
But we have to focus on primary laws to access to make sure that it's not just the most ardent supporters, the most ardent partisans voting and electing almost 90% of our members of Congress.
And we see some shoots of green in this across certain states where they're changing their primary laws, though it's not just Republicans go over here, elect your primary candidate.
Democrats, you do the same over here.
And you guys cannot be involved in any of the process.
Where we have jungle primaries in several states now, where it doesn't matter what party gets the candidate of what party gets the candidate, the votes, so long as the top two vote shares can be two Ds, could be two R's, one D, one R. Whoever gets the top two, then go on to the general election.
And there, you change the incentive structure of those members of Congress.
And then, especially once they do win, knowing that their primary is different back home, they will change their incentive structure once they get to Congress.
They're not worried about their primary from the extremes anymore.
Then they have to act in accordance with where the most people are, which is true on C-SPAN too.
80% of us are somewhere in the middle that we are can be seen as even though we are partisans ourselves, we're open to having different conversations.
That those different incentive structures, but it's always, always, always got to start on the election side because that's where these members of Congress have to go back to make sure that their job continues.
Yeah, we've had 27 of them in our almost 250 years of government.
The first 10 came pretty quickly after the first inauguration back in 1789 with our Bill of Rights.
And then we've only had 17 more.
Two of them have dealt with alcohol.
So this is something that I think a founder's frustration would be.
Like if we're able to bring them back and have conversation, especially with James Madison, they'd be like, you guys only fixed us 27 times in our entire country.
I mean, we gave you the path forward.
We wanted to make it hard, but we were not.
We promised.
We even told you outright explicitly saying, hey, we didn't perfect this thing.
We don't know what's coming down the pike.
If you wanted to see a constitutional amendment, just show James Madison some AI and he'd be like, man, we got to update some things.
But in terms of likelihood, when you look at polling, it's going to be term limits, which I hope is not going to be undertaken.
But I think the money in politics, potentially a primary constitutional amendment, that we can, do we have to update these things?
Maybe age limits.
I mean, there's a lot of things that if you put it just to the polls would pass, but the barrier is incredibly high for a constitutional amendment, which is why we've already only had 27 of them.
With three-quarters of state legislators, you got to pass both chambers of Congress at a high clip.
We've proven over and over that those are things.
But I'm thinking money in politics, at least over the transparency side of it, maybe limiting the dark money side, given the Supreme Court ruling on it, age limits with members of Congress or something with the presidency, given the historically elderly presidents we've had in the last couple cycles.
And then potentially something with elections focusing on the primary side.
In terms of no one does anything they don't want to do, I think that's true over time.
I think in every single day we make decisions that we either have to do or any parent of young kids, myself included, which is why my background is 1982.
We're in our in-laws here, that we do things, we make sacrifices, but it's for something like you mentioned, it's for something personal, something we believe in, something that will outlast ourselves.
So every parent of young kids, they do things they don't want to do that day, but they know it is in the best interest long term.
So it's not a sustainable model to keep doing things that we don't want to do, but we do make short-term sacrifices.
But you said one magic word there, which is something that if I had some Harry Potter Pixie dust or a wand or whatever he does to change the world, the teaching, the teaching is it.
And it can't come in college.
It can't even come in high school.
That's too late.
We need civics education from this country the same way we need science, the same way we need math.
One of the biggest mistakes we've made generation over generation is that now we have said that, Lance, I was curious if you in the 1950s, I'm sure that you had a civics dedicated class, which was different from history and different from government.
History and government, those are the important classes.
We absolutely need them, but those are not the practical, the applied type of skills that civics is.
And so we have seen a generation over generation decline in civics education to now where fewer than 10% of districts in the country teach any civics education, how to read a ballot, how to access your lawmakers, how to know what level of lawmakers has deciding authority over problems that you care about, right?
So much of what we are frustrated with of the everyday lives is done at the local level.
Yet most people can't name their local politicians or elected officials.
No county commissioners, no school board officials.
They only care about mostly the president of the United States and then their elected members of Congress.
That's just the inverse of how our politics works on the day-to-day.
And in fact, if you want a big ROI on your civic participation, show up to the local levels and you will be outright flabbergasted how empty those rooms are and how much access you have to people who want to hear from you.
These overlooked local officials who just have done a really thankless, almost anonymous job of how your cities run and your education curriculums are decided.
Show up at that local level.
But to me, the civics education, the applied skills, we have convinced ourselves that the minute you turn 18, you're ready to go do something.
You're ready to go vote and make the same decisions that a PhD in American government, those votes count the same exact.
It's one versus one of someone who just graduated versus someone who dedicates their lives to this.
Our votes are equal and that is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
But we need to recognize that it doesn't just come when you turn 18.
It doesn't just come as you're an informed member of society the minute that your birthday says you are.
We have to teach these skills the same way that we teach language, that we teach history, that we teach math and science.
We need to recognize that this is just not a learned thing once you turn that magic number of 18.
This is something we need to learn from a young age.
And I think that that will go along with the commitment.
If we're taught that it's important from a young age, we will think that it's important as we age and progress through our society.
I am a black sheep of my family where politics was not something you discussed at the dinner table.
It was just kind of something that existed over there.
And that's true.
And this goes to Lance's question or Lance's point too, is that you often take for granted something that you didn't have to fight for yourselves.
Parents are saying that we've always said that kids have it easy these days.
They didn't have the struggles we did.
That is also a goal of a lot of parents too, and a lot of goals.
But we're recognizing that if we take a lot of this stuff for granted, things that we left unquestioned, like a peaceful transfer of power, they can rear their ugly heads back at you.
But in terms of my upgrade, I was just always interested in folks who changed the world.
How did they do it?
How did they convince others that they were the right mission at the right job?
Was it just divine intervention?
Was it some sort of confluence of the times?
And then it got to, man, you can make a lot of change.
I had an incredible number of good teachers that really changed the lives of their 25 students every single year.
And you can have over a lifetime an incredible impact there.
But that still is very limited to changing one education law for the entire country.
So my shift started going to like, how can you make the most difference in the biggest way?
And that always, always, always was one degree is separated from politics.
So it went all the PhD route in American government and then started realizing as I worked for these folks or with these folks, like, man, are we sure we want these people deciding it?
Especially the 24-0-year-old staffer who was there last night.
We're soon to be gone in two years.
Like, that's how a lot of our decisions are made.
And then he started being like, no wonder we're struggling to do a lot of this stuff.
So my conversation then shifted to like, how can we change the institutional commitment?
How can we change the structure of this stuff to give us our best chance?
Because if Lance is going to quote the founder of So Mine, Ben Franklin said, We got a republic if you can keep it.
And it's if that you can keep it.
And we have so long taken for granted that the keeping was going to be assumed.
It can't be.
And we need a recommitment not only to our civic culture, but also to our institutional culture as well.
Andy, out of Bowie, Maryland Independent, good morning.
You are next.
unidentified
Well, good morning or Merry Christmas, America.
There's been so much good stuff I'd like to comment on that's been said.
I agree wholeheartedly with the civics discussion.
But I called in earlier, wanting to limit my comments and term limits and media from what was said at the very beginning of the show.
Term limits first.
I'm a retired reporter.
I was, I sat a term on the Republican Central Committee in Maryland.
One year at our convention, Helen Bentley, former congresswoman, was our speaker, and she was dead set against term limits.
Her argument was: if you get rid of the representative, you also have to get rid of the staff because the staff is more powerful than the representative, and they stay there forever.
They might move around in different positions, but that's where the real power is.
I would argue lobbyists write the bills, not staff, but that's a personal pet peeve.
Also, I would argue we already have term limits.
Every other year, voters can throw the bum out.
For whatever reason, voters choose not to.
Secondly, about the media, Casey cited legal options, ethical options, keeping the media straight.
I would say that's hogwash.
We look at Russia Gate, mainstream media had it wrong.
We look at more recently the ACA subsidies, mainstream media and the Democratic Party have it wrong.
All we have to do is look up at who voted for the 202 Inflation Reduction Act, which ended the ACA subsidies.
And we can see Democratic names all over it.
It was a partisan vote, Democrats versus Republicans, that ended the subsidy this year.
And now Democrats want to point the finger at Republicans and the mainstream media assist them in doing that?
No, that's all wrong.
And I like Casey's subject, Casey's comments on that.
Mr. Bergen, I can't believe that politicians are taking different sides of an issue when things change.
I mean, this is the reality of our politics.
I'm not going to blame the media writ large for covering this in the way that they are, but really a lot of things can change.
A vote four years ago, two years ago, depending on circumstances, you're going to get politicians to blame the other side.
And now the debate is about, can we have an up or down vote on extending the ACA subsidies or can we fold it into last funding bill?
That was the leverage point for Democrats in the shutdown.
Yes, you're going to see some of those names change depending on the circumstances, but you pick any point in time and then you fast forward a certain period of time, you're going to see those votes change, which is why we can see every single campaign cycle, the very ominous ads of black and white gray of this politician used to say yes on there, and now he's saying this.
The same way we have people go against Donald Trump saying he's the most dangerous person on the planet, and then four years later, serve in his cabinet hoping to be the heir to the MAGA throne.
Politicians will go where the voters are.
That is nothing new.
We shouldn't be surprised about it.
I'm not going to blame the media for that, but I'm going to blame our consumption on the media.
On the term limit side, and I was interested in the caller's position because it's always reporters that will tell you that the term limit side, exactly as this caller turned in, will say, actually, when I'm covering this stuff, it's the staffers who are writing these laws and it's the lobbyists who are in there telling the staffers how to write these laws.
And it's always the inexperienced lawmakers who are able to be susceptible to those opinions first.
The staffers are incredibly powerful.
That is true on Capitol Hill and especially in state governments where a lot of state governments are just part-time legislators where they go back and they have a job, they have a family, and this is what they do in a small subset of their year.
That investment that we should treat politicians and lawmakers, especially at the federal level, this should be a career.
The same way I want experienced pilots, I want experienced lawyers, I want experienced doctors deciding my cases.
Their job is no less important on deciding a lot of this stuff, including those things about how lawyers work and doctors work with insurances and the education curriculum for teachers.
Like the experience matters in almost everything, but it's one of the most negative connotations when it comes to politicians.
We need to flip that narrative.
And he's right that you have a shot every two years or four years or eight or six years to throw these people out.
Are there advantages to being an incumbent?
Absolutely.
But there are disadvantages to being an incumbent too.
Just ask the folks running in 2026 on the Republican side if there's an advantage to being an incumbent right now.
This stuff can change, but it takes all of us.
We are but one vote, but that doesn't mean that we can't go get more through our civic activity.
And that's something that I want to get across to folks that it takes all of us, but in the intervening times, not just on Election Day.
So this is a good conversation for a lot of folks who say, but the president's term limited.
And he wasn't before.
It took an amendment after FDR ran and won for about 150 years.
No, he ran four times and he won each and every one of those times.
The voters chose him to come back and be reelected.
But then they had a conversation about that ultimately ratifying the 22nd Amendment, limiting presidents to two terms.
So the question is, and I support the two-term limit.
So the question often is, how can you support for presidents that you don't support for members of Congress?
And to me, those are fundamentally different jobs, that no single member of Congress has anything close to the unilateral authority of a president, not only being commander in chief, but what we've seen with the pardon powers, the executive orders, one person can upend a lot, good or bad, for benefit or for ill.
A lot of things that happen in our society, to say nothing of how we interplay or literally attack a lot of countries across the world.
No member of Congress has anything close to that level of unilateral authority.
Plus, the institutions are different.
All of the folks who work on the executive branch side, at the end of the day, serve at the pleasure of the president of the United States.
On the other side, they are in collective bodies where they are but one vote of 435 or one of 100 on the Senate side.
They're not anything close.
And so I think that that power must be limited on the executive branch side, given the amount of authority invested in one individual.
You can't serve forever.
I think that it would be a dangerous, we've already had that precedent.
It could be a dangerous thing where we end up having folks in too long with too much authority on the House and Senate side.
That the collective institutions are they disperse that authority across their individuals in a way that is just simply not true on the presidential side.
If you want to limit the chaos that you see on C-SPAN one and two every day, adding hundreds of folks to those chambers, that ain't going to make it move more smoothly.
If you add more cooks to the kitchen, especially folks who mean this and are elected by this, their livelihoods are connected to this, you're going to get more volume.
You're going to get more chaos.
But when you think about representation, when we had our first Congress, it was about one representative for every 30,000 Americans.
Now we're up to 720, 730, 750,000 for every one member of the House that you're sending there.
And so you can imagine, given those numbers, that you're going to have a representation problem where a lot of folks have never seen, never met, never heard of their representative, supposedly being their voice in D.C.
So should we lower that number back to, I don't know, pick a number, 100,000, 250,000.
But then you get into real institutional constraints when they are sent here, where you have bigger numbers of people serving on committees, the offices.
If you think DC is a swamp now, just adding a couple hundred members of Congress, it will help to solve the representation side.
But then there's going to be a lot of downstream, some positive, some negative, unintended consequences of putting those numbers within the chambers.
Given our polarization right now, you can see it going both ways, that you can have more and more districts where people are less partisan because you start to split up those districts.
But you can also see people where given, like a Wyoming, for an example, if you have three representatives to Wyoming, I doubt you're going to get a D.
And you'll still see those folks run to the extremes, especially in the primary, knowing that these seats are available.
Then they are sent to Congress with that primary incentive structure.
So you can also add to the polarization there.
But I think it's a conversation worth having.
We haven't updated our apportionment per representative in over 100 years.
Susie, in making Georgia Republican, just about 10 minutes left with Casey Burgitt.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Good morning, and thank you for the topic.
I dearly love it and always have.
Two items before I get to my request.
When I was in high school in the 60s, my government teacher made all of us students sit up and take notice when he asked us, Do you know who your members of the Supreme Court are?
And I said, I know we got a Supreme Court, but no.
And I decided that day that that was never going to happen again.
That was very motivational for me.
Also, during that class, he brought to light the fact that originally the senators were selected by the state governments.
Therefore, state governments had a word to say in our federal legislation.
I thought, why in the heck would they take that away?
I have never approved of that, and I doubt we'll ever get it back.
So where am I going with this?
I have been very active and focused on teaching my children and those around me the facts of our civics lessons that we're discussing.
In 1992, during the presidential election, I got a state put through my heart when a campaign manager had a mic drop.
There were several that came by and told his presidential candidate, you just tell the people whatever they want to hear.
Don't worry about just tell them whatever they want to hear.
And when you're elected, do whatever the heck you want to do.
I hurt so badly.
I began praying regularly that the Lord would raise us up statesmen of the caliber of our founding fathers.
And we are starting to get a few of those back.
Also, I'm a believer that the swamp is in D.C. is in the bureaucracy.
And there are a few of the elected officials working there with them, but the swamp is the bureaucracy itself.
I love, it always comes back to a teacher or someone of a mentor capacity, given showing you the importance of this stuff, that again, it doesn't exist without us all paying attention.
And I tell my students all the time, if you're not willing to use your voice, someone is more than willing to use it for you, and you have no guarantee that they're advocating for what you care about.
So that's good.
It's always in that.
And we need to get more of those conversations, mentor relationships within, especially at earlier ages, focusing more on the local, the state, than the federal.
That federal attention will always be there.
In terms of the swamp and the bureaucracy here, it has been my experience.
I've lived and worked in government, inside and out of government for 15 years now.
The staffers, the unnamed anonymous folks, are just almost across the board incredibly dedicated civil servants.
I know bureaucracies always get the negative connotations and slow and unmotivated and uneasy.
Doge had a huge impact on this, but we recognize when we break them that they end up actually doing a pretty good job.
They do very important work, whether domestically or internationally.
And they know their issue, their portfolio, better than most, better than anyone, because they do it every single day.
And so I think they often get a bad rap for being lazy or being in the deep state for a lot of times, but it's mostly because they are responsible for making their particular train run on time independent of the politics, independent of the representatives and senators voting on this, or the president who comes in with their ideas every four or eight years to try to change them, flip them back and forth when the parties switch over.
And it is those bureaucrats' jobs to make sure that these programs that often a lot of folks rely on, whether it's assistance and food or medical insurance, or that they're trying to make education curriculums work better, making sure that the transparency of data across the 50 states are coming in and informing the conversation at the federal level.
In my experience, they are not swamp rats.
They are not a deep state conspiracy trying to make sure that things break.
They're actually trying to make sure things work when a lot of the outside actors, a lot of the partisans are trying to break them, whether they're trying to break them for something new and better or just trying to break them because it's often easy to run against the system as a means of taking over the system.
So I'm not jumping on Susie's bandwagon of saying that the swamp exists in the bureaucracies.
I get why that is because they are nameless, faceless folks, and there's a lot of them.
The government is incredibly big.
So we can have conversations about where to cut and how much.
But it's been my experience that these are actually dedicated folks who do know their issue better than anyone else, and they just want to be left alone to do good work, mostly within the states and localities they're responsible for.
I think that you can have a lot of conservatives right now saying this is where we have been promised and where we needed to be for a lot of times.
But she mentioned the Constitution.
There's a lot of misnomers.
The first chapter in the book is about a lot of the myths within the Constitution itself.
The Supreme Court is won.
And we have a full chapter on the Supreme Court in the book too, where we should get politics.
The Supreme Court is subject to politics more than it ever has been.
Within the Constitution, it just says that the Supreme Court must exist.
They didn't say how big it was, what their jurisdiction was.
They didn't even say the number of justices that were supposed to serve on the Supreme Court.
So if you think it's broken, if you think it's too political, there's a chapter in that book that I would love for you to read and then we can have conversations about it.
But they, again, are a consequence of the process to get there.
Right now, it is a consequence of how we nominate and approve Supreme Court justice seats throughout our country with changes being made on the congressional side.
But recognize Congress is the first branch of government.
It is the architect of not only the executive branch and what departments are there and how much funding is there.
We have funding debates going on and on.
We're about ready to have another one with a government shutdown looming at the end of January.
They're also the architect of the judicial branch, the often forgotten branch, until you get frustrated with a ruling.
So if you don't like the lack of ethics on the Supreme Court, if you don't like how big it is or you want more justices or you want to focus what their jurisdiction is, or if you want Congress to tell them how many cases to hear and what cases those are, that is a prerogative of the Congress.
We think of them, the independent judicial branch.
They are independent, but not independent of Congress and their overseeing.
So if you think it's broken, focus on your member of Congress because they can write the laws that can change a lot of how the Supreme Court functions, including how many justices have those robes to sit on those seats.
Two callers have been waiting a minute to chat with you.
Let's get to Mike first in the Keystone State.
Mike, go ahead.
unidentified
Hi.
I'm just curious to get the guests' take on a ranked voting system, where you can cast your primary vote for the candidate that you identify most with, but then you can have a second, or if that candidate doesn't win, then your vote goes to your second choice.
There's a lot of push right now and a lot of frustration across the states because again, federal, there's no federal election in this country, including for President of the United States.
Each state decides how they conduct their own elections for their politicians.
And there's been a big push for ranked choice voting, where you literally, independent of the parties you list in order of preference.
And then the top vote getters, when they bash all those balance together, they count up all those preferences.
The top two vote getters, whether it be two Ds versus each other or two Rs or one D1R, they go on to the primary system.
So this is a response or a reform idea that's gaining traction, including in local and state elections in several states, to get around that two-party system that we've always had conducting through the primary process, oftentimes which is closed, allowing only their partisans to vote in their respective primary elections.
I think it has merit.
I think a lot of research is saying that it's very confusing to folks that have only existed in the two-party system, which goes back to the civics conversation.
This is something that we want to advocate for.
Then we need to teach this type of balloting because it's not intuitive to a lot of folks, especially who have only existed in a previous era and a previous way of electing folks.
So whether it's jungle primaries of the top two vote getters, whether it's ranked choice votings, there's a lot of options on the table.
And I think states are wise and increasing momentum of picking these ups as options, knowing that the partisan system that we have with closed primaries or primary voting systems of first past the post has exacerbated a lot of the polarization that we see in Congress because they're responding to the incentive structure back home from where they're elected.
I know we're past the post of 9 a.m., but SK has been waiting for a while to chat with you out of Washington.
Last caller here.
SK, go ahead.
unidentified
Yes, hi, Casey.
I love you're speaking.
You're very knowledgeable.
Your book is about hold these truths.
You talked about the amendments to the Constitution.
There's a propaganda bill called the Smith Month Modernization Act of 2012, which came, it overturned the 1948 act to prohibit the dissemination of propaganda to the American people.
It was overturned in 2012 by Obama administration, Congress.
And I just want to think about how that fits into things of what we're told these truths are, because I constantly see lying and just the horrible misstatements.
And people are not telling the truth on TV.
The mainstream media is a propaganda machine, and it's mostly the Democrat side.
What do you have to say about the Smith Month Modernization Act and how it applies to everything you've said?
I don't know enough to speak intelligently enough, which I wish more members of Congress and our leaders were willing to say.
I don't know enough to tell you the truth on it.
But the color's right.
The sentiment is there.
He's not alone in sharing it.
He may be coming from, he's obviously blaming the Democratic side.
I think a lot of Democrats will blame.
There's a propaganda machine on the right, just as strong, if not stronger, perpetuating a lot of this stuff, which leads me to two thoughts.
Number one, this isn't going away.
Our media environment is incredibly fractured, more so than it's ever been.
It's going online.
It's going to go back to the AI conversation where you're literally going to, unless we put up guardrails for this stuff, you're going to see literal campaign ads where you're going to see some candidate there speaking, looking, acting like this person, and he's saying something that he or she never said.
And it's going to look incredibly real.
And we don't know if that's illegal yet.
The propaganda has always been true.
There were incredible propaganda machines going back to the days of Thomas Jefferson out of the State Department from which he was the leader of at that time.
He had a partisan newspaper that he had someone work for in his position.
This is a genie, again, that's not going back in the bottle.
So we need a response to this and making sure that when you get to court, when you have news in your name and you're defending it, then you cannot just say, hey, this is an opinion show.
We can do what?
But now we're in a conversation with the First Amendment versus the right for folks to understand and make sure that there are legitimate news sources to their name, which puts a huge burden on the consumer themselves, right?
That we need a media literate citizenry to recognize opinion versus not.
And then maybe potential guardrails, legal and otherwise, to make sure that what you are speaking, especially when you're putting news next to your name or you're an authoritative, looked at as an authoritative site, that you are upholding journalistic standards and making sure that you are not exacerbating the propaganda machine.
But this always goes back to the attention economy that we consume what we want to consume.
We've never had more choice.
That is a blessing and a curse where you're not just going to get the three news channels of your grandparents and your parents.
But at the same time, you have choice to consume what you want.
You are the own consumer of your own information and make sure that you're checking yourself and that you are not subject to a lot of these properly meant GANA machines that are out there and making money off of your attention.
But before we get to 2026, C-SPAN's Holiday Author Week continues tomorrow.
It's Trimane Lee.
His book is A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence in Black Life in America.
On Wednesday this week, it's Greg Lukianoff, The War on Words, 10 Arguments Against Free Speech and Why They Fail.
On Christmas Day, Jeffrey Rosen of the National Constitution Center will join us.
His book, The Pursuit of Liberty, How Hamilton v. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America.
And then on Friday this week, Chris Gibson, Republican of New York, former member of Congress.
His book, The Spirit of Philadelphia, A Call to Recover the Founding Principles.
That's all this week long on C-SPAN's Author Week.
We hope you join us all week long.
Coming up in just a few minutes here, we turn this program over to you.
It's our open forum.
The last 45 minutes or so this morning will be your phone calls on any political or policy topic that you want to talk about.
The numbers are on your screen.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Independents 202-748-8002.
Go ahead and start calling in, and we will get to your open forum calls right after the break.
unidentified
This Friday on a special edition of Ceasefire, host Dasha Burns features key moments from Ceasefire's inaugural season, highlighting moments of friendship and humor, respectful disagreement.
The thing that I appreciated about Rob is while we differed, particularly after he led the charge for the Democrats to defeat the Republican majority in 2006, I always felt like still too soon.
We ought to just commit ourselves to love and justice, not hatred and revenge.
unidentified
One of the wonderful things that I've been able to experience with my very dear brother, Robert George, is that I love the brother when he's right.
I love him when he's wrong.
I love him when he's wrestling in his quest for truth.
Watch our special bipartisan moments from the season of Ceasefire this Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern, only on C-SPAN.
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In our last 45 minutes of today's program, we're taking your calls in open forum.
Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, now is the time to call in.
Here's how you can do it: 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
As you are calling in, here's the front page of today's Washington Times, the redacted Epstein files, ignite cover-up claims.
The lead saying the Justice Department's incomplete and heavily redacted release of the Jeffrey Epstein case files has sparked accusations of a Trump administration cover-up of selected associates of the notorious sex offender, Congressman Thomas Massey,
the Kentucky Republican, RoConna, the California Democrat who spearheaded the legislation to release the Epstein files, saying that they're drafting a contempt measure that would fine Attorney General Pam Bondi until she releases all of the Epstein files that the law requires.
On NBC's Meet the Press yesterday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch defended the Department of Justice's release of the Epstein files.
There were a number of photographs that were pulled down after being released on Friday.
That's because a judge in New York has ordered us to listen to any victim or victim rights group if they have any concerns about the material that we're putting up.
And so when we hear concerns, whether it's photographs of women that we do not believe are victims or we didn't have information to show that they were victims, but we learned that there are concerns, of course we're taking that photograph down and we're going to address it.
If we need to redact faces or other information, we will, and then we'll put it back up.
So we are in every way, shape, and form complying with the statute.
Well, you can see in that photo there's photographs of women.
And so we learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those women and the fact that we had put that photo up.
So we pulled that photo down.
It has nothing to do with President Trump.
There are dozens of photos of President Trump already released to the public seeing him with Mr. Epstein.
He has said that in the 90s and early 2000s, he socialized with him.
So the absurdity of us pulling down a photo, a single photo, because President Trump was in it is laughable.
And the fact that everybody's trying to act like that's the case is a reflection of their true motivation.
But the reality is anybody, any victim, any victim's lawyers, any victim rights group can reach out to us and say, hey, Department of Justice, there's a document, there's a photo, there's something within the Epstein files that identifies me, and we will then, of course, pull that off and investigate it.
Todd Blanch, that was yesterday on the Sunday shows.
Here's the CNBC story from today, the latest on the Epstein files.
The Department of Justice restoring some of those images showing Donald Trump after a backlash received over the weekend.
You can read that story there.
The story likely to continue to play out over the course of this week.
Again, it was late Friday that those Epstein files were released.
That's some of the news that's leading this week.
What do you want to talk about?
Phone lines are yours.
It is Open Forum.
Sarah is up first out of the Keystone State Democrats.
Sarah, good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
I would like to talk about how Republican spokespeople say things like, well, the Democrats didn't do anything for the people that voted for Donald Trump, who had previously voted for Democrats.
They say they didn't help us.
But it's like people don't realize that it takes also some negotiation.
So, yes, Obamacare wasn't perfect, but the Republicans say they forced it on us, and we had these really high, high costs when the alternative was that there were so many uninsured people.
There was spreads of infectious diseases.
Even before COVID happened, if there wasn't insurance to pay for things like vaccinations, it would have been far more deaths.
There was untreated diabetes.
What does that mean?
People go to the emergency room.
It raises the costs for everybody.
Premiums go up.
So if they just, if they really want to save money, they would think about, you know, if they say they try to convince people not to, you know, that the Republicans know what they're doing when they had 15 or more years to come up with a plan.
They didn't.
But they don't care about insuring people.
And I'm surprised that they put out, you know, we have this new plan that just has junk policies that really won't help people with pre-existing conditions like diabetes, which means people go to the emergency room and costs go up.
I think that, you know, when these people have their talking points and say, well, you know, Democrats forced us on us, they voted for the three years and then it was going to expire and put us in this position.
I mean, I know that the commentators are just trying to let them speak.
And I know that they have their next question to ask.
But I really don't understand why they don't push back on simple facts like that.
All right, we'll go to Jerry in Nevada, Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning.
How are you today?
I was listening to your other guests earlier, and I still feel there's a few things that are never mentioned anymore.
I never hear anybody talk about personal responsibility anymore.
But people take it upon themselves to take care of their own lives, to take care of themselves, that the government is not their mother and their father.
I think they need to be able to take care of themselves.
I also feel that maybe a new amendment is that we need some public service.
Maybe everybody really needs to learn civics by being part of some service to the country for two years after they get out of high school.
Maybe that will really make us all better citizens.
And really, that's what it's all about, I think, is we need better citizenship.
People that take responsibility for themselves are good citizens and treat each other well.
If you watch, just to explain, maybe it's a little too much explanation here, but we switch who's on top at the beginning of each month, Democrats and Republicans, because we've gotten this complaint before because we were simply going by numerical order.
And for a long time, it was Democrats 8,000, Republicans, 8,001, Independents, 8,002.
And there were some complaints that the Democratic number was always on top.
So we just switch it around at the beginning of each month to try to balance that out to not get those complaints.
But if we were to switch the numbers, if Republicans were 8,000 one month and 8,001 the next, we feel like it would get more confusing.
So we try to keep people so they remember what line they usually call in on.
So that's why we do it.
If you watch come January 1st, it'll go back to Democrats on top and the 8,000 number being on top.
Again, maybe that's too much of how the sausage is made, but that's why we do it, Derry.
unidentified
I know why you do it.
I'm saying it doesn't, it's not fair.
It doesn't make sense.
The numbers are the numbers.
You don't have to change it.
Just let them stay the same and they will be wherever they are.
I know why you're doing that, but it doesn't make sense to me.
Okay, I think they because they were all going over there because that's what men do, and that's a man for you.
And I can't believe these women that's calling in, they should be ashamed of themselves.
And I don't see what the difference is between somebody that has photographs at their house and a person, I'm sorry, I'm a little nervous, and a person that is going to look at these young women and gawk at these young women.
I don't see what the difference is.
And he was a player, and he is a player, and they're all players.
And I lived in Florida already, and I was in that scene, and I know what they do.
All these men, what they do, I know what they do.
All these powerful men that have money, I know what they do.
They have women in every port.
They leave their wives, or their wives don't legal because they have money.
And I don't see why, because he has money, that he should get a pass.
That's Frank in Florida talking about Massachusetts.
The former governor of Massachusetts and the former senator from Utah, Mitt Romney, has a column in today's New York Times.
The headline of that piece, tax the rich like me.
This is what former senator Mitt Romney had to say.
If, as predicted, the Social Security Trust Fund runs out in the 2034 fiscal year, benefits will be cut by about 23%.
Typically, he says Democrats insist on higher taxes to fix the problem.
Republicans insist on lower spending.
But given the magnitude of our national debt, as well as the proximity of that cliff, both things are necessary.
He says on the spending cut front, only entitlement reform would make a meaningful difference.
And on the tax front, it's time for rich people like me to pay more, Mitt Romney says.
I believe in free enterprise, and I believe all Americans should be able to strive for financial success.
But we have reached a point where any mix of solutions to our nation's economic problems is going to involve having the wealthiest Americans contribute more.
Tax the rich like me is what Mitt Romney writes today in the New York Times.
This is George out of the land of 10,000 lakes.
Go ahead, George.
unidentified
Yeah, thanks, Heathman.
Yeah, I want to bring up the big fraud in Minnesota.
We have been talking about this for years and years, and the mainstream media did nothing.
Now Walls comes out and he says, hey, I've been looking at this for years and years, although we have whistleblowers that go completely against that.
And over the years, you always mentioned California, Illinois, New York.
Nothing was ever said about Minnesota, yet here we have the largest fraud.
They're talking upwards of $9 billion.
And it's always blue states that are getting called for this fraud.
Even the media in Minneapolis and in Minnesota did nothing.
They covered it up.
Now Walz is still defending the Somalis.
He's got a problem right now.
Somalis, if you look at the congressional county state, it's all red except for four areas that are blue.
Most of it is in Minneapolis.
If he goes against the Somalis, he's out his biggest voter base.
So he's kind of stuck.
So, I mean, he's going to have a real issue.
And for how many years?
He's been in office seven years, I believe.
And no media anywhere's covered it.
They still don't in the national news.
Very rarely.
And if they do, it's because Wald is going out against Trump.
Media complicity blamed as feds say the Minnesota fraud crisis could now reach $9 billion.
Minnesota fraud exposed.
This is Marie in Virginia.
Democrat, good morning.
unidentified
You're next.
Yes.
I've not heard anybody mention the increase in the Medicare premiums.
They went up $18 a month this year.
And Bick Romney talks about Social Security is going to run out of money.
Well, there's like $60 million or more on Social Security.
You take $203 a month for a premium.
That's a lot of money.
And that's not counting the money that's coming out of everybody's check every week to help pay for Medicare.
You're talking about over trillions of dollars over one year.
And we need to get everybody who's under the age of 65 off of Medicare.
My nephew is 49 years old, and he's on Medicare.
No, I'm sorry.
If he's disabled, that's one thing, but he shouldn't be on Medicare.
And these people who are disabled to work, if that's the reason you're on Social Security, then you shouldn't be allowed to work and make the $23,400 a year that retirees like me are allowed to make because you're supposed to be disabled to work.
If you're disabled to work, you're disabled to work.
You shouldn't be allowed to work and make a penny.
And that's the way it used to be back in the 70s.
When my dad got hurt when he worked for the state, he got disabled to work.
He wasn't allowed to work anywhere and make a penny.
And I think that's the way it ought to be now.
But these increases in Medicare is getting outrageous.
And I've not heard nobody say how much is going into the Medicare system every year.
And it's trillions that's getting took out of people's checks.
And then people working, it's getting took out of their checks, too.
I'd like to know how much is getting took up and how much exactly Medicare is paying out every year.
He cannot really be the president of the United States of America because everyone and all presidents that are swimming in has to raise their right hand, which he did.
And they also have to post their left hand on top of the Lincoln Bible that sits on top of the Holy Bible.
And it shows videos.
I saw him yesterday, and then they've had it showed from behind, and his hand never once.
I thought I'd give my opinion, a perception about Trump.
I think that there's a good chance he was somehow involved in that Epstein stuff because we see things that he was buddy-buddy with Epstein.
But if you remember, Kennedy, his father was in with the mob and they ran the politics.
Maybe these people had a pedophile blackmail ring that was running politics, and Trump turned against him, and perhaps he reformed and married and was true to Melania.
And Broadway is actually, did you go on Friday and look through some of those files?
unidentified
No, but I did look through the birthday book that was previously released by the Democrats.
And, you know, he had it looked like he had things that he wrote in there with the big signature Donald and that they both loved women.
And there was a similar, I think it was the New Yorker.
There was an article in there that Trump said how much he loved women and how much great he thought Epstein was, except that he liked the younger ones.
So I imagine he was on the periphery of all this, and he doesn't, of course, want to incriminate himself.
And, you know, you can't put him in jail unless there's solid evidence.
But if he turned against it, I think people can realize that people can repent and change their ways.
Yeah, I'm talking about, you know, all the, you know, the things concerning Epstein and stuff, you know, and, you know, Epstein is dead, you know, and we shouldn't, you know, be bringing up, you know, especially the victims.
You know, I understand that the victims want to remain anonymous, you know, but there are other victims that want to be, you know, want their story told, you know, and there, yeah, there's a lot of politicians that were involved, you know, like the Clintons, you know,
Bill Clinton and stuff, you know.
But, you know, when I look at it this way, one, we need to forgive each other and stop all this nonsense, this division.
The media needs to focus on the truth and not, you know, the truth is not relative.
The truth is constant and never changes.
And if we focus on those things and, you know, have Christian people in office, you know, they're public servants, you know.
And we, myself, you know, being a Christian, you know, my thoughts are on how can I help other people, you know, and I'm just wondering just why are they just, you know, you know, hashing up all these negative things and why can't they focus on the good things?
And all three judges who released the grand jury material said that our law trumps the prior law.
That's just common sense, Law School 101.
Yet Todd Blanche is using a different theory that wouldn't survive first contact with any court, which is he's trying to say that prior laws override our law.
Look, people have talked about, and by the way, Todd Blanche is the face of this, but it's really the Attorney General's office, Pam Bondi, who is responsible.
And there are several ways to get at this.
Some take longer, some are shorter.
The quickest way, and I think most expeditious way to get justice for these victims is to bring inherent contempt against Pam Bondi.
And that doesn't require going through the courts and give her, and basically Rokana and I are talking about and drafting that right now.
Okay, well, I mean, on another network this morning, Democratic Senator Tim Kaine said impeachment or contempt, it is premature, Congressman Conna.
And the Deputy Attorney General said, bring it on.
They don't seem to be taking this very seriously.
And if you just don't have the math in the Senate, including, at least now, this Democratic Senator not being convinced, doesn't that sort of show that you're at the limit of pressure?
And it would fine Pam Bondi for every day that she's not releasing these documents.
I'll tell you why I've talked to the survivors, why this is such a slap in the face.
One of the survivors said they released her name accidentally, but they still have not released the FBI file about the people who abused her at her request.
unidentified
And the problem here is that there are rich and powerful people.
Back from Face of the Nation yesterday on what's happening on the House side on the Senate side.
This is an ex-post this morning from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer saying, I'm introducing a resolution directing the Senate to initiate legal action against the DOJ for its blatant disregard of the law and its refusal to release the complete Epstein files.
Chuck Schumer putting that ex-post out earlier today, just after 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
He goes on to say the American people deserve full transparency, and Senate Democrats will use every tool at our disposal to ensure that they get it.
This administration cannot be allowed to hide the truth.
Chuck Schumer in his ex post today.
Back to your phone calls, just about 20 minutes left in the Washington Journal this morning, ending in open form.
Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about, now's the time to call in.
Phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, Independents as usual.
This is Susan in Greendale, Wisconsin.
Good morning.
unidentified
Good morning, and new day.
I would like to talk about this waltz in Minnesota.
I have not heard anything about Rick Scott in Florida.
When he was the CEO, they defrauded Medicare and Medicaid.
I think they had 14 felonies, and there was just a small portion that was paid back.
I guess the Republicans need to talk about Rick Scott.
He's a pathologist, and he says that the way the death of Epstein occurred, it looks more like a homicide than a suicide, mainly because of the way the hyaloid bone was damaged in that strangulation.
So maybe it'd be a good idea to bring Thomas Baden on C-SPAN and maybe talk about that.
The other thing is about Epstein, he had a townhouse walking distance from the Trump Towers, and they said that Trump was a frequent visitor to this townhouse and received massages.
So I just wanted to know why that was never brought out.
And I heard that, I think, on the Tom Hartman show.
So I just, that's my source of the information about that townhouse.
We are coming up on 9:50 on the East Coast, about 10 minutes left.
It's open forum.
That's how we're ending the program today, letting you lead the discussion.
Samuel in California, Republican.
Go ahead, sir.
unidentified
Yes.
Thank you for taking my call.
I want to talk about President Trump, about the great job he's doing, about how he's running this country.
Look, he's close in the border, close in the border, and he's been working bringing prices down and all the tariffs that he's putting on these countries and everything.
They're putting a heavy wealth in this country, over $18 trillion.
And I think coming January to June of next year, 2026, there's going to be a big boom in this country with jobs.
And there's going to be plenty of money coming in.
And he's doing a fantastic job.
And I'm going to tell you right now, the Democrats can't take it.
When I say that I'm going to fight alongside of you, I mean all of you, each and every one.
President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless self-defeating purity tests.
He says, make America great again because every American is invited.
We don't care if you're white or black, rich or poor, young or old, rural or urban, controversial or a little bit boring or somewhere in between.
People of every faith come to our banner because they know that the America First Movement will make their lives better, and they also know that the Democrats don't care about anything other than maybe transit their kids.
So if you love America, if you want all of us to be richer, stronger, safer, and prouder, you have a home on this team.
I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform, and I don't really care if some people out there, I'm sure we'll have the fake news media, denounce me after this speech.
But let me just say, the best way to honor Charlie is that none of us here should be doing something after Charlie's death that he himself refused to do in life.
He invited all of us here.
Charlie invited all of us here for a reason.
Because he believed that each of us, all of us, had something worth saying, and he trusted all of you to make your own judgment.
And we have far more important work to do than canceling each other.
We have got to build, and President Donald Trump is a builder.
Vice President JD Vance yesterday at the Turning Point annual conference.
If you want to watch his entire address, you can do so on our website at c-span.org.
By the way, he mentioned President Trump.
We're set to hear more from President Trump today.
He's scheduled to make an announcement with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the Secretary of the Navy from Palm Beach, Florida.
The White House providing no more details about the subject of that event, but President Trump making himself available today, and we'll be carrying that address on the C-SPAN networks this afternoon.
Check our guide updates for listings and times, but that is happening, expected to happen today.
This is Ben in Reading, Pennsylvania, Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
Thank you.
My comment has to do with Epstein.
I believe that the Congress, when they return from their holiday break, should convene hearings to determine why it is that the Blind administration and the Democrats failed to release the Epstein files for four years.
These issues that you talk about, why did it bubble up?
Why did you feel like today was the day to call in for the first time and say that?
unidentified
You know, I've been thinking about that.
It's at the point now where you've got to say something.
If you're a citizen of the country, you've got an obligation to ensure that your country is following the standards that were set forth that's legal, that we're supposed to follow.
And that was the Constitution.
That's the basis of our government.
And if we don't follow that at least, what do we have?
Do we have government?
Do we have law?
And matter of fact, from the very top, it appears to me that they have no respect for the rule of law and government.
Our president does not.
And that's for sure.
And if Congress continues to allow him to do such, we the people of this country, unless we fight for our country, then we get what we deserve.
Noah, Central Port, Central Point, Oregon, Republican.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Yes, hello, sir.
I'd like to talk about the reclassification of marijuana.
I think it's a great thing that President Trump did.
And I hope they expand upon that, maybe with other bills, because the studying of that to help out veterans would be great because who knows what kind of medications could be generated from the study of marijuana medically for medical reasons.
And I just hope whoever's listening to this, I mean the Senate or the Congress, maybe they could put a bill through.
And when they do study that, maybe they could use that to help veterans with any drugs or the use of marijuana or their derivatives.
Do you know people who this is who have been helped by impacts me?
unidentified
And it also, you know, as you know, some people have other substance abuse issues and they utilize marijuana for, you know, to curb those other issues.
President Trump signing that executive order on December 18th, Thursday last week, to federally classify marijuana as a less dangerous substance.
It's the biggest change for the drug since 1970 when it comes to classification and an opportunity USA Today writes for the industry to operate more easily.
That's the story by Bart Jensen in USA Today.
This is Steve Arizona, Independent.
Good morning.
unidentified
I have two comments.
First of all, the Trump administration through the Department of Justice are in blatant violation of law with their bungling handling of a cover-up of the Epstein files.
I would like to know when Congress or the American people are going to start holding this administration responsible for their illegal acts.
Second comment has to do with artificial intelligence.
I would be interested in seeing a response if someone asks ChatGP what the future of AI is.
Dana in Silver Spring, in Silver Springs, Florida.
Forgive me.
A line for Democrats.
Go ahead, Dana.
Got you on the air now.
unidentified
Hi.
Hi.
Yes.
I am a first-time caller, and I had a couple of issues that I wanted to bring up.
On the Epstein files, the Trump administration is having a cover-up.
I would like for you to show the files that they are releasing.
Most of them are blacked out.
The pages, you know, thousands of pages are actually just totally black.
So if they're protecting the people that have done these terrible, heinous crimes, they certainly need to be publicized.
And this shouldn't be happening.
You can show them, I'm sure there is a news story that you could actually show some of the files and how the pages are blacked out.
So these people that are calling in that think that this needs to be let go, they're not realizing that people have actually been harmed by this and that their children could still be harmed by this.
So it is certainly something that we need to know.
And I also wanted to mention the ACA subsidiaries that are not going to be paid in beginning in January.
And the January, when people are actually losing their insurance, they're not able to have any insurance.
They're not going to be able to have their medications, that people are going to die.
And also back on the IPS team files, I realize that y'all are showing the pictures of Clinton, but you're not showing pictures of Trump.
Those pictures need to be shown.
They actually put pictures out and then they took them away.
Oh, by the way, the press conference that we talked about today, some timing on that for you.
The President and the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, will be speaking 4.30 p.m. Eastern Time.
Julia Manchester of the Hill newspaper with a little bit more information.
The Navy Secretary also expected to join that press conference saying it's going to be a shipbuilding announcement.
So some time and details on that now.
4.30 p.m., look for it on the C-SPAN networks this afternoon.
And we will see you tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific, back here on The Washington Journal.
unidentified
Well, coming up, elected officials and conservative activists speak at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest Summit in Phoenix.
This is the organization's first major event since its co-founder, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated in September.
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