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Comcast Supports C-SPAN
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C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | |
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Comcast. | ||
| The flag replacement program got started by a good friend of mine, a Navy vet, who saw the flag at the office that needed to be replaced and said, wouldn't this be great if this was going to be something that we did for anyone? | ||
| Comcast has always been a community-driven company. | ||
| This is one of those great examples of the way we're getting out there. | ||
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Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | |
| Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Benham Ben-Taliblu with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies will talk about anti-government protests in Iran and the potential U.S. response. | ||
| Then Politco's Victoria Guida discusses job creation in 2026 and the Justice Department's criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. | ||
| And SCODIS blog executive editor Zachary Shemtop previews today's Supreme Court hearing on state bans on transgender girls playing in girls and women's sports in schools. | ||
| Washington Journal starts now. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| It's Tuesday, January 13th, 2026. | ||
| The House and Senate are both in at 10 a.m. Eastern, and we're with you for the next three hours on the Washington Journal. | ||
| We begin on the criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. | ||
| That probe revealed Sunday earning pushback from lawmakers and both parties yesterday. | ||
| Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney Janine Pirro took to social media last night to defend it as being based on the merits. | ||
| This morning, we're asking for your view of that probe. | ||
| Do you see it as an act of political pressure? | ||
| The number to call? | ||
| 202-748-8000. | ||
| Do you see it as a legitimate investigation? | ||
| 202-748-8001. | ||
|
Federal Reserve Investigation
00:09:54
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| If you see it as something else, 202-748-8002, you can also send us a text. | ||
| That number, 2022 SPANWJ, on Facebook. | ||
| It's facebook.com slash C-SPAN. | ||
| And a very good Tuesday morning to you. | ||
| You can go ahead and start calling in now. | ||
| Here's the headline on this topic from the front page of the New York Times today. | ||
| The Federal Reserve Chairman facing a fiercer attack is fighting back. | ||
| Jerome Powell drops cautious ways. | ||
| They say agency independence is now at stake amid the criminal investigation. | ||
| This topic, a subject of conversation around Washington yesterday, including with Senator Elizabeth Warren, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, was asked about this investigation during an interview at the National Press Club. | ||
| This is what she had to say. | ||
| He's saying, I want to put my hand on the dials on monetary policy. | ||
| And Jerome Powell and some of the Fed have resisted him and said very calmly That they are going to continue to look at the economic data and that they are going to make decisions based on what the economic data say. | ||
| And that's just not only not good enough for Donald Trump, it's a challenge to who Donald Trump is. | ||
| It's a challenge to somebody who thinks he's supposed to run the Department of Justice right out in plain view in order for Donald Trump to try to have a chance to take over the Fed as quickly as possible so that he can make political decisions that he thinks will help him rolling into the 2026 election, | ||
| even if it has disastrous long-term consequences for our economy and also for our economic structure. | ||
| And you know, I just want to add one more point to this. | ||
| What Trump is trying to do is terrible for our economy, but it undermines America all around the world. | ||
| People rely on the American economic system, and I'm saying this at a writ large, that it's a Fed, that's independent, it's making decisions based on data. | ||
| You may like them, you may not like them. | ||
| I've often not liked them and disagreed on the data, but that it's making its decisions based on its best understanding of the data. | ||
| The Fed has been the gold standard for that kind of monetary policy decision making. | ||
| And Donald Trump is just burning that to the ground. | ||
| And that's going to be costly for the United States and all of our global markets. | ||
| It's going to be costly for the United States over a very long arc if Trump gets away with this. | ||
| Senator Elizabeth Warren, that was yesterday at the National Press Club here in Washington, D.C. Also yesterday at the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. | ||
| This was a topic of conversation. | ||
| Press Secretary Caroline Levitt was asked about the investigation, said that Donald Trump is not directing this investigation. | ||
| Here's that interview. | ||
|
unidentified
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Did the president ever direct DOJ officials to open an investigation into Powell? | |
| No. | ||
| And can you reassure the American public that his long-standing criticisms and public comments about Powell had nothing to do with the investigation? | ||
| Look, the president has every right to criticize the Fed chair. | ||
| He has a First Amendment right, just like all of you do. | ||
| And one thing for sure, the President's made it quite clear: Jerome Powell is bad at his job. | ||
| As for whether or not Jerome Powell is a criminal, that's an answer the Department of Justice is going to have to find out. | ||
| And it looks like they intend to find that out. | ||
| I see. | ||
| That would be Janine Pirro. | ||
| She took to X last night to post about this investigation, a three-paragraph post. | ||
| This is what she said. | ||
| The United States Attorney's Office contacted the Federal Reserve on multiple occasions to discuss cost overruns in the chairman's congressional testimony, but we were ignored, necessitating the use of legal process, which is not a threat. | ||
| The word indictment has come out of Mr. Powell's mouth and no one else's. | ||
| None of this would have happened, she said, if they had just responded to our outreach. | ||
| This office makes decisions based on the merits, nothing more and nothing less. | ||
| We agree with the chairman of the Federal Reserve that no one is above the law, and that is why we expect his full cooperation. | ||
| Janine Piro there quoting Jerome Powell from his statement on Sunday night. | ||
| That was the statement released by the Federal Reserve, the statement that revealed this investigation was happening, the Justice Department contacting the Federal Reserve on Friday about this investigation related to testimony that Jerome Powell gave last year before the Senate. | ||
| And here we are this morning. | ||
| We're asking for your view of that probe of Jerome Powell. | ||
| Do you see it as political pressure? | ||
| The Trump administration trying to influence monetary policy decisions. | ||
| 202748-8000 is the number to call. | ||
| Do you see this as a legitimate investigation? | ||
| 202-748-8001. | ||
| Do you see it as something else? | ||
| 202-748-8002 is that number. | ||
| Colors already on the line. | ||
| This is Daniel out of Louisiana on that third line. | ||
| Go ahead, Daniel. | ||
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unidentified
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How are you doing? | |
| I'm doing well. | ||
| What do you think about this investigation? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, what I think, I think the Federal Reserve's a whole Ponzi scheme from 1913 when it started. | |
| Pretty much, if you know who runs the Federal Reserve, it's the Roth trials. | ||
| And the whole global cabal is being taken down as we speak. | ||
| Daniel, do you have any thoughts on Jerome Powell? | ||
| The audit the Fed. | ||
| They tried to audit the Fed right before 9-11. | ||
| There was like $9 trillion missing. | ||
| All right, that's Daniel out of Louisiana. | ||
| This investigation is centering on Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve Chairman. | ||
| His term is up later this spring. | ||
| The most likely person to replace him, the National Economic Council director for President Trump, Kevin Hassett, he was asked about this investigation also yesterday at the White House. | ||
| This is what he had to say. | ||
| I would expect that the markets would be happy to see that there's more transparency with the Fed. | ||
| It's something that people have been calling for for quite a long time. | ||
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unidentified
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Are you worried that the probe undermines the independence of the central bank and could destabilize the markets? | |
| I guess the question is: if you think the building costs $20 billion or $10 billion, do you think at some point that it's appropriate for the federal government to investigate? | ||
| And it seems like the Justice Department has decided that they want to see what's going on over there with this building that's massively more expensive than any building in the history of Washington. | ||
| And if I were Fed chair, I would want them to do that. | ||
| I think that it's really important to understand where the taxpayer money goes and to understand why it goes this way or that. | ||
| Do you think there's a chance Powell will stay on as a governor on the board even after his term as chair? | ||
| I'm not sure about that. | ||
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unidentified
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I've not talked to Jay about that. | |
| He's a good person. | ||
| If he wants to continue government service, he'll make that call with the time comes. | ||
| You think that that would be something the next Fed chair, whether it's yourself or someone else, could leave with? | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, we'd have to see how it goes. | |
| But Jay's a good person. | ||
| That was Kevin Hassett yesterday at the White House being asked about this investigation. | ||
| He too referencing the topic of this investigation, the chairman Jerome Powell's testimony before the United States Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. | ||
| That happened last June, June the 25th of 2025. | ||
| They were talking about renovations for the Federal Reserve and federal appropriations and the cost overruns of those renovations. | ||
| I want to take you back to June 25th of 2025 to show you one of the key moments that focuses on the topic of cost overruns and what has very much become the topic of today's discussion. | ||
| Page 129 of the final plans reflected rooftop garden terraces. | ||
| Page 127 and 129, 27 of the final plans, the white marble was pages 40, 41, 65 of the final plans. | ||
| I would welcome your staff coming in to walk my staff through what is happening there, as opposed to what we have only read in the New York Post, not only in the Wall Street Journal, but also at the National Capital Planning Commission's website. | ||
| So we would welcome that opportunity to have a some of those are just flatly misleading. | ||
| The idea of elevators, you know, it's the same elevator. | ||
| It's been there since the building was built. | ||
| So that's a mischaracterization. | ||
| And some of those are no longer in the plans. | ||
| That's earlier. | ||
| The plans have continued to evolve. | ||
| That was June 25th of last year. | ||
| Today, there is an active criminal probe of Jerome Powell relating to his testimony before the Alton. | ||
| If you see this as an attempt to apply political pressure to the Federal Reserve and Jerome Powell, 202-748-8001, if you see it in Florida. | ||
| The legitimate investigation. | ||
| The Justice Department has every right, and the president has every right to question what they feel is anything that is wasting taxpayers' money. | ||
|
Ronald's Investigation Concerns
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| Now, it may turn out that it's not true. | ||
| And if it's not true, then that will come to light and we'll move on. | ||
| But if the investigation proves that there has been waste of taxpayers' money, then we need to make changes. | ||
| And it's just, to my mind, just that simple. | ||
| All the rest of this is just people choosing sides on whether they like this person or that person. | ||
| That's all I have to say on the subject. | ||
| Thank you for your time. | ||
| That's Roger in Florida. | ||
| Thank you for the call. | ||
| The Speaker of the United States House weighing in on this investigation. | ||
| Melanie Zenona, Congressional Reporter, has this to say on the speaker's reaction. | ||
| He called the allegations, quote, serious and says, quote, if the investigation is warranted, then they'll have to play that out. | ||
| He was asked on Capitol Hill if he personally thinks it's warranted. | ||
| He says he hasn't reviewed the testimony yet. | ||
| This is very much the topic of conversation on Capitol Hill yesterday. | ||
| It's the topic of conversation for our first 30 minutes of the Washington Journal this morning, and we're taking your phone calls asking how you view this investigation. | ||
| Is it political pressure? | ||
| Is it a legitimate investigation? | ||
| Is it something else? | ||
| Phone numbers for all of those responses. | ||
| This is Mac, who sees it as political pressure. | ||
| Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, this is political pressure because of the nature of the president's trying to interfere with the interest rates. | |
| Just like yesterday, when he said that the whole stock market went down, you can't create that kind of pressure on a person that's supposed to be independent. | ||
| He needs to check his 34 felons. | ||
| Is that all you want to say, Mac? | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, that's it. | |
| That's Mac in Pennsylvania. | ||
| Don in Miami. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
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unidentified
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Morning. | |
| What are your thoughts about this investigation? | ||
| It's a criminal probe. | ||
|
unidentified
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Morning, John. | |
| On the lighter side, Happy New Year. | ||
| And all weekend, I've been hearing how glamorous the ladies are on the show. | ||
| They'd be getting all these compliments. | ||
| So I just want to say you're good looking too, John. | ||
| Have a look. | ||
| Thanks, Don. | ||
| What's your thoughts on this? | ||
|
unidentified
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Political pressure. | |
| Why? | ||
| I'm on the wrong line, but well, lower interest rates, it looks good for the president. | ||
| But I don't think it helps the economy. | ||
| Do you think if it's political pressure, do you think it's smart political pressure? | ||
| Does this get Jerome Powell to job owning? | ||
| So what's the end result here? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I don't know. | |
| How do they say that? | ||
| Wait and see. | ||
| That's Don in Miami. | ||
| Appreciate the call. | ||
| Don, this is what the Wall Street Journal editorial board calls this move. | ||
| Lawfare for dummies. | ||
| That's the headline of their lead editorial today. | ||
| They write in the annals of political lawfare, there's dumb. | ||
| And then there's the criminal subpoena and federal prosecution delivered Friday to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. | ||
| They go on to say, whatever you think of Mr. Powell or the central bank independence, the way to change the Fed's legal status is through legislation, not a criminal persecution of dubious merit. | ||
| They end by saying America elected Mr. Trump to reduce inflation, and he and Republicans have 10 months until the election to show progress. | ||
| Picking a fight with the Fed and the bond market over an issue that voters will find confusing and irrelevant is lawfare for dummies. | ||
| Steve, Massachusetts, what do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi, Fanny. | |
| Hi. | ||
| Thank you for taking the call. | ||
| Can you hear me? | ||
| I can, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay, yeah, and I think there's something different going on here. | |
| Powell lowered the rates right in September, right before the election. | ||
| For that basis, he should have lowered the rates right after the election, but he didn't. | ||
| I believe the American people, we, not people in Washington, D.C., we don't care about this issue. | ||
| We would like for you to, the government, to stop spending our money. | ||
| I'd like to make a point on Elizabeth Warren as well. | ||
| She was put in charge of the TARP money by Harry Reid many, many years ago. | ||
| And when $60 million came up missing, all of a sudden she had $45 million in a bank account to run for the Senate of Massachusetts, who the Democrats think that was Teddy Kennedy's seat, and Scott Brown stole it. | ||
| And look, we, the American people, Democrats and Republicans, we love our country. | ||
| You people, not you yourself, but people that live in Washington, D.C., you don't love our country. | ||
| You are not Americans. | ||
| You don't vote for the president. | ||
| Your voting record goes against what the American people. | ||
| Nixon won 49 states. | ||
| He didn't even get 70% of the vote in Washington, D.C. That's Steven Massachusetts. | ||
| I don't know what to say. | ||
| That's Steve. | ||
| This is Joan in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
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unidentified
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Okay, well, Charles just following his economic plan. | |
| He had on the campaign trail. | ||
| He wanted to ignore the deficit, bash the Fed, trash the dollar, cut back on labor supply by rounding up the immigrants and sending them home. | ||
|
unidentified
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Put Matt said, quote, about devaluing the dollar and politicizing the Fed because he knows best. | |
| He has the best gut feeling ever. | ||
| How many businesses did he bankrupt? | ||
| Isn't anybody worried about us? | ||
|
unidentified
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We're going to be bankrupt. | |
| We want no money. | ||
| And what's going to happen? | ||
|
unidentified
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This is like a three-bit banana republic when they take over that. | |
| That's Argentina, Venezuela. | ||
| He is a debt dictator. | ||
| That's Joan in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Just a couple pieces of background information relevant to this conversation since the revelation of this criminal probe and the accusations that this is about political pressure over lowering interest rates. | ||
| Here's where the interest rates are right now. | ||
| The New York Times noting that the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates just gradually, reducing them by 0.75 percentage points since September to a new range of 3.5 percent to 3.75 percent. | ||
| They note that President Trump has demanded rates as low as 1 percent, calling Mr. Powell a numbskull and a stubborn mule, quote unquote, for refusing to concede. | ||
| The New York Times also going in from Friday's subpoenas relate to renovations that began in 2022 at the Federal Reserve's headquarters in Washington, D.C. Project set to be completed in 2027 is $700 million over budget and expected to cost roughly $2.5 billion. | ||
| You'll remember that it was last summer after that congressional hearing that President Trump went to the Federal Reserve building here in Washington, D.C. Tim Scott, who was questioning Jerome Powell in that Senate clip that we showed you, joined Jerome Powell and President Trump on that tour of the renovations and they had that testy exchange. | ||
| This is July the 24th of last year. | ||
| So we're taking a look and it looked like it's about 3.1 billion. | ||
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unidentified
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It went up a little bit or a lot. | |
| So the 2.7 is now 3.1. | ||
| I'm not aware of that. | ||
| Yeah, it just came out. | ||
| Yeah, I haven't heard that from anybody in the Fed. | ||
| It just came out. | ||
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unidentified
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Our notes added about 3.1 as well. | |
| 3.1, 3.2. | ||
| Just came from us. | ||
| Yes. | ||
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unidentified
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I don't know who does that. | |
| You're including the Martin renovation. | ||
| Yeah, you just added in a third building, is what that is. | ||
| That's a third building. | ||
| It's a building that's being built. | ||
| It was built five years ago. | ||
| We finished Martin five years ago. | ||
| It's part of the overall work. | ||
| So that exchange, again, at the site of the renovations at the Federal Reserve, that was last July. | ||
| Here we are today, this probe being revealed on Sunday. | ||
| The Federal Reserve Chairman was contacted on Friday about it, apparently worked over the weekend before releasing that statement for this conversation. | ||
| And then we'll open the phones up for any public policy that you want to talk about, including this. | ||
| But we'll stay on this topic for about 15 more minutes. | ||
| This is Ronald in Jericho, New York. | ||
| Ronald, what do you think? | ||
| Yes, good morning. | ||
| I think that the investigation is valid. | ||
| However, far beyond that, I would like to say that I happened to hear a very prolonged discussion and explanation of the Federal Reserve itself. | ||
| And the major point that was made is that this is only to benefit the banks, not the citizens of the United States. | ||
| And that hypothetically, if the Federal Reserve were eliminated altogether, that that alone could eliminate the federal debt entirely. | ||
| Quite a remarkable thing to say, but I urge people to get more information about this and really look into it themselves and put away nearly $40 trillion in U.S. debt. | ||
| Well, it's an excellent question. | ||
| I urge people to look into this. | ||
| I can't give, I'm not an economist. | ||
| I can't give a definitive explanation myself. | ||
| However, the person who was an economist that gave an extensive lecture about this that I heard on television was very convincing in what he had to say. | ||
| All right, that's Ronald, New York. | ||
| This is David in Michigan. | ||
| Good morning to the Wolverine State. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, sir. | |
| What's your view of this investigation, David? | ||
|
unidentified
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My view on everything that's going on out of the mobile office is very, very concerning and should be very concerning to the public and to this nation. | |
| Our president is a rogue. | ||
| And I thank you for taking my call. | ||
| To the Bluegrass Gate, Tom in Cox Creek. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Your view of this investigation? | ||
| Cox's Creek. | ||
| Cox's Creek. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| One of the things that people don't think about is that if you lower interest rates, you're going to increase prices. | ||
| I bought my first house in 19%. | ||
| I sold houses in a small town in southeast Colorado that has a horrible economy for three times as much as what I would have been able to with normal interest rates. | ||
| Our prices are where they are because of the low interest rates. | ||
| If the interest rates are not reasonable and moderate like they are right now, the prices will continue to just soar. | ||
| And the inflation for homebuyers won't go down because the people that own the houses now are not willing to sell them at a $50,000 or $100,000 loss. | ||
| So, Tom, your point is that what Donald Trump would like to see when it comes to the Federal Reserve, i.e. much lower interest rates, that's not going to work when it comes to just the cost of everything in this country right now. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's correct. | |
| It will simply increase the inflation in housing prices. | ||
| So that being said, and your view of monetary policy, what's your view of this investigation? | ||
| Total political pressure because it sounds good to lower interest rates. | ||
| I don't know why a Fed chairman has to be threatened with criminal prosecution when the Justice Department or whatever other watchdogs there are and runs in everything that the government does almost. | ||
| And the renovations taking place at the Federal Reserve. | ||
| Just some background information for your knowledge about the funding of the Federal Reserve, a bit of a unique independent agency in our federal government when it comes to funding. | ||
| It doesn't really go through the usual appropriations process that we talk about and see play out here in congressional committees and the floor of the House and Senate. | ||
| This is from the Federal Reserve's Public Education and Outreach document. | ||
| They put these documents out occasionally. | ||
| They note that the Federal Reserve is not funded by congressional appropriations. | ||
| Its operations are financed primarily from the interest earned on the securities that are provided by depository institutions, such as check clearing and funds transfers and automated clearinghouse operations are another source of income for the Fed. | ||
| This income is used to cover the costs of those services after payment of expenses and transfers to surpluses. | ||
| All the net earnings of the reserve banks are then transferred to the U.S. Treasury. | ||
| So just some background information, investigation of Jerome Powell. | ||
| Yeah, I would just like to point out the fact that Rep Luna was the one who instigated this investigation into Powell. | ||
| This had absolutely nothing to do with President Trump. | ||
| Jerome Powell lied to Congress, and that's why she instigated this probe. | ||
| Okay, so I guess it's okay for Jerome Powell to lie to Congress, but it's not okay for Steve Bannon to lie to Congress. | ||
|
Powell Wanted Poster
00:00:53
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| You say, Rep Luna and her criticism about Jerome Powell in terms of the timing of this and potential reason for why it's happening. | ||
| Now, this is one theory put forth on the front page of the Washington Post today. | ||
| They note that housing finance regulator Bill Pultey met recently with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and he shared a prop resembling a wanted poster that he had made up featuring Jerome Powell. | ||
| This is according to a person with knowledge of that meeting. | ||
| That's how they describe it. | ||
| Pultey laid out scenarios that included investigating Powell, and Trump liked that idea, the person told the Washington Post. | ||
|
Washington D.C. Updates
00:15:38
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| It's not clear how the inquiry into Powell was approved, but an official with the Justice Department said it launched a criminal probe into Powell in November and said that Pulte was not a factor in the inquiry. | ||
| The extraordinary investigation they write of a sitting Fed chairman was, of course, disclosed by Powell himself late on Sunday. | ||
| That's the latest from the Washington Post on this investigation. | ||
| You can continue to call in about this investigation, but we'll also, here at the bottom of the hour, open up the phones to any public policy issue that you want to talk about. | ||
| You can continue to call in on this, or there's plenty going on, whether it's the protests in Iran, the protests in Minnesota and Minneapolis, what's going on around the country. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats to call in. | ||
| Republicans, it's 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| And again, here's what's happening today on Capitol Hill as you're calling in. | ||
| The House is in at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| That's where we're going to go after this program ends. | ||
| The Senate is in at 10 a.m. Eastern as well. | ||
| That is on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| At 10 a.m., you can head over there and see the latest from the floor of the Senate. | ||
| And then there's also plenty happening on Capitol Hill today. | ||
| President Trump off Capitol Hill, out of Washington, D.C., he's in Michigan today. | ||
| He'll travel to Michigan to deliver remarks on the state of the economy. | ||
| He's speaking at the Detroit Economic Club. | ||
| You can watch live on C-SPAN 3 today at 2 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| You can also watch on c-span.org and of course tune in on the free C-SPAN Now video app. | ||
| Now, your phone calls. | ||
| Timbo is in the natural state independent line. | ||
| Timbo, what topic do you want to discuss this morning? | ||
| Hey, Big John. | ||
| Looks like the criminals won. | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
| Well, it looks like our wannabe fascist dictator is well on his way to achieving his goal of total control of the country, total control of the people, and now total control of the money. | ||
| This guy is out of control. | ||
| And Democrats and everybody out there, you better clip this guy's wings come Election Day. | ||
| Otherwise, he's going to run this country into the ground or he's going to start a thermonuclear war. | ||
| And we're all going to be vaporized. | ||
| Have a good day. | ||
| That's Timbo in Mountain Home, Arkansas. | ||
| Democrats can call in at 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Officially open forum. | ||
| And you can talk about any topics. | ||
| We mentioned the latest out of Minnesota yesterday in the land of 10,000 lakes. | ||
| It was Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison who announced a lawsuit against the federal government to stop the deployment of ICE agents in Minnesota. | ||
| Here's some of that statement. | ||
| And we're here to announce a lawsuit we're filing against the United States Department of Homeland Security to end the unlawful, unprecedented surge of the federal law enforcement agents into Minnesota. | ||
| Because this has to stop. | ||
| It just has to stop. | ||
| We allege that the obvious targeting of Minnesota for our diversity, for our democracy, and our differences of opinion with the federal government is a violation of the Constitution and of federal law. | ||
| We allege that the surge reckless impact on our schools on our local law enforcement is a violation of the 10th Amendment and the sovereign laws and powers of the Constitution grants to states. | ||
| We allege that DHS's use of excessive and lethal force, their warrantless racist arrests, their targeting of our courts, our churches, houses of worship, and schools are a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act on arbitrary and capricious federal actions. | ||
| And we ask that the courts will end the surge of thousands of DHS agents into Minnesota. | ||
| Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison there announcing that lawsuit. | ||
| Back to your phone calls in open forum. | ||
| This is Gary in Great Bend, New York, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I can explain a little bit of my knowledge of the Federal Reserve. | ||
| It's a federally chartered business. | ||
| And if it was done away with, the debt would be done away with because that's who the money is owed to. | ||
| It's actually owed to the Federal Reserve. | ||
| Very simple. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Taylor, Bowie, Maryland, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, meet Bullcrap, that they are calling this young woman a domestic terrorist. | |
| And they are not saying that the rioters on January 6th are domestic terrorists. | ||
| I'm sorry, are you saying something? | ||
| No, Taylor, I'm listening to you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| I am 29 years old. | ||
| I live here in the Washington, D.C. area. | ||
| I have student loans, and I'm not pleased with the way that this country is going. | ||
| I know that a lot of your callers are in their 70s, in their 80s. | ||
| And I wish that we had leadership in America that looked like Zeron Mamdani in New York. | ||
| It's just really disappointing. | ||
| Thank you for your time. | ||
| Taylor, stick on the line for just a second. | ||
| You mentioned age groups perhaps not understanding each other is maybe what you were implying there. | ||
| Nicole Russell, one of the younger columnists on USA Today's staff, this is what she has to write about the shooting in Minnesota, Nicole Goode, and her death. | ||
| She writes, Good's death is awful, but it is disingenuous at best to frame what happened simply as though she was a mother killed by an ICE officer as she was out for a leisurely Sunday drive. | ||
| She said Goode was directly interfering with federal law enforcement operations and posed a threat, namely because she was driving a massive vehicle. | ||
| This does not mean that she was deserved to die or that the ICE agent should have employed lethal force. | ||
| It just means that I can see how the agent fired upon her car, and I'm struggling to understand why Goode was interfering with ICE agents. | ||
| This was entirely preventable. | ||
| The best way to prevent being shot by a federal agent is not interfering in their duties while they're actively trying to enforce the law. | ||
| In order to maintain law and order, law enforcement officers must maintain authority, or will soon live in a lawless land. | ||
| I bring it up just because, again, she's one of the younger reporters on the USA Today staff, one of the younger columnists. | ||
| What are your thoughts on what she had to write there? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think that we have to have a conversation about why law enforcement immediately pulls out their gun when there's like the officer could have shot the tire. | |
| He didn't have to shoot her. | ||
| And then even when they pulled her out of the car, one of the officers called her the B-word. | ||
| There just has to be a larger conversation around law enforcement and how they execute their job and how they can de-escalate a situation because she was driving away. | ||
| That's Taylor. | ||
| Go ahead, finish your statement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's all I had to say. | |
| That's Taylor in Bowie, Maryland. | ||
| Don is in the Hawkeye State Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm just commenting on, you know, Congress passed all these laws for people to abide by, but yet the Democrats just don't seem like there's no law that they have to obey. | |
| And this goes back to when Schumer and those guys, to me, that was unlawful. | ||
| And what's going on is unlawful, too. | ||
| So this is what's ripping apart the United States is just the way some people think of it and not believing in what Congress has passed for laws. | ||
| That's all I have to say. | ||
| You mentioned the judges. | ||
| I think you meant the justices at the Supreme Court. | ||
| It's a busy January at the Supreme Court. | ||
| There's going to be seven arguments over the next 10 days, including two cases today on the topic of transgender girls and women competing in girls and women's sports. | ||
| That's happening here in Washington today. | ||
| We're going to talk about it a little bit later in our program, but one of the high-profile cases taking place this term at the Supreme Court. | ||
| Nathan in Ohio Independent, you are next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Go ahead, Nathan. | ||
| Hey, the Federal Reserve is a private bank. | ||
| It's not really federal. | ||
| So why are the taxpayers paying for the renovation of their building? | ||
| Do you have any thoughts on the investigation, Nathan? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, yeah. | |
| They're robbing us blind. | ||
| Just look at all the states with all this fraud going on, and hardly anybody's outraged about it. | ||
| It'd be cheaper to tear the building down and start overfrast. | ||
| That's Nathan in Ohio. | ||
| This is Michael in San Diego, California, line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Bandaged a couple weeks ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| I saw your hand was bandaged a couple weeks ago. | ||
| Is it okay? | ||
| All good now, Michael. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great. | |
| I'd like to, I'm going to quote some words out of Trump's mouth, but first I would like to say what I consider the most important words that every American should know. | ||
| They are the words on the Statue of Liberty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free the refuse of your teeming shore. | |
| Send these, the homeless tempest tossed to me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I lift my lamp beside the golden door. | |
| For all you people out there that read at a sixth grade level or less, refuse is another name for garbage, and tempest is a violent storm and stuff. | ||
| Those words, and e pluribus unum, the true motto of our country, not in God retrust, are the most important words in America. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now on to the Donald. | |
| Direct quotes: Don't believe what you see and what you hear. | ||
| Just believe what I tell you. | ||
| Smart people do not like me. | ||
| I love the uneducated. | ||
| And a few years ago, when Leslie Stowe was interviewing him and she asked him straight out, why do you call us the lion media when we report the truth about you? | ||
| He said, because when I don't like what you have to say about me, I want to be able to plant seeds of doubt in people's minds and everything else. | ||
| So they question what you have to say about me. | ||
| People, don't you understand when the media tells the truth about you and the truth proves you're a terrible person, your only defense is to say that they lie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's the part I can't understand about these voting public how they can't see the liar for the liar that he is. | |
| And that's about all I had to say today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
John, do you have any questions for me? | |
| Not today, Michael. | ||
| That's Michael out of San Diego. | ||
| Linus is next in Bethany, Louisiana. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How are you? | |
| Doing well. | ||
| Yes, listen, I'm calling in regards to what is happening here in America. | ||
| I've been a bishop for over 30 years, and I am disturbed to see our country in the condition from which it's going in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's nothing I'm here, I know our House Speaker personally, Mike Johnson, along with Bill Cassidy and others. | |
| And I'm disturbed that we have accepted and adopted the idea that it's okay to put armed troops within our streets. | ||
| It is a sad day in Americas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I come from a military family, and I am deeply hurt to see the innocent of mothers and families, our young people in schools, and nothing is being done in relation to gun reform. | |
| And, you know, I'm disturbed as a pastor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It hurts to see America going in this direction when my family fought for this country. | |
| And we all, as Americans, should be outraged when a member of law enforcement who's supposed to serve and protect life when his life is not in jeopardy. | ||
| It is sad to see her. | ||
| I have, in many marches, as I watch young African-American men and women be killed throughout this country, whether you be white or black, human life means everything to us as ministers. | ||
| What is happening to us here in America where we have accepted that it is better to do wrong to the innocent? | ||
| What's happening to America when we can't stand up for the basic principles, the basic rights, God-given rights? | ||
| Have we forgotten that we are Americans? | ||
| We are one nation under God. | ||
| I'm from Louisiana, born and bred, and I've saw countless murders over and over again in this place. | ||
| So I'm calling this morning to you all. | ||
| And I preached my first time caller. | ||
| I'm in my 60s, and I've saw a lot of stuff happen within my state. | ||
| And I'm just asking all people of goodwill, remember what America stands for. | ||
| We don't stand by and watch our children be murdered at the hands of madmen. | ||
| Our senators and congressmans are not implementing law. | ||
| I'm a gun advocate. | ||
| I believe in the right to hunt, but I don't believe in the right to hunt humans and take lives of the innocent. | ||
| So that's what I'm calling for this morning. | ||
| And if they had chair, sir, I'm sorry. | ||
| You mentioned you're a bishop, a pastor, a minister. | ||
|
Sermon on Fentanyl and Law Enforcement
00:09:59
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||
| What denomination, if you don't mind me asking? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| I'm Baptist. | ||
| My denomination is Baptist. | ||
| I'm a Baptist. | ||
| Are you, do you have a congregation? | ||
| Are you a former pastor? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| No, sir. | ||
| I have a congregation, and I'm over some churches here in the city of Streetport, Louisiana. | ||
| I have pastors that are not only here, but are abroad that came under our ministry that we went out and allowed them the opportunity to lead others. | ||
| What did you talk about Sunday? | ||
| Did you preach on Sunday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Sunday, we talked about the love of Christ and the compassion that Jesus Christ showed all of us through his suffering and how we must look out for our neighbor. | ||
| That's what my message sundered. | ||
| Did you bring up what happened in Minnesota on Sunday? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| I did. | ||
| I brought up what happened in Minnesota on Sunday, and I told them, even though we have law enforcement in our church, I said, even though we love our law enforcement, but this nice agency has taken it to a whole nother level. | ||
| And our officers that are in my church agreed with what the pastor was saying, that it takes people that are trained in law enforcement to do the job correctly. | ||
| They said that they would never have stood in front of that vehicle at all. | ||
| So we got professionals. | ||
| I got people that are retired in my church that are of law enforcement. | ||
| I know people within the community. | ||
| I know our DAs, our judges, our governor. | ||
| I know all these people. | ||
| And what was done to this young lady was not only illegal, but it was unnecessary. | ||
| And it's due to the training. | ||
| Linus, how often do you find yourself bringing up the news of the day, politics, the political debates in this country? | ||
| How often do you find yourself bringing that up in a sermon? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we preached a sermon that God put on my heart to preach. | |
| But, you know, in the climate that we are in, everybody is talking about it. | ||
| You know, it's a subject of conversation now. | ||
| And what is happening, you know, throughout this country, people are saying in our congregations, I don't just pastor my church. | ||
| There are other churches that I am over as well. | ||
| But it is sad to see, and people are disturbed here in Louisiana. | ||
| What is going on? | ||
| How our country is starting to look like a third world country. | ||
| Linus, I appreciate the call from Bethany, Louisiana. | ||
| Say you're a first-time caller. | ||
| You can call in once a month. | ||
| Hope you join us again down the road. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sure, I will do you so kind. | |
| Thank you so very much. | ||
| And if you all can, I'm working on something right. | ||
| There's like 13 men that have been murdered. | ||
| And I'm working with the FBI and with the Inspector General. | ||
| There's 13 men have been murdered in St. Gabriel Parish due to fentanyl overdose that is coming into the jail. | ||
| So they told me if I happen to get off C-SPAN, the Inspector General, he said, at least mention some of the stuff that we are doing in the relationship to trying to see why all these young men are being murdered. | ||
| And one just recently that I, one of my members that was down there, her son, Antonio Dukes, they took him out, gave him the fentanyl. | ||
| They say it's the guards just right there down there. | ||
| So I know you got to go, but I appreciate y'all. | ||
| Can y'all shed some light on what's happening? | ||
| Because just the other day, another young man, 32 years old, Antonio Dukes, was just simply murdered. | ||
| They said it was an overdose of fentanyl, but from what the FBI is saying, that they've been watching them for a while. | ||
| We had, I think they said 13 murders now, Pastor. | ||
| So I appreciate it. | ||
| Thanks for bringing up topics for us to discuss. | ||
| This is Amy Next in Ohio Independent. | ||
| About 10 minutes left here in this first open forum. | ||
| We'll have another one later in the show. | ||
| Amy, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Hi. | ||
| I think our problem with the immigration is: yes, do we need closed borders and we have closed borders now? | ||
| That's fantastic. | ||
| The problem is, what do we do with all the people that have come in and we have allowed to live here for generations by not enforcing, you know, immigration policy and just allowing people to be here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do we do with those people? | |
| I think that is what the problem is with what ICE is doing these days and what this administration is doing. | ||
| People that have lived here for generations, have built families, have lived here 30, 40 years, and yes, they may be undocumented, but they are not criminals, shouldn't just have to be ripped out of their society and their lives by failed policy and failed enforcement. | ||
| I think that is what is stirring up such a problem with everybody because the way this administration is having the people just ripped out of their lives and basically treated like it's a manhunt from somebody that murdered somebody and everybody, all the federal offices descend on looking for that person. | ||
| That's how it feels when ICE comes into these small communities, you know, just walking around and picking people up off the street when they don't have, you know, they haven't identified people like we're going for this person, we're going for that person. | ||
| If you talk to administration officials, they'll say what's happening now, the enforcement actions that are happening now, are what Americans voted for when they elected Donald Trump again in 2024. | ||
| And immigration was very much front and center in that campaign. | ||
| And Donald Trump talked a whole lot about what he was going to do to enforce our immigration laws, to get our border under control. | ||
| That this shouldn't be a surprise what's going on right now because this is what Donald Trump ran on and this is what Americans elected him to do. | ||
| What would you say to that? | ||
| Oh, I don't think that's what Americans elected him to do. | ||
| He talked about the criminals. | ||
| We have no problems with them going after the criminals, the gangs, those people. | ||
| But when you're picking people up off the street, you know, or when they're in an immigration hearing doing what they're supposed to be doing, why are we picking those people up? | ||
| You know, that is what, you know, not allow employers to hire, give fines to people, you know, make the people want to leave. | ||
| They can, if they did a better job of not doing it this way, maybe when police pick up people, they could check, you know, for criminal offenses, you know, major criminal offenses. | ||
| Maybe the police would work with them and hand them over. | ||
| But the way this administration is going about things, it is putting people on edge and everybody just wants to fight it instead of trying to work together in a better way that is going to cause less harm to people. | ||
| And this Rene Good incident, I don't blame the ICE officer for being fearful because the community and all of this stress has escalated the situation. | ||
| I think if we were in a dialed-down temperature, I don't think that this would have happened. | ||
| I don't think she intentionally tried to hit him. | ||
| I think his point of view was that she was hot environment. | ||
| Amy, thanks for the call from the Buckeye State to Florida, Palm City, Florida. | ||
| This is Bruce, Republican line. | ||
| Bruce, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning, John. | |
| How you doing? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
| Part of this problem with this immigration is the blue states and blue sanctuary cities will not hold the criminals. | ||
| They let them go back out into the streets, thus creating chaos when ICE does come to arrest them. | ||
| All the stuff has been created by the Democrats. | ||
| They allow these people to come into the country. | ||
| God knows what it cost. | ||
| Now it costs a lot of money to get them out of the country. | ||
| And a lot of them aren't vetted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're criminals. | |
| And the sanctuary states and cities are allowing it. | ||
| And the reason they did this is because in 2030, there's going to be another census. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So they're doing it for power. | |
| And that's all they're doing it for. | ||
| And that's all I have. | ||
| That's Bruce in Florida. | ||
| More to talk about. | ||
| Until then, including a little later this morning, Politicos Victoria Guida will join us to discuss the Justice Department investigation into Jerome Powell. | ||
|
C-SPAN's Unbiased Coverage
00:03:02
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| But first, we'll talk with the Foundation for Defense of Democracy's Benham Ben Taliblou about the mass anti-government protests in Iran, potential U.S. military response. | ||
| Stick around for that conversation. | ||
| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
As Congress returns to Washington for the second session of the 119th Congress, lawmakers face a January 30th deadline to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year and avoid a shutdown. | |
| President Trump begins the second year of his term with major foreign and legal issues in focus, including Venezuela and the tariff case before the Supreme Court. | ||
| Attention is also turning to 2026. | ||
| The midterm elections are ahead, with every seat in the U.S. House on the ballot. | ||
| All 435 voting members and five non-voting delegates. | ||
| Many candidates will compete in newly redrawn districts, including in states like Texas. | ||
| Voters will also decide 33 U.S. Senate races and 36 gubernatorial contests. | ||
| High-profile mayoral elections are coming in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New Orleans, cities where clashes with the Trump administration have helped shape national debates. | ||
| And the road to the White House begins to take form as potential 2028 presidential contenders start testing the waters. | ||
| Follow it all on C-SPAN as events unfold and co- C-SPAN is as unbiased as you can get. | ||
| You are so fair. | ||
| I don't know how anybody can say otherwise. | ||
| You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I absolutely love C-SPAN. | |
| I love to hear both sides. | ||
| I've watch C-SPAN every morning and it is unbiased and you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments. | ||
| This is probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country. | ||
| You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark. | |
| If you ever miss any of C-SPAN's coverage, you can find it anytime online at c-span.org. | ||
| Videos of key hearings, debates, and other events feature markers that guide you to interesting and newsworthy highlights. | ||
|
Ongoing Protests in Iran
00:15:52
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|
unidentified
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These points of interest markers appear on the right-hand side of your screen when you hit play on select videos. | |
| This timeline tool makes it easy to quickly get an idea of what was debated and decided in Washington. | ||
| Scroll through and spend a few minutes on C-SPAN's points of interest. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| A focus now on the ongoing nationwide protests in Iran, potential U.S. response. | ||
| We're joined again by Benem Ben Taliblu. | ||
| He serves as senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. | ||
| And Benam Ben Taliblu, it was back on January 4th that you had a column in the free press in which you said there's something different about these protests. | ||
| These protests have only grown and the government response has grown since you wrote that piece. | ||
| Take us back to the origination of these protests. | ||
| How did they start and what is different about them? | ||
| Sure, absolutely. | ||
| And great to be with you and belated Happy New Year to you and your viewers. | ||
| You know, as long as there's been an Islamic Republic, there's been protests against an Islamic Republic. | ||
| That is not new for you or the viewers. | ||
| But this protest was triggered on December 28th when the Riyal, which is the Iranian currency, reached a historic high. | ||
| Significant inflation, hyperinflation in that country. | ||
| The Riyall was valued then at 1.43 million to a single U.S. dollar. | ||
| So people's savings, people's earnings, people's ability to actually generate income from even having a menu on a restaurant all basically evaporated. | ||
| And protests began in the Tehran Bazaar. | ||
| Tehran actually has the biggest bazaar in the modern Middle East, has played a historic role in previous protest movements, including the 1979 revolution. | ||
| But then within a day, it developed a contagion effect across society. | ||
| And then within two days across Iran entirely, such that by the time you got into a week of protests, protests had touched all of Iran's 31 different provinces. | ||
| And then they began to spiral. | ||
| And as you know, just like we've talked about in the past, what starts as an economic protest, what starts as an environmental protest, what starts as a social protest quickly morphs into a political protest because this has been the trend of anti-regime protests since December 2017. | ||
| People have mass grievances. | ||
| People have pushed past reform. | ||
| People are looking to use every opportunity to push past the state and actually talk about the one thing that Washington very often for the past decade, decade and a half, is very keen to avoid in the Middle East, which is fundamentally regime change. | ||
| And what was triggered by an economic crisis became basically the latest installation of a movie we've been seeing for eight, nine years in Iran, which is Iran's National Uprising. | ||
| So is there an opportunity for regime change? | ||
| How likely is that to happen? | ||
| And what would be the U.S. role in that? | ||
| Well, much does ride on the U.S. role. | ||
| You know, we're having this conversation today where President Trump will be convening senior national security officials, including defense officials, trying to tailor U.S. response. | ||
| We can get to the potential red line that he drew a bit later in the conversation. | ||
| But make no mistake, something being imposed from abroad. | ||
| This is if the world can support something that has been happening organically from within. | ||
| So we know that you, and the viewers may know, 1999, 2009, the Green Movement, again, major anti-regime protests. | ||
| But again, I want to stress since 2017, since 2018, Iranians have been protesting en masse not to change the exchange rate, but to change the regime in its entirety. | ||
| And when you have fundamentally a more progressive, a more secular, a more nationalist, a more young, a more liberal population that is unarmed, and that keeps going up against a much more regressive, a much more authoritarian, a much more Islamist and autocratic dictatorship that is armed to the teeth, and as we've seen in the past few days, willing to throttle and then later shut off the internet under the cover of darkness they can kill. | ||
| I just saw a horrifying report from a major Iranian diaspora news outlet that confirmed up to 12,000 killed under the cover of the internet blackout over the past four days. | ||
| Really horrific. | ||
| This is the most significant protest crackdown in the history of the Islamic Republic. | ||
| Of course, the people are going to lose their best and their brightest in every single iteration of protests. | ||
| So much will ride on if regime change is possible, can Washington help put the squeeze on the regime from the top so that the people can continue to put the squeeze on the regime from below. | ||
| What is the news outlet that you talk about? | ||
| I ask because people are trying to get an understanding of what's actually going on. | ||
| There's a picture on the front page in the New York Times. | ||
| This image on the front page, verified by the New York Times, showing the apparent body bags in Iran. | ||
| This is out of Tehran. | ||
| But people are trying to figure out what's going on. | ||
| There's been reports over the weekend that it was hundreds, you say 12,000. | ||
| Just what sources do you trust? | ||
| So about 500, 600 have been confirmed by independent human rights monitors. | ||
| Then there are reporters, in particular, this outlet that I mentioned was called Iran International. | ||
| They actually have an English webpage as well. | ||
| They're headquartered in London and headquartered in the U.S. as well. | ||
| They basically have talked to a whole host of reporters. | ||
| People who have actually been providing some of these images, more importantly, medical staff, nurses, doctors, mortgages in Iran, sources within the government, sources within city councils that basically have been dealing with this issue. | ||
| And I think the most horrific thing that I've seen is actually reading something in print. | ||
| I've seen a lot of those images over the weekend. | ||
| But the most horrific thing I've seen is a text saying that someone just woke up one morning, went for a stroll on the street to see if there were protests that a.m., and instead saw just city cleaners, government employees, laborers power washing blood off of the street after the crackdown from the night before. | ||
| So there is so much imagery, but there is so much still that has yet to come out. | ||
| And again, if folks want to check out that report that just a few hours ago said up to 12,000 killed, which would be the most significant crackdown from the state against the street in the history of the 46, 47-year Islamic Republic, that is at Iran International. | ||
| You mentioned Donald Trump's red line. | ||
| Remind us what that is, what he said here. | ||
| So one reason why these protests are different is because Trump is actually choosing to make them different or choosing to really touch the issue. | ||
| If you will, these protests didn't come out of a vacuum. | ||
| They are six months after the 12-day war, which is when the U.S. and Israel struck Iran's nuclear program. | ||
| Many so-called experts then said that there would be a rally around the flag effect. | ||
| There was not only no rally, Iranians in these protests have been taking down and burning regime flags. | ||
| So for many reasons. | ||
| And putting up a different flag. | ||
| Precisely, putting up the pre-1979 flag, you know, in terms of chants and slogans we've seen since 2017 steadily, increasingly call for a more nationalist orientation in terms of what the protesters want, but also increasingly calling for the exiled crown prince and his family. | ||
| So there is a significant difference. | ||
| If you go Islamist, I go nationalist. | ||
| They found the exact foil to the identity and the ideology to the regime. | ||
| But back to Donald Trump, he on Truth Social very early this year had said that if the regime cracks down, and he says, as is their custom, protesters famously drawing a very sharp contrast with his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, when it came to the 2009 protests. | ||
| And he said that there would be a U.S. response, and he used the word locked and loaded. | ||
| So people assumed a potential military response. | ||
| In the ensuing days, in his media clips, in his media statements aboard Air Force One, to the press, and again on Truth Social, he reiterated that claim. | ||
| And what was a historic standing with protesters early this January is now reaching a point of diminishing returns because he's talked about potentially standing with protesters and holding regime accountable, but at the same time, unfortunately, has kind of watered it down, saying that the reports of deaths he had received were due to a stampede rather than this massive regime crackdown. | ||
| And only just two days ago, I believe, aboard Air Force One, he said that they appear to be crossing his red line. | ||
| And that's why today's meeting with senior national security officials about how, if, when, and at all will they respond is going to be key to dictating the success of this movement as well as what level of U.S. support will be provided, if any. | ||
| One of your colleagues at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy writing in today's Wall Street Journal alongside a member of the Council on Foreign Relations urging the president to not repeat Obama's mistake when it comes to Iran, what they're referring to when they say Obama's mistake is a Syrian red line that Barack Obama had set, and then Syria crosses that line and the lack of U.S. response. | ||
| Is that your feeling here as well? | ||
| There's also talk of another comparison with the Obama administration, which is aboard Air Force One in the same interview where Donald Trump was talking to the press about potentially enforcing that red line, and he said that the Iranians appear to be crossing it. | ||
| He also mentioned for the first time that the Iranians had reached out to negotiate with him amidst all of this crackdown. | ||
| And a comparison that actually comes to mind is not just Syria-Obama 2013, but Iran-Obama 2009, when there were protests on the street where protesters were calling for Obama, are you with us or are you with them? | ||
| And because the Obama administration was looking to draw a sharp contrast with the regime change legacy of the Bush administration and democracy promotion in the Middle East, the president kept as his prize trying to negotiate with the Islamic Republic and preferenced nuclear diplomacy or the attempt to get nuclear diplomacy over standing with protesters. | ||
| And now the great fear here is not that President Trump will replicate a 2013 red line, but that he will actually live up to public if indeed he does choose a military option. | ||
| Potentially he's leaking something to make the regime look weak as it's cracking down at home. | ||
| But make no mistake, all of this flip-flopping actually removes that wind beneath the wing that he very importantly gave Iranian protesters with that moral support. | ||
| The protests in Iran, the latest there are our topic. | ||
| Benjamin Ben Taliblou, Benham Ben-Taliblou, our guest, and a very good one on this topic. | ||
| Remind viewers how long you've focused on Iran. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So I've had the luxury of looking at Iran for almost all my life. | ||
| But with FDD now, I've been there just about 13 years in various capacities and for a little over a year and a half as the senior director of their entire Iran program. | ||
| And he's here to answer your questions. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats, Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Plenty of callers for you already on this topic. | ||
| Marty up first out of Louisville, Kentucky, Democrat. | ||
| Marty, you're on with Benem Ben Taliblo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| I have a couple comments for the guests, and then I'll hang up. | ||
| I was in college here in the United States in 1979 during the Iranian Revolution. | ||
| And the Iranian students at our college explained to me that the Death to America demonstrations you're seeing every night on ABC are not pointed at the American people. | ||
| It's the American government for keeping a brutal dictator in power in their country for 25 years. | ||
| And I'm having trouble believing that any American involvement in forcing regime change in Iran can do anything other than being disastrous. | ||
| I was just listening to Richard Engel talk on the Today show, explaining that if the United States tries to overthrow the Iranian government, it's going to be a much bigger military operation than what we saw in Venezuela, which was just a commando raid that only lasted a few hours. | ||
| And as far as the Iranian policy toward Israel, which is a policy of hatred, it's not, it seems to me that whatever regime is in charge in Iran is going to be the same because it's not a political group. | ||
| Like in Iraq, Saddam Hussein will represent a political party, the Ba'ath Party, which no longer exists. | ||
| But the policy of hatred toward Israel is based on their religion, the Muslim religion, and it just seems to me that whatever group is in charge of their government in Iran is still going to be the same policy. | ||
| So that's all I have. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Marty, thanks for that. | ||
| Benem Ben Taliblo. | ||
| Sure, thanks, Marty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's start backwards with the religion and the Israel issue. | |
| So, no, I will also tell you as a first-generation Iranian American, but also a Muslim, that it is not built in that every Muslim has to actually hate Jews or the state of Israel. | ||
| Certainly is not the case. | ||
| You actually see now Israel trying to build ties with more and more Muslim-majority nations. | ||
| There's always this flirtation now with Saudi Arabia. | ||
| There was talk of Indonesia. | ||
| There is the Abraham Accords phenomenon. | ||
| And there's tons and tons and tons of interfaith initiatives at the civil society level, at the non-government level, that disprove the thesis that just because you're a Muslim, you have to hate Jews or Israel. | ||
| So there's that fact. | ||
| Second, tied to that is actually Iranian society. | ||
| Iranian society is actually hyper-secular, whether you're looking at the names of families compared drastically to the names of families even pre-revolution, which actually had much more religious names, whether you're looking at levels of mosque attendance, whether you're looking at religiosity in public life. | ||
| If you actually flip the script on the government of the Islamic Republic, you will actually have one of the most secular countries in the heartland of the Middle East. | ||
| And you don't have to take that from me. | ||
| You can just take a look at literally Arab tourists, tourists from the Muslim world who have gone to Iran, even at peak holy months like Ramadan, and have asked, is this even a Muslim nation? | ||
| So ironically, you know, there's this try to push someone into heaven. | ||
| They pop out of the other side of hell. | ||
| Ironically, after 46 years of an Islamist government, the last thing Iranian society wants is Islamism in any kind of form. | ||
| So this fear that we've kind of seen with popular movements across the Arab world where there are majority Islamists has actually been the exact opposite with respect to Iran. | ||
| And because the regime is Islamist, you have a pretty strong hyper-national, hyper-secular foil among society. | ||
| And you see that against generation of generation of Iranian protesters. | ||
| So I don't believe that is necessarily the concern. | ||
| In fact, you could flip the script and get something many Iranian dissidents and members of the diaspora have called the Cyrus Accords, which is to find a way to actually bridge the gap between these two ancient biblical non-Arab peoples, which are the Jews and the Persians. | ||
| And to go back to your friends from college, I assume they're talking about 1953. | ||
| You know, one of the great things that is not talked about with respect to 1953 that did actually make, and yes, there was Western involvement, declassified documents from MI6, declassified documents from CIA, declassified documents from the State Department about this quote-unquote coup. | ||
| But one of the things that actually helped make the coup historically successful was the flipping of Iran's clerical establishment from the pro-Mossadegh camp, from the prime minister at the time who was trying to nationalize the oil industry to the Western bloc. | ||
| So Iran's theocrats who are in power today are the heirs of people who made the flip to actually side with America and per declassified documentation got cash for it. | ||
| And I'm not willing to give the leftists who made the Islamic Revolution in 1979 or the theocrats who are in charge today this kind of laissez-passe to ignore this gross historical fact that helped bring into power one of the most despotic regimes in the region, which, by the way, | ||
| even if that human rights record was not the track record, as an American, as someone interested in American interests and American foreign policy, I think it's a pretty bad idea that for generations now we've been trying to pivot out of the Middle East and we keep getting sucked back in because of this strategic competition and the kind of terrorism emanating from the Islamic Republic. | ||
| You don't have to take it from me after the 12-day war between America, Iran, and Israel, Iran's clerical establishment issued a whole host of fatwas against a sitting U.S. President Donald Trump that called for the taking of his life, his property, his family, and even his wife and female children. | ||
| So I simply don't think it's a good idea to let these governments who traditionally have put their money where their mouth is to be standing. | ||
| So that's why this is not about charity, to quote Henry Kissinger. | ||
| Foreign policy is not missionary work. | ||
| Way out to Hawaii. | ||
| This is Alan, Independent Line. | ||
|
Stopping The Mass Killing
00:13:26
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| Alan, a very good early morning to you in Hawaii. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, Don and Ben. | |
| It's been a while. | ||
| I actually called him once before and spoke to him, I think, on Iran and Rob Maui. | ||
| I'm hoping, I'm really a big supporter that Donald Trump can do something brilliant and do something that will not cause inflammation, but will basically take down enough of the IRGC momentum to stop this mass killing and to help, if possible. | ||
| And I'm just curious what Benjamin, what is the best path? | ||
| I mean, because I actually started to watch the free press today, and you were on with Michael Duran. | ||
| Great piece. | ||
| I just got to see it a few minutes ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I just heard that you were going to be on, so I stopped watching the free press and came to the Washington Journal. | |
| But I was curious if maybe you could discuss what the FDD thinks is the best path. | ||
| Is there a strategically perfect path to take to help the Iranian people to do a regime change? | ||
| Thanks, Alan. | ||
| That's very kind of you, by the way. | ||
| For years at FDD, we've been talking about something called maximum support. | ||
| You know, the defining elements of U.S. policy, particularly under Donald Trump since term one, has been maximum pressure, this kind of political and economic squeeze from the top that the U.S. government is able to kind of impose on the government of the Islamic Republic. | ||
| But we've talked about the need for an ancillary pillar, a supporting prong called maximum support to actually stand with in practice rather than in principle, you know, protesting Iranians. | ||
| Just last year, for example, there was a bill introduced in Congress called maximum support. | ||
| Unfortunately, it didn't go anywhere. | ||
| There was also amendments put forward about trying to get a defection strategy going to task the intelligent better position to not get caught flat-footed for when the Iranian government takes out the internet because there was a lot of stuff in there about secure communications and satellite communications. | ||
| And then, of course, in terms of if you're trying to flip the script on an unarmed, if you're trying to flip the script in the favor of an unarmed street against a hyper-armed state, you need to go after the security forces. | ||
| We forget February 11, 1979, political movements to gain power over armed states, they have to find a way to co-opt or nullify or get defections from the armed forces. | ||
| That is going to be the X factor here in terms of defining whether the protest movement succeed. | ||
| Can they create enough pressure from the bottom? | ||
| And can Uncle Sam put enough pressure from the top to get the kind of the people shooting their way through the crisis to defect, to be disloyal, to cause cleavages within the armed forces? | ||
| Thus far, we have to be realistic. | ||
| We have not seen that with the political elites, and we have not seen that with respect to the military elite. | ||
| Potentially, if Donald Trump enters and changes the equation, he could try to tip the balance without getting the U.S. directly involved in the fight between the state and the street. | ||
| And one thing that comes to mind, which is pretty low cost, there's a kinetic one and a cyber one, it depends how he wants to do it, is to go after the military-grade jamming that is now happening to Starlink satellites that are allowing Iranians to blackout does mass killing. | ||
| This is now a trend for them. | ||
| In this case, there have been over 100 plus hours of an internet shutout, so basically five days in counting. | ||
| This is when they've done the bulk of their killing. | ||
| And if we're going to try to level the playing field, we should be assisting with trying to get more Starlink satellites into Iran. | ||
| But even then, when the regime is jamming those Starlink satellites with military-grade jamming, perhaps either from a cyber perspective, being able to go after the software that does that jamming that causes interference with this satellite uplink, or kinetically go after the locations doing the jamming. | ||
| And in this sense, they could get Iranians back online and be able to get Iranians to continue to organize and communicate with one another and then share images and videos of their protest movement with the world and potentially talk about scaling up that support there. | ||
| So, you know, whoever quote unquote flips the switch on the internet again and helps get Iranians back online, that person, that group, that country could go a very long way in Iranian history because they would have leveled the playing field between the state and the street. | ||
| There's other options we can talk about as well. | ||
| I had a piece with the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Mark Dugwitz, in The Atlantic, where we put forward a menu of options, diplomatic, informational, kinetic, military, economic. | ||
| There's tons of other things. | ||
| In the Wall Street Journal, I had a piece with another colleague of ours, Saeed Qasiminejad. | ||
| He's a trained economic specialist, and we've talked about replicating the oil model with Venezuela. | ||
| So if you're trying to slow down the regime's repression apparatus, why is it that the regime is able to sell between 1.5 and 2 million barrels of oil a day still to China? | ||
| This is a big problem. | ||
| So going after the regime's repression apparatus and pulling the plug on the economic engine that allows the regime to pay the people doing the shooting, that also could go quite a far away. | ||
| The headline, the lead story in today's New York Times, Iran says they're set for war, but they're open to talks after the crackdown. | ||
| How does Iran say to their people and to their military with a straight face that they're ready for war after what happened in the 12-day war, as it's being called last year, and the ability for Israel, for the United States to impose their will militarily, essentially through an air campaign against Iran? | ||
| So excellent question. | ||
| But saying something contradictory and being Orwellian and hyperbolic are not new for the government of the Islamic Republic. | ||
| It's totally possible to see an array of facts and then intonate something totally different. | ||
| That is unfortunately kind of stylistically and substantively what the leadership of the Islamic Republic has long chosen to do. | ||
| That's how you get an economy. | ||
| That's how you get a polity that looks like that kind of a country today. | ||
| But more importantly, when it comes to the threshold to kind of quote unquote declare victory, the Islamic Republic, much like its terrorist proxies, always declares victory because it's left standing. | ||
| So so long as it's left standing, it will claim victory and say, aha, my adversaries tried to dislodge me. | ||
| Aha, my adversaries, they didn't try to defang me. | ||
| They didn't try to remove the crown jewel of my nuclear apparatus. | ||
| They didn't try to stop my missiles. | ||
| They were going after me. | ||
| And therefore, because I'm alive, ipso facto, I win. | ||
| So this is the narrative that they have spun over the past six months. | ||
| You'd be hard pressed to find anybody in Iran who believes it. | ||
| The challenge is, how do you actually translate this disbelief into cracking or pressing apart on the security forces? | ||
| Anthony, Greentown, Pennsylvania, Republican, good morning. | ||
| You are next. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
| When you mentioned before about the diminishing returns as we go along, I was hoping I didn't wake up this morning and find out we did something there last night. | ||
| My fear is that the longer we wait to respond to the protests and the crackdown of the protests, that we're going to be less effective at toppling that government. | ||
| We hood of these people aren't very good right now. | ||
| I have a couple other questions as well. | ||
| Could I just address that comment super quick? | ||
| So that which we know slash assume the government is doing is you may have seen something from President Trump on Truth Social the other day about a tariff, but any country that does business with the Islamic Republic and with the U.S. would be subject to a 25% tariff. | ||
| It'll be interesting to see how that is implemented because there is still, when we talked about oil again, still room for improvement in terms of President Trump's second term maximum pressure economic policy. | ||
| So he's got that tariff out there. | ||
| And then there was an allegation in the Iranian press yesterday that one of their major news websites, Tasnim News, had to change its domain name. | ||
| We don't know if this is lawfare or covert activity or just kind of bureaucratic and legal pressure. | ||
| But unfortunately, a lot of government and semi-government and semi-official Iranian news agency domains that have a tie-in to mains don't function as of yesterday or today. | ||
| You can just check them when you go online yourselves that they redirect or they say can't connect. | ||
| So the tariff and the domain name seem to be things that they've done already. | ||
| But I grant you that is not enough to change the balance on the streets nor to put wind beneath the wings of the protesters. | ||
| Anthony, give me one more of your questions because we're running short on time. | ||
| People that are in the country now to help crack down and maybe the armed forces of the country aren't being relied upon for the crackdown. | ||
| Is that true? | ||
| So there is no hard empirical evidence for that. | ||
| But since 2009, particularly if you talk to protesters and those who've left the country in major iterations of national anti-regime uprisings, you almost always have some group of Iranians, often in social media, often in real life, saying that in the crackdown, they heard kind of commands or orders being given and barked between the paramilitaries doing the repression, kind of knocking back the protesters, as orders or commands not being in the Persian language and orders or commands being in the Arabic language. | ||
| They're similar, but they're very different languages at the same time. | ||
| So you can easily tell what language is kind of being barked, what language is kind of being said. | ||
| We've heard more and more of those allegations past 2009. | ||
| And given the fact that I think in 2019, when there was significant flooding in Iran, the Iranian government brought in Afghan Shia militias and Iraqi Shia militias to do flooding. | ||
| And it was somewhat telling. | ||
| Flood response? | ||
| Flood response. | ||
| Pardon me. | ||
| Flood response. | ||
| But it was telling because in the areas that there were previously flooding, there were also protests as well. | ||
| So one wondered if they were getting people into place to do some kind of a crackdown. | ||
| But this has always been a long-term fear of both the Iranian dissident community and the protest community, because even if you are successful at co-opting the security forces, the fail-safe of the Islamic Republic seems to be this Shi'ite Foreign Legion. | ||
| But we haven't seen hard evidence of that yet, but it's often been something told to us, alleged to us by previous periods of protest. | ||
| Before we run out of time, one more call. | ||
| Scott's been waiting in the Keystone State as well. | ||
| Go ahead, Scott. | ||
| Independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I had it. | |
| I'd like the host to ask this guy a question after we're done here. | ||
| Kind of asking him the same question you asked the guest. | ||
| What would you say to the people of the United States voted Donald Trump in to end these wars, to end this imperialism? | ||
| But I'd like you to guest to ask you that. | ||
| And my question would be, all these protesters that supposedly want to go save, but that's just to cover up. | ||
| We want to go control this country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But all these protesters that we want to save, usually we see them out there saying death to America. | |
| Death to America. | ||
| All these protesters that we want to go over there and save. | ||
| Scott, I got to cut you off. | ||
| Yeah, go ahead. | ||
| Scott, I got to cut you off because nothing could be further from the truth. | ||
| You have a government in that country, in Tehran, who has been chanting death to America, who came to power through street protests in 1978, 1979, through an unholy alliance of leftists and Islamists, and they toppled a U.S.-backed monarchy. | ||
| And they have taken control of major state resources to actually contest, challenge, and overturn decades of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, forcing America to go deeper and deeper into the Middle East to have to contest and challenge these guys. | ||
| So not only ideologically is the street not the one saying death to America, the street is the most pro-American, the most pro-Israeli street in the heartland of the Middle East. | ||
| And it would be a real own goal, strategically, morally, and politically, of epric proportions to miss the gigantic difference that the Iranian people are paying in terms of blood, in terms of their own blood, to help actually stand with us. | ||
| If you flip the script on the Ayatollahs, you bring back into power the most pro-American population in the Middle East, then we can begin to really talk about how can Uncle Sam peacefully exit the region without getting sucked back in, find a way to actually end some of these really endless conflicts. | ||
| Because if you remove the arsonist, remember, the Islamic Republic of Iran is the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism, who's created or co-opted a whole host of these proxy and terror groups in the region that keep sucking us and Israel and some of our other partners in the region back into cycle of violence after cycle of violence. | ||
| It's not going to be peace and roses and blossoms tomorrow, but you take out the major arsonists behind those, then all of those other conflicts looked imminently much more controllable, containable, and roll-backable. | ||
| For much more from Benham Ben Taliblu, FDD.org is the website of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. | ||
| He's the senior director of the Iran program there. | ||
| We always appreciate your time, especially during a busy time. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| More to come this morning on the Washington Journal, including up next, we'll talk with Politico's Victoria Guida about the Justice Department investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell over his statements to Congress and what could come next. | ||
|
Exploring the American Story
00:03:00
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| We'll be right back. | ||
|
unidentified
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High school students, | |
| join C-SPAN as we celebrate America's 250th anniversary during our 2026 C-SPAN Student Cam Video Documentary Competition. | ||
| This year's theme is Exploring the American Story through the Declaration of Independence. | ||
| We're asking students to create a five to six minute documentary that answers one of two questions. | ||
| What's the Declaration's influence on a key moment from America's 250-year history? | ||
| Or how have its values touched on a contemporary issue that's impacting you or your community? | ||
| We encourage all students to participate, regardless of prior filmmaking experience. | ||
| Consider interviewing topical experts and explore a variety of viewpoints around your chosen issue. | ||
| C-SPAN Student Cam Competition awards $100,000 in total cash prizes to students and teachers and $5,000 for the grand prize winner. | ||
| Entries must be received before January 20th, 2026. | ||
| For competition rules, tips, or just how to get started, visit our website at studentcam.org. | ||
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|
Unusual Statement Investigates Fed
00:15:39
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unidentified
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C-SPAN is your unfiltered connection to American democracy. | |
| Advance the mission. | ||
| Donate today at c-SPAN.org forward slash donate. | ||
| Together, we keep democracy in view. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Politico economics correspondent Victoria Guida joins us now to discuss the Justice Department's criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, an investigation we learned about on Sunday when Jerome Powell revealed the investigation in the form of the video statement that he put out about this, an unusual statement that got a whole lot of attention. | ||
| The headline in Politico from your latest piece, Why Jerome Powell is Not Flinching at Donald Trump's attack. | ||
| Explain why you think he made that statement on Sunday night and why you don't think he's flinching. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, so first of all, that was, as you said, an extraordinary statement, particularly for him. | |
| I mean, this is somebody who Donald Trump has been attacking since 2018. | ||
| So they have a long and contentious relationship. | ||
| And in that time, Jay Powell has pretty much resisted engaging directly with Trump at all. | ||
| So this is the first time he's ever really said, hey, you know, publicly, hey, this is the president trying to pressure me to lower interest rates. | ||
| And the reason why he is doing this, approaching it in this way, is because he has a lot of support. | ||
| And we saw that actually in Congress, not just Democrats, but we actually saw Republican lawmakers saying, hey, I'm not so sure about this investigation, you know, raising worries that this is going to compromise the independence of the Fed. | ||
| Tom Tillis, one of those Republicans, and his statement also getting a lot of attention yesterday in the wake of this investigation coming to light. | ||
| He said in his statement, if there's any remaining doubt about whether advisors within the Trump administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should be now none. | ||
| It is now the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that is in question. | ||
| I will oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed, including the upcoming Fed chair vacancy until this legal matter is fully resolved. | ||
| Tom Tillis, how unusual a statement from Tom Tillis towards the administration? | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, it's very combative. | |
| Notably, the senator is retiring after his term, and so he doesn't have the same reelection concerns that some of his colleagues do. | ||
| But even so, he tends to not really do this level of confrontation. | ||
| Bring us back to the heart of the matter here, this renovation project and the statements that Jerome Powell made to Congress about this project. | ||
| What should we know about this investigation itself and the particular statements that the Justice Department is digging into? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So there are two buildings that are under construction right now. | |
| One is the Eccles Building, which is part of the Fed headquarters, and then the other is a sort of aging, somewhat dilapidated old building that they bought at a discount that they are renovating. | ||
| And the renovations of both of these buildings, which are in the National Mall, they're marble buildings, has ballooned past $2 billion. | ||
| And so this is, you know, I mean, that's a pretty eye-popping number. | ||
| And so the question is, why is it costing this much? | ||
| Is this a waste of money? | ||
| So, you know, this was something that came up last year in a hearing at the Senate Banking Committee. | ||
| Chairman Tim Scott asked Powell about this. | ||
| And Powell downplayed the New York Post's framing of this, which is kind of what started all of this, where they were sort of casting it as a palace. | ||
| This is about a minute and a half. | ||
| Let me just play the exchange that you're describing. | ||
| Page 129 of the final plan are features and final plans. | ||
| The new elevators that dropped board members off at the VIP dining suite was page 37 of the final plans. | ||
| The white marble was pages 40, 41, 65 of the final plans. | ||
| I would welcome your staff coming in to walk my staff through what is happening there, as opposed to what we have only read in the New York Post, not only in the Wall Street Journal, but also at the National Capital Planning Commission's website. | ||
| So we would welcome that opportunity to have a Can I just quickly say some of those are just flattenly misleading. | ||
| The idea of elevators, you know, it's the same elevator. | ||
| It's been there since the building was built. | ||
| So that's a mischaracterization. | ||
| And some of those are no longer in the plans. | ||
| That's earlier. | ||
| The plans have continued to evolve. | ||
| Victoria Guida, did we actually get any answers on why this project has ballooned past the original estimates? | ||
| And where are we today on that project? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so as the administration has ramped up focus on these renovations, the Fed has released a lot more information. | |
| It seems like one of the things that has been a significant cost is a lot of the security features. | ||
| So things like bulletproof glass and the marble, because there's also, you know, these are historical buildings. | ||
| And so there are limitations. | ||
| You know, the senator mentioned the National Capital Planning Commission. | ||
| There's also the National Fine Arts Commission that are part of making sure that building renovations like this preserve the character of historic buildings. | ||
| And so those are just a couple of the things. | ||
| There's also, I think, a parking structure that's underground, and that might have also led to these cost overruns. | ||
| And so there's a question as to whether this was a wise use of money. | ||
| And the Fed's own inspector general is actually looking into that as well. | ||
| But the Justice Department investigation is a criminal investigation, right? | ||
| Which is not something about like, is this a stupid use of money, right? | ||
| It's a totally separate question. | ||
| And, you know, Chair Powell mentioned specifically that they were probing his statements to Congress. | ||
| And so this sort of gets to, I think, the political unease around this situation because. | ||
| Is the Justice Department saying that Jerome Powell lied to Congress and that is the criminal action here that you can't lie in sworn testimony before Congress? | ||
| Is that why it's a criminal probe? | ||
|
unidentified
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So that is the implication, right? | |
| Like Chair Powell has not been indicted. | ||
| And actually, Janine Pirro, who's the U.S. attorney who is bringing this case made that point on Twitter. | ||
| I'm sorry, X. Never get that one right. | ||
| But yes, I mean, that's potentially, right? | ||
| As I said, they haven't done it yet. | ||
| Against the sitting chairman of the Fed over a statement like that is a pretty striking move. | ||
| Janine Pirro, her statement on X last night at 8.30 p.m. Eastern, the United States Attorney's Office contacted the Federal Reserve on multiple occasions to discuss the cost overruns in the chairman's congressional testimony, but were ignored, necessitating the use of the legal process, which is not a threat, she says. | ||
| The word indictment has come out of Mr. Powell's mouth and no one else's. | ||
| None of this, she says, would have happened if they had just responded to our outreach. | ||
| The office makes decisions based on the merit, nothing more and nothing less. | ||
| She said, we agree with the chairman of the Federal Reserve that no one is above the law, and that is why we expect his full cooperation. | ||
| So take us through the next couple weeks and months here. | ||
| How much longer does Jerome Powell have as chairman and what happens to him after his term is up as chairman? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So his term as chair ends in May. | |
| And he also has an underlying board seat. | ||
| There are seven seats on the Fed board. | ||
| And that term doesn't actually end until 2028. | ||
| And so now one of the questions is whether he might decide to stay, not as chair, but just as a regular governor, right? | ||
| Because technically he is confirmed to that level of term. | ||
| Now, traditionally, chairs leave when their chair term is up, regardless of when their board term is up. | ||
| And the expectation had been that Powell would leave. | ||
| But now, as a result of this sort of, you know, criminal investigation, there's a question as to whether Powell might have more motivation to stay. | ||
| Victoria Guida of Politico, our guest with us for about another 15, 20 minutes or so here on the Washington Journal, a good person to call in to ask questions about this investigation that we all learned about on Sunday. | ||
| She's been tracking it and has been tracking the story for months and, I guess, years now. | ||
| 202-748-8,000 for Democrats to call in. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| As folks are calling in from the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, they both mentioned the name Bill Pulte of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, saying that it was his report that made its way to Janine Pirro, which sent this investigation into motion. | ||
| What should we know about Bill Pulte, and are you hearing that as well? | ||
|
unidentified
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So yes, Bill Pultey is the head of what's called the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which is a financial regulator that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that are important in the mortgage market. | |
| And he has been very vociferous in supporting President Trump's criticisms of Powell, particularly saying that higher rates are hurting the mortgage market. | ||
| And he says regularly publicly that Powell should be fired and needs to go. | ||
| So yes, we are also hearing from administration sources that this idea did originate from Bill Pulte. | ||
| Has Bill Pultey been particularly critical of Jerome Powell in the past? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, definitely. | |
| I should also mention that Pulte himself has denied that this came from him. | ||
| And part of what's a little bit of a question mark at this point is, okay, so the idea originated with Pulte. | ||
| That means that the idea went through Trump, right? | ||
| Because President Trump has said that he didn't know anything about this investigation. | ||
| And the question is whether, you know, there is some sort of if Pulte recommended to Trump or if he recommended to the Justice Department. | ||
| The through line there is a little bit unclear. | ||
| We don't really know exactly how that works. | ||
| Would Pam Bondi have to know about this investigation for something as politically explosive as this? | ||
| Would Attorney General Pirro have to have brought this up the chain to Pam Bondi before issuing this request, whatever set off the Fed on Friday night? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, so with the caveat that I don't cover the Justice Department and that's a world that I'm much less familiar with, it just logically seems difficult to imagine that the Attorney General would not be made aware of a criminal investigation of a sitting Fed chair, which is an unprecedented thing. | |
| Let me come to the next Fed chair. | ||
| The expectation is that Kevin Hassett could be the next chair of the Federal Reserve. | ||
| He is the White House National Economic Council director. | ||
| He spoke to reporters yesterday about this investigation. | ||
| This is what he had to say. | ||
| I would expect that the markets would be happy to see that there's more transparency with the Fed. | ||
| It's something that people have been calling for for quite a long time. | ||
|
unidentified
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Are you worried that the probe undermines the independence of the central bank and could destabilize the markets? | |
| I guess the question is: if you think the building costs $20 billion or $10 billion, do you think at some point that it's appropriate for the federal government to investigate? | ||
| And it seems like the Justice Department has decided that they want to see what's going on over there with this building that's massively more expensive than any building in the history of Washington. | ||
| And if I were Fed chair, I would want them to do that. | ||
| I think that it's really important to understand where the taxpayer money goes and to understand why it goes this way or that. | ||
| Do you think there's a chance Powell will stay on as a governor on the board even after his term as chair? | ||
| I'm not sure about that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've not talked to Jay about that. | |
| He's a good person. | ||
| If he wants to continue government service, he'll make that call when the time comes. | ||
| That would be something the next Fed chair, whether it's yourself or somebody else, completely wouldn't. | ||
|
unidentified
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You know, we'd have to see how it goes. | |
| But Jay's a good person. | ||
| Victoria Guida, what do you take from that exchange? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So this was striking that he chose to comment on this. | |
| I mean, actually, this entire thing has been unusual. | ||
| The fact that Pirot actually publicly commented on it, I think, is relatively unusual to comment on a grand jury investigation. | ||
| Something where there has not been an indictment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, yeah. | |
| You know, it's interesting because he is potentially the next person to lead this organization. | ||
| And he's basically saying, you know, there's legitimate questions here about how this money was spent. | ||
| He sort of didn't really get into the idea that this is technical information they're looking for. | ||
| But the post, the social media post from Janine Pirot confirms that there is an investigation. | ||
| And Chair Powell said that the investigation is particularly focused on his statements to Congress. | ||
| Victoria Guida, with us taking your phone calls, your questions about this investigation, again, that we all learned about on Sunday and has been a big story here in Washington around the country since then. | ||
| Phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. | ||
| And we'll go to Larry on the Independent line in Tennessee. | ||
| Larry, thanks for waiting. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I was an auditor, a fixed asset construction auditor in New York City, originally with the CPA firm, and then I went private with a corporation, which I won't say the name. | ||
| But normal process is you have weekly meetings throughout a construction process, even before when you start doing the site work, you take sealed bids, and there's a whole process that goes on. | ||
| We're many years into this process. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What happened? | |
| And where did the balls fall through the cracks? | ||
| And who's really responsible? | ||
| I'm not saying that the chairman's not responsible, but there should have been oversight building up to this point. | ||
| We shouldn't be many years or billions of dollars down the road and then somebody all of a sudden saying there's a cost overrun. | ||
| So it sounds to me that a lot of things fell through the crack early on. | ||
| And somebody needs to be questioning what really happened. | ||
| How did we get to this point? | ||
| Because there should have been architectural bulletins for any change orders. | ||
| There's a whole process. | ||
| Purchase orders issued for any overruns. | ||
| I'm totally confused as an accountant. | ||
| Larry, thanks for that, Tennessee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so, you know, first of all, you know much more about this kind of thing than I do, clearly. | |
| But what I will say is this all was a public process. | ||
| I mean, so as I mentioned earlier, there are a couple of organizations, a couple of agencies here in Washington, D.C. that are dedicated to projects like this. | ||
| And so, for example, the Fed submitted plans to the National Capital Planning Commission many years ago, and those were proposed and the commission weighed in on those and then they were amended. | ||
| And that was all public. | ||
| You can actually go find those documents. | ||
|
Interest Rates Lowered: Economic Focus
00:10:09
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|
unidentified
|
And, you know, there was actually a front page story on the Wall Street Journal in, I think it was 2022 that was basically talking about the fact that these cost overruns had been happening. | |
| It was sort of a little bit of a cheeky framing about how, you know, inflation is something that the Fed is supposed to fight and inflation was also affecting some of the building materials and part of the reason why some of these cost overruns had happened. | ||
| So it's not so much that the information wasn't available. | ||
| I think it was much more of just the political saliency of it. | ||
| I just don't think people were paying that close of attention. | ||
| More on the reaction yesterday on Capitol Hill. | ||
| Let me mention another Republican, French Hill, the Republican chair of the House Financial Services Committee, putting out this statement. | ||
| I've known Chairman Powell since we worked together at the Treasury during the George H.W. Bush administration. | ||
| Then as now, I know Mr. Powell to be a man of integrity with strong commitment to public service. | ||
| While over the years we have our policy differences or disagreements, I found him to be forthright, candid, and a person of the highest integrity. | ||
| He goes on to say, pursuing criminal charges related to his testimony on building reservations, renovations at a time when the nation's economy requires focus and creates an unnecessary distraction, calling it an unnecessary distraction. | ||
| How important is that from the chairman, the Republican chairman, the House Financial Services Committee? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would say that it's an extremely important signal. | |
| I mean, as a member of the pension, but French Hill is somebody who is somebody that other people in the House look to on matters of financial services because he chairs that committee. | ||
| And as he said, he's known Chair Powell for many years. | ||
| And one thing that I will say, too, is that Chair Powell has made it a regular part of his tenure to meet with politicians. | ||
| And so part of the reason why I think you've seen the reaction that you've seen on the Hill is just because these people know him. | ||
| Lisa Murkowski also, I don't remember her exactly saying, is Senator Dave McCormick and Senator Kevin Kramer, both of whom are close allies of the president, said directly, both said directly separately that they didn't think that Chair Powell had committed a crime. | ||
| And so you're definitely seeing unease, even from people that aren't necessarily happy with Chair Powell's tenure and that agree with the president that Powell should be lowering rates faster. | ||
| Taking your comments via social media as well, I wanted to highlight one of them. | ||
| This is Renee from Ohio saying there seems to be a lot. | ||
| There seems to be a lot on this topic of getting rid of the Federal Reserve in Project 2025. | ||
| Can you elaborate on that? | ||
| Was this part of Project 2025 going after the Federal Reserve? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so I don't remember the particulars of Project 2025, but yes, that sounds right. | |
| There are definitely parts of the MAGA coalition that are interested in ending the Federal Reserve. | ||
| You know, President Trump doesn't necessarily seem to be one of those people. | ||
| I think he just seems to want the central bank to be more compliant with what he wants out of interest rates. | ||
| And that's sort of the, you know, how much control should he have over the Fed? | ||
| And of course, the reason why there's a political installation for the Fed is that sometimes the Fed, in order to do what's right for the economy, has to make politically unpopular decisions. | ||
| And so the worry is that the more you subject them to political pressure, the more they're going to make bad decisions for the long term. | ||
| The Fed has cut interest rates gradually reducing them by 0.75 percentage points since September to a range of 3.5 percent to 3.75 percent. | ||
| Where would Donald Trump like to see those rates? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So he suggested that he would like to see them down to one percentage point or even less. | |
| That's something that I'll note that I don't know that I've heard any economists really agree with. | ||
| Even others in his administration sort of don't necessarily suggest that they would support that exact number, but you hear a lot of people saying, yes, we agree that rates should be lower. | ||
| The question is, how much are you worried about the potential weakening of the labor market versus the fact that inflation is actually still above the Fed's 2% target? | ||
| It's a lot closer than it was before, but it's still above. | ||
| When is the next time the Fed could cut rates? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Later this month. | |
| What have they said about cutting rates again? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So they're expected to pause, which is perhaps part of what's going on here. | |
| I mean, you know, if we assume that there is a connection between this investigation and the rate decisions, as Chair Powell has alleged, you know, as you mentioned, the last few meetings they have cut, and now they're expected to pause because they think that they've done enough for now and can sort of wait to see what happens with the labor market and inflation. | ||
| Let me go to Jamie in Maryland Independent. | ||
| Jamie, you're on with Victoria Guida. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, hello. | |
| I just wanted to say, it seems like it just seems like, I mean, well, first off, let me say I'm in a market for buying for purchasing a home myself. | ||
| So of course, I would like to see interest rates lowered. | ||
| I came out of the home that I sold, and it was hard, you know, because I had like a 3.75% interest rate then, and today's interest rates being somewhere around 6.5%, you know, just coming from about 7%. | ||
| That makes a really big difference. | ||
| And, you know, it's about a $1,500 to $1,800 a month difference for me. | ||
| So, of course, I would love to see the interest rates lowered. | ||
| I don't know why anyone wouldn't want to see the interest rates lowered, you know. | ||
| And it just feels like it feels like they want to bring the, like they bring the people to their knees until they can take no more before they lower the interest rates. | ||
| And my last point, and I'll let you guys go, but I feel like our politicians are like in somebody's pocket. | ||
| So whether it's pharmaceutical companies, you know, or whether it's the oil companies, or whether it's the folks that actually own our mortgages, I just feel like the American people get paid in that way, you know? | ||
| That's Jamie in Maryland. | ||
| What do you want to take from Jamie's call? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I also would like to see mortgage rates lower, just personally. | |
| So it's a little bit more complicated than that, though. | ||
| And this is where interest rates, there's actually a lot of different interest rates, right? | ||
| So what the Fed controls or guides is short-term interest rates, right? | ||
| It's actually technically it's overnight borrowing, but that sort of feeds more directly into very short-term debt. | ||
| And what influences mortgages is actually much more of longer-term debt. | ||
| So particularly the 10-year rate on U.S. government debt. | ||
| And what guides those rates is actually expectations among bond investors for what's going to happen with inflation, what's going to happen with growth. | ||
| And so the problem is if you set interest rates in the short term unnaturally low, right, or lower than they should be for where the economy is at, the concern is that that could then let inflation out of the box, which would then necessitate higher rates down the road in order to get that under control. | ||
| And so actually you have seen the Fed cut rates three times this year and about a percentage point at the end of last year. | ||
| And we've actually seen the 10-year barely move at all. | ||
| And that's because investors are, there's a lot of things, right? | ||
| One of them is growth, right? | ||
| Like growth has been strong. | ||
| That's also a factor. | ||
| But there's also concerns about what's going to happen with inflation. | ||
| I'm sure there's some element of what's going to happen with the Fed, some uncertainty there. | ||
| And so it's not just a matter of the Fed lowers rates a percentage point and your mortgage rate goes down a percentage point. | ||
| It's a lot more complicated than that. | ||
| Running short on time, President Trump's State of the Union a year into his second term in office is coming up. | ||
| What does an economics reporter look for in the State of the Union address? | ||
| What will be interesting through your eyes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the President has actually just in the past week mentioned several economic policy ideas. | |
| And so it's a matter of what is actually going to get done in terms of affordability, right? | ||
| Which is something that has been a talking point among both parties because all of the polling shows that people are very unhappy with the high cost of living. | ||
| Also, President Trump's economic polling numbers have been notably low. | ||
| I say notably because the economy is supposed to sort of be his thing that voters trust him on and lately people have been unhappy. | ||
| And so he's mentioned for existed that could take effect as soon as January 20th. | ||
| And he's also talked about other policies that he might pursue in housing to make that more affordable. | ||
| A big thing there that a lot of experts say is that we need to have policies that lead to the building of more housing because we just don't have enough and that's one of the reasons it's so expensive. | ||
| So yeah, I think that affordability is probably going to be a central focus because that's just one of the big things that the midterm elections are going to be about. | ||
| Victoria Aguita covers it all for Politico and Economics correspondent there. | ||
|
Open Forum
00:05:02
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| You can see all of her work at politico.com on XVTG2. | ||
| Easy enough to find. | ||
| Thanks so much for your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Coming up and to end our program today, we will have open forum. | ||
| Any public policy issue, any political issue that you want to talk about, and there is a lot going on. | ||
| Phone lines are yours, Democrats. | ||
| It's 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, 202-748-8002. | ||
| Go ahead and start calling in, and we'll get to your calls after the break. | ||
|
unidentified
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Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A, University of Texas at Austin history professor Peniel Joseph shares his book Freedom Season and talks about the pivotal events of 1963 that impacted the civil rights movement in America. | |
| That year marked the centenary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, the assassinations of President Kennedy and Mississippi civil rights activist Medgar Evers, and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four little girls. | ||
| 1963, I think, is the most pivotal year of the 1960s. | ||
| It's the year that gives us both triumphs and tragedies. | ||
| And it's really the year that makes the 1960s the 60s. | ||
| So it's civil rights insurgency. | ||
| It's the Kennedy administration going back and forth with activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and others about what to do next. | ||
| We see a right-wing insurgency. | ||
| George Wallace becomes one of the pivotal figures of the year. | ||
| And people like William F. Buckley in the National Review are engaged in a war of ideas with people like James Baldwin, who becomes the best-selling author and really perhaps the most pivotal figure in the entire year. | ||
| So it's really an extraordinary year. | ||
|
unidentified
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Penil Joseph with his book, Freedom Season, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | |
| You can listen to Q&A and all our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series. | ||
| Sunday with our guest Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove, who has authored several collections of poetry. | ||
| Don't think you can forget her. | ||
| Don't even try. | ||
| She's not going to budge. | ||
| No choice but to grant her space, crown her with sky, for she is one of the many, and she is each of us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | |
| Did your teachers say, well, look, poetry is not a big career future. | ||
| You should write prose. | ||
| People tell you that or not. | ||
| You see, I didn't even know that it was something that you could do and live with your life. | ||
| I thought that, and I was writing poetry from the age of 10, I guess, but it was always a secret thing. | ||
| It was a thing that I wrote and thought, okay, this is my secret. | ||
| It was my thing that I enjoyed. | ||
| I didn't realize that a little black girl could become a poet. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club with Rita Dove. | |
| Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific. | ||
| Only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Washington Journal continues. | ||
| Open forum now to end our program on this Tuesday. | ||
| Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about, now is the time where we turn the program over to you. | ||
| As you're calling in, here's what's happening today here on Capitol Hill and around Washington at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| The House is in session. | ||
| That's where we'll go when this program ends here on C-SPAN. | ||
| On C-SPAN 2, the Senate comes in at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| You can watch the Senate there. | ||
| On C-SPAN 3, the oral arguments are taking place today on state transgender bans in sports. | ||
| The oral arguments are something you can listen to on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| A reminder, we don't have cameras in the United States Supreme Court, but we do have access to their live oral arguments. | ||
| So on C-SPAN 3, we'll be showing those live for you to listen to. | ||
| It is a pair of cases that are being talked about today. | ||
| We'll dive into those more a little later in this segment. | ||
| And then also today at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, President Trump's schedule. | ||
| He's not in town today. | ||
| He heads to the Detroit Economic Club, where he'll deliver remarks on the state of the United States economy. | ||
|
Republicans And The Russia Scandal
00:12:16
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| Live coverage from Michigan. | ||
| That's 2 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| That's also on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| Plenty to watch this Tuesday here on the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| And for this remaining 58 minutes or so, it's open forum. | ||
| Your calls on any public policy topic that you want to talk about. | ||
| Diane in Ohio, Democrat. | ||
| You're up first in this segment. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Hello, John. | ||
| When I call in, I usually state facts and I go through things that I think is important. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And one thing that made me think is how people usually, the Republicans state about the Russia scandal, that he was out of it. | |
| But according to the book called Rage by Bob Woodward, it states that Mueller's report stated that while it did not, so, you know, that means then, of course, there is something going on with that. | ||
| So, you know, that idea that Russians weren't involved, it didn't say it, did it? | ||
| Diane, you've read Rage by Bob Woodward. | ||
| I think that one came out in 2020. | ||
| What are you reading now? | ||
|
unidentified
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What am I reading now? | |
| Well, it's interesting because the young lady that was involved with, what is his name? | ||
| The one who was into the sex things with the little girls, I'm reading that Nobody's Girl by Virginia Roberts. | ||
| You're talking about the Epstein investigation, the Epstein files. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, yes, I couldn't think of his name. | |
| But I want to know in that instance, not that it's in the books, but I had heard and was told by two different responses in terms of investigated that Elon Musk went to see this young lady and two months later she killed herself. | ||
| I want to know what he said to her. | ||
| You know, it doesn't make sense to me. | ||
| And I also wanted to make a comment about the fact that the migrants that they're picking up, the only lawful, unlawful thing that they did is a misdemeanor. | ||
| Our so-called president has 34 counts against him, and that's felonies. | ||
| So we're picking up people with misdemeanors. | ||
| Come on, people. | ||
| They are important to this country. | ||
| And of course, you know, economically, they have contributed quite a bit to us. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| That's Diane in Ohio. | ||
| This is George, also in the Buckeye State. | ||
| Mindful Republicans. | ||
| George, go ahead. | ||
| Open forum. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thanks for C-SPAN, allowing our opinions to be taken. | ||
| Thanks a lot. | ||
| Anyway, this lady must have Trump derangement syndrome. | ||
| I mean, come on. | ||
| We got more important things than what she ever talked about. | ||
| We got Russia, we got China, we got Iran. | ||
| We got all kinds of problems, and she's worried about all this stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, get alive, people. | |
| This is just stupid. | ||
| This is just outright stupidity is what it is. | ||
| George, you say you mentioned Iran as one of the bigger problems here. | ||
| What should we do in Iran? | ||
| Well, I mean, the protests are going on, and I guess possibly a thousand people being killed. | ||
| But you have to do something. | ||
| Reports of even more than that, and perhaps a lot more than that, George. | ||
| Well, you know, that's minuscule compared to how many people died in Ukraine. | ||
| We got to do something everywhere. | ||
| And this lady's talking about something that happened years ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's just how stupid our society has become, John. | |
| And we've got to look at things for the economy in the United States. | ||
| You know, we got so much on our plate, and Trump's doing the best he can. | ||
| Biden, in his four years, which was really Obama's four years, did hardly nothing. | ||
| We wouldn't have the Ukraine war if Trump was re-elected. | ||
| To do with the average person that's on Main Street, John. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| That's George. | ||
| In Ohio, one of the issues we're dealing with today, as you said, Iran. | ||
| And yesterday, it was White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt who spoke with reporters outside the White House about potential options when it comes to Iran. | ||
| This is what she had to say. | ||
| Are you taking airstrikes off the table in Iran, and does he believe there's a potential path to end the protest there without military action? | ||
| Well, I think one thing President Trump is very good at is always keeping all of his options on the table. | ||
| And airstrikes would be one of the many, many options that are on the table for the commander in chief. | ||
| Diplomacy is always the first option for the president. | ||
| He's told all of you last night that what you're hearing publicly from the Iranian regime is quite differently from the messages the administration is receiving privately. | ||
| And I think the president has an interest in exploring those messages. | ||
| However, with that said, the president has shown he's unafraid to use military options if and when he deems necessary. | ||
| And nobody knows that better than Iran. | ||
| Caroline Levitts outside the White House yesterday. | ||
| This is the op-ed pages of the Washington Post this Tuesday morning. | ||
| Max Boot, a columnist and author. | ||
| And this is the headline from his piece today. | ||
| Trump was an imperialist all along. | ||
| He writes, how far we have come from the neoconservatism of the George W. Bush years. | ||
| Its overweening sin, in which I shared, was an excess of idealism about the U.S. ability to export democracy. | ||
| The overweening sin of Trump's neocolonialism is the absence of any idealism at all. | ||
| It is a cynical doctrine, perfectly suited to a president who has devoted his life to making money but is at odds with the idealistic impulses long embedded in U.S. foreign policy. | ||
| It smacks of 19th century imperialism, he writes, devoid of any lofty justification about spreading Christianity and Western civilization. | ||
| Max Boot writing in the pages of today's Washington Post. | ||
| This is Dominic Stamford, Connecticut, Independent. | ||
| Good morning to the Constitution State. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| Well, I'm quite informed. | ||
| I'm quite in God in America. | ||
| President Trump says, you know, he's not going to be the policeman of the world. | ||
| He's going to five wars. | ||
| And do you think he's doing that, Dominic? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, he did that. | |
| Because there is war in Israel. | ||
| There is war in Ukraine. | ||
| There is war in the Middle East. | ||
| And now you are your republic. | ||
| You cannot be. | ||
| America has too many problems. | ||
| Economically, we got problem. | ||
| We cannot be fighting everywhere. | ||
| Monroe Doctrine is not a good thing. | ||
| If you do peace, peace come up by negotiation. | ||
| Talking first, and then you can react. | ||
| If you go to Iran, you bomb Iran. | ||
| You go to Vendezera, you bomb Vendezera. | ||
| You go to Middle East, you bomb Middle East. | ||
| What's going to be happening? | ||
| You try to create peace between Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| There is no peace because those guys are not going to make peace. | ||
| If you fight in yourselves, we Venezera, you see UN with some jewels. | ||
| What do you think Russia gonna do? | ||
| What do you think Russia gonna do? | ||
| You cannot keep fighting. | ||
| That's Dominic in Connecticut. | ||
| This is Thaddeus in the granite state. | ||
| It's Berlin Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, how are you doing? | |
| Thanks for taking the call. | ||
| Hey, I'm just calling again just to try to get our voice out there for help. | ||
| We got over 2.2 million people in the U.S. in jail right now. | ||
| And it just seems like nobody gives us the help we need. | ||
| There's things in the prison legal news about COs getting arrested, all this other stuff, accountability. | ||
| And I just feel like Trump needs to look at us because, man, if he looked out for us a lot more, he'd get more votes from us. | ||
| Thaddeus, you say us. | ||
| Are you incarcerated or have you been incarcerated? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm actually incarcerated right now in Berlin prison in New Hampshire. | |
| What for, if you don't mind me asking? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was homeless back in 2021, 2022. | |
| I stole some tools and they gave me a 5 to 15 when I was asking for help. | ||
| I was begging the courts. | ||
| I wrote to the courts and not once did I get the opportunity for rehab or anything. | ||
| They just straight sent me to prison. | ||
| I took a cap plea and I got smoked. | ||
| How long have you been in prison? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've been in since I'd say 2022 now. | |
| And how long do you think you have until a potential parole or getting out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My minimum is 2027, but if I do focus, I get a year and a half knocked off, and I've been waiting to go and focus, which is a drug program. | |
| And that's all I'm waiting for now. | ||
| What could, short of, I guess, a pardon, what do you want to see Donald Trump do for the larger prison population in this country? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I guess just hear our voice. | |
| Just let us know that he's listening. | ||
| That's Thaddeus in Berlin, New Hampshire. | ||
| Thaddeus, it's once a month. | ||
| How often do you get a chance to make a phone call while you're in there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We can call any time between 7 in the morning and 10 at night. | |
| Well, you can call us once. | ||
| Thaddeus, bring up the prison population. | ||
| It is the prison policy initiative that has a chart on the size of the U.S. prison population. | ||
| It's a chart you may have seen before on this program. | ||
| They talk about the nearly 2 million people that are confined nationwide, about 1.1 million of them in state prisons, some 203,000 in federal prisons. | ||
| Local jails house about 562,000 people in this country. | ||
| When it comes to federal prisons, drug charges, about 20,000 federal drug charges when it comes to, well, it's about 88,000, if you combine the Bureau of Prisons and the Marshall Service on drug charges. | ||
| Another 116,000 people on drug charges in local jails, in state prisons, the drug possession charges somewhere around 150,000 or so. | ||
| You can see the chart. | ||
| It breaks down the prison population by offenses, by where they're housed. | ||
| It's the prison policy initiative, prisonpolicy.org, one that we show occasionally on this program. | ||
| Randy is in Lexington, Kentucky, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Hey, that fellow's in prison. | ||
| I think that we ought to give him the opportunity to have how many times he gets per day, or if he would rather take a caning per day, or how many for a week or a month. | ||
| How many, what, Randy, are you asking about? | ||
| Caning. | ||
| Caning? | ||
|
Janet Cannot Talk
00:06:58
|
||
| Like physical beating, Randy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And then once that's over, would he take that or would he take the sentence that he's got right now? | ||
| Maybe he just takes a month's worth of caning, you know, once a day or something like that, and then he can deal back out. | ||
| You're advocating for instituting caning a corporal punishment? | ||
| That's what we used to do all the time. | ||
| Didn't have prisons for these people. | ||
| They had stockades, stockyards, out in public. | ||
| They'd hang people in public. | ||
| They would fine them sometimes, things like that. | ||
| But we didn't keep them in prisons very long. | ||
| We didn't have them many, many years ago. | ||
| Do you think we're better off at the time where we were hanging people in public for crimes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| We're better, not better off today. | ||
| No, we were better off then hanging people in public and executing them where people can see what happens when you do capital punishment and you do things like that. | ||
| It makes a tremendous thing. | ||
| But what I was calling about, if I could, I was kind of disappointed in you with the Baptist pastor that called from Louisiana and you were asking him things that they were talking about. | ||
| And he was a corporation and they're not supposed to talk about the things that he said that they talk about. | ||
| Now, my church, we talk about abortions, homosexuals, transgenders. | ||
| We go out and try to get people elected and all things like that. | ||
| And actually they don't tell us what we can and can't do. | ||
| We pay all of our taxes. | ||
| Randy, what churches are associated with the government? | ||
| It's not something that we do in this country. | ||
| All of them that are 501c3 corporations. | ||
| You know that, John. | ||
| You're talking about nonprofits, the nonprofit status of churches? | ||
| They're all corporations they've got to follow. | ||
| In order to get that nonprofit status, they have to follow the will and the orders of the government. | ||
| And there's about 30 different things. | ||
| I could pull up the list and go through them with you someday. | ||
| But you can't talk about political and social issues. | ||
| You can't talk about abortion, pornography. | ||
| You can't talk about homosexuality, all those things that you're not allowed to talk about. | ||
| So I guess what you're advocating for, Randy, is revoking the nonprofit status of churches in this country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Amen. | |
| And then there is a separation of church and state. | ||
| Right now, the state owns all churches that are corporations that get that nonprofit status. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| That's Randy. | ||
| This is Gilbert in the Buckeye State Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
| I haven't spoken to you for over two and a half months, but I enjoy you because you're just good. | ||
| You're the best. | ||
| But anyway, I just wanted to talk to make a statement in regards to, I vote every four years for president and I go along with it. | ||
| I'm just a common sense person, and we deal with what happens every four years. | ||
| So Trump, Obama, you name them all. | ||
| I still deal with it. | ||
| Are you there? | ||
| Yeah, Governor, who'd you vote for in 2024? | ||
| 2024 voted for Trump. | ||
| Who'd you vote for in 2020? | ||
| Trump. | ||
| Who'd you vote for? | ||
| Who'd you vote for? | ||
| Because he had a business mentality only. | ||
| I don't get involved with what he did in his other life, but his brain is totally business. | ||
| And people will listen to it and understand what it takes to be business. | ||
| I hear people talking about he filed bankruptcy and all that, but that's business bankruptcies he's done. | ||
| You're allowed to file bankruptcy. | ||
| Please. | ||
| Who'd you vote for in 2016? | ||
| 2016. | ||
| Who'd I vote for 20? | ||
| I said Trump. | ||
| Wait a minute. | ||
| Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump. | ||
| Clinton, Donald Trump. | ||
| Who'd you vote for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Who'd you vote for in 2008? | ||
| You're talking 2008. | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| My mind. | ||
| I get flustered when I'm talking on this. | ||
| This is only the third time I've talked. | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| I can't answer you. | ||
| No, I was just going back. | ||
| You talk about I always vote for the president by the president. | ||
| Before I hang up, I would like you to add a phone called Common Sense because you had some guys, four people that spoke yesterday that were fantastic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Huh? | |
| I appreciate that, Governor. | ||
| I hope you keep listening and listening to other callers as well. | ||
| This is Janet in Tucson, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Listening to all the callers, I can feel that we do need age limits on our presidency. | ||
| We need to be 30 at the bottom and 70 at the top because all these people over 70 are challenged, and I'm one of those people. | ||
| I'm 82. | ||
| So I'm just thinking, I want Americans not to fall for this division of throwing hate to each other and making it so much worse. | ||
| This president has cast a depressing shadow on America, and we need to stick together and hope for peace. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's all I have to say. | |
| Janet, who do you want to see run for president in 2028? | ||
| I think Gabby Gifford's husband, I think he would be a great president, and they're picking on him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're picking on the wrong people in our society. | |
| Why do you like Mark Kelly? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because he's so powerful with his mind, and he has been so strong for his wife. | |
| And I just really think that he's just a great man. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That is Janet's in Tucson, Arizona, the Associated Press story about the latest on Mark Kelly when it comes to his lawsuit against the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. | ||
| Democrat Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona said Tuesday that the Pentagon's escalating investigation into his remarks urging troops to refuse unlawful orders as part of an effort to silence dissent within the military. | ||
|
Sending Messages to Service Members
00:15:37
|
||
| The story going on to say this is just about sending a message to retired service members, active duty service members, government employees, do not speak out against this president or there will be consequences. | ||
| That's what Kelly told reporters after a defense briefing from the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and others talking about the strikes in Venezuela. | ||
| That's the story in the Associated Press. | ||
| This is Sharon in Bemidji, Minnesota. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| Thanks for always keeping us so informed. | ||
| I love it when you're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm from Minnesota, so I'm going to talk a little bit about Minnesota, and really not Minnesota, but just what's happening in Minnesota. | |
| It's probably going to get teary because it's just so you all can guess who I'm talking about. | ||
| So we have some plainclothes secret police who use brutal force tactics. | ||
| Their central role is implementing a racist policy. | ||
| They are not subject to judicial review. | ||
| Their mission is to protect the regime. | ||
| They neutralize all political and ideological opponents, like socialist gays, immigrants. | ||
| They forcibly take innocent people from their families. | ||
| They knock elderly people to the ground. | ||
| They shoot people point blank. | ||
| They create state terror. | ||
| And they act outside the rule of the law. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And you all probably think that I'm talking about ICE, right? | |
| I'm actually talking about the Gestapo. | ||
| Hello. | ||
| It's so real what is happening in Minnesota right now and across this country with ICE. | ||
| And Don, I'm hoping that the next time that you're on, because I think that you guys kind of get to pick the people that you bring on. | ||
| But there is a lot of talk right now about who is ICE? | ||
| Like, who are these ICE agents? | ||
| Because I'm hearing that they are like non-trained crowdboys or like the old IDF from Israel. | ||
| That is some pretty scary stuff. | ||
| Sharon, have you ever met somebody, maybe not somebody who works in my, do you know people who work in law enforcement? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My son-in-law is a police officer who has moved up the rank six times since he has been. | |
| I don't want to tell you the city, but I'll tell you the state in North Dakota. | ||
| He's only been there for six years and he has moved up the rank seven times. | ||
| I am so proud of my son-in-law. | ||
| He blows my mind. | ||
| Have you talked to him about what happened? | ||
| I have. | ||
| And how does that conversation go? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He is totally on my side. | |
| He is on the side of right. | ||
| He doesn't believe the way that ICE is behaving, performing their so-called duties is right. | ||
| It is not the way that law is trying to do their job. | ||
| And like he's trusted the law. | ||
| They love it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They go out. | |
| They have parades. | ||
| He's in parades. | ||
| He's biking. | ||
| It's crazy what he has got this community. | ||
| I wish I could tell you which city it is, but then everybody would know exactly who I am talking about. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I can't give him up. | |
| That's okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So happy birthday to him on Friday. | |
| But my last point with this whole Gestapo business right here in River City with their leader, Heinrich Heimel. | ||
| Remember that name? | ||
| AKA, Christine Noam. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| That's Sharon in Minnesota. | ||
| Alice in New York, Republican. | ||
| Good morning to you. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll be quick. | |
| So I'm the Romney Republican, and I would like to see Mark Kelly run for president. | ||
| He's a moderate. | ||
| He's strong on immigration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
These people who call in, like George and somebody yesterday said the older women, they don't know why they believe in Trump, but they listen to Fox News all day. | |
| And I used to listen to Fox News. | ||
| And then one day I realized, wow, this is so slanted, and they don't give the other side. | ||
| It's very easy to just become uninformed if you constantly listen to that news station. | ||
| And even after everything Trump did, trying to steal the election, the latest stunt, putting a gun at the head of the Venezuelan president and saying, you better do what I want, bombing all of these countries, pardoning the Ecuadorian president who said he's going to stuff the Coke up the nose of the gringos. | ||
| It's just incredible. | ||
| After every single thing, people still believe in him. | ||
| And I'm a Republican, but I think Obama was one of the best presidents. | ||
| He sent back the most illegals, and I'm really for a strong border. | ||
| But it's just incredible how people just still believe in Trump after everything he did. | ||
| And those pictures in the drawer that they released, I saw the body habitats of those girls. | ||
| They look like they were 16 years old. | ||
| And it's not a far stretch to think that Trump would do something after all of the sexual abuse he's done, all of the sexual things saying he could grab women. | ||
| I mean, people don't believe that he didn't do something with those young girls. | ||
| It's just incredible. | ||
| That's Alice in New York. | ||
| You started your comments by mentioning that you would like to see Mark Kelly run for president. | ||
| Senator Mark Kelly, as we mentioned before, filing that lawsuit against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth yesterday after filing the lawsuit, he took to the floor of the Senate. | ||
| Message to every retired member of the military. | ||
| If you speak out and say something that the president and secretary of defense doesn't like, you will be censured, threatened with demotion, or even prosecuted. | ||
| Every service member knows that military rank is earned. | ||
| It's not given. | ||
| It's earned through the risks you take, the sacrifices you and your family make, the leadership you display, and the respect you earn from the superiors who recommend you for promotion. | ||
| After my 25 years of service, I earned my rank as a captain in the United States Navy. | ||
| Now, Pete Hegseth wants even our longest-serving military veterans to live with the constant threat that they could be deprived of their rank and retirement pay years or even decades after they leave the military just because he or another Secretary of Defense or a president doesn't like what they've said. | ||
| If Pete Hegset succeeds in silencing me, then he and every other Secretary of Defense who comes after him will have license to punish any retired veteran of any political persuasion for the things that they say. | ||
| Senator Mark Kelly on the floor of the Senate. | ||
| That was yesterday. | ||
| The Senate will be back in session today at 10 a.m. in just about a half an hour from now. | ||
| You can watch that on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| The House also returns at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| You can watch that here on C-SPAN on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| Today, having to do with state transgender sports bans, you can listen to those cases again on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| And in about 15 minutes, we'll be joined by Zach Shemtaub of SCODIS Blog to give you a preview of those cases. | ||
| Until then, it's open forum. | ||
| 202748-8000 for any public policy issue or political issue that you want to talk about on the Democratic line. | ||
| 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8002 for independents. | ||
| Republican Nate, Las Vegas. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
| Wow, this is a smorgasbord of topics over the last 10 callers. | ||
| It's open forum. | ||
| It goes like that, Nate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I got you. | |
| All right, here we go. | ||
| First of all, it's Department of War, okay? | ||
| And Kelly should be tried for treason, period. | ||
| This is just unacceptable. | ||
| As far as I hope the Supreme Court does the great thing today, and I'm pretty sure they will. | ||
| I'm pretty sure that common sense is going to be applied. | ||
| So the action today is just the argument. | ||
| The decision will be a while down the road. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I understand. | ||
| And I think it's going to be the best thing to happen for the Democrats, probably a couple months before the election and say, yeah, you know, men shouldn't be in women's sports. | ||
| It'll be the best thing that ever happened to the Democrats, which, you know, you have the spiritual life. | ||
| And if you truly believe in being a good person, everything else falls in line. | ||
| I mean, I believe that it should be, you know, God and then the country and then your family to take care of business. | ||
| And I think most American men, they like to say Trump. | ||
| It should always be the president, period. | ||
| Whether they like him or don't like him, it should always be President Trump. | ||
| Is that how you felt about Democrats, Biden? | ||
| Is that how you felt? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Absolutely. | ||
| And, you know, we got this immigration problem because of Biden. | ||
| He ignored the Constitution. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay? | |
| And I hope Congress can come up with some way. | ||
| We got to get rid of these people some way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We got to get rid of them. | |
| The millions that came in, you know, they ignored the Constitution to let them in. | ||
| And now the Democrats are saying, oh, well, you can't do this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's against the Constitution. | |
| I mean, it's just not common sense. | ||
| So we got to get a little, we're going to have to get a little bit tougher in this country over the next maybe five years. | ||
| Things are going to change big time. | ||
| Artificial intelligence is going to change everything. | ||
| I mean, it's just, we're on the verge of just a whole new, you know, I saw Elon Musk yesterday, you know, talking about, you know, to go where no man's never gone. | ||
| I mean, we're going to be out there exploring space pretty soon. | ||
| I mean, Star Trek is going to become a reality. | ||
| People are going to have to start realizing that we're in a whole different, we're going to have to unite as a world, you know, eventually. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| That's Nate. | ||
| In Las Vegas, you mentioned President Trump and the issue of immigration. | ||
| This was the president on his Truth Social page less than an hour ago. | ||
| This is a bit of a lengthy post. | ||
| He's up and truthing, as they call it, this morning. | ||
| This is what he writes. | ||
| Do the people of Minnesota really want to live in a community in which there are thousands of already convicted murderers, drug dealers, and addicts, rapists, violent released and escaped prisoners, dangerous people from foreign mental institutions and insane asylums, and other deadly criminals too dangerous to even mention. | ||
| All the patriots of ICE want to do is remove them for your neighborhood and send them back to the prisons and mental institutions from where they came most in foreign countries, he says, who illegally entered the USA through Sleepy Joe Biden's horrible, in all caps, open border policy. | ||
| He goes on to say, every place we go, crime comes down in Chicago despite a weak and incompetent governor and mayor fighting us all the way. | ||
| A big improvement was made. | ||
| Thousands of criminals were removed. | ||
| He says, Minnesota Democrats love the unrest that anarchist and professional agitators are causing because it gets the spotlight off the $19 billion that was stolen by really bad and deranged people. | ||
| And then, in all caps, to end the post, fear not, great people of Minnesota, the day of reckoning and retribution is coming. | ||
| That was the president's 8:40 a.m. Eastern earlier today. | ||
| This is Susan in the Volunteer State Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| I like the last two women's comments. | ||
| I totally agree. | ||
| I would vote for Mark Kelly to be president. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But the thing that gets me is this TDS stuff. | |
| There is no such thing as TDS. | ||
| He's he's what, Susan? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I'm sorry. | |
| I thought you couldn't hear me. | ||
| He's distracting from the Epstein files, which is very important. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He was screaming on the phone. | |
| That's how he lost his voice. | ||
| Talking about, I don't care if you have to start a war. | ||
| And that's exactly what he's doing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Release the files. | |
| Susan, how focused were you on the Epstein files during the Biden administration? | ||
| Well, not very much. | ||
| I believe they were under seal, weren't they? | ||
| In terms of releasing the files, did you feel like the files needed to be released then? | ||
| And the only reason I ask is because Republicans will say that these files all of a sudden became very important for Democrats when Donald Trump became president, but when it was the Biden administration's responsibility, Democrats didn't care as much about them. | ||
| Do you feel that way? | ||
| Is that true for you? | ||
| Well, we didn't hear about it, number one, and Trump ran on it. | ||
| That was very important that he let that be known. | ||
| And now, all of a sudden, but the senator that created TDS, I believe he got caught and arrested for trying to diddle a 17-year-old woman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So there's that. | |
| Susan in Tennessee. | ||
| This is Dennis in Wisconsin Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking your call from someone incarcerated today. | ||
| Kudos for that. | ||
| This country's prison system. | ||
| We have a county jail here in Wisconsin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And after GM and Parker Penn and everybody else left town, our local county jail is probably one of the biggest sources of revenue we have left. | |
| And we are number five. | ||
| When you say sources of revenue, do you mean biggest employer? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pretty much, yeah. | |
| And revenue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I'm sorry. | |
| The fines. | ||
| You know, there's a book, Seven Weeks to Sobriety by Joan Larson, one of the most important books for anyone who has an alcohol problem. | ||
| And allegedly, Wisconsin has one. | ||
| We're a lot of Scott, Irish, German, you know, Milwaukee, Wisconsin drinks, and 80% of us can. | ||
| The legislation we have crafted by the, we are the fifth largest. | ||
| Look up insurance companies, and we are the fifth largest state in terms of domicile insurance companies in the state, and they lobby and write the legislation that we have. | ||
|
Probable Cause Controversy
00:04:51
|
||
| It's not good legislation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I ended up being incarcerated here for an alleged third DUI that I fought and lost. | |
| I've never been pulled over for probable cause, but the blood alcohol thing is, you know, it's a tip. | ||
| I've never had an accident. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've never been pulled over for probable cause, but below 0.08, and it's going to cost you. | |
| I ended up incarcerating that. | ||
| Is the argument that you're making that the blood alcohol level that you're arrested on should be higher in this country? | ||
| Yeah, I believe so. | ||
| That we shouldn't arrest people for drunk driving. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I didn't say that. | |
| Drunk driving, if you're drunk drive, I have never been told of a probable cause. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sort of a drink and drink. | |
| It means I've never violated a traffic law while drinking. | ||
| It means I grew up in this state. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've been drinking since I was 14, and I can drink and drive. | |
| And if I'm breaking the law, yes. | ||
| But if I have a taillight out and I don't know about it and I'm 08, excuse me. | ||
| Dennis, do you trust? | ||
| You seem to trust your own driving skills. | ||
| Do you trust other people's driving skills under the influence? | ||
| You're twisting this here, okay? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I live in a state where people drink and drive, and 80% of them can. | |
| If you're violating the law, yes. | ||
| If you put somebody at risk, if you're hit and run and you're a criminal, absolutely. | ||
| But if there's no probable cause here, okay, if you are driving and obeying the traffic laws, you shouldn't be rousted and incarcerated, okay? | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| That's Dennis. | ||
| This is Joanne in Connecticut, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I think President Trump is doing a fantastic job. | |
| Under Biden, the inflation was transitory. | ||
| It rose up to 22%. | ||
| We're digging ourselves out of a hole of what the Biden administration did. | ||
| They didn't follow the Constitution by allowing millions of people into our country and telling us that the border was closed. | ||
| I don't understand the blue states who refuse to turn over these violent criminals to ICE on a retainer. | ||
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They're repeated offenders. | |
| And I don't understand it. | ||
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Are you really want pedophiles, rapists, and murderers in your neighborhood? | |
| This is who you're fighting for and not the American citizen? | ||
| That's Joanne in Connecticut. | ||
| This is Steve back in the Badger State of Wisconsin, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Yeah, I've been listening to a lot of what some of the people are saying. | ||
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My original reason for calling was this witch hunt going after that Hegset and Trump are using right now, going after the people that spoke out against unlawful orders. | |
| If either one of them would just consult the UCMJ, it's in there that not only are you allowed legally to refuse unlawful orders, you are bound by your oath to ignore them. | ||
| And if you want a prime example of an illegal order, a little history, remember me lie? | ||
| Anybody? | ||
| Come on now, folks. | ||
| Just because you're following the law, you should not be prosecuted just for some petty vengeance because you're not doing what the emperor in the Oval Office is trying to push down your throat. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| That's Steve in Wisconsin. | ||
| About 15 minutes left here in this morning's Washington Journal. | ||
| We mentioned at 10 a.m. Eastern over on C-SPAN 3. | ||
| We'll be able to listen to the oral arguments that are taking place at the Supreme Court today. | ||
|
Supreme Court Transgender Sports Cases
00:09:00
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| It is one, it's a pair of cases that are part of seven arguments over the next 10 days as part of the January argument session at the Supreme Court for much more on this. | ||
| We are joined by Zach Shemtab of SCODIS Blog. | ||
| C-SPAM viewers, very familiar with Zach Shemtab. | ||
| Mr. Shemtop, thanks for the time this morning, another busy day at the court. | ||
| Walk us through these cases on transgender sports, transgenders in sports, where they can participate, transgender women can participate in women's and girls' sports. | ||
| What are the basis of these cases and what we know about before we listen to these arguments? | ||
| Yeah, very glad to be here. | ||
| So there are two separate cases, Little versus Hetcox and West Virginia versus BPJ. | ||
| These concern laws in Idaho and West Virginia banning the participation of transgender women and girls on women's and girls' sports teams in public school. | ||
| So there are currently around 27 states concentrated in the South and Midwest that have similar such laws, though they vary on their extent. | ||
| The Idaho law was passed in 2020. | ||
| It was actually the first of its kind. | ||
| It's called the Fairness in Women's Sports Act. | ||
| And the West Virginia law was passed in 2021. | ||
| It's the Save Women's Sports Act. | ||
| And so you have these two challengers now saying that these laws are both unconstitutional and in violation of what's called Title IX, which is a federal civil rights law passed in 1972. | ||
| And then how much has the Supreme Court dealt with not only Title IX issues in the past, but the issue of transgender rights in this country? | ||
| So the transgender rights issue, you had relatively recent cases. | ||
| So the first one was Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice Roberts. | ||
| And the majority held that a transgender employee is firing under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which has similar language to Title IX, which is what we're dealing with here, that essentially Title VII barred employment discrimination because of sex, and transgender fit into that. | ||
| So Gorsuch actually said it's impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex, and therefore it violated the statute. | ||
| Turning to the Equal Protection Clause, more recently, last term actually, in a case called United States versus Scrum Eddie, Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Justice Gorsuch, voted against the transgender challengers or transgender folks in that case, finding that Tennessee's ban on certain forms of medical treatment for transgender minors was not unconstitutional. | ||
| It did not violate equal protection. | ||
| So what are you going to be watching for listening for when we get to listen to this case in about 14 minutes from now? | ||
| What will be the sort of the tea leaves to read? | ||
| So that's a great question. | ||
| The main justice to watch is Justice Gorsuch. | ||
| And I think the reason there is Justice Gorsuch, you know, made clear in the Bostock case that, you know, according to a statute, discrimination based on sex includes transgender individuals. | ||
| And one could argue in this case, in these cases, that these folks are being discriminated against because they're transgender and therefore based on sex. | ||
| So Gorsuch could be sympathetic to that argument. | ||
| On the other hand, you also have the equal protection claim. | ||
| And in the Equal Protection case, Gorsuch was not as sympathetic to such arguments, although he and the chief and the majority did not ultimately decide on how that played into transgender individuals. | ||
| So Gorsuch, I think, is really the justice to watch here, followed by the Chief Justice. | ||
| One can watch Kavanaugh, although I would think Justice Kavanaugh is likely to write a more narrow opinion. | ||
| And then Barrett as well. | ||
| But I think as for the rest of the justices, I think one can predict where they're going to go. | ||
| Justices Thomas and Alito are probably going to be very skeptical of the claims of the transgender athletes. | ||
| And Sotamoy Kagan and Jackson are likely to be much more sympathetic to them. | ||
| And then the mechanics folks who will be listening to this, what are the mechanics of how this argument will take place? | ||
| Will these cases be argued separately? | ||
| Are they combined? | ||
| Who's doing the arguing? | ||
| So originally, the first one is going to be HECOX, and that's going to take place for approximately an hour. | ||
| The court always gives an hour of time for these cases, but then it usually stretches more from that. | ||
| And then the West Virginia case is going to be argued after that. | ||
| I just want to say it's probably important for listeners to realize that in terms of the HECOX case, there's a little bit of a twist in that the challenger, Lindsay Heckox, has actually said that this case is done. | ||
| HECOX withdrew the case for a number of reasons and saying that the court shouldn't even hear it. | ||
| So I think that first hour may be spent on, well, is it appropriate to drop this case? | ||
| What should the justices do in that regard? | ||
| Where the second hour, which is the BPPJ case, is going to be more focused on the merits or the substance of the matter. | ||
| If the challenger says the case is done, why would it go forward? | ||
| So, I mean, there are still very important issues in play. | ||
| So when it was initially brought, these issues still remain in terms of the statute itself and how the statute can be challenged. | ||
| And so the justices said, you know, we want to hear that. | ||
| And the government, by the way, opposed the withdrawal and said these important interests are still in play. | ||
| The court said, okay, we recognize what both sides are saying here. | ||
| We'll make that decision after oral argument. | ||
| And then in terms of when we're going to get a decision on these cases, are these cases that go until late June or even into very early July? | ||
| It's a great question. | ||
| I would predict, given how there are two cases and how complicated they may end up being, that we're looking at the end of June. | ||
| Although one, I think, theme of this term has been the court decides whenever it wants to. | ||
| And then what else should we be watching for this week in terms of this slew of cases in this January argument session before the court? | ||
| I mean, not necessarily this week, but next week, there's a very important case of Trump v. Cook, which is the case of the Federal Reserve removing an officer of, excuse me, removing a commissioner of the Federal Reserve. | ||
| Obviously, that has become an even more important issue given the developments of the last few days. | ||
| So that case is going to certainly generate a lot of interest. | ||
| Also, there's going to be an announcement of oral arguments, excuse me, of opinions tomorrow. | ||
| We don't know if that means we're going to get, for instance, the Voting Rights Act or even the tariffs case, but that's going to obviously generate a lot of interest since those cases are pending and they're quite important. | ||
| And for folks who don't follow the court quite as closely, why would they announce decisions if we don't know what decisions they're going to announce? | ||
| Just explain how a decision day works versus an argument day. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So again, another good question. | ||
| So the way the court does not announce greatly in advance when it's going to announce a particular decision, and it never says what decision is going to be announced. | ||
| So you don't know coming in, unless it's the very end of the term and there's one or two cases left, that otherwise you don't know what opinions, what decisions are going to be announced. | ||
| So what ends up happening is like a few days, two to three days before an announcement is to take place, the court puts on its website that it is going to perhaps announce some opinions. | ||
| Everyone then realizes, okay, we need to get ready for that. | ||
| The day of at around 10 a.m., the court then announces those opinions to the public. | ||
| But again, you know, journalists, Supreme Court aficionados, no one has any idea what opinions those will be until the justices actually release them. | ||
| You mentioned Supreme Court aficionados. | ||
| They're all Supreme Court aficionados at SCOTUS Blog. | ||
| That's where Zach Shemtab is the executive editor. | ||
| SCODUSBLOG.com is where you can go. | ||
| We always appreciate your help and your good work to keep us apprised of what's going on at the court. | ||
| Really appreciate it and glad to have been here. | ||
| Less than 10 minutes left before the House comes in. | ||
| We will end in your phone calls and open forum. | ||
| 202-748-8000 for Democrats to call. | ||