Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Participants
Main
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pedro echevarria
cspan35:36
Appearances
brian lamb
cspan00:34
kevin mccarthy
rep/r01:06
mike johnson
rep/r01:05
nancy pelosi
rep/d00:51
zohran mamdani
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Clips
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jonathan karl
abc00:23
Callers
louise in virginia
callers00:54
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Lou's 2026 Party Vision00:13:41
unidentified
Biographer Kyle Barrett discusses Freedom 250's illumination of the Washington Monument with a large-scale projected light show, which started New Year's Eve and will continue through January 5th to kick off celebrations for America's 250th birthday.
And George Mason University's Mercatus Center senior fellow Jordan Lofthaus on his book, An Economist's Guide to Environmentalism.
It's the Washington Journal for the second day of the new year.
What message would you offer your political party this year?
Democrats, perhaps with the swearing in of New York City Mayor Zoran Mandani in New York City, it's encouraging your party to use his blueprint to victory as a way to engage with voters, especially with this year's midterm elections.
Republicans, perhaps it's to have your party advocate to fulfill more of President Trump's America First agenda before the November elections.
Regardless of your political party, what message would you have for your party in this coming year?
Here's how you can tell us.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Perhaps you have a third party that you support, Independents.
If you want to give us a call at 202-748-8003, you can text us your thoughts about the message to your political party this year at 202-748-8003.
You can also post on Facebook and on X. Appearing on the Hill news site this year, this morning, a story of taking a look at Democrats and the message they hope to communicate to their party this year.
This is the headline.
They start 2026 with fresh momentum and lingering challenges, in which they write this.
High prices, steep tariffs, and strains stemming from the 2025 record-long government shutdown have dragged Mr. Trump and some of his lowest-level approval ratings on the economy, which was the top issue for voters in the 2025 election.
From Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spamberger to the mayor of New York City, Zoran Mandani, Democratic candidates found success in putting focus on affordability and economic concerns, and many in the party want to lean into that even more in 2026.
But it remains to be seen whether that will be a sufficient strategy for the party to maintain its momentum through the midterms and beyond.
It quotes Democratic strategist Michael Ceroso saying, All that obviously makes it easier for Democrats to consistently have something to throw against the wall, but I would argue I'm not quite sure if there's a message that Democrats have proposed and driven that's created the results we saw in November or leading into momentum that we're seeing next year.
That's taking a look at the Democratic Party.
It was the mayor of New York City being sworn in yesterday in a second ceremony after his first one.
This is Oran Mandani talking about his principles of leadership going into his new position.
We will govern without shame and insecurity, making no apology for what we believe.
I was elected as a democratic socialist and I will govern as a democratic socialist.
In my principles for fear of being deemed radical.
As the great senator from Vermont once said, What's radical is a system which gives so much to so few and denies so many people the basic necessities of life.
The movement we began over a year ago did not end with our election.
It will not end this afternoon.
It lives on with every battle we will fight together.
Every blizzard and flood we withstand together.
Every moment of fiscal challenge we overcome with ambition, not austerity, together.
Every way we pursue change in working people's interests rather than at their expense, together.
No longer will we treat victory as an invitation to turn off the news.
From today onwards, we will understand victory very simply.
Something with the power to transform lives and something that demands effort from each of us every single day.
What we achieve together will reach across the five boroughs and it will resonate far beyond.
There are many who will be watching.
They want to know if the left can govern.
They want to know if the struggles that afflict them can be solved.
They want to know if it is right to hope again.
So standing together with the wind of purpose at our backs, we will do something that New Yorkers do better than anyone else.
So Democrats, Republicans, what's the message to your party for this coming year?
202-748-8,000 for Democrats.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
We'll start with Dee in Texas, Democrats line.
What's the message to your party?
unidentified
Good morning, and happy 2026.
Let's hope that we are moving forward into something that is more bright and optimistic than we had in 2025.
My message to my party is this: we are a party of addition, not of subtraction, and we have nothing to be ashamed of.
That we are people who want to see everyone in this country win and not just a few.
We got to stop being ashamed of that, and we have to stop trying to sound like Republicans because the Republicans are the ones who are the party of subtraction.
They are the ones who want to take things away from people.
That is not what the future looks like.
That is not in our best interest.
And I applaud Ma'am Donnie for being proudly socialist Democrat.
And we need to move closer to that and further away from this idea that we can moderate with people who want to leave other people behind.
A message to the Republicans would be to get a life and stop being sycophantic to this guy who's not necessarily doing the things he should be doing for the country.
But to the Democrats, I would say you should first off start out by apologizing to the American people for being just as bad as the other guys when it comes to donor class support.
In other words, they're all committed to the big money and they're all committed to the Israel lobby.
And it's clear that they don't go far enough when they have to because of that.
So they should say, we apologize for that and we're going to change our ways and we're going to start, we're starting to start supporting the people who vote for us.
I think they almost have to give up their super PAC and depend on our people to support them.
But if they do that in good faith, I think they have a chance.
And all the other stuff is not good enough because they're viewed as just as bad as the other guys.
Michael in Maryland, Republican line, again, delivering his message.
You can deliver yours as well on the lines and pick the best one that represents you.
I'll also remind you that if you've called us in the last 30 days, if you could hold off from doing so today, we would appreciate it.
In recent days, Punchable News takes a look at Republicans, their agenda for 2026, saying that they're planning to make their marquee tax bill the centerpiece of their election messaging.
But given that Republican senators acknowledge the party hasn't effectively communicated what's in their signature package to voters, it may be a risky proposition.
The one big beautiful bill, which Republicans are increasingly referring to as the Working Families Tax Cut, features a litany of border security, military spending, health care reform, and tax policies.
It's a wide-ranging GOP wish list that leadership painstakingly pushed across the finish line in July.
But Republicans are concerned about the onslaught of Democratic attacks that slammed the bill as a draconian Medicaid cut, which, while the Republicans struggled to cobble together votes over the summer, Democratic groups had spent millions on negative TV ads to find in the legislation President Donald Trump's signature accomplishments so far in his second term.
That bill was one of another of a list of messages or at least attempts for this year by the House Republicans.
This was from Representative Mike Johnson just a few weeks ago.
I think what he's sometimes when he's taken out of context on comments like that, he's referring to what we accomplished with the Working Families Tax Cut, the Big Beautiful Bill, because there's so much in that that a lot of people said, wow, you guys checked all the boxes.
Well, we did to a certain extent, but there is so much more to do.
And we're going to have a very aggressive legislative agenda coming right out of the gates in January.
We're going to continue to work, for example, on health care to continue to bring costs down for the American people to bring down the cost of living overall.
You're going to see an aggressive affordability agenda, and we're going to see continued codification of the president's executive orders.
He's up to about 200 of those.
Probably about 150 of them are codifiable by Congress, and we're working steadily through that list.
You're going to see us delivering for the American people while the effects of that giant piece of legislation that we did on July 4th, got signed on July 4th, come into implementation.
So much more, much more yet to do.
And the President and I talk about that almost every day, and he's excited about it, and I am.
So the message from the House, Speaker, is that, as you're watching at home, what's your message to your respective political party for 2026 on our independent line?
The Democrats really, you know, they pulled the wool over our eyes, basically, making us think that they were the different party.
And now they've been exposed, and they've been exposed by people like Bernie Sanders and AOC and people that are out there saying, you know what, the party's not really for the little people.
The party's for the big guy.
And we know that now.
And we know that even Obamacare was a big tax write-off to the insurance industry.
So, you know, we got it.
We get it now.
We know even somebody in Massachusetts, like our Governor Healy, who was recently asked about what she felt about rent control, said that she basically isn't for it.
Well, you know what?
She's for the people that, you know, she's for the corporate people.
I just want to say two things to Governor Fisher: that he should be making the law that when you live with a person so many years, you should be married so many years.
Again, part of the message you want to deliver to your political party.
The lines are there.
Pew not too long ago taking a poll of Democrats about frustrations they have.
They label it as such, saying many Democrats frustrated with the party saying it's their party saying it's because it's not doing enough to fight against Donald Trump himself.
That's 41% of those who responded to that.
Other categories, a lack of good leadership, a lack of a cohesive agenda or message, out of touch with voters, ineffective when in power, did not keep promises, or a lack of party unity.
Maybe one of those are compiling your message too to your party, whether it be Democrat or Republican.
You can express those as well.
Louisiana's next Democrats line.
This is Chris.
Hi there.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
I totally disagree with almost every one of your last callers where the Republican voice was minute.
In reference to frustration by the Democrat, I totally disagree with that too.
The ACA right now subsidies are basically not available.
Right now, we're just starting a new year and all the American citizens can't even afford medication for them suffering with cancer and all other major diseases currently right now.
The Republican Party, Mike John, all of them, they have done nothing but basically everything that they wanted to do for corporations and for the folks who are the richest in our country.
With all due respect, they need to focus with what we want.
Right now, the ACA subsidies needs to be approved in the next six days, I would say, because without their approval, and they talk about the Obamacare, which is the ACA, the ACA was one of the best things that ever happened to this country dealing in medical.
Right now, our whole medical situation is an abomination.
You can again comment on the line that best represents you by calling the numbers 202748-8,000 for Democrats, 202748-8,000 for Republicans, and 202748-8,000, 2 for Independents.
And you can also text us your thoughts at 202-748-8003.
Some mentioning health care.
The latest analysis when it comes to those subsidies that one of the callers had mentioned in a story this morning or from a couple of days ago saying it was those millions of Americans facing higher health care costs starting yesterday, January 1st, 2026, as the Enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expire.
The subsidies which were enhanced during the pandemic, later extended, will end after lawmakers could not reach a consensus on an extension or a new health care policy.
Experts predicting premium increases for many Americans.
The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates annual out-of-pocket premium payments for subsidized enrollees will increase by an average of 114%.
So maybe it's health care that you want to address your party on.
Maybe it's a matter of economics or other issues.
Again, call and let us know.
Independent line, Francis in New York.
unidentified
Hello.
Yes.
Hi.
Good morning.
So I am an independent, but I lean primarily towards the Democratic Party.
I would like them, my advice is for them to keep telling the American people the truth and exposing a lot of the problems that the Republican Party have created by lying to the American people.
My advice to the Republican Party is that they need to start telling the truth about what is happening in this country, drop job losses, insurance, health care, all those things that matter to the American people.
And actually, they need to talk about the cost of living and the cost that the kind of pay that they're providing people, especially in red states.
I'm calling from New York, and our minimum wage is nearly $20 an hour.
And a lot of these people from Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, all those states that call in, they're poor.
And I think they resent these blue states because these people earn their pay and they work really hard for it.
So, as I said, the Republican Party needs to start telling their folks the truth.
They need to start valuing education, and they need to do more for their state.
I say go back to being the party that we used to be when I was a child.
And that is the Democrats speak for the working person.
And we need to do more of it than we've been.
And less of all of these tax cuts that only enhance the wealthiest people of this country.
And the poorest people go begging.
The income distribution in this country is disgusting.
It's French revolutionary type of income distribution.
And we need to go back to understanding that tax cuts, the tax cuts that have been passed, only enrich the wealthy.
Trickle-down never worked.
Bubble up works.
If you give money to the poorest people of this country, that money goes out into the world and does good things.
And if you don't, if you don't understand that economically, if you don't put those policies out there that benefit the most people of this country, Virginia, if I may ask, why do you think that message is not being delivered by the current Democratic Party?
It's just plain not getting through.
I don't understand.
I don't know why.
I don't know why.
I am dumbfounded that the people of this country don't see that Donald Trump is not a person who acts in their best interest.
He acts in his own best interest and always has.
And the same for Republicans who think that tax cuts are the way to make this country go.
It's always been when you put the common man to work, when you make sure there's a strong middle class, that this country thrives that way.
I think number one, and I've talked about this with a number of my friends, and I think that personally I would do something to try and overturn or at least begin the steps to overturn Citizens United.
Now, that's, of course, an issue here in America.
Globally, I think we need to re-engage and assert ourselves.
I think that we should go ahead and recommit to both NATO and the United Nations.
I believe that on the world scene, we need to do everything we can as a party going forward to reassert ourselves on the global stage as a steadying influence.
Back here at home, of course, I think that we need to go to work immediately on immigration policy and reassert ourselves with our health care views and use Obamacare as our base, as the place where we're beginning with mandated coverages.
Dire Times Ahead00:15:13
unidentified
No matter what the insurance companies want to do, we need to make certain that our elderly and our youth, our very young, are absolutely taken care of.
Okay, that's Jim there in Missouri giving us a call.
Kathy Nicholson saying, Republicans, be honest, follow the law and the Constitution, pray and keep working for the American people.
America first, God wins.
She writes on Facebook this morning, also another Facebook poster saying, and not sure which party directed exactly, but saying, don't just point at economic problems, actually offer solutions, show how you want to improve people's lives.
If you want to post on Facebook, facebook.com is how you do that/slash C-SPAN.
And then on X, you can do that at C-SPANWJ.
The banner there says, what's your message to your political party?
Maybe it's on matters of economics, maybe it's on other matters.
Maybe you want to focus on state officials.
As one caller did this morning, you can choose the line that best represents you as you talk about your party.
202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents 202748-8002.
On that independent line, our next caller will be Kurt.
Kurt there in Pennsylvania giving us his thoughts, addressing the widespread of political parties on our independent line.
Democrats line in New York.
Paul, go ahead in Kingston, New York.
unidentified
Hi, this is Paul and Kingston.
For the Democratic Party, I would like to make two suggestions.
One, for health care, I think we need to move to where the rest of the world has been for decades and generations, to a single payer system, sometimes referred to as Medicare for all.
And when you suggest where everybody is covered for everything from birth till grave, all medical care is free for everybody as a basic fundamental human right.
And when you make that suggestion, conservatives generally start yelling, who's going to pay for this?
It'll bankrupt the country.
Marxism.
No, it won't bankrupt the country.
It's not Marxism.
Taxpayer money does pay for it, but every penny spent goes directly for health care.
What makes health care so expensive in America is not the cost of health care.
It's the profits.
In America, it is treated like any other commercial product.
Now, the rest of the world has had this for generations.
The United Kingdom has had it since 1948.
Canada has it.
All the countries in Europe have it, whether they're socialist countries or capitalist countries.
They all had it for generations.
They spend far less money than we do.
They cover everybody for everything.
And it's no miracle.
It's just spend the money for health care and take out the profit motive.
Paul, if I may ask, why do you think Democrats haven't pushed along something like that, even in our past history when we've had a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress?
unidentified
I honestly don't know.
I can only assume that too many people in office of all political parties are pocketing money from the people who are profiting off of the current system.
That's my guess, both Republicans and Democrats.
The other suggestion I would like to make is in regard to education.
I think we should have free college education in America like the rest of the countries do also.
We do it in this country for kindergarten through high school and have for all time.
But if they want to go to college when they get a little older, we throw them all under the bus.
The other countries do it for college like we do kindergarten through high school, and they wisely consider it to be an investment in their future.
Let's hear from Keith in Virginia, Republican line.
You're next up.
unidentified
Good morning.
My message is to focus less on the petty attacks and more on the Constitution, which is the roadmap for bringing this country together.
I think the country is way too polarized, and I think we need to stop thinking about our entrenched interests in both parties and really focus on what will unite the country, which is the Constitution and protecting it.
I think you were calling maybe from a car, from your car or something like that.
But you got most of your point across.
That was Keith in Virginia.
That pew poll that I saw that I showed you earlier also asked about generally American sentiment about parties' governance.
When it comes to being too extreme in its positions, 61% net, but 34% saying that the Republican Party was too extreme with 28% a very extreme, 28% somewhat extreme.
The Democratic Party, 29% too extreme in its positions, somewhat extreme in that, 27%.
When asked about the party governing in an honest and ethical way, when it comes to the Republican parties, they say that for the very category, 10% only, 29% somewhat.
And then the Democratic Party, 9% vary somewhat, 33%.
It goes on from there from that pew poll about people and their view, especially in light of the midterms coming up later this year.
Maybe that's the driving force of comments you have when it comes to this idea of your message to your political party.
Again, we've set aside a line for independents.
If you want to give us a call and give us your perspective in Ohio, this is Tony.
I just want to comment today, especially in supporting Virginia from Arizona, who called in a couple callers ago.
This country is under corporate fascism.
It isn't the party.
Both parties are involved with the corporate greed that goes on in the world.
And we, the people, are no longer able to support our families, support the people of this country that need the help.
We are in for some dire times if we don't stop this.
I would like to suggest that for those who are interested to read some things from Chris Hedges, who has been speaking out about this for years, and also Ralph Nader.
Ralph Nader's newspaper, Capitol Hill Citizen, is invaluable to educating oneself.
This is Matthew Crawley from Facebook posting on a message to a party saying this: actually pass legislation in the House that matches the president's executive orders.
Make the Democrats have to block it in the Senate so they will have to run on it.
Again, Facebook is a way that you can post your thoughts about this topic or this idea of the message that you have when it comes to your particular political party, another on our independent line.
Okay, well, I guess what I would have to say to my party and all other parties is this: if nobody contributes into the system, they should not be able to draw from the system.
If you are not a veteran, you cannot draw from veterans' benefits.
If you do not pay into Social Security or Medicare, you cannot draw on Social Security or Medicare.
I'm sorry.
Everybody keeps saying they cannot feed their families.
Let me tell you this from a woman's perspective.
If I cannot afford to pay for the birth of a child, how can you expect me to pay to feed that child?
Then I should not be having that child in the first place and stop blaming government for my irresponsibility.
It was on Sunday where former Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, in talking about the year ahead, offered some advice to Republicans on the things that they should focus upon.
Here are some of the former Speaker's comments from Sunday.
By the way, Kevin McCarthy, the former Speaker of the House, is one of our guests for today's ceasefire program, which you can see later on this evening.
He'll be joined by former independent West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin to preview the year ahead in politics, including the upcoming midterm elections, as well as political and legislative battles in Washington.
You can see that conversation with our host, Dasha Burns, at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, and you can only see that on C-SPAN.
Let's hear from Spencer on your message to your political party.
Spencer joins us from Nebraska.
Democrats line.
Hi.
unidentified
How you doing?
I just want to say that the Democratic Party needs to quit being chicken to the Republican Party and go ahead and disallow all these bills that they're bringing through.
They've been doing this for years, blaming everything on the Democrats.
The Republicans are doing the dirt and blaming it on the Democrats.
They need to quit blaming all the dirt on Democrats and take their own brain and get some of the old guys out there and get some young guys in there.
So, Spencer, I thought you said that the Democrats, I thought I heard you said, and maybe I'm wrong that you said the Democratic Party was the one being chicken.
Was I incorrect in that?
unidentified
They are being like one of the chickens.
They're scared of the Republicans.
Anytime something goes on, that clown says, oh, it's the Democrats' fault.
No, it's the party that you're with, the Republicans who's doing all the stupid stuff.
The Democrats are just chicken.
They don't want to do nothing.
Just sit in the office and listen to what they got to say.
Spencer joins us from Nebraska with those thoughts.
Another one on our independent line, Allen in Wisconsin.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Happy New Year, Pedro.
Quick message of the Democrats, Republicans.
To the Democrats, get rid of the limousine liberals in your party.
Get rid of the Nancy Pelosis and all the people funded by the Rothschild family and all these wealthy billionaires in the background.
It's disgusting.
Very specific message to the Republicans.
This is existential.
There are 47 million people unable to pay their student loans today.
The federal student loan program is catastrophically failed.
The pandemic was the nail in the coffin.
Trump should have wiped that whole thing out when he was president first time, quite frankly.
But what the Republicans need to do, Pedro, they need to return constitutional bankruptcy protections as they exist for all of their loans, all of their borrowers, to student loans.
And they need to charge the hedge fund colleges for these discharges.
So that would probably be $6 billion a year.
Well, the top 20 colleges, their endowments grow by $35 billion a year.
Nancy Pelosi On Democrats And Accountability00:09:32
unidentified
I'm not talking about all colleges, just the top 20.
So the colleges need to pay for bankruptcy discharges, and the Republicans have a constitutional, conservative, and moral duty to make this happen, or they will absolutely be annihilated in the midterms.
Alan in Wisconsin, you heard from former Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, here is former Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi in an interview on ABC on her thoughts for 2026 when it comes to the Democratic Party.
In this new year, your message to your political party, if you want to advocate for a specific thing or general things, 202-748-8,000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents, 2027-8002.
You can text us your thoughts at 202-748-8003.
Sandra is next.
Independent line.
Democrats.
I'm sorry, Democrats line.
Sandra's from Indiana.
Sandra, good morning.
unidentified
Yeah, everybody is griping about this and that.
And they didn't vote because he didn't like Coblin Harris.
A lot of you folks posted on Facebook even before the start of the program.
Feel free to do that.
Keep going throughout the show, too.
Democrats need to stress that their constituents' concerns are important to them and that cleaning up the mess left by the Trump administration is a top priority.
And the reason I'm calling is I've been reading some information through different magazines that Amazon, through these tariffs, these tariffs are killing our country.
It's going back to 1929.
Amazon is transferring.
They're building a 23 football field size building up in Canada, up in British Columbia, and they're going to approximately lose about 6,000 people.
Are you saying within the Republican Party itself?
unidentified
Yes, all of them, because they're not going to get, if they don't start holding anybody to account, they're not going to have, they're not going to get votes.
And the second thing is that they need to pass the executive order bills and get them passed through Congress.
Because if they don't make the 2026 election, they won't get them passed.
Maurice, your message to your party or a party when it comes to 2026.
unidentified
Good morning, everybody.
Happy New Year.
I've been around for 90 years now, and everybody that is believing that government can solve their problem, they just are forgetting the lessons of history.
The Democrats have never done anything that actually improved life.
All they do is spend your money on the people who are not contributing to the national good.
Thank you to all of you who participated this morning.
Later on in the program, we'll be joined by George Mason University's Mercatus Center's Jordan Loft House.
He takes an economist look on dealing with environmental issues.
We'll get those thoughts from him.
But in looking at the year ahead, specifically when it comes to foreign policy, joining us for that discussion, Atlantic Council's Matt Croening for challenges in the Trump administration in the coming year when it comes to foreign policy.
We'll hear from him when Washington Journal continues.
unidentified
Today, on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, former House Speaker, Republican California Congressman Kevin McCarthy and former Independent West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin come together to preview the year ahead in politics, including the upcoming midterm elections and the political and legislative battles ahead in Washington.
They joined host Dasha Burns.
Bridging the Divide in American Politics.
Watch C-SPIRE today at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
American History TV, Saturday is on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
This weekend, as the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, join American History TV for our series, America 250, and discover the ideas and defining moments of the American story.
This week at 11 a.m. Eastern, historians discuss the creation of the Continental Army and the state of the British Army in America in 1775.
Then at 8 p.m. Eastern on lectures and history, when Kentucky became a state in 1792, it had a choice, keep slavery or abolish it.
University of Kentucky professor Melanie Gullen talks about the state's decision.
And at 9.30 p.m. Eastern on the presidency, a look back at the unveiling of First Lady Barbara Bush's forever stamp and profiling her life of service at a ceremony at the White House.
Exploring the American story, watch American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find the full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history.
is as unbiased as you can get.
You are so fair.
I don't know how anybody can say otherwise.
You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country.
I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices.
You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds.
I absolutely love C-SPAN.
I'd love to hear both sides.
I've watched every morning and it is unbiased and you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments.
It's probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country.
You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruption.
When you talk about that shift in approach, what do you think drives that?
unidentified
Well, you know, I think the president has been consistent, but this time he's got a different set of advisors.
And we see different camps within the Republican Party and within the administration vying for influence.
And so you do have some of the traditional kind of Reaganite internationalists, but you also have some who are more skeptical of U.S. global engagement.
And we've seen the battles within the administration play out and influence policy, most notably in Ukraine, but also over Iran's nuclear program and elsewhere.
Is this the idea that some in the Republican Party would say, why are we engaging in in the first place?
Or others say, while others say this is a direct interest in the United States, there's that tension there?
unidentified
Yes, and I think to some degree it's generational.
You know, for people my age or your age, we think of America's involvement in the world as winning World War II, winning the Cold War.
I think for younger generations of Americans, they think of American global engagement as failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a global financial crisis, COVID.
You know, why are we engaging at all?
Why don't we just come home?
So I do think that an engaged United States has been good for the world and for American citizens over the past 80 years.
But there are those who are more skeptical, and we're seeing those fights playing out, not just in the Republican Party, but also in the Democratic Party.
You have those who are more pro-U.S. engagement in the world and those who are more skeptical and want to focus on issues at home.
You've hinted at it, but when it comes to the Atlantic Council, your own personal take, what philosophy do you hold to generally?
unidentified
Yes.
Well, I have a new book coming out called Force for Good, How America and Power Makes the World Safer, Richer, and Freer.
And so that's basically my view that after World War II, the United States was left as the most powerful country in the world.
Its leaders looked back at the devastation of the first half of the 20th century and said, we don't want to do that again.
We don't want to return to world wars and depression.
And so they worked alongside their allies to build the international system we've had for the past 80 years based on strong alliances in Europe and Asia, extended American nuclear deterrence, trying to promote free and fair trade and democracy and human rights.
And the world is safer, richer, and freer because of it.
Zero great power wars in 80 years.
Standards of living in the United States and around the world are now five times higher than they were before the beginning of the American era.
And after World War II, there were only about 12 democratic countries on earth.
Today, there are almost 100.
So the world is safer, richer, and freer because of American engagement.
And so I think the United States needs to stay engaged, but it has to do that smartly.
It's not always more everywhere.
And so how can the United States best pursue a smart but engaged foreign policy?
You've served under former President Bush, former President Obama, in the Trump administration.
How does that shape your approach to current events when it comes to foreign policy?
unidentified
Well, having that real world experience, of course, is helpful.
And I do think a lesson for me is that there is more of a bipartisan consensus in foreign policy, even still today, than I think many people understand, because often the media rightly focuses on the debates and the controversies.
But there are underlying pillars where there still is broad bipartisan support, support for the NATO alliance, support for strong alliances with Japan, Australia, and Korea and Asia, support for a strong U.S. nuclear deterrent, and so on.
So that gives me some optimism that the United States can still chart an overall consistent strategic course, even as we have these debates within parties and between them.
On that front, the president himself posting on Troop Social today saying this: if Iran shoots shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue.
We are locked and loaded and ready to go.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
The president, when the president says stuff like this in relation to what's going on, what does that tell you?
What do you think of that response?
unidentified
Well, this is unusually strong language from a U.S. president.
We have seen presidents in the past criticize the regime, support the protesters, but they've used sanctions or other tools.
This sounds like a threat to intervene militarily.
And the president does have some credibility in this regard, having just struck Iran's nuclear facilities last year.
And there has been discussion about possibly Israel or the United States conducting a strike on Iran as it reconstitutes its missile program.
And so we'll have to see.
But I guess I would not be surprised if President Trump does authorize the U.S. military or Israel to strike Iran's missile facilities that they're trying to rebuild in response to a violent crackdown against these protesters.
Do protests like these, even though maybe they're economic in nature, do they influence other things like what Iran does eventually with missile programs, what it does for how it treats other parts of the world?
Is there an ability to influence or sway or does it strictly stay when it comes to just the protests about economics?
unidentified
Well, the regime is fearful for its own survival, and part of the reason it does violently crack down.
It doesn't want to collapse.
And this is the primary goal of many autocratic regimes.
Regime survival is number one.
But then number two, Iran has had this foreign policy of supporting an axis of resistance, a group of terrorist and proxy groups, and investing in higher-end asymmetric capabilities, ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.
And so it seems like, even though they've been weakened over the past year, that this two-part strategy really hasn't changed of repression at home and pursuing these destabilizing asymmetric capabilities internationally.
And we do see that Iran has been able to walk and chew gum and do both of these things at the same time.
And so even as it is repressing its population, it is investing again in its missile program.
And likely in the future, we'll try to reconstitute its nuclear program as well.
Well, I do think that China is the biggest challenge the United States is facing and maybe has ever faced just because it's so much more capable than past rivals, even Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.
And so in Trump's first term, he declared great power competition with China as the foremost challenge facing the United States.
That was continued in the Biden administration.
And the Trump administration just came out with a new national security strategy that kind of downplayed the description of the China threat.
But then if you look at the policies recommended, many of them, you're right, are all about containing China.
It talks about maintaining a favorable balance of power in Asia.
That's about China.
It talks about preventing hostile powers from dominating important regions.
It talks about winning the economic and technology competitions.
It talks about countering hostile and malign influence in the Western Hemisphere.
So those are all about countering China.
I think not everything is about China.
There are other things going on in Gaza and with trade, but it probably is the single most organizing, most important organizing principle for U.S. foreign policy today, countering China.
And Mr. Craney, while we're on the topic, it was a couple of days ago that China had a series of military operations centering around Taiwan.
What do you think about this latest activity?
unidentified
Yes, well, this is concerning because China has said that it wants to take Taiwan, that it would prefer to do that peacefully, but it is keeping the military option on the table.
Xi, the Chinese leader, has asked his military to give him the ability to invade by 2027.
So I guess the good news for 2026 is he doesn't think he's there yet, but they think they're getting close.
And so if China were to attack Taiwan, this could lead to a major U.S.-China war.
And I think what we've seen over the past few days are essentially a dress rehearsal that China is conducting these military exercises, practicing for a potential blockade or invasion, and also just part of its daily pressure campaign against Taiwan's government.
Because I think Beijing's real hope is that Taiwan will just give in under the pressure.
And so, yeah, we've seen this military pressure, but it's combined with economic, diplomatic, and a lot of other types of pressure as well.
Even the response from the State Department reads, China's military activities and rhetoric towards Taiwan and others in the region increase tensions unnecessarily.
We urge Beijing to exercise restraint, cease its military pressure against Taiwan, and instead engage in meaningful dialogue.
That's the response.
Is that a strong enough response for the situation, or should there have been more?
unidentified
Well, I think that is a good response.
And, you know, Teddy Roosevelt talked about speaking softly and carrying a big stick.
And so the Pentagon is going about creating the big stick right now.
Admiral Paparo is the commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
He has a concept he calls Hellscape of basically creating a lot of unmanned systems that would be able to destroy a Chinese invasion fleet.
You see the Pentagon focusing.
Well, just coming back to the national security strategy I mentioned, it talked about the Western Hemisphere as a top priority region, but had Indo-Pacific number two.
So I do think a lot of the U.S. government, Department of Defense, X-M Bank are really focused on the China threat.
So I think we are doing enough, but it is concerning.
My concern about the Trump administration policy towards Ukraine is outrageous being a veteran.
And do you think that also, with Trump allowing NVIDIA to sell the computer chip to China, could come back to bite us later, because the Chinese do believe in mass numbers that they're building their NAVY, that we don't have a NAVY number-wise as big as China's?
NATO Expansion and Guarantee00:15:43
unidentified
That could hurt us if China does attack Taiwan?
They got more naval ships.
We don't.
They got more people to serve in their Navy.
We don't.
But overall, it seemed like to me the administration doesn't know what they're doing in foreign policy.
So first on Ukraine, I do think that the president has learned in office on this issue.
I think he came in believing that it was going to be easy.
I think over the past year, he's learned that it is more difficult than he thought.
I think he's learned that it is Putin that's the challenge, not Zelensky or Europe, and that getting Putin to negotiate in good faith is going to require more pressure.
So I think there's been some positive developments there.
We can return to those.
On exporting the NVIDIA chips, there is a debate among experts on this.
And so one view is that we need to divide these chips to China because we need to win the technology race.
The other view is that part of winning the technology race is not just having the best technology, but it's having others use our technology and that we would rather have China dependent on us than vice versa.
And so that was the logic that went out in terms of exporting those chips.
And then on China having more ships than us, you're right, that's a problem.
And the Trump administration does have a major shipbuilding effort underway.
But I would say when it comes to an invasion of Taiwan, it's not just about countering the ships.
As you know, as a veteran, you have to think about the contingency.
And so the biggest concern would be a Chinese amphibious invasion.
And so to counter that, the United States doesn't necessarily need more ships than China.
We and Taiwan and our other allies just need enough munitions and drones and other things to sink those ships, the invasion fleet, before it can get to the island.
And so I think that's where a lot of the focus is now as well, investing in drones and anti-ship missiles and other munitions that could deny a Chinese invasion.
And I hope that you can give me a little bit of time to make a little bit of an explanation before I pose the question regarding both subjects.
And just before I even do that, I would like to say we appreciate in Canada the United States' presence and when it's doing good around the world, but we also very much do not appreciate when the United States is cultivating and instigating wars and conflicts.
And the first question I'd like to have your guest consider, as I add to the question, is, how does the United States leadership expect that there will be any way of ensuring peace and stability and the economic trading system in the world to continue stably as long as the United States continues being unable, or probably better said unwilling,
to collaborate with the world's two other biggest, most powerful countries, China and Russia?
Let me qualify the China issue.
Instead of poking China in the eye by sailing your Navy's warships and getting to my country's Canada's warships between Taiwan and China regularly, which drives the Chinese leadership crazy, the United States could simply and very safely and with no risk to anybody, merely commit to China that you will no longer sail your warships between Taiwan and China's mainland.
You don't do that, so it instigates conflict and an adversarial relationship, ensuring that China, among other ways, will never consider collaborating with the huge problems in North Korea Iran, Israel being attacked by Muslims onto Ukraine.
The Ukraine conflict is directly a result of NATO expansion.
To end that conflict would merely require the United States guaranteeing Russia's security not so much Ukraine but Russia's security, as was Russia's demand before it invaded Ukraine in 2021 December if the United States was prepared to reset the relationship with Russia so that Ukraine became again a neutral country, there would be no need for this war to continue.
Yes well, thanks for um sharing your perspective on on both issues, but I do see it uh differently.
I think the United States and its allies, including Canada, are essentially status quo powers.
We're happy uh with the world essentially the way it is, uh Russia and China are So-called revisionist powers.
Xi and Putin both say explicitly that they're willing to use force to uh remake uh their security architecture in the region uh to conquer uh peaceful neighbors.
And so we we see uh Russia launching this full-scale invasion against Ukraine, and we see Xi uh threatening to invade Taiwan.
And so you're right that a U.s military presence uh NATO in Europe and uh warships in the Indo-pacific uh anger those dictators, but the reason it angers them is because it stops them from engaging in aggression against their vulnerable Neighbors.
And so I just really disagree with the premise.
I think a strong NATO and a strong military presence deters conflicts in those regions.
And if we withdrew that, it would just open up highways for aggression for these dangerous dictators.
When it came to you, Kraney asked the question about NATO expansion and ensuring that.
unidentified
Yes, and so just to elaborate on what I was saying before, Putin has been very clear that he sees the collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, that he wants to recreate the Russian Empire.
We've seen him use military force against every country on his border that's not in NATO, against Georgia, against Ukraine, has essentially turned Belarus into a puppet state and so on.
And so, yes, he doesn't like NATO expansion because NATO expansion stops him from dominating his neighbors and recreating the Russian Empire.
But I think we've seen objectively that NATO expansion has led to peace.
Every country that's been brought into NATO has been safe from Russian attack, like Estonia, for example.
And countries that have been left outside have been exposed to Russian attack.
So I think the problem was not too much NATO expansion, but not enough.
Mr. Krainik, the New York Times highlights it's year four when it comes to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
In this year four, what do you think has to happen in order for a major shift in current hostilities to happen?
unidentified
Yes.
Well, you know, at the beginning, I think the idea that Ukraine could take back all of its territory was a good goal.
But I think what we've seen now is that the battle lines have really solidified.
I think new technology like drones is making it hard for forces to take territory on the battlefield.
And so unfortunately, I think some kind of ceasefire along the current lines and a peace agreement that would preserve most of Ukraine is about the best that we can do.
And that's what the Trump administration has been trying to negotiate.
The major challenge is Putin.
Putin doesn't want that deal because he doesn't just want territory in eastern Ukraine.
As I was saying before, he wants to control Ukraine, either through physical occupation or by having a friendly puppet government in Kiev.
And Putin thinks he's winning on the battlefield.
And maybe hard for us to imagine because he's losing so many men and it's so slow.
But he sees the trend line in his favor.
And so getting to peace then is going to require changing Putin's mind and making him believe that he can't win on the battlefield and this is the best he can do.
And so I think that is going to require more support to Ukraine so that Ukraine can continue to hold the lines, but also more pressure on Putin.
And I think part of the reason we've seen more serious diplomacy for Moscow in recent months was that in the fall, the Trump administration sanctioned some Russian energy giants.
And that was starting to affect Putin's pocketbook and make him think about negotiations.
But we're not quite there yet.
I think it is going to require more pressure on Putin before he's really willing to agree to any kind of ceasefire or peace.
We saw President Zelensky at the White House or at the Var-a-Lago over the holidays in one of those discussions centered around security agreements with the Ukrainian president wanting 30, 40, 50 years maybe.
What does that look like, security agreements?
And should the United States consider it?
unidentified
Well, that's an important question because getting a lasting peace would really have two parts.
First is getting the initial ceasefire, which is what I was focusing on.
But then you're right, once you get there, how do you make sure that Putin just doesn't reattack again?
And so you need to make sure that Ukraine and its allies can deter a further Russian attack.
And so some kind of security guarantee from the United States should do that.
Putin doesn't want a direct war with the United States.
There was initially talk about NATO membership for Ukraine.
And in fact, NATO has promised Ukraine that it would eventually join the alliance.
That seems to be off the table for now.
And so now we're focused on these bilateral Ukraine-U.S. security guarantees.
And we have seen that work in other regions.
The United States has a bilateral security treaty with Japan, bilateral security treaty with Korea, Australia, and others.
And so a bilateral security guarantee between the United States and Ukraine could work just like it does in Ukraine or in Japan.
Putin would know that any attack against Ukraine could lead to a war with the United States, and that would deter him.
And so it does seem now that there's a discussion over how long would this security guarantee last.
Apparently, Trump has promised a 15-year guarantee.
You're right that Zelensky is pushing for longer.
I guess from my point of view, I think any guarantee, even 15 years, would be a major step forward.
And after 10 or 15 years, the United States could always decide to renew.
So if we could get Russia to agree to any American guarantee as part of a ceasefire, I think that would start to lay the foundation for a more stable peace in Ukraine.
The Atlantic Council's Matt Kroening joining us for this discussion.
Mark in Georgia, Independent Line, you're next.
unidentified
Yes, thank you.
Good morning, Matthew.
I've read recently that what this administration actually wants to do is shift our foreign policy from that of global peacekeeper to hegemon of the Western Hemisphere.
I think the President's rhetoric towards Greenland and Canada and our actions, military actions against Venezuela, would support that shift in strategy.
I invite your comments.
Well, I think it's not either or, but both.
And I think you're right that we have seen more of a focus on the Western Hemisphere.
The national security strategy talks about the Western Hemisphere as the priority theater for the United States.
And, you know, there are many foreign policy experts for a while who've been saying, well, why don't we focus more on the Western Hemisphere?
It is our own neighborhood.
And there are challenges in the region, narco-trafficking, irregular immigration, Chinese and Russian presence in the Arctic and elsewhere.
And so I think focusing more on the Western hemisphere does make sense, but we don't want it to be at the exclusion of other regions.
And again, the national security strategy did talk about Indo-Pacific as the number two region.
We see President Trump actively engaged diplomatically in Ukraine and Gaza.
So I don't see it as either or.
I think we can do more in the Western Hemisphere, even as we maintain engagement in other regions.
That national security strategy you wrote about, and in part you said this.
The NSS airs, however, by disavowing the pragmatic promotion of democracy and human rights.
Can you elaborate on that?
unidentified
Yes.
Well, many of the responses to the national security strategy were critical.
Overall, I thought it was a good document for many reasons, and we can return to that.
But I think one of the weaknesses was that it essentially disavowed the promotion of democracy and human rights.
And I understand where that's coming from.
I think after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were sold in part on democracy promotion, there are many in the United States and the Trump administration who say, you know, we shouldn't be spreading democracy at the barrel of a gun.
But there are a lot of other ways that the United States has promoted democracy over the years, including through examples.
And I think that's a strength of the United States, that we are the good guys.
We stand for freedom and human rights.
Putin and she and the others don't.
And we've seen that our best friends in the world are other democracies.
And so I think having a world with like-minded democracies that respect the human rights of their own people, that are more cooperative internationally, is ultimately in the U.S. interest.
This is Rob, Rob on our Line for Democrats in New York.
Hello.
unidentified
Hello.
Yeah, I believe that we're dealing with a very simple-minded president.
He has looked in the past, looked at Teddy Roosevelt as his mentor in a certain sense.
And we know that these oil tankers were going to Cuba.
And we know that Venezuela is propping up Cuba at all times.
And we are looking to actually that pad regime change in Venezuela.
And we do want to get Cuba out, you know, less communist.
We'll take over Cuba as well.
The point being here is that he is a simple-minded person that is talking to the dictators.
Russia's Ambitions in the East00:14:07
unidentified
He looks at himself as a dictator in a certain sense.
And he will say to Putin, you could have Ukraine.
He's made up deals that don't really favor Ukraine.
He's looked at China and with Taiwan and hasn't done anything or in a sense, really protect them, where Japan is really upset or really kind of doesn't feel safe anymore.
I think he's allowing that to happen so he could take over the Western hemisphere, as you mentioned earlier.
And that is the real thing that he wants.
He wants to build up the United States presence in Cuba, get the Saudi Arabian money in there, make Kavanaugh back to be the 50s Cuba for America.
Okay, well, let's leave it there for our guests to answer.
unidentified
Yes, well, thank you for that.
And I partially agree and partially disagree.
I do think in the Western hemisphere that there are a number of factors pushing this focus.
And, you know, Marco Rubio, our Secretary of State, his parents left Cuba.
And he's been focused on anti-American communist dictators in the region for a while.
And so I think it's no secret that he would prefer to see a different government in Venezuela and a different government in Cuba.
President Trump has said that Maduro must go.
And if we just look back at some successful U.S. foreign policy presidents, Reagan and George H.W. Bush both used military force in the Western Hemisphere to install more pro-American governments in Granada and Panama.
That worked well.
So my view is if we could get a better government in Venezuela and in Cuba that respected the human rights of their people and that were more cooperative, that would be a major foreign policy success.
So we'll have to see what happens there.
In Ukraine and in Asia, I somewhat disagree.
There are others like you who have said that Trump has this sphere of influence type thinking.
I'm going to dominate the Western Hemisphere.
I'll let Putin dominate Europe.
But if you actually look at the negotiations, I think that's not true.
That the Trump administration has drawn lines in its negotiations with Putin.
If the United States were willing to say, okay, Putin, you can have all of Ukraine, maybe Putin would agree to that.
But the United States hasn't been saying that.
It's been saying, you know, only the territory you control.
Currently, it's insisting on these security guarantees.
So I do think that President Trump, again, is focusing more on the Western Hemisphere, but doesn't want to abandon other regions.
I think he likes being a globally engaged leader involved in all of these hotspots around the world.
Mr. Kradig, a viewer text us this morning asking about your thoughts about the possibility of a full-scale invasion, as he describes it, of Venezuela this year.
unidentified
Yeah, I think that's unlikely.
President Trump has been proud of himself.
He talks about how he's a peacemaker.
He has this doctrine of peace through strength.
And as I read it, it is a focus on peace, but not peace through appeasement.
It's peace through strength.
And so I think we've seen that Trump is willing to use military force in kind of short, sharp, decisive ways, like the strikes against Iran's nuclear program in the 12-day war.
But he's also been very skeptical of long, drawn-out military occupations with no clear end in sight.
He's been critical of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and elsewhere.
And so I could imagine Trump using force in Venezuela, but more like a commando raid or strikes against certain facilities.
Very hard for me to imagine Trump authorizing a full-scale invasion of Venezuela.
We saw last week about the dock that was hit by the United States.
What do you think about those approaches?
Ultimately, what do you think those achieve?
unidentified
Well, you know, I think that Trump's strategy, and it hasn't been articulated, so we're all reading the tea leaves here, but it does seem like the purpose is a pressure campaign to try to force Maduro to leave voluntarily, to hope that he'll say, this is getting dangerous.
Maybe I'm better off if I go into exile in Russia or something like that.
So I think that's what we're seeing so far.
And if that doesn't work, the United States does have options to take it up a notch with more strikes directly against the mainland.
Some have speculated that maybe Trump would authorize some kind of strike or raid to capture Maduro directly.
So I think that's the goal is to stop the flow of narcotics into the United States from Venezuela, but ultimately to pressure Maduro to step down and hope that you get a transition to a better government.
And I would point out that the Venezuelan people have voted Maduro out.
He lost an election in a landslide last year.
And if you look at public opinion polling in Latin America, there is majority support for U.S. military action to remove Maduro.
So he's worn out his welcome both in Venezuela and in the region.
Let's hear from Jim and Maryland, Republican line.
unidentified
Hello.
Oh, hello.
Good morning.
I think I have the solution to the battle in Ukraine.
You said before that NATO is off the table, but I don't understand why we don't offer that to Ukraine.
First of all, if we gave that to NATO, Russia would not invade.
And I think you could make a peace treaty on the fact that Russia could keep the land that they have and they could never invade again because Ukraine would be a part of NATO.
There's other countries that are smaller than Ukraine that are part of NATO.
They don't even have any military.
So Ukraine is a country that I think would qualify.
Why do you think that they're not giving them a chance to be a NATO?
Well, it's a good point, and I essentially agree with you that if Ukraine were in NATO, it's extremely unlikely that Russia would attack, again, because Putin doesn't want a war with NATO and with the United States.
And, you know, in the 2008 Bucharest NATO summit, the alliance promised Ukraine that it would join someday.
And so the alliance kind of left Ukraine in this gray zone that made it vulnerable to attack.
I think the reason we're not doing that, though, does have to do more with domestic politics, and it is bipartisan.
The Biden administration was also reluctant to take major steps toward bringing Ukraine into NATO.
And so I think there's this sense, rightly or wrongly, that the American people are kind of tired of foreign military engagements after Iraq and Afghanistan.
You know, expanding U.S. military commitments by bringing other countries into NATO, especially a country that's currently at war with a major nuclear power, is just too difficult.
And so I do think that's off the table for now.
But over the long term, I do think solidifying Ukraine as a member of the Western Alliance would lead to a more peaceful Europe.
All right, I've got to pause you there only because of interest of time and because you put a lot out there for our guests.
Mr. Krainen, go ahead and address what you wish.
unidentified
Yes, you did cover a lot of grounds.
Let me take a couple of those.
First, on why do we see China as an enemy?
You know, part of the reason is that China sees us as an enemy.
And President Xi has given many speeches.
They've been compiled into books.
But he does see the United States as the biggest threat facing China.
And China says it wants to dominate the Indo-Pacific.
It says it wants to break America's alliances in the region.
And so that would be a bad thing for the people of Japan, of Korea, of Australia, who don't want to be dominated by China, who want that continued American presence.
And the United States did try to engage China for a quarter century after the end of the Cold War.
And we hoped that we could make China so-called responsible stakeholder in the rules-based system.
But especially under President Xi, they've decided no, they want to challenge the United States.
And so I think we're reluctantly being forced now to defend ourselves.
Just final response to your points on democracy and human rights.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm finishing up this book on U.S. foreign policy over the past 80 years.
And the United States has almost always prioritized security and economic interest first and democracy and human rights secondary.
But I think there is still a difference there that the United States, where it has had the opportunity to promote democracy and human rights consistent with its security and economic interest, it has done that.
And I think that has led to expanded freedom in Europe.
Remember, there are only a handful of democratic countries in Europe at the end of World War II.
Now the entire continent is free.
And also in East Asia, at the beginning of World War I at the beginning of the Cold War, Japan, Korea, the Philippines were not democracies.
Now they are because, and Taiwan, and now they are because of U.S. presence and advocacy.
So I think the United States does have a better record than some might think when it comes to promoting democracy and human rights.
This is Patrick joining us on our line for Republicans from Georgia.
unidentified
Good morning.
I have a couple of questions.
One is if your guest, Mr. Koenig, has information about a program called GLADIO that's run by the intelligence services of several different countries.
And the other question is, what would security guarantees for Russia be to bring peace in this conflict after we guaranteed that we would not put NATO on its border?
And then there was the Minsk one and Minsk II before they invaded that the Western countries backing Ukraine broke.
And then after the invasion, there was an Istanbul agreement that Ukraine signed on all three of these and the Western bankers forced them to break that.
So I was just wondering what do you think the security guarantees for Russia would be in this conflict?
Well, first on this GLADIO program, I'm not familiar with it.
And from the way you described it, it sounds like if I were, that I wouldn't be able to talk about it.
So sorry, I can't comment on that.
On security guarantees for Russia, I think it depends on how you define security.
I think if you define it as most in the United States define it, that Russia can be a free and sovereign country, doesn't need to worry about threats to its sovereignty or territorial integrity.
Russia has that.
Nobody's threatened that.
The problem is that's not what Putin wants.
Again, Putin wants to conquer his neighbors and create the Russian Empire.
And so when he talks about security guarantees, he's talking about what are the guarantees that I can continue to conquer my neighbors without outside interference.
And so that's just a fundamental conflict of interest.
That's not the world that the United States and our European allies want to live in.
And so if the guarantees are what are the guarantees that Putin can conquer Ukraine, then he's not going to get those here.
Matthew Kroenig is with the Atlantic CouncilAtlanticCouncil.org, the website, if you're interested in seeing the work on various topics of foreign policy.
Coming up later in the program, we're going to hear from Jordan Lofthaus of George Mason University's Mercatus Center, an economist look at environmental issues.
And if you want to participate, 202-748-8000 for Democrats.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
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We'll take those calls when Washington Journal continues.
unidentified
Today on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, former House Speaker, Republican California Congressman Kevin McCarthy, and former independent West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin come together to preview the year ahead in politics.
including the upcoming midterm elections and the political and legislative battles ahead in Washington.
They join host Dasha Burns.
Bridging the Divide in American Politics.
Watch C-SPIRE today at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
Irish-American writer Frank McCourt wrote a book in 1996 that was on the New York Times bestseller list for over 100 weeks.
Over the next 20 years, Angela's Ashes sold close to 10 million books worldwide.
It was translated into 24 languages.
McCourt, who was born in New York City, moved with his family to Limerick, Ireland for his childhood years.
Frank McCourt died at age 78 in 2009 of melanoma cancer.
He was a guest on the BookNotes television program on September 19th, 1996.
unidentified
We revisit an interview with Frank McCord and his book, Angela's Ashes, a memoir.
BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb, is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
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According to a new Maggot Research report, nearly 90 million Americans turn to C-SPAN, and they're almost perfectly balanced: 28% conservative, 27% liberal or progressive, 41% moderate.
Republicans watching Democrats, Democrats watching Republicans, moderates watching all sides.
Because C-SPAN viewers want the facts straight from the source.
This is open forum, and you can comment on issues of politics, pick the line that best represents you, and call us if you haven't called us in the last 30 days: 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, and Independents 202-748-8002.
And if you want to call those lines right now, we will start and take those calls in just a moment.
It was on New Year's Eve, the start of New Year's Eve, that the Washington Monument became a large-scale movie screen, and it's part of efforts by Freedom 250.
That's the organization behind the 250th celebration of America's birthday.
And for every night since New Year's Eve, a new demonstration, a new video that depicts an aspect of America's history.
One of the people behind that effort, Kyle Barrett, joining us with DCE Productions.
What was the goal ultimately in portraying these images on the Washington Monument?
unidentified
I think it was just to inspire Bride and everyone and to show that regardless of what's going on and what side of the aisle you're on, we should all be proud about our country, about its history, and it's worth celebrating.
So, you know, bring your friends, bring your family, come learn about our history.
And I think you'll take away something that'll inspire you to move forward on the next 250 years.
And if so, give us a sample of some of those themes.
unidentified
So each night you're going to see the same primary act that runs for about 18 minutes.
And that's a four act structure where we walk you through the history of the country from its founding through the Industrial Revolution and into modern advancements like ours our space accomplishments and flight.
And then what we're going to see in between that, that's what's going to change and evolve over the next couple of days.
We call those screensavers and they're things like historical paintings that you would see in the Capitol Rotunda that we've brought to life and animated.
There are going to be fun America 250 graphics.
So we wanted to give people an opportunity as they walked around the National Mall to take photos and come home with an experience that very few people will get because this is the only second time that this has ever been allowed to happen on the Washington Monument.
The technical challenges, can you explain in layman's term how that works and how you're able to do that?
unidentified
Well, you know, if you're watching your TV, we've got a nice landscape.
So we have lots of real estate to show you what we want to show you.
But when you take and you turn that into a tall, thin structure, it really limits how much you can actually show people.
So finding ways to take large rectangle paintings and find the most intimate moments in those and then make sure that those are what's visible can be a challenge.
And then beyond that, trying to find ways through narration and sound design to really make you feel something.
I think that's the glue that really brought this all together.
Who worked on this from the federal government from America 250?
I imagine this is a collaborative effort.
What are some of those forces that brought this together?
unidentified
Yeah, this was a very, very large gathering of people.
And it basically took an act of Congress to get approval and permitting with the National Park Service to actually allow this to happen.
So from the top down, we're talking every federal agency had to be involved and had to be in agreement.
And then all the technical and logistical folks on the ground to get the experience built.
You know, I'm on the content side.
I have such an appreciation for the people that had to sit out in the cold for a week building projectors and running power and generators and command tents for the team on the ground to actually bring these visuals to folks.
Again, for Open Forum, the numbers will be on your screen if you want to participate and pick the line that best represents you.
Thomas in Pennsylvania, Democrats line.
Thank you for waiting.
Go ahead.
You're on.
unidentified
Thank you for taking my call.
I just want to make this real quick and I'll get through it real fast.
This is all to all the Republican voters out there.
It was a Democrat called Franklin D. Roosevelt that gave you your Social Security.
It was a Dixiecrat called Lyndon Baines Johnson that gave you your Medicare.
It was a Republican, former Governor Mitt Romney, that wanted to do some kind of health care plan for the people of Massachusetts, so much so that the Republicans thought that was a very good idea.
But yet again, it was a Democrat, Barack Obama, who took that concept of a plan, as we all have been hearing, and made it nationwide.
And it was called the Affordable Care Act.
What I'm saying is you have to be a little bit more of a critical thinker here, what's going on.
And no matter what anybody tells you, because I'm quite sure that you stood by those TVs when you saw the Republican Congress try to get rid of your Social Security.
It was a Republican Congress who was trying to find some way to get rid of your Medicare.
So no matter what you want to say about the Democratic Party, yeah, they're kind of in a little flux at the moment.
It's always been because the Republican Party, going back as far as Dwight D. Eisenhower, never believed, in no way, shape, or form, that government should help American citizens.
I just got a quick summation of, I don't watch C-SPAN anymore because it seems like it has been not nonpartisan.
I used to watch it in the later, I think the middle 80s, when Brian Lamb really was involved in it.
And I don't know what he's doing now.
I'm not really sure.
Don't really care.
But I just watched the one segment with Mr. Crony.
You had three Democrats.
You had one Independent.
You had a caller from Canada.
And you had one Republican.
So I'm not really sure how that's nonpartisan.
And then when you open the lines up, you've got another Democrat on there.
I mean, my family's been in the military for 100 years, and I've never been so embarrassed in my life when Barack Hussein Obama was elected and Joe Biden or whatever his name is is a letter.
I mean, I was in the military.
I'm the last one in my family.
I'm 60 years old, and I've never been so embarrassed in my life.
Tim, you said you don't watch the program, but you're calling us now.
What prompted you to call today?
unidentified
Well, I just wanted to see what happened.
I just wanted to see where you guys have moved to because, believe me, I do statistics on when people call and you have much more Democrat callers than you do Republicans.
And you seem to try to get independents in, but it just doesn't seem like that you really do.
When I do turn it on, I mean, you know, I know you've been on there for a while.
I think the one lady, Heather, and I may be incorrect in her name.
You mean, as far as the people who call in the program, sure, they talk to our phone screener who talks to them, make sure they're calling on the right line and the topic they're going to engage in.
And then it comes to us, and then we put them on the air.
unidentified
So do they make the decision of how many Democrats, how many Republicans, how many independents call?
So in your case, it's – but I would advise you to keep watching the program because even, I think, if you keep watching, we're still consistent with what we've done, even from Brian Lamb, who's still around, by the way, and what he did and what he started with this network.
unidentified
No, I know he started it.
I watched it back in 1985, 86 when I got out of the military.
I was only in three years.
I started watching it in 1986.
And I will say this for you, and I'll let you guys, I do feel like you were one of the few nonpartisan programs on there because, you know, CNN was around, Fox wasn't around.
Of course, Newsmax wasn't around.
All these other places weren't around.
And you had Arnett and Shaw on there back in the early 90s when the war was going on when my friends were all over there.
This is Anthony, Anthony, Democrats line, also from New York and Buffalo.
Hello.
unidentified
Yes.
First of all, what is the assumption that has given Trump administration the right to do what he's doing for foreign policy?
Nobody asked that to your guests.
Secondly, in Minnesota, a 23-year-old person of dubious intent built some kind of a documentary that accused all of these daycare centers of not being open.
You notice that in your reporting that this guy started this problem with this, and now the decision in the Ukraine, anyone that thinks that Trump, President Trump, has any intention of helping the Ukrainian people, they ought to forget it.
He stopped giving them foreign aid.
Now he sells the missiles to Europe to give to the Ukraine.
And he is basically saying, I believe Putin, I don't believe my own intelligence agency.
He said that with the first Trump administration.
So there you go.
And as far as these people calling, if your screeners do a wonderful job, oh, who's calling by the Democrat or the Republican line?
The phone screeners are our first line, so to speak, and their lifeblood is getting us connected to you, the viewers.
We appreciate their efforts.
You had mentioned the daycare story, a follow-up in the Washington Post this morning under the headline, viral video has led to unfair punishment, according to daycares.
And in part saying this, the scrutiny on the nine-day care centers in Shirley's video has nationwide implications because all daycare centers will have to submit more documentation to HHS before receiving child care funds.
The new guidelines, while still unclear, mirror, quote, defend the spend requirements that briefly went into effect in April before they were stopped.
Child welfare policy analysts say for a few weeks, states seeking to draw down money to reimburse daycares were asked to upload additional details on why the payments were justified.
That effort significantly delayed payments to providers, said Stephanie Schmidt, Director of Child Care and Early Education at the Nonpartisan Center for Law and Social Policy.
If the new administration, sorry, if the new documentation requirements are the same or more onerous, providers that are chronically underfunded will struggle to keep their doors open, according to that quote.
You can read more there online if you wish.
Let's go to Jim.
Jim joins us on our independent line in New York, Farmingdale, New York.
Letty in Florida, Independent West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin will appear alongside former Speaker of the House, Republican Kevin McCarthy, on our ceasefire program, talking about different issues, including the midterm elections and political legislative battles that they see ahead in Washington in 2026.
You can hear both of their opinions on the program as it airs tonight at 7 o'clock in the evening, both the Eastern and Pacific time zones, and then a re-air at 10 o'clock in both those time zones as well.
That's our ceasefire program, that conversation moderated by Dasha Burns.
Let's go to Michael.
Michael in New Jersey, Independent Line, you're next up on this open forum.
Hello.
unidentified
Hello there.
First, let me say Happy New Year's to everybody.
And this is my first time calling in C-SPAN in 2026.
So I watched history with the Washington Monument, and I had to turn it off, I'm going to be honest with you, because it had a Mayberry RFD view of history.
I think with today's technology, we could have had Mexicans, Chinese.
How about Native Americans and African Americans?
All the peoples that built this country should have had a little say in the history.
And it was just like Mayberry RFD all the way.
And it's not the actual history of the United States, how we got so great.
I know we've been discussing the daycare problems they've been having in Minnesota a lot, but it seems now they've got more regulations for it.
We keep getting a bigger government, bigger government.
Why is government even involved so heavily in daycare?
Government Expansion Concerns00:05:17
unidentified
Just like I noticed today that the government's now got their first grocery store in Atlanta.
We're getting a bigger government.
We're trying to get more government, more tax dollars tied up, bigger government, bigger government.
We should be getting more independent grocers in Atlanta, not getting the government involved in more things so they can come up with more ways to redistribute our wealth, our taxes, through all these new government programs.
And the government really doesn't run things very well, like the DMV.
You know, I just can't see the government getting more involved in daycare.
I was just going to ask you if you ever could do a future show.
I read online that the Supreme Court has ordered Donald Trump's organization to turn over all their business records with all these foreign governments.
And I truly believe that America is going into a recession this year.
I just want to say to my brothers and sisters in this country, to tighten your belts.
Don't spend money you don't need.
And I just see a really big change and downturn to this country.
But I called regarding Matthew Koenig and the Atlantic Council and what he had to say with regards to his worldview or the council's worldview.
But the fact that he exists and the council policies are the way they are is the problem in this country.
We have a problem.
Now, it's not they have a problem.
We have a problem.
You can't solve this by blaming the rationality that he gave with regards to why We have enemies as China and Russia is because of their aggressive behavior.
Someone said that because of Russia and China's behavior.
We have invaded every country about six or seven different countries in the last 20 or 30 years.
Are we nuts?
Our whole foreign policy is based on how big an aircraft carrier we can build.
We've got two on order for the Pacific Ocean that are going to cost us, I don't know, maybe a trillion dollars apiece.
I don't know what the hell they're going to be.
But the problem is that Russia has is that no one talks about what's securing Russia.
The Soviet Union was 15 different countries that broke up.
And Vladimir Putin is the only guy with brains enough and guts enough and balls enough to live through that process.
It was yesterday in his inaugural address that New York City's mayor, Zoran Mandani, talked about the example he wants to set for his fellow New Yorkers.
You can see that full speech on our website and our app.
But here's a portion from yesterday: We will govern without shame and insecurity, making no apology for what we believe.
I was elected as a democratic socialist and I will govern as a democratic socialist.
...in my principles for fear of being deemed radical.
As the great senator from Vermont once said, What's radical is a system which gives so much to so few and denies so many people the basic necessities of life.
The movement we began over a year ago did not end with our election.
It will not end this afternoon.
It lives on with every battle we will fight together.
Every blizzard and flood we withstand together.
Every moment of fiscal challenge, we overcome with ambition, not austerity, together.
Every way we pursue change in working people's interests rather than at their expense, together.
No longer will we treat victory as an invitation to turn off the news.
From today onwards, we will understand victory very simply.
Something with the power to transform lives and something that demands effort from each of us every single day.
What we achieve together will reach across the five boroughs and it will resonate far beyond.
There are many who will be watching.
They want to know if the left can govern.
They want to know if the struggles that afflict them can be solved.
Again, more comments from the mayor available at our website at c-span.org, our app at C-SPAN now.
Let's hear from Charles in Oklahoma, Republican line on this open forum.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Hi, Pedro.
First time caller.
So I have an obscure topic that I've never heard anyone bring up before.
I've long been aware of the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, which set the ratio for the House of Representatives, capping that number at 435.
The Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, calls out the ratio for representatives at 1 to every 30,000 citizens.
And since that was part of the Constitution, I really believe that it should have been a constitutional amendment to change that ratio.
But instead of passing a constitutional amendment, what the Congress did in 1929 after the census was they just artificially capped the number of representatives at 435.
I realize that if we do the, it's a basic math problem.
If you divide the U.S. population by 30,000 today, you'd have over 11,000 representatives.
And I realize that that's too large of a number to be effective to govern.
But currently, the ratio, if you were to take the number of representatives, 435, and divide that by the U.S. population, it's one to about every 800,000 U.S. citizens.
And I really feel that what we wind up seeing is the voice of the common man, the little man, is drowned out because of the lobbyists, the effectiveness of big money getting the ear of that one representative and then dominating legislation.
I really feel that that's part of the reason we see this strife that we're seeing.
The election of Mandami, which we were just showing.
Those things that the class warfare, the class struggle is real.
I believe that.
I call it on the Republican line, but I really do see the other side of the argument.
I've been trying and trying and trying, and I finally got through.
And I've got three short points to make, and I'm going to get off and let somebody else talk.
The other day, they had a subject about the most important news story.
Nobody mentioned the Supreme Court giving Trump a get out of free, a get out of jail free card.
He's above the law.
That was the most important news story in 2025.
Number two, healthcare.
We're sending money all around the world.
Israel has universal health care for all of their citizens, but yet we're giving them money, and Miss Mary is dying on the bus because she doesn't have health care.
And third, you will hear more Democratic callers than Republicans in the future because America will be waking up when they start to feel the pain that's going to be inflicted on America because of Trump's policies.
So don't blame C-SPAN.
Woke is not a bad word, it is the opposite of sleep.
One thing that I want to make clear is I believe that the system is working perfect.
If I could, you know, I'm 37 years old and, you know, the scriptures say, you know, when things are going crazy, remember the days are old.
Well, I just like to take it back just a little bit of history that I love, you know, especially being a biracial, a biracial man, black father, white mother.
I've had really no choice of picking up history, especially being in Indiana, the history of Indiana and white supremacy.
So let me go ahead and take it back to the 60s of some of the history.
And the gentleman I would like to speak on is Chairman Fred Hampton in Chicago back in the 60s.
And I'm not going to talk about no civil rights public movement, but what a great man like him did.
You know, not only was his message to the slums in the city, in the ghettos, but he also stretched his hand out, you know, to white men, white women, Mexicans.
You know, we all have something in common, you know, and that's in a sense, you know, to make our to make this United States better.
It's in a sense a revolutionary spirit, you know, which once we all come together and the political power, which I don't really want to talk about the politics more than I want to talk about, you know, what one's the power that they have in their own communities.
Our final segment of the morning takes a look at the topic of environmentalism, but particularly how an economist views ways that the free market and economics can help alleviate issues of environmentalism.
Jordan Loftaus of George Mason University's Mercatus Center joins us next for that conversation.
And Washington Journal continues.
unidentified
including the upcoming midterm elections and the political and legislative battles ahead in Washington.
They join host Dasha Burns.
Bridging the Divide in American Politics.
Watch C-SPIRE today at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
As Congress returns to Washington in January for the second session of the 119th Congress, high-stakes deadlines loom.
Lawmakers face a January 30th deadline to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year and avert a shutdown.
The House is also expected to take up a vote to extend enhanced health care subsidies for another three years, with current provisions set to expire at the end of 2025.
And all eyes turn to 2026.
The midterm elections are ahead.
Every seat in the U.S. House will be decided, including all 435 voting members and five non-voting delegates.
Many will run in newly redrawn districts, including in states like Texas.
Voters will also decide 33 U.S. Senate races and 36 governors contests.
And consequential mayoral elections are on the horizon in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New Orleans.
Cities where clashes with the Trump administration have shaped national debates.
And the road to the White House begins to take shape as more potential 2028 presidential contenders hit the campaign trail.
Follow it all on C-SPAN as Congress returns and the 2026 campaign season ramps up.
C-SPAN, bringing you democracy unfiltered.
In a divided media world, one place brings Americans together.
According to a new MAGIT research report, nearly 90 million Americans turn to C-SPAN, and they're almost perfectly balanced.
28% conservative, 27% liberal or progressive, 41% moderate.
Republicans watching Democrats, Democrats watching Republicans, moderates watching all sides.
Trade-Offs in Environmental Economics00:15:50
unidentified
Because C-SPAN viewers want the facts straight from the source.
No commentary, no agenda, just democracy unfiltered every day on the C-SPAN networks.
When you see the word environmentalist and you see the word economist, how do you merge those things in looking at the topic?
unidentified
Yeah, that's a great question.
So I grew up actually just outside Yellowstone National Park in Idaho.
So I grew up, you know, going to Yellowstone, going to Grand Teton National Park.
The outdoors has always been my passion.
I actually came to economics a little bit later in life, in mid-20s, I kind of switched and went to economics.
And what I saw there was, hey, we can use the tools of economics to better understand environmental problems and then evaluate the vast array of potential solutions we could have to these environmental problems.
When did you discover early, when did it click for you as far as that's the way you could look at these issues versus other ways you could look at environmental issues?
unidentified
Yeah, that's a great question.
So my undergrad is actually in environmental geography, and I had never taken an economics class in my life before age 25.
And so when I started taking economics, it was kind of a light bulb moment.
I started to see like, oh, these are really important and applicable ideas.
And I guess even before I started studying economics, I didn't really know what it was.
It was like, oh, stocks and bonds and things like that, which it is part of it.
But I think there's a more fundamental way of understanding and looking at the world that really transformed the way I see the world.
And I wanted to write this book to help other people who are, you know, would consider themselves environmentalists to help them kind of see how you can apply the economic way of thinking to environmental problems.
Well, when it comes to environmental, what's your perspective?
What philosophy do you follow when it comes to where we stand on that?
unidentified
Yeah, I guess that's, you know, that's a really good question because there's, for a lot of people, environmental issues can be really tied up with a lot of, you know, moral issues, questions of that.
And so, you know, that's the philosophy side.
And the way I think about it is we might have these philosophical moral goals on one side.
We can pivot from there to using the tools of economics to really evaluate.
So let's say we want to stop a species from extinction.
That's our moral goal.
We're going to pivot to the cold, hard analysis of economics.
We can figure out the different ways of thinking about the trade-offs of different approaches to saving it, saving a species or something.
And then once we evaluate that, we can pivot back to kind of the more philosophical stance to say, is that a good or a bad way to do it?
So there's this constant dance between our moral goals, our positive analysis, switching back to our moral or philosophical evaluations of that.
And you take these ideas, you call them a toolbox.
What do you mean by that?
unidentified
Yeah, that's a great question.
I tried to lay out, at least in the first half of the book, kind of 10 tools or 10 principles, ways of thinking that I think are really important for people to understand.
And so some of them, I think, for a lot of people who have never studied economics, a lot of them are going to be very intuitive.
So one of them is just the concept of trade-offs.
Whenever we make a decision, we have to trade off something else.
If you have $100, you can spend that going to a restaurant or going to the movies, but you can't spend it on both.
So everyone knows intuitively about trade-offs.
But when you bring that idea to the foreground, especially in terms of environmentalism, you can see like, well, when we prioritize one thing, that necessarily means we may not be able to prioritize something else.
And so that's one of the tools is thinking about trade-offs.
Another one is the idea of unintended consequences.
So again, most of us realize like sometimes we have good intentions, but the good intentions don't always work out.
And that applies to public policies in a lot of ways.
You know, some public policies, we may want to solve a problem, but in a lot of instances, public policies either make the same problem worse or create a whole host of other problems that we have to deal with.
So it's this constant game of whack-a-mole that you have to jump around with.
Let me give you a, for instance, in the world of trade-offs and unintended consequences.
The government wants to drill in a certain section because oil and natural resources are there.
What are the trade-offs of making a decision to do or not?
What are the unintended consequences of making or doing that or not?
unidentified
Yeah, and that's the hard question is, say, we want to develop some area for fossil fuels.
You know, the trade-off is we might accidentally end up, or, you know, not even accidentally, purposefully, we choose to give up, say, the landscape or the animals that live there or anything like that.
But, you know, there are really difficult trade-offs there too, because in maybe an area with fewer chances for economic development, that might be one of their only viable options.
So those become really difficult trade-offs.
And then the question is, too, who gets to determine the trade-offs for whom and who bears those.
And you're saying that those kind of choices and others apply to decisions specifically when it comes to how we treat the environment.
unidentified
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, I think it applies to every instance of human choice in the human domain.
But for environmentalists, I think a lot of these economic concepts may not be, they may even be in the background.
And I'm trying to pull them to the foreground to say, hey, these principles should always be on the forefront of what we're talking about.
We always need to consider trade-offs, unintended consequences.
We need to think about knowledge, who has knowledge.
This is, it doesn't sound like a very economics thing, but like what is knowledge?
The field of epistemics is really intricately tied in with economics too.
So thinking about who has knowledge, how is knowledge discovered, aggregated, communicated, those are different things too.
So all of these things work together and I'm trying to pull those to the forefront for discussion for environmentalists, people who care about the environment.
More of this discussion with Jordan Loftaus, if you want to ask him questions about his approach to environmentalism, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
You can text us your thoughts too at 202-748-8003.
What about a thing like climate change?
We hear that word all the time.
How would you look at it versus, say, other environmentalists or other people who are involved in the issue?
unidentified
Yeah, so my take on climate change is very similar to Nobel laureate Eleanor Ostrom's.
So she was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics back in 2009.
And she studied, I mean, this sounds like a big technical term, polycentric governance.
Polycentric, meaning many centers, as opposed to a centralized, top-down, one-size-fits-all approach.
She advocated for and analyzed how kind of multifaceted approaches to complex social problems can actually solve them, even without a central planner dictating it.
And so, you know, climate change is so complicated.
There's so many causes.
There's so many consequences.
What might work in one place isn't going to work in another area.
What works for one problem isn't going to work for another one.
So we need all sorts of different approaches in the government sphere, the market sphere, and the civil society sphere to really tackle this monster of a problem.
So what does that look like?
We might want a whole bunch of different government approaches.
You know, we don't want to put our proverbial eggs all in the same basket because if we have one approach and that doesn't work out, you know, it's kind of tough luck.
So what we need to look for is a whole bunch of different companies trying a whole bunch of different things, innovating, trying things out, a whole bunch of different policymakers in different areas trying things out, a whole bunch of different civil society groups trying different things out, advocating in different ways, trying different approaches.
And the combination of all of them, the contestation and collaboration between all these different entities, I think is probably our best bet when it comes to climate change.
I imagine that in that approach, a lot of data is used.
When you look at it in a data sense and look at it in the economist sense, does it take emotion out of it?
And does it make it easier, in a sense, to make these decisions about environmental issues?
And I'll probably paraphrase it.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
unidentified
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I think data is an important part of it too, but I think it's this constant balance and dance between the cold, hard data and then actually talking to people on the ground, getting into the subjective perceptions of what people on the ground are doing.
Because I think, and this goes back to Eleanor Ostrom's work too, she did a lot of field work talking to people on the ground to see how they solved complex social problems.
You know, these common pool resources, these commonly owned goods that, you know, prior to her work, a lot of economists said, oh, it can't be done.
We either need to privatize everything or we need the government to control it.
And what she found is this kind of other way where people were able to create their own solutions based on their own unique circumstances.
And so I think that needs to be tied in there too.
As we can look at the cold, hard data on what's working, but we also need to listen to what people on the ground are saying.
And so it's this multiple methods, methodology of trying to figure out how to, you know, solve really hairy, ugly problems like climate change.
This is from Tony in Pennsylvania, Independent Line.
You're on with our guests.
unidentified
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
So a very troubling analysis, the young man is proposing to deal with something like climate change or environmental issues.
The idea that you take the private market, the private market, namely being sort of private equity and capital that does not care about the environment or climate change at all, and apply that to a cure for those problems is just strange.
I mean, if you look at just any metric, if you look at, again, how quickly we have damaged the earth, how that damage is accelerating, what's happening to wildlife, even what's happening to people, this idea that economics being sort of put before science even as something that you'd look at as a tool, but the idea of economics being used as a tool to solve it is very, very alarming.
When I think about AI and I think about the energy that's going to be required for that, and I think about the fresh water that's going to be required for that, and I just look at any sort of thing that's being driven by capitalism, private equity, and the decisions they make, it's never to benefit the people.
It's always to benefit a handful of very, very wealthy oligarchs.
And then the think tanks that come onto your platform, C-SPAN, they always present a very privileged, wealthy point of view.
And rarely do we hear from scientists?
So I would turn to the scientist and not this young man and his economic theories.
We've invited the guest to come on our program to talk about his ideas, how you could respond.
unidentified
Yeah.
I mean, I'm very sympathetic.
I think a lot of these questions are very important.
And environmental issues are very important.
And I guess what I'm trying to push for for us to, you know, broadly to think about regular citizens, policymakers, activists is looking at what governments are good at and maybe not so good at, looking at what markets are good at and maybe not so good at, and looking at what civil society is good at and not so good at.
And so I wouldn't say that I'm trying to privilege economists over scientists.
I'm saying scientists, policymakers, advocates, economists all need to be in conversation with one another to look at the really complex, nuanced ways in which we can figure out institutions, rules that can actually produce the outcomes that we want, especially in terms of the environment.
So again, going to something like species conservation is the Endangered Species Act may have good intentions, but there might be unintended consequences that we want to look at.
One of these things that has been documented in the scientific literature and political science and economics is this idea of preemptive habitat destruction or even it's called shoot, shovel, and shut up, where a lot of people have an incentive to get rid of a species on their private land before government officials find out.
And so this can happen.
We have to acknowledge that that is an incentive that people face.
That's the economic way of thinking.
People have often perverse incentives, or the rules that we operate under can sometimes produce perverse incentives.
So how can we switch that around to come to positive incentives?
And that's really what I'm advocating for is thinking about the rules in which we operate under and how those rules shape human behavior.
That's the economic way of thinking that I'm trying to push for.
The question is the fact that we do have things in place called the Green Acres Act in the metropolitan area, New Jersey, New York, so on, and other states, too, that overlaps into.
But right now, under the Obama-Biden administration, it seems that they did away with that, or they, how do you say, diluted and polluted it because there's been a considerable amount of building on land that was dedicated for such.
And as you know, I mean, plants digest hydrocarbons, all types of pollutants in the air, and spit out oxygen, which basically stimulates the climate growth and control.
What has been being done is eroding all that.
And the idea is, my question to you is, what has been being put in place to police that that it doesn't go overbound?
I mean, I'm in the farming industry.
I own Rizzoli Farm, so I know the eroding of the farming land, too.
You know, what has your agency or your group been doing to enforce the past laws that were put in place by the Reagan Bush?
Yeah, so I can't speak directly to this particular policy that he's talking about, but I think it goes to a bigger question of how do we set up different types of rules to deal with different types of problems.
So in one state, a policy for New Jersey that might work or might not work may not work in Montana or vice versa.
And so looking at different rules for different types of places, people with different preferences.
you know, priorities, and trying to focus that there.
And so I think that, you know, different people might be willing to make different types of trade-offs in that kind of sense.
And so I think that's where the economic way of thinking pushes us to go is in what sense, what types of rules work for which types of situations.
In that case, would you say that that's an example, say, of unintended consequences?
You put in legislation or regulation.
He was talking about the impact of that, but you don't know that going forward when you put it in.
You just see it as it plays out.
unidentified
Yes, and that's part of it, too, is when you put a policy in one place, that's, again, like I mentioned before, not putting all your eggs in one basket.
Sometimes it's better to have a smattering of different types of policies, say across the country or across the world, so we can learn from one another.
This goes back to Eleanor Ostrom's point of polycentric governance.
It's a little bit different than just pure decentralization.
Of course, there's a role for the federal government, but the federal government does not make every decision for everybody.
There's a lot of kind of lower level or even bottom-up decision-making that happens.
And so, you know, Montana can try a policy, New Jersey can try a policy, and maybe New Jersey's is a raging success, and Montana can say, hey, that looks like a good one.
Let's try that, maybe tweak it a little bit and pull it, you know, match it for our scenario.
Or you can learn what not to do from policy failures in other places.
Going back to the previous caller, is a free market approach to these kind of issues the best approach, in your opinion?
unidentified
Yeah, I would hate to make a blanket statement like that because I think it depends on the situation.
I think what we've seen is a lot of really cool innovations emerging from markets.
And I guess, too, I'm taking a very broad conception of what markets are.
Really, it's anyone exchanging with one another in that sense.
And so even organizations, so one example I can talk about from the book is an organization based in Montana called the American Prairie Reserve.
And what they're doing there is engaging in a willing buyer, willing seller system of trying to buy up land from different people across this area in north central Montana, then trying to stitch together this giant area, become one of the largest wildlife reserves in the lower 48, and it would be privately owned.
I would consider that, you know, that's a market.
It's people buying land for environmental purposes.
Now, of course, is that going to solve every problem everywhere?
No, but I think it's a really cool innovation that we can look to as an example and look maybe how we can take those ideas of this willing buyer, willing seller relationship and apply it to other environmental issues.
Jordan Lofthouse joining us for this conversation.
He's the author of An Economist Guide to Environmentalism.
Let's go to Larry.
Larry is in Washington, Independent Line.
You're on with our guests.
Good morning.
unidentified
Yeah, good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
Yeah, interesting subject matter that I've spent a lot of time thinking about.
One thing I wanted to comment on was our forest management.
If we're talking about protecting wildlife and pollution from all the smoke, I think there could be a lot more done.
For example, the fires in California, there could have been a lot done that could have mitigated that and mitigated for future fires.
Another subject would be, I think nuclear is going to be the future with newer technology and being able to go with smaller type plants, modular, could make a big difference.
And then I guess the last thing I would say, there's a lot I could say on the side, I do solar, I have a solar switch mouth, built my own do-it-yourself.
And it's kind of expensive if you pay someone to do it for you.
But there's a regulatory taking of property rights when they start over-regulating, you know, with the species thing is kind of frustrating.
I've been in the real estate business.
And I understand, you know, having the right vegetation and flood zoning and all that.
But I think some of that gets a little bit over the top with some of these people that get too emotional and don't think logically about this subject.
Yeah, I think those are some really great comments.
And I think what is highlighted here is, again, this idea of trade-offs is, especially when it comes to like energy and energy production, each different type of energy is going to have a different range of trade-offs that we're going to have to think about.
So solar energy, one of its benefits is that there are no direct carbon emissions.
But one of the trade-offs we have to make with that is solar panels don't make energy at night.
And so that's a trade-off.
Or nuclear energy is also carbon-free.
But, you know, there is, there can be potential trade-offs there too.
Say, what do we do with nuclear waste or these kinds of different things?
So there's not some easy one-size-fits-all solution.
There's no panacea.
We have to, that's the really tricky part of this is evaluating the trade-offs.
Again, who bears the trade-offs?
Who gets to make the decisions about who bears the trade-offs?
I have really, I only have two questions for you, Mr. Loftaus.
And the first of two questions is, you know, President George H.W. Bush supported environmental policies.
He supported legislation in 1990.
It was November 1990.
It was called the Clean Air Act.
First question, do you believe the Republican Party, since 1993 when Mr. Bush left office, do you believe the Republican Party hates combating climate change?
And second, do you believe that free markets are the only way or is it the best way?
Second question for you is, why do you think Republicans are less interested in combating climate change?
Yeah, I'll start with the question about free markets as the only way or the best way.
Again, I don't think it's the only way by any means.
And is it the best way?
I think markets are the best way in some circumstances sometimes.
But again, like I said before, I don't think there's any panaceas for all these really complex problems.
So I think almost all of these complex problems are going to be a mixture of market approaches, government policies, and civil society action.
And it's the combination of all three, checking and balancing one another that I think is going to lead to the ways that we can find solutions to these problems.
Now, I do think that markets do have certain advantages.
And I think we can look to a lot of very interesting innovations coming out of markets.
One of a major climate contributor to climate change is agriculture, especially factory farming.
And what we've seen there is we've seen some really interesting innovations in say meat substitutes or even lab-grown meats, which kind of take that out of the picture.
Or we've even seen this thing where you can actually feed cattle seaweed, which really cuts their methane, methane production, and methane is a very potent greenhouse gas.
Market-Based Solutions00:12:06
unidentified
And so who would ever thought that feeding seaweed to cattle would be one part of the solution, but it seems like there is an industry starting to grow in that area.
And so again, I'm not saying that feeding seaweed to cattle is going to solve all our problems, but I think it's one of the many approaches that we can use.
And that would be kind of a market-based approach.
But this discovery came through academics.
So again, it's academia, scholarship, science, meeting markets in this, you know, in this combination.
I'll read you a little bit of what you wrote and get you to expand on it.
You said political leaders in Western states, especially governors, spearheaded a variety of new programs and initiatives to boost sage grouse numbers and protect critical habitats.
One of the most successful approaches was in Utah due to the sagegrouse conservation plan, highly polycentric structure.
Many governance decisions were devolved to very local levels, including direct input for private landowners, commercial associations, and nonprofits.
And since a large portion of Utah's greater sage grouse population resides on private land, some estimates place it around half the population.
The buy-in from private landowners and commercial associations was a critical component.
It goes on from there.
Let's start with the basic.
What is sagegrouse, and how does it give you an example as far as an economist approach?
unidentified
Yeah, so this, the sagegrouse, so I'm from the West again, I'm from Idaho, and so sagegrouse is a ground-dwelling bird.
It's a favorite of bird watchers.
It's this kind of actually very alien-looking bird.
It has spiky tail feathers.
The males have these air sacs on their chest that they puff up to woo the females.
So they're a really cool bird.
But they, around 2010, populations were declining across the West.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that they were thinking about listing the bird under the Endangered Species Act.
But if you've ever been to the Western United States, you know that sagebrush, the plant sagebrush grows everywhere and that's kind of the habitat of the sagegrouse.
And so listing the bird as an endangered species would have huge ramifications across the entire western U.S.
And so the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined in 2010 a warranted but precluded designation which said, hey, we're thinking about it, but we're not going to do it yet.
And they gave the Western governors the ability to kind of make their own plans.
And the Fish and Wildlife Service said, hey, if you can boost the numbers, we won't list it.
So from there, between 2010 and 2015, a bunch of different states took a bunch of different approaches.
Like you said, I highlighted Utah is a good example of really going down to kind of the lowest level, these local working groups, getting the buy-in from people on the ground.
Because again, like I mentioned before, when you don't have buy-in, people can push back.
This might be one of those unintended consequences.
And what they end up doing is that kind of shoot, shovel, and shut up thing that I talked about before.
And so with Utah getting the buy-in from federal, state, local policymakers, local land owners, cattlemen's associations, you know, farmers' associations, scholars, scientists, the conversations with them got this buy-in.
They could make plans at the local level that allowed them to protect the habitat, which helped protect the species, boosted it.
And by 2015, the Fish and Wildlife Service said, hey, you've done enough.
We won't list it now.
So again, will that work forever in the future?
I don't know.
Maybe in the future, if populations start declining again, we're going to have to try a different approach, try something else.
But at least for that episode, I think that shows how kind of this bottom-up approach where you involve the stakeholders on the ground is one way of thinking, the economic way of thinking.
It's thinking about who has the knowledge, who's willing to make those trade-offs kind of a thing.
Past professional life I've worked on industrial wastewater treatment systems throughout the upper Great Lakes area, Midwest southern U.S, and saw a great deal of America's industrial might in the late 90s and since then it is pretty much all gone for various reasons, mostly economic, and these, these factory closures have left basically holes in these communities and kind of a legacy of environmental damage.
So I'm curious how you would address that from an economic lens, because these are people on the ground, real folks.
They're not academic journals or anything like that.
So I mean, these are the people who feel the pain and the brunt of the decisions and the unintended consequences and things of that nature.
Yeah, that's a really great question and I guess, maybe to just back up a little bit, I would say that most environmental problems arise when there are an issue or a disconnect with property rights.
Either property rights are not well defined or well enforced.
So like, for example, I can't come over to your house and just throw garbage in your backyard.
That would be.
You know, you could call the cops off.
Yeah yeah, that'll be found upon.
Well yeah social, social sanctioning, I can't do that, I can't.
You know that you have a right that I can't do that to you.
But when it comes to other things, often with air or with water, the property rights there are much murkier.
They're not privately owned, and so what happens there is we get things called spillover effects technical economic, starting negative externalities.
So these negative externalities can come up, and I think this what this gentleman is talking about here, is these negative externalities spill over onto people who had no part in creating them, and that you know, we have a kind of a moral repulsion to that.
And so what do we do from there?
I think that's where economics can help us think about it.
Are there ways in which we can either establish property rights to do this?
Sometimes that might be really hard, like it's really hard to establish property rights to say something like air, like I can't say this is my patch of air because air moves around but we can think of other ways of addressing these issues.
Might there be ways that we can think about making market-like regulations, so a cap and trade system is a market-like regulation to solve environmental issues.
But in the case that was brought up here, it might.
You know, that can be really hard to deal with.
But I think that's where we see the role of both government and civil society coming in.
Civil society groups can bring attention to it, they can raise money to address these externalities that have happened in the past.
So even if, say you know, a lack of property rights caused these negative spillover effects in the past, we can figure out ways of maybe establishing property rights, finding new public policies, finding civil society solutions to these issues.
A viewer asks you this is David Orlando saying that the most important thing to him is the responsibility and accountability of cause and effects on drilling oil or stripping land and data centers.
He includes.
And then he says corporations and he puts all of these in caps do not care, comment please.
unidentified
Yeah, I think I would argue that some corporations probably do and I think we do see that in some places where we see especially a lot of outdoor recreation companies really care about that.
So If you are a whitewater rafting company or a whitewater rafting corporation, you really care about water quality.
And so that's one example.
Now, there might be other companies that care much less.
I won't deny that.
But I think what's interesting here is in a market, you have a lot of different people with a lot of different preferences.
And markets can be used to indulge or promote certain kinds of preferences.
So there are plenty of corporations that actually, well, maybe I'll back up a little bit and say that there are a lot of people across the world with environmental preferences, and there are many companies, corporations that are willing to help people out who want to, you know, who have those desires.
We're running a little short on time, Gary, so jump right in.
unidentified
Okay, with this amount of time, it's not fair to the guests, but I want to point the guests to President Trump's last address to the United Nations and in his speech to them, how he addressed climate control or the thought of climate in general.
And then from there, look back at his cabinet right now and specifically what they are saying and doing, because we as Republicans that get it, so to speak, that support him, we see climate control rules as just another way to control the masses.
And he cares about climate.
He's just going to tell the globalists that he's got a different agenda.
Yes, I think the way I would respond to this is there are sometimes government policies can infringe on people's rights and liberties.
I think that's pretty uncontroversial to say.
But I think one way that economists and political economists think about it is distinguishing between governance and government.
Now, government can be one form of governance, but governance is a much bigger concept.
It's people living by rules that help us to coordinate with one another.
So if you've ever belonged to a club or a church or civic association, those usually have rules.
There's rules for membership.
There's rules for, you know, if they kick you out of membership.
And that's a form of governance.
And I think governance can happen in a lot of different ways and at a lot of different levels.
And government is just one aspect of that.
And so I think that is a really important thing to look at here when thinking about these complicated issues is even when, say, a government policy might have negative unintended consequences, we have other forms of governance that exist across the world that can be used to solve complex issues like various environmental problems.