C-SPAN’s Washington Journal (01/26/2026) examines Minnesota’s fatal ICE shootings—Governor Tim Wall accuses 3,000 "untrained" agents of violating state law, while DHS claims Alex Predty (a VA nurse) brandished a gun, contradicted by videos. Callers clash over election interference, with Democrats warning of voter suppression via subpoenaed voter rolls and Republicans defending ICE tactics amid backlash. Andrew Roth (The Guardian) and Stephanie Bolzon (VELT) reveal Trump’s rhetoric strains U.S.-Europe ties, from NATO criticism to Greenland comments, while Canada’s Mark Carney warns of a "rupture" in global order. The episode ends with midterm election stakes, funding deadlines, and NASA’s Artemis revival, framing ICE controversies as part of broader democratic tensions. [Automatically generated summary]
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Coming up on Washington Journal this morning, along with your calls and comments live, we'll discuss the 2026 midterm elections and factors that could determine who controls the House and Senate with Cook Political Report Senior Editor David Wasserman.
And then White House reporter for The Hill, Julia Manchester, will preview the week ahead at the White House.
And global affairs correspondent for The Guardian, Andrew Roth, and North America editor for Velt, Stephanie Bolzon, on U.S.-European relations in the Trump administration.
State and local officials in Minnesota are continuing their calls for federal immigration agents to withdraw from the state following the second fatal shooting there and ongoing community pushback against the actions of immigration and customs enforcement.
This morning, we want to hear your thoughts on whether the federal immigration crackdown is making cities safer or less safe.
Our phone line for Democrats is 202-748-8000.
For Republicans, 202-748-8001.
And for Independents, 202-748-8002.
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We're also on social media at facebook.com slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
Now, for the latest on what's been happening in Minnesota, here's an article from the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Minnesota is in uncharted territory as state feds clash over the shooting of Alex Predi.
State leaders successfully sued the Trump administration to force it to preserve evidence in the fatal shooting of Alex Predi.
The story going on to say that the killing of a Minneapolis man by federal agents is escalating a standoff between state and federal officials over the Trump administration's massive deportation operation in Minnesota, prompting tense and urgent debates over federal jurisdiction and the rule of law.
In the wake of Alex Predty's killing on Saturday, Minnesota leaders sounded alarms about federal agents violating Minnesota law while they carry out Operation Metro Surge.
A federal judge ordered Trump administration officials not to destroy evidence related to the shooting after the Hennepin County Attorney's Office and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension filed a lawsuit to preserve crime scene materials.
Here's Minnesota Governor Tim Wall speaking yesterday about the ongoing conflict.
If it was the intention of Donald Trump to make an example of Minnesota, then I'm damn proud of the example that the world's seeing.
We believe in law and order in this state.
We believe in peace.
And we believe that Donald Trump needs to pull these 3,000 untrained agents out of Minnesota before they kill another person.
And we're up here telling another story of a Minnesotan just trying to live their life without the interference.
To Americans who are watching this right now, and I don't know, maybe you're watching it with curiosity, bewilderment, horror, scorn, or sympathy, I've got a question for all of you.
What side do you want to be on?
The side of an all-powerful federal government that can kill, injure, menace, and kidnap its citizens off the streets?
Or on the side of a nurse at the VA hospital who died bearing witness to such government?
Or the side of a mother whose last words were, I'm not mad at you.
The side of tens of thousands of peaceful citizens who showed up to march when the windshield was 40 below because they love this state and they love this country.
You're allowed to decide at any point that you're not with this anymore.
If you voted for this administration, heck, even if you thought Operation Metro Surge was a good idea, sounded like the thing to do a month ago, you're still allowed to look at what's happening here in Minnesota and say, this isn't what I voted for and this isn't what I want.
I ask you not to stand by idly, speak out, share what you're seeing, and urge others to put politics aside.
Now, prior to the shooting of Alex Predty, there was some polling on how Americans think about these immigration enforcement actions and whether or not they make cities more or less safe.
Half of Americans, according to a CNN poll, think ICE is making U.S. cities less safe.
51% say that it's making cities less safe.
31% say it's making cities more safe.
And 18% say that it has no impact at all.
Now then, FBI Director Kash Patel was on Fox News yesterday responding to this latest fatal shooting at the hands of federal agents.
Now, groups, including the NRA as well as gun owners of America, have pushed back against those statements by the FBI director.
Meanwhile, there's an exclusive in the Wall Street Journal this morning, an exclusive interview with the president, where Trump says the administration is reviewing everything about the Minneapolis shooting.
In an interview, the president says immigration enforcement officers will at some point leave the area.
This article going on to say, President Trump declined to say whether the federal officer who fatally shot a man in Minnesota this weekend had acted appropriately and said the administration was reviewing the incident.
In a five-minute telephone interview with the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Trump didn't directly answer when asked twice whether the officer who shot Alex Predty had done the right thing.
Pressed further, the president said, We're looking, we're reviewing everything, and we'll come out with a determination.
Administration officials have publicly defended the officer.
The president criticized Predty, the 37-year-old who was killed by a federal border patrol agent Saturday morning on a Minneapolis street for carrying a gun during protest activity.
Again, our question this morning is whether you think federal immigration crack, the federal immigration crackdown, is making cities safer or less safe.
We'll start with William in West Virginia on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, William.
Go ahead, William.
unidentified
Okay, thank you.
You know, I've kind of got a mixed feelings with it.
I don't really think anybody, you know, celebrates anybody losing their life.
But I think it's failed leadership.
I really think that's what it boils down to.
The rhetoric is just extremely high.
And I think the data probably does show that, you know, the streets are safer, but with the rhetoric, with laws, fraud, and the Attorney General, I mean, they are just blowing it up.
I mean, they should be helping ICE out.
They should be blocking streets off to where, I mean, just for example, if I'm driving down the road in West Virginia, that's where I'm from, and I see a young lady I know that's pulled over.
If I stop, especially armed, if I stop and start harassing the officer, I'm going to die.
You know, we have classes when we're in eighth grade here.
You know, a lot of us know that prior to that.
So, you know, it's a shame, but I think if you had some assistance from the, you know, the state and local governments, you know, we wouldn't be having this situation.
We'd be talking about the fraud, you know, in their state and not killings.
You had a lady on yesterday from LA, and she was spot on.
Everything she said, you know, was spot on about the data and how young black men are getting swallowed up by the immigrants.
You know, and so, William, you mentioned everybody.
This individual showed up to an law enforcement operation with a weapon and dozens of rounds of ammunition.
He wasn't there to peacefully protest.
He was there to perpetuate violence.
And he was asked to show up and to continue to resist by a governor who's irresponsible and has a long history of corruption and lying.
And we won't stand for it anymore.
These law enforcement officers take an oath.
They get up every single day and they go out to protect the public.
Many of these individuals live in their communities.
And this mayor and this governor have doxxed them.
They have allowed people to threaten them and their families and expose their identities in order to instill fear and violence.
And that's not what America is about.
We're going to continue to tell the truth about Minnesota, Minneapolis, what happened here, the theft over the last many years that these leaders have facilitated.
And we're going to continue to do our work to get to the bottom of the investigations.
The one question you should be asking is: the mayor, the governor, and the attorney general have all confirmed that they have been subpoenaed to come in front of a criminal federal grand jury.
So they are covering up and are being a part of a system where they are going to be brought to justice for anything that they had to do with this investigation.
They have confirmed they've been subpoenaed, and they will be in front of a grand jury to get that criminal investigation unfolding and to disclose the kind of fraud that they have allowed to happen.
The president's speech in Europe, and this is about immigration, that was the most racist speech by a world leader since Hitler, slamming Europe for becoming more diverse and less white.
His words, not my opinion, that was his words in his speech.
You know, on the Statue of Liberty, it says, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
So, Rob, excuse me, Rob, I just want to make sure that I give folks some context for what you mentioned at the top of your comment about the president's statements at Davos.
This is a summary and an opinion piece in The Guardian, but it does include, I believe, the quote that you're referencing where the president in 2024 complained that we have a lot of bad genes in our country right now.
But in this particular comment from in certain places in Europe that are not even recognizable anymore, blaming culprits that included unchecked mass migration.
It's horrible what they're doing to themselves.
They're destroying themselves, these beautiful places.
We want strong allies, not weakened ones.
He talked about Minnesota, and he said, the situation in Minnesota reminds us that the West cannot mass import foreign cultures which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own.
And there he was talking about Somalia, which he called a failed, it's not a nation, got no government, got no police, got nothing, although Somalia does have all of those things.
But those were some of the sections of the speech that I believe our caller was referencing.
Alan is in Stanley, Virginia, on our line for independence.
They either pepper sprayed or gas sprayed a car with a family in it coming back from a school activity where the six-month-old baby had to be taken to the hospital because the baby couldn't breathe.
Or the people outside of the car assisting the family inside the car to get out.
ICE didn't have anything to do with it.
unidentified
They gassed him up, but they wouldn't take him out.
So ICE needs to be abolished, as far as I'm concerned.
And as far as them going after people who should not be in this country, they're going to court and taking people out of as they're trying to either go in and do what they need to do, or they're coming out from trying to do what they've already needed to do.
Let's reserve and let's let an investigation take place and see what really happens.
And if ICE was in the wrong, yes, they should be held accountable.
But none of this would happen if you weren't resisting ICE.
And if people are getting caught up that are here and they're trying to assimilate and they're trying to work because the local police are told if they have a criminal in custody, ICE cannot go and get them.
But while we have the topic, well, Cindy was calling in from Connecticut.
We have a piece of tape I'll play in just a moment from Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
But he's responding to the story highlighted here.
Pam Bondi offers to pull ICE out of Minneapolis if voter files are handed over.
It says U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz demanding the state take three specific actions before federal immigration agents would consider reducing their presence in Minneapolis, including handing over voter rolls.
In the letter, Bondi blamed both state and local leaders for the unrest that has come in response to the Trump administration's immigration enforcement operations.
She said that Walls could restore the rule of law.
The letter comes after a Border Patrol agent shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Predty, a 37-year-old ICU nurse during a federal immigration enforcement operation.
And as I mentioned, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut was reacting to Attorney General Bondi's demands to get ICE agents out of Minnesota by handing over voter rolls.
But Donald Trump has made it clear that he intends to try to interfere in the upcoming 2026 election.
He says that his one regret from 2020 was that he didn't take the voting machines.
And it is really alarming that in this letter, Bondi says, well, we'll get the ICE officers out of Minneapolis if you give us control of your voter lists.
It has always been, I think, the fear, and now I think closer to the reality, that the Trump administration is creating this mayhem, particularly in cities in swing states, in order to take control of the election, to say, oh, the city's out of control.
The state's out of control.
You can't trust the state government.
We just need to run the election in November.
I know to some people that may sound a little conspiratorial, but Trump has told you over and over again that he regrets that he didn't interfere in the prior election.
And this letter seems pretty definitive proof that they are trying to trade the presence of ICE and the murder and mayhem that they are causing for control of Minnesota's elections.
Robert is in Barnwell, South Carolina, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Robert.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I hear all of these people call in and talk about reading a book about the history.
Well, I'm a 743-year-old man.
I've done 20 years in this United States Army.
My mama gave three sons to the Vietnam War: me, my brother, who is dead now, and my other brother, who died over there for a man who refused to go five times.
Now, they shoot a veteran, a nurse who was helping the VA veterans.
And I can't even get the VA to take care of me.
So they just took out a person who was helping veterans.
So when these people come on here and talk about veterans, don't thank me for my service.
Prove it.
Prove it.
And the gentleman, I like to just say this: the gentleman that called in and said, oh, if I was driving down the state of West Virginia and I saw a state trooper with a car pull over, I got out and said something, I asked him this: if he saw a state trooper with someone pull over with a mask on, would he keep on going?
And if he said he would, I wouldn't want him in my space anyway.
And another thing, I would not want him to be with me in any combat situation there is.
Robert, I want to read the statement that came from the Predi family that specifically references Alex Predi's work with the VA hospital.
The families issued a statement saying, We are heartbroken, but also very angry.
Alex was a kind-hearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends, and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA Hospital.
Alex wanted to make a difference in this world.
Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact.
I do not throw around the hero term lightly.
However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman.
The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting.
Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump's murdering and cowardly ICE thugs.
He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed.
Please get the truth out about our son.
He was a good man.
Thank you.
Back to your calls on whether you think this immigration crackdown is making cities safer or less safe.
Gordon is in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Gordon.
unidentified
Good morning.
Yeah, I think it would be helping to make cities safe if the federal officers wouldn't be having all this resistance and chaos.
I mean, how are you supposed to go in and arrest somebody when you got hundreds of people in the streets throwing stuff at you and spitting on you?
I mean, I don't understand it.
If I had anything to say about it, I would declare martial law on the state of Minnesota and bring in the military.
And anybody that violates the curfew of the martial law gets arrested and taken away.
Therefore, the streets are empty, and they can go and they can pick up whoever they want out of the jail, out of the homes, wherever these people are at, they'd be able to do it if there was a curfew.
And those that don't want to abide by the curfew can get arrested right along with the illegals.
And I think the state government is any state government that doesn't turn over a criminal that they have in their county jails to the federal officers, I believe, are breaking the law.
You don't release a criminal that has a warrant out form or needs to be questioned by ICE.
You don't turn them loose out into the city streets to harm the public again.
unidentified
And that's exactly what a lot of these states and counties are doing.
And I think it's against the law.
You know, they need to get tougher.
You don't need to put up with hundreds of people abusing you and trying to hurt you and disrupt actions.
Dan is in Georgetown, Massachusetts, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Dan.
unidentified
Hi, thank you for having me on.
I just want to point something out here.
Amy Klobuchar, Senator Murphy, along with the ex-Senator McCain, they were very effective going to Ukraine before the war, stirring up the Ukrainian citizens into a coup against Russia.
So they've got some experience.
Now, I'm with some callers here.
I'm sorry to say it, but the left has been captured by well-played propaganda, exacerbated by big government and big media.
And do you think that the federal immigration crackdown is making cities more or less safe?
unidentified
But is trying to make it safe.
It is being hampered by the government of Minnesota.
I also think that the federal government's also not sending in a tank on people down in Waco, Texas, or they're not shooting innocent people in Idaho or killing innocent man, old man in Oregon, in Northern California.
They're not doing all that.
Those people were in the wilderness.
They were fighting for their own rights to live like they wanted to live.
And that's, I mean, you know, this is not Bill Clinton, or better still, Hillary, Hillary Clinton.
This is not Barack Obama.
This is not Joe Biden screaming about people.
I mean, this is ridiculous.
It's all coming from the left, and the left have absolutely lost their mind.
Patricia is in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Patricia.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I'm going because, and I have to, as I'm listening to all these calls, I have to say, I hear the same rhetoric, the same words being used over and over again from people who say, oh, Biden brought in so many people.
It could be, but you keep saying the same thing.
You're not saying anything new.
As for the situation in Minnesota, people, I'm afraid you're not listening.
The health hospitals and health personnel in Minneapolis have called upon ICE to stop haunting their hospitals and preventing people from getting care.
They're yanking people out before they get even into the hospital.
Superintendents of schools are calling upon ICE to stop haunting their parking lots to stop coming into their schools, which they should not be doing, and taking children away.
And on top of which, they do not allow anybody in the state who do criminal investigations, who do investigations of these kinds of things, to get any information about what happened in the shootings of that young woman and that young man in Minneapolis, who I'm sorry died so tragically.
unidentified
So as far as I'm concerned, people, you've taken the Kool-Aid and you've had a good high time with it, but you're not paying attention to what is really happening.
You are being lied to every day and you don't know it.
So Customs and Border Patrol Commander in charge, Greg Bavino, was challenged about his narrative and the administration's narrative about how Alex Predi died.
And this was specifically, he was challenged about the videos that contradict Homeland Security's statement that Alex Predty approached officers with a gun.
I want to go back to one of the videos and I know you can see it there and I want to ask you about what you're seeing because multiple angles of this incident show him holding up a cell phone and recording it, not a gun.
The weapon, we do know that the suspect did bring a weapon, a loaded 9mm high capacity handgun to a riot.
We do know that as far as what happened in that intervening moment with the video that you just showed, that's going to come to light through the investigation.
That's being investigated and those facts and those questions will be answered soon enough.
Okay, but the Homeland Security Secretary is not waiting for that investigation to take place before saying that Alex Predi was, quote, brandishing a weapon.
Let's go to video seven because, of course, you know this far better than I.
The definition of brandishing is waving or flourishing something, especially a weapon, as a threat or an anger and excitement.
That's just a still photo of what Alex Predty appears to be holding.
There is nothing that we have seen that showed him, as Secretary Noam said, brandishing a weapon.
Have you, sir, seen something different to support what the Secretary said?
Dana, I think what we need to take a look at here is the situation in its totality.
What happened leading up to this situation?
The suspect decided to inject himself into a law enforcement action.
What's not being said here is the fact that Board of Patrol Agents and Law Enforcement were conducting a targeted law enforcement effort against a violent, illegal alien that was nearby, and that suspect injected himself into that law enforcement situation with a weapon.
Again, we're looking for your thoughts on whether the federal immigration crackdown is making cities safer or less safe.
Cassandra is in Fort Washington, Maryland on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Cassandra.
unidentified
Hey, good morning, M. Kimberly.
You know, this whole thing is a mess.
And the shootdown that I see the nurse that was trying to help that young lady, you know, the Lord is looking at this.
And it's sad.
It's so evil that's coming from Washington, D.C., you know, and they have no right to go out there and just murder innocent people.
And what is this country coming to?
We all are immigrants, okay?
We all came from another country except for the Native Americans.
And no, I don't think Minnesota should turn over their voting rights.
And it's a shame that so many people in this country are losing their lives just because of that man up in the White House and whoever else is working behind it.
And, you know, everybody's looking at us.
And if, you know, if we ever get into a war, you know, I don't even think our allies will even help us.
You know, and it's really, it's really sad.
In one of the chapters, as Matthew said, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Terry is in Rogers, Minnesota on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Terry.
unidentified
Good morning.
Say, a couple of issues I'd like to clear up.
Alex was not a veteran, as one of your previous callers stated.
He worked as a nurse at the Veterans Administration.
Number two, nobody's denying he had a gun.
And the Minneapolis Police Department, Ballistics, has stated the gun did discharge.
So I've watched the film both ways.
And you showing the one where he's standing confronting the officer with a camera is far different than the one when he's on the ground going for something on his side that isn't clear, clear enough to say for sure.
But he had the gun.
I mean, let's not let's not pretend he did.
I also would like to put out to all the people that.
I just hadn't heard that information about the gun discharging.
Where did you see that specifically?
unidentified
I've seen that on a number of sites here.
I'm in Minneapolis.
I live in Minneapolis.
I've seen that on reports here on various some news and outlets that put on Facebook.
I've read them.
I've seen this morning another one saying it was confirmed.
But we'll find out, right?
I mean, I think there's nobody that's honest that can say that they've seen a video that identifies what really happened.
They are way too foggy.
And your station, along with others, choose to pick the one that they feel fits the narrative they care to show.
But I'd like to get into this.
This is the real issue.
The problem here is that people think they get to make and follow only the laws they choose.
Our elected officials, according to our democracy, pass laws.
ICE enforcement agencies are legally performing and enforcing those laws.
People that go in and interrupt those actions are committing a crime.
Pretty had a permit to carry, but the law states he has to have the permit and ID with him.
He had neither.
He went in and interjected the woman that went in.
They go, look, he's defending some woman that the ICE just went over and started pushing.
No, she entered into the street in the middle of an arrest operation, an attempted arrest operation, and got and got physical with an officer, got in his face.
He pushed her out of the way while he tries to do the job.
And then Purdy comes in.
He's face to face with the officer, holding the phone, and the officer says, back up.
And he doesn't.
He physically engages the officer.
That's why he's in a wrestling match.
It's true.
That type gun discharges on its own sometimes or has accidental misfires.
Maybe that's what happened.
And it's a terrible tragedy that it did.
But the truth is, Alex shouldn't have been there.
He shouldn't have been confronting law enforcement that we elected.
We passed laws staying not to do that.
I'd also say in ICE, when people get, oh, the Gestapo, you know that ICE is 50% Hispanic, an even higher minority when you add in other minorities.
I don't recall the Gestapo having 50% Jewish members.
So Terry, just I was trying to find another article with what you were referencing about the weapon possibly discharging.
And the one that I was able to find quickly, which is in the New York Post, said that Alex Predi's SIG handgun has a history of accidentally firing, offering a possible clue to why the border agent shot him.
This is again in the New York Post.
Armed Minneapolis anti-ICE protester Alex Predi was carrying a popular handgun that has a history of unintentionally firing, leading some gun experts to suggest that the gun might have accidentally discharged after a border patrol agent grabbed him from him, causing another agent to open fire, killing him on Saturday.
But as you said, Terry, this is still early information, and we're waiting to learn more.
Next up, John in Westchester, Pennsylvania, on our line for independence.
Good morning, John.
unidentified
Hi, how are you doing?
I just wanted to reference the guy in the last post, or the last call, and you kind of had the New York Post article up there.
The actual reference for that article is a random guy on X posting about the six-hour.
It isn't even verified, so it's just some guy on X saying that the gun discharged.
So, I mean, that guy in the last call was just spewing the most false narrative that I've seen.
Even that, he leads off with the notion that that gun fired.
Well, John, just to follow up, the message that you're referencing, it looks like it was a post on X by Rob Doer, a lawyer for the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, who said that he believes that Predi's gun went off after the agent grabbed it, leading the other agent to open fire.
But as you said, John, this was just a post on social media.
But go ahead, please.
unidentified
He believes, people believe a lot of things.
So, okay, I believe that he's wrong.
Does that make him right?
Make me right?
All right, so sorry.
I understand what you're saying, though.
And I do appreciate you actually asking that man where he got that information.
I wish you do that with most of these folks with these French conspiracy theories.
That being said, I'm sick of people blaming the victims in these cases.
You know, people, I support immigration, and Eileen Democrat.
I'm fine with getting illegal immigrants out.
It's the way that Donald Trump is doing this.
It's the way the ICE is doing this, with masks, with aggression.
Even with that woman and that guy, the ICE agent was stalking after them.
They were off to the side of the road, and he kept on pushing them.
He charged that woman and pushed her so hard into the ground.
And that's when Alex went down and grabbed her and tried to pick her out, tried to help her.
So he was actually being the aggressor in that situation, which is just bush league law enforcement, as that man in Maine, the police chief in Maine, said.
So, I mean, you know, you look at the way that they're doing these things, killing Americans.
It's horrible.
I don't know how anybody can support this.
The texts that they're using are wrong.
And to victim blame based off of what you see objectively in these videos is just crazy to me.
This administration objectively lies every single day.
Even worse, it's Republican and name-only supporters who advocate for the sanctity of life, Second Amendment, against censorship, for a constitution, countless other things that this administration betrays every single day.
They're just lying to you.
Greg Lovino, you played that video.
He's lying.
It's objectively verifiable.
Greg Bavino, Noam, and even Donald Trump, one hour, this guy's Stephen Miller, they're calling him domestic terrorists, saying that this guy's intending to do maximum damage.
It's a blatant line.
How do you guys support these people lying to your face?
If they lie to you about this, what else do you think they'll lie to you about?
And then the voter rolls, are you kidding me?
Pretty much, this is just a preface.
It's pretty much them trying to build a case for their base such that they can interfere or have ICE agents outside of all the election polling stations.
And then Donald Trump won't become a true lame duck president, which he deserves to become.
I believe that the Trump administration is really playing fast and loose with our laws and our Constitution.
It is a sad shame when an attorney general for the United States is bullying the administration of Minnesota to give them their voter logs so that they can be used to provide the Republican Party a hand up in the next election.
It is a sad, sad state when we cannot have a country that protects our own.
We have the right to demonstrate and to protest loudly, but without violence.
And the violence seems to be being committed on our citizens, not on the immigrant population that is noted for having less crime than our own people.
We have a lot of homegrown terrorists in this country that are running around killing our own people.
And no one in the federal government of Donald Trump and JD Vance want to improve the lives of our people, not wreck their lives, kill them, and lie about the situations that are occurring.
Listen, when Trump campaigned, and I'm a full-blown mega, when he campaigned, you never heard one of his speeches when he did the same distressing immigration.
We're going to get the illegals the hell out of here.
We heard it every time, 20,000 people at these rallies.
Now, what did you expect him to do?
What we expect him to do, those of us that elected him, including every swing state, what do we want him to do?
Coming up later this morning on Washington Journal, we're going to talk about the uneasy relationship between the United States and Europe right now.
We're going to be joined by two journalists, Andrew Roth of the British newspaper The Guardian and Stephanie Bolzon of the German newspaper Veldt.
But first, after the break, we'll be joined by Cook Political Report senior editor David Wasserman, who will talk about the upcoming 2026 midterm elections and what to watch for in the battle for control of Congress.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
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There are a few vacancies, but they need three seats on net to retake the majority from Republicans in the House.
And we just shifted 18 ratings in Democrats' favor.
And today we only see 18 out of 435 races as toss-ups, but Republicans would need to win two-thirds of the toss-up column to hold their House majority.
Now, that makes Democrats modest favorites.
There are still some unresolved questions over district lines in a few states amid this mid-decade redistricting war that Republicans launched last summer in Texas, but hasn't gone according to their plans.
We've seen Democrats counter in California.
They are proposing a new map in Maryland and in Virginia, where Democrats are threatening four Republican seats by asking voters to approve a constitutional amendment.
Meanwhile, Republicans, they've passed new maps in Missouri, which is still subject to a legal and referendum challenge, North Carolina, which each gives Republicans an additional seat on top of the three to five that Texas could generate.
And in Indiana and Ohio, Republicans did not get the boost that they had hoped for from mid-decade redistricting.
So that really places the onus on Florida and Governor DeSantis, who has indicated that Florida will revisit its congressional map in April.
The end result is likely to be close to a wash or maybe even a small boost to Democrats from these new maps heading into November.
Republicans have a geography advantage in the fact that there are only four genuinely purple states that are up for election this fall.
Republicans hold a 53 to 47 majority in the Senate, and Democrats hold two of those four purple states, including Georgia and Michigan.
Republicans are defending Maine and North Carolina.
And so even if Democrats were to sweep all four of those races, that would only get Democrats to 49 seats, and they would need to win at least two of their reach states.
Democrats are hoping to compete in Iowa, Ohio, Alaska, and Texas, which are all states that Donald Trump carried by 11 points or more.
So we could be on a trajectory for a similar result to 2018 when Democrats were able to flip the House majority but fell short in the Senate.
So let's look first at some of the differences that you lay out between what we're expecting here in 2026 and what happened in 2018.
So you mentioned the inflation and geopolitical instability that we have right now, the redistricting war, more open seat, but fewer genuine takeover opportunities, as you said.
And then you also say that the Democrats' brand is weaker than it was eight years ago.
Back in 2018, Democrats had at least a 40% favorability as a party consistently in polls.
Most recent NBC News poll from October found that Democrats' favorability as a party was at 28%.
And so not even Democrats like Democrats these days.
But that's unlikely to be a problem for them because midterms are almost always referenda on the party in power.
And President Trump has dominated the news and recent events, be it in Minneapolis or Venezuela, have dominated the news to such an extent that Democrats don't need a clear leader or message to be able to overtake Republicans.
All they really need is to keep the spotlight on a president whose approval rating is hovering around 41 or 42 percent.
And among independents, that approval rating is in the low 30s.
And Democrats have a big advantage in that Donald Trump owns the economy and inflation after being in office for over a year.
And whereas in his first term, his approval when it came to handling the economy was consistently three points higher than his overall approval.
This time around, it's three points lower.
And three times as many voters rate the economy and inflation as their top issue versus eight years ago.
So Trump has politically lived and died by voters' perceptions on cost of living.
And that's a big reason why we saw such a swing in his favor in 2024, particularly among Latinos and other immigrant groups, independent voters, voters who are not that ideological but ask themselves, am I better off than I was two or four years ago?
Many of those same voters are either disenchanted with both parties or snapping back to Democrats.
Yeah, this is a big concern for Democrats and one of the advantages that Republicans could still have, particularly in the House, where they really need to localize a lot of these contests and spend an exorbitant amount trying to decimate the Democrat in the race in order to overcome this core national environment for their party.
And there are a couple of factors here.
First of all, when Donald Trump first came into office in 2017, he didn't really have a robust political operation or fundraising apparatus.
Now, the MAGA Inc. PAC entered 2026 with $304 million in cash on hand.
It remains to be seen how much will be spent on 2026 or how much will be saved for 2028.
But the RNC also ended the year with about five times as much cash on hand as the DNC.
But the Supreme Court could be poised to strike down coordination limits on spending between parties and candidates, which could allow Republicans to funnel some of that money into races where Republicans might otherwise be, Republican candidates might be at a cash disadvantage.
Well, we saw a split screen in November between Zeron Mamdani's election in New York City and the election of more moderate women with national security backgrounds to gubernatorial offices in Virginia and New Jersey.
And Republicans are trying to figure out the best line of attack against Democrats at the moment.
And in fact, there's a part of the Republican Party that wants to train the focus on Mamdani and some of his what they would characterize as radical socialist plans to change New York City.
But the president held a pretty chummy meeting with Mamdani at the White House.
There are some Republicans who want to train the focus on Governor Tim Walz and social services fraud in Minnesota and tie other Democrats to that.
However, the escalation of deportation efforts in Minnesota, which looks increasingly perilous politically for Republicans, could detract from Republicans' efforts to do that.
And then you also talk about how the health care item, you know, you mentioned this a bit earlier, but this really, you mentioned Medicaid, but also with these expiring ACA subsidies that people are already feeling some higher prices there.
Well, polls in the last two months have routinely shown that Americans want to see these enhanced ACA subsidies extended, overwhelming opposition to letting them expire, which has created this coverage cliff and premium cliff that essentially writes Democrats' ads for them heading into the fall.
And yet, the White House has offered very little cover and shown very little interest in brokering a bipartisan deal, even though you saw 17 House Republicans break ranks from party leadership and join Democrats on a discharge petition to extend these subsidies by three years.
And so I think increasingly you're seeing Republicans create distance between themselves and the White House, and not just the usual suspects like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and some of the prominent Republican moderates in the House, but also other that we might not have expected to voice opposition to the White House.
For example, on the war powers resolution to see Todd Young and Josh Hawley join Democrats on that, on the ACA provisions, even on overriding Trump's veto of appropriations for a Colorado water project and Florida infrastructure, members like Lauren Bobert from Colorado objecting to the White House.
We're going to be taking questions for David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report shortly.
Democrats can call in at 202-748-8000.
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You know, because we're talking about the comparison between the 2018 midterms and 2026, back in 2018, a couple months before the midterms, you were here on Washington Journal talking about whether or not those elections were going to be a referendum on the party in power.
Because right now we see a Trump party and we see a president who's willing to take shots at his own party in Congress.
And he has certainly maintained high favorability within his own party.
But that also cuts both ways because to the extent he picks fights with Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, or people like Jeff Flake, does that depress the enthusiasm of Trump loyalists to show up at the polls in an election in which Donald Trump is not on the ballot?
And this is music to Democrats' ears because there are a lot of Trump voters, particularly whites without a college degree who formed his base, who simply aren't accustomed to voting in midterm elections.
I'd like to get into this, but midterms tend to draw a much better educated electorate to the polls.
And so if a lot of those voters don't feel particularly fond of congressional Republicans, can they really be counted on to show up?
It's deja vu, Kimberly, because The biggest problem for Republicans is this enthusiasm gap and the fact that Republicans have not demonstrated that Donald Trump can turn out his base for Republicans other than him.
And it used to be in the Obama era that when more people voted, Democrats did better.
If you think about the millions of voters that Obama ushered into the political process, a lot of young non-white voters who had not participated before, and they showed up for Barack Obama, but when they didn't vote in 2010 and 2014, Democrats got clobbered.
Today, Donald Trump has a big advantage among voters who are most peripherally engaged in politics.
There's a big reason why Trump has gone to venues where you wouldn't normally expect to find politicians, be it UFC fights or F1 races or even sneakercon.
But Democrats excel with the voters who consider themselves the most civic-minded, who show up not just to vote in presidential years, but every midterm, every special, every primary, every race for school board.
And so when turnout goes down, Democrats have a structural advantage.
We've seen this not just in the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, but we had a special election in a pretty red district in Tennessee on December 2nd, in which the Democrat outperformed the 2024 presidential margin by about 13 points, still lost by nine, but still that gives you an indication.
And in that race, 64% of Harris's voters formed the Democrats' vote total, and the Republican only got about 48% of Trump's voters.
If you replicated that nationally, Republicans would be at risk of losing not just the House, but some of those Senate reach states for Democrats that could put them over the top.
I think turnout will be higher this November than it was in the special elections where we've been seeing Democrats outperform, but certainly lower than 2024.
Alan is in Brooklyn, New York on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Alan.
unidentified
Good morning.
I was pleased to listen to all of your cogent points.
Thank you.
There are so many strands of news now that would make this too long.
I'm going to try to pack them together.
A lot of the Republican voters who had been anti-climate theory, who had been pro-gun control, who had been patriotic about our role in World War II and the military's honor in general, would seem to be whipsawed by recent events by Trump trying to get control of Greenland.
He's kind of admitting that the ice melt has made that more valuable, and therefore he's kind of conceding some of the climate issue.
But now we're suffering from the cold snap that is resulting in part from that ice melt and causing a lot of people who are anti-welfare Republicans in the deep south suffering a major affordability crisis on the front of energy, not just for air conditioning in the summer, but for climate-related cold snaps, bringing vastly higher heating bills throughout the country right now.
And these are a whole new constituency of people who may be interested in getting public support for this area of heating costs above and beyond the other affordability issues Trump was suffering.
My question now is, do you think his ICE tactics are directly calculated to be excessive for the purpose of scaring Democrats from the polls in Democratic cities at a time when they've been trying to weaken the ability to use mail-in voting and weakening vaccination rules to make it look more likely people will need to use the mail-in voting.
It doesn't seem that they're being rational about this violence with the ICE forces.
Seems they're trying to scare people away as part of their tactic to try to avoid losing the next term because he doesn't want to be impeached.
And he said already, if he loses this election, he may be impeached.
How drastic are his thoughts about using excessive force to scare people away?
Yeah, there's no evidence that the White House is resorting to these escalated tactics to have an impact on suppressing Democratic turnout in cities.
If anything, it is skyrocketing Democrats' outrage and energy level to vote.
There's no question that the Democratic base's enthusiasm and outrage is quite high.
But at the same time, this effort is designed to fulfill the president's campaign pledge to deport immigrants who are here illegally.
Now, the voters who are really going to determine the extent of the swing this November and change in Washington are the voters who do believe that those who are here illegally should be deported,
which according to the October New York Times Siena poll, 54% of respondents believe that those who are here illegally should be sent home or sent to their home country compared to 43% who oppose that position.
But in some recent surveys, and I'll just cite the YouGov survey from last week, and this is before the most recent shooting and killing in Minneapolis, by 51 to 37 voters opposed the tactics or disapproved of the tactics that ICE has been using.
And so it's that voter who does believe that we that in deportations, but objects to the heightened tactics that ICE is using.
I suspect that disapproval number is only going to increase in light of what's happened.
And so whichever candidates can speak to that voter in a way that will resonate are likely to succeed.
Keep in mind, we're only 26 days into 2026, and there's already been an absolute avalanche of news.
It's impossible to predict what we're going to be talking about in September or October, although we are likely to be discussing the instability and conflict arising from deportations.
But we know for sure that we're going to be talking about the economy and health care.
And those are really the two constants in Democrats' messaging against the White House and Republican candidates.
It could be enough to put the Senate in play.
Democrats have had a strong recruitment cycle in the Senate, getting Roy Cooper to run in North Carolina, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Mary Peltola in Alaska.
But we've really got to see whether Democrats are making progress and running ahead in some of these redder states in order to know whether they have a chance because it's a pretty far leap from Maine and North Carolina, which are genuinely purple states at the presidential level, to Alaska.
And in Alaska, even where Mary Peltola, Democrats' strongest candidate, is running, the only candidate she's ever beaten in that state is Sarah Palin, who had a 61% unfavorability rating after ditching the state's governorship and then coming to launch a comeback.
So these are going to be very tough states for Democrats to win.
If that were to come to pass, then it could mitigate what we're looking at for Republicans.
However, at the moment, voters are still fairly pessimistic about what the next year will look like.
And there are jobs reports, there are estimates that suggest that layoffs will increase even as we see the stock market hitting record highs.
And there's uncertainty about tariffs, particularly what the Supreme Court will do.
So Americans' outlook towards the economy could improve, but their perceptions of their spending and purchasing power are down by about a quarter since Donald Trump took office last January.
So, Doug, I do want to give David a chance to respond.
Sorry to go after you again, but also the detail about the training being shortened to 47 days also turned out to not be true.
It was reported with an anonymous source in the Atlantic, but the Department of Homeland Security later denied it.
I'm just going to read you a little bit from Snopes.
The day after the Atlantic story came out, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, denied the claim to the Washington Examiner and stated that training to become an enforcement and removal operations officer is eight weeks long.
But what was the specific question that you wanted David Wasserman to respond to?
The median voter does want to see immigration laws reformed and updated and enforced, but they don't want to see Americans' civil liberties violated or right to protest infringed.
And they do want to see due process and investigations that are coordinated between federal and state authorities.
And so this is where it's gotten really dicey for the administration politically.
And whereas in the 2022 midterms, Democrats were able to focus on the aftermath of the overturning of Roe v. Wade to take some of the focus off of inflation that the Biden White House was struggling to deal with.
This time around, we've seen President Trump try and lean into the culture wars to take the edge off some of the economic challenges plaguing him and his party.
I do want to flag that later on we're going to have on C-SPAN, we're going to be covering the Illinois Senate Democratic debate later on tonight.
So if you want to get an up close and personal look at how some of these Democrats are shaping up their narratives, this is going to be the Illinois Senate debate primary tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern.
You've got the top Democratic candidates running for Senate in Illinois, and it's sponsored by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.
There will be Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton, Representatives Robin Kelly, and Raja Krishna Morthy, who are all competing for that Democratic nomination.
You can watch the debate as part of C-SPAN's campaign 2026 coverage at 7 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, and online at c-span.org.
Let's go now to Bill in Lou's Delaware on our line for independence.
I've been watching C-SPAN forever, and a couple of, I would say like two weeks ago, three weeks ago, they had the anniversary of, I think it was the guy, Democrat, he ran for President Dean.
And when he was like, I think he won one of the primaries and he started going, you know, very ebulent, very excited, and he started screaming a little bit.
And that got, and then he had to resign because that was the end of his campaign.
I'm thinking to myself, man, I mean, if that ended a campaign, I cannot believe what Donald Trump, I mean, the things that he's done, the things that he says, nothing ever, ever, ever affects him.
In fact, he responds with these tweets right as it's happening.
And you think it's crazy, but then you look around and his base, not even his base, they whitewash, they believe everything.
So my question to the guest is, I don't care, the economy, people could say that nothing has ever turned the tide for the people that support him.
And in fact, there was a critical share of the electorate in 2024 that personally disliked Donald Trump and voted for him anyway and saw him as the lesser of two evils.
In our research in 2024, what we found when we narrowed down the electorate in the seven key battleground states to just the roughly 7% of voters who were purely undecided or not firmly committed to either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump was that they had overwhelmingly negative views of both candidates.
They thought that Kamala Harris was way too liberal to serve effectively as president.
They thought Trump was too erratic and out of control to serve another term as president.
But by a 55 to 26 margin, they believed that Trump was better positioned to bring inflation and the cost of living under control.
And these voters who dislike his leadership style, but see his erratic rantings, be it on truth social or in more formal settings, They believe that it's tolerable as long as it intimidates our negotiating partners into accepting a better deal for the U.S.
And just as we see broad disapproval in public opinion polls for tariffs, we also see a plurality of voters in most surveys who believe that Trump is using tariffs not as a permanent strategy, but as a bargaining chip to improve U.S. position in the long term.
And so it's these voters who are very soft Trump vote or were very soft Trump voters in 2024 who are risk who are at risk for Republicans of falling out of their coalition.
There are fears among Democrats and a number of impartial election observers about the tactics that the White House or Department of Justice or FBI could use to try and raise objections to the results of the midterm elections after November.
And some of those are going to be litigated in court before November.
Some could be litigated afterwards during the certification period.
But it's important to remember that our elections are administered at the state and local level, and that provides somewhat of a safeguard from any one president or administration ordering sweeping changes, such as a preference to do away with mail-in voting.
April 2024, I said dictator will be in office, and now it comes true to light.
unidentified
My question, comment is: do you see any polling in Texas that would show that Jasmine Crockett could still win the Senate seat, even though the districts were gerrymandered, and that the people will turn now on the Republican Party?
And also, any comments you want to make about the Senate race in Georgia of Oscar?
And one other final comment about his comment about the European soldiers didn't support us in Afghanistan.
Could you elaborate on all three if you can, please?
So Jasmine Crockett, who is running in the Democratic primary against state senator James Tallarico for the nomination to face whichever Republican emerges from the primary that John Cornyn, a three-term senator, is locked in and struggling to survive.
Jasmine Crockett, her theory of the case is that there are millions of Texas citizens who are sympathetic to Democrats' position who do not turn out to vote from year to year and that she can activate them with a very progressive message.
And that is a rather farcical claim, in my opinion.
The reason why Democrats have backslid in Texas of late is that we've seen Hispanic voters shift right and shift away from the Democratic Party, particularly along the border, not just on border issues and the perception that Democrats have not been able to control the border when they were in charge, but also on inflation.
And so Democrats might have a rare opportunity in Texas if Republicans nominate Attorney General Ken Paxton, who had been impeached by his own party and acquitted in the state Senate, but has a ton of personal baggage.
Even so, Texas is a state that Trump carried by 14 points in 2024, and there aren't a whole lot of truly persuadable voters.
In Georgia, there's a Republican primary that could work to Democratic Senator John Ossoff's benefit.
In Georgia, the governor, Brian Kemp, has elevated former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley, who has had a rocky rollout to his campaign.
He's a first-time candidate, has not demonstrated yet that he has a full grasp of the issues.
And then two Republican congressmen, Buddy Carter from the Savannah area and Mike Collins from outside Atlanta, who are vying for MAGA support and vying for the president's endorsement.
And it's unclear what President Trump will do here.
And then, two, your other comment about health care and what's being done with that.
The only thing the Democrats have done is run the cost of our premiums into the ground through Obamacare, which has increased the cost so significantly.
So how could you suggest that either one of those two items could help the Democrats in the midterms?
Well, I'm not suggesting that Democrats are in a position to turn around the economy if they do well in the midterms.
In fact, Democrats would still hold relatively little power.
They would hold a check on the White House, but they wouldn't be in a position to make sweeping changes to the economic policy being implemented by the White House.
Now, on these subsidies, I do think there would be more of a significant policy outcome from Democrats reclaiming control of the House even by a narrow margin.
Democrats could hold up White House priorities on a number of issues over health care, and not just in a shutdown sense, but they'd have more leverage, more negotiating power.
And I do think you would see the White House be forced into taking more interest in bipartisan support.
Keep in mind, there were 17 Republicans who voted to extend enhanced ACA subsidies for three years, and millions of Americans who are on the edge of this premium cliff where if their income is above a certain level, they're paying exorbitantly more for health care.
And so, politically, I think a number of Republicans do acknowledge that this is a liability.
Ann Marshall is Associate Professor of History and Executive Director of the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library at Mississippi State University.
Her book is Cassius Marcellus Clay: The Life of an Anti-Slavery Slaveholder and the Paradox of American Reform.
Clay lived to be 92, had two wives and 11 children.
Kentucky was his home state.
As an anti-slavery reformer, Cassius Marcellus Clay is often remembered as a knife-wielding rabble-rouser who both inspired and enraged his contemporaries.
Abraham Lincoln made him minister to Russia.
And yes, the boxer Muhammad Ali was originally named after him, but decided he wanted his own original name.
Ann Marshall will discuss all this with us.
unidentified
A new interview with author Ann Marshall about her book, Cassius Marcellus Clay, The Life of an Anti-Slavery Slaveholder and the Paradox of American Reform.
BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb, is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
If you watch on C-SPAN, you're going to see me physically across the aisle every day, just trying to build relationships and try to understand their perspective and find common ground.
That was the response from the Department of Homeland Security.
Yes, go ahead.
unidentified
Okay, all right.
They're responding saying it's not been cut from six months to 47 days.
But if you multiply seven times eight weeks, that's 56 and you subtract Saturday and Sunday.
That's 47 days of training, unless they're training for the whole 56 days, including Saturday and Sunday.
But the one question I wanted to ask: everyone always talked about the popularity of the Democrats and how it's going to affect the election.
But I just wanted to ask your last guest: what is the popularity of the Republicans?
Because I really never hear that mentioned as much.
And how will it affect Democrats in red states the opportunity to win some of those seats?
Because we know on these off-elections that's been going on in the last two or three months, Democrats have been taking up house seats in red, well, you know, state seats in red districts and flipping them.
So houses are going up.
Of course, whenever you get another guest, the popularity of the Republicans and the popularity of the Democrats.
And will the Democrats continue to flip seats, not only in state houses, but also in red states specifically?
I'm calling about, I was an Air Force Security Police Canine Handler from 68 to 74.
And I went through eight weeks of basic training, and then I went through 10 weeks of security police school before I was even able to carry a gun or have a shield.
And even then, I had to wait for my security clearances.
And then I went through 10 more weeks of canine school.
For these guys to go out there with eight weeks of training and get the right to actually not just apprehend but arrest civilians and get a police, a federal police shield and a gun, and then be totally protected with immunity is just bizarre.
It's out of this world.
I don't know how they get away with it, and they're certainly undertrained.
So when children don't know how to curse of right, which, by the way, they're not teaching in elementary schools anymore, they don't know their rights.
I actually want to read a recent post from this morning.
President Donald Trump posted on his social media website, Truth Social, about the ongoing activities in Minnesota.
The president posted, I am sending Tom Holman to Minnesota tonight.
He has not been involved in that area, but knows and likes many of the people there.
Tom is tough but fair and will report directly to me.
Separately, a major investigation is going on with respect to the massive $20 billion plus welfare fraud that has taken place in Minnesota and is at least partially responsible for the violent organized protests going on in the streets.
Additionally, the DOJ and Congress are looking at Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who left Somalia with nothing and is now reportedly worth more than $44 million.
Time will tell all.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, President DJT.
Let's hear now from Ron in Johnston, Pennsylvania, and our line for Democrats.
Thank you so much for hopping on on this still snowy day.
But of course, the topic of attention is still focused on Minnesota and the fatal shooting this weekend, this past weekend at the hands of federal agents.
The administration's defending that immigration crackdown.
I was just reading the President's Truth Social post about sending Tom Homan to Minnesota.
What else are you hearing from White House officials as these protests continue and the fallout continues?
Well, I thought it was notable in an interview with the Wall Street Journal last night that President Trump did not immediately come to the defense of the federal agent who shot Alex Predty on Saturday.
Instead, he said, we are looking at everything.
Now, this all comes as Christy Noam, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, said that Predi was brandishing a weapon.
But from all angles of the footage, and there are multiple clips out there that we've seen, we do not see Predi at any point brandishing the weapon.
Instead, he seems to be filming or appears to be filming the situation that was unfolding between ICE office or federal agents and a protester or protesters in the area.
There are some reports of tension within the administration because of the optics of all of this.
We know that there are obviously growing concerns that now a second American citizen has died at the hands of the federal government in Minnesota.
So I think there's a lot of questions going forward, and the administration is treading carefully now that they're seeing really the backlash to all of this.
Now, at the end of last week, we thought we were on a pretty steady, you know, glide path to passing funding for the federal government to avoid a partial government shutdown at the end of this month.
But now there are several Democrats who are threatening to hold up in the Senate the spending package over DHS funding as it pertains to ICE.
Can you talk a little bit about where that stands?
You know, we know that there are no votes scheduled in the Senate today, but the Senate is in session.
But there's a big question as to whether this will be held up and we could see another government shutdown due to the optics and what's happening in Minnesota, in Minneapolis regarding these federal agents and ICE.
And it's notable because you're not only seeing Democrats voice opposition, but you're also seeing Republicans increasingly starting to voice concerns and maybe even some backlash to what's happening in Minneapolis.
Senator Bill Cassidy, for example, someone who hasn't necessarily been shy to speak out against the administration, a Republican from Louisiana, he condemned the actions of the federal agents after that video surfaced on Saturday morning.
You also have House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer saying on Fox News or Fox Business yesterday that ICE should leave Minneapolis in an effort to de-escalate the situation following the death of a second American citizen.
So we're seeing more cracks, it seems, in the Republican coalition forming.
Well, the President did not hold any public events yesterday.
I think it's been relatively quiet at the White House.
However, we understand that the President has declared a number of or approved a number of emergency declarations, or state of emergency declarations in various states that have been impacted by this storm.
We're seeing White House officials direct people to pay attention to the National Weather Service.
And we'll probably get an update today at 1 p.m. when White House Press Secretary Caroline Lovitt is expected to hold a press briefing at the White House.
Well, he's going to Iowa because this is a part of his upcoming weekly midterm travels ahead of the midterms in November.
We've heard Chief of Staff Susie Wiles say that President Trump will be hitting the road more.
And we understand that, you know, obviously Iowa is not necessarily a swing state.
It is home to a number of competitive races this November.
You have the Iowa gubernatorial election, the open Senate seat that's taking place, a number of competitive House seats in Iowa that could help determine the House majority.
So this is President Trump very much, I think, warming up for what is expected to be a very busy year of campaign travel.
I mean, we don't know exactly when the president will announce it, but he seems to have been inching closer and closer towards a decision on the Federal Reserve chair.
It seems like he has it very narrowed down.
A couple of weeks ago at Mar-a-Lago, he said that he has the decision in his mind.
So it seems like we're inching closer and closer.
Obviously, we're watching that very, very closely.
You know, because I'm from Washington, D.C., even though I live out here in Edgewater, I am from Washington, and I understand when it snows in Washington, D.C., you get out of town because you're not going anywhere if you think you have a car.
And that comes to the point is that power still can come out.
If you had not lost power, don't count that out.
You can still lose power.
And it's something that I had prepared for back in October with getting my foods together.
I had also plasticked up a picture window, which is, you know, we all love our picture windows, but to have to plastic up the picture window really made a big difference and keeping warm.
So I just hope that everybody's going to keep in good spirits.
And this is my well wishes, good spirits, and be happy and be very cautious in the house because you don't want to get hurt during this time because 911 won't be able to get to you that fast.
One, I feel very badly for the two families who lost their loved ones in Minnesota.
That's very sad.
And also, I would like to ask any Republican how they would feel if ICE came to their neighborhoods and did things that they are doing to the American people.
Thank you for being here.
This is great that we're able to express our feelings.
He loves children and he has many children of his own and grandchildren.
And I just think the demarcation, largest demarcation between the Democrats and the Republicans is on this right to life.
When they had the vote, and you can look it up on your thing there, when they had the vote about a couple years ago on first, second, third, and abortion after, almost every Democrat voted for abortion.
And Jesus said he gave us life and life more abundantly because he came to save us from our sins.
So when you end the life of a little baby in the womb, you're going against what God has created because he said that he created many of the particular ones in the Bible from the moment of conception.
And I just want to thank our president for making sure that the poor ladies that were in the hallways singing in abortion clinics and are going to get sent 10 years to prison aren't going to get sent to prison.
He's standing for people who love the Lord and who love life.
Ed is in Hendersonville, North Carolina, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Ed.
unidentified
Good morning.
A couple points.
I wish every time the media mentions the shooting, which should be investigated neutrally, but I wish they would provide the facts that, number one, the guy was there with a gun.
You never hear about that, Harley.
Number two, he had a gun with magazines and no ID.
And number three, he's filming the events just like he was instructed to do by the governor.
These are issues that I wish the media would add when they add the full context of why he was there.
No ID with the gun and doing what he was instructed to do by the governor.
So basically, just complete the full.
By the way, the other issue is ICE.
ICE is funded with the big bill through 2019.
Okay, so let's add that in there also.
Just all of the information would be fine if we could get it.
Lauren is in Norfolk, Virginia on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Lauren.
unidentified
Hey, good morning.
I am a registered nurse, and I have been so for the past almost 20 years of my life.
And I think one thing in this conversation that people seem to be forgetting is that this entire altercation occurred in front of a donut shop.
And my understanding is this is a vibrant street where the locals go in that community to participate in just regular daily American activities like going to get donuts and coffee.
I think that when we talk about looking at this in the context of what was happening, this is an American street in America.
I'm also a registered nurse that has worked in level three trauma centers where, you know, people would refer to that as an inner city.
And nurses deal with violence all the time in our field.
Also, for law enforcement, when they do have to use lethal force, they are responsible for every shot that is made, correct?
unidentified
So my question is, in many of these videos, after he is on the ground, one of these officers proceeds to shoot him four or five times, which looks like in the head.
The people in this community are continuing to go to a donut shop where there is now a makeshift tombstone for an American citizen that served our veterans as a nurse, who by all accounts was just a decent human being.
unidentified
And again, I would just ask anybody that's calling in that is saying that these people in the National Committee are going to be a good idea.
We are about out of time for this segment, but thank you to everybody who called in for Open Forum.
Up next, we're going to be joined by Andrew Roth of the British newspaper The Guardian and Stephanie Bolzen of the German newspaper Veldt.
We're going to talk about the uneasy relationship between the U.S. and Europe right now.
We'll be right back.
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Stephanie On European Unity00:15:02
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Yes, and I should have mentioned that VELT is a German news outlet, so thank you very much.
But before we talk about that U.S.-European relationship dynamic, I want to talk to you both briefly about what's been happening in Minnesota and how the shootings there by ICE and the protests are landing abroad.
Yeah, I think in the UK, for instance, you know, it's also top headline news, but it very much depends on what your kind of political outlook is.
So the U.S. is a bit of a prism for the culture wars of the UK or of the EU to also play out.
unidentified
You know, and those who might be anti-immigration in the UK are likely going to side with ICE in the U.S.
So if you look at the Daily Mail right now, you know, the main story is not about the shooting, but about the siege being laid to the Minnesota hotel where ICE agents are staying.
So this is very much, the U.S. is exporting this kind of cultural fight at the moment.
And it's, you know, top headline news in the UK as well.
Staying with you, Andrew, last week marked the first anniversary of the second Trump administration.
And this has been marked by quite a contentious relationship with some of our European allies, whether it's on tariffs or the issue with Greenland.
Can you talk about how you see that relationship having changed?
unidentified
Yeah, I think that the EU or the European-U.S. relationship is probably the one to undergo the biggest change or one of the biggest changes under the new Trump administration.
And I think that there are elements of the administration, Donald Trump, but those under him as well, especially JD Vance, who are set upon changing an 80-year relationship that's been defined by a kind of transatlantic security relationship.
And it's in, some would say, complete freefall.
It's definitely in tumult.
It's a massive change, and European allies in general are questioning right now: can we rely on the U.S.?
Is the U.S. our ally?
Is it unreliable, or is it even our enemy?
If you look at the recent national security strategy that was released, that's sort of a prism into the discussions that are taking place in the U.S. about how to upend the relationship with Europe.
And the big question here right now, the big discussion point, is immigration.
The U.S.'s internal problems and internal questions are playing out in relations with Europe.
Is Europe, you know, this idea of multicultural Europe, is that a threat to the United States?
A lot of people in the administration are playing it like that, and that's creating incredible tension between the U.S. and Europe.
That's testing, you know, both the kind of fraternal bonds that exist, but also questions like transatlantic security, etc.
So this is a sea change in terms of our relationship in the U.S. with Europe writ large.
Stephanie, Andrew mentioned the national security strategy, which came out back in November.
I want to read just a bit of it as it pertains to Europe.
The larger issue facing Europe, the larger issues facing Europe, include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birth rates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.
Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.
As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and military strong enough to remain reliable allies, yet Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States.
Transatlantic trade remains one of the pillars of the global economy and of American prosperity.
How did this language land in Europe and some of the President's other rhetoric since he's come back into office?
We never asked for anything and we never got anything.
We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable.
But I won't do that.
Okay, now everyone's saying, oh, good.
That's probably the biggest statement I made, because people thought I would use force.
I don't have to use force.
I don't want to use force.
I won't use force.
All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland where we already had it as a trustee but respectfully returned it back to Denmark not long ago after we defeated the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians and others in World War II.
We gave it back to them.
We were a powerful force then, but we are a much more powerful force now.
Andrew, the president also announced that he wasn't going to move forward with tariffs on a group of European allies, talked about a framework of a deal on Greenland.
What do you think this debate over the status of Greenland has done to the relationship between the United States and its European allies?
unidentified
It's pushed it to the breaking point.
I mean, this was kind of where Europe had to draw, you know, you could say a line in the snow, a line in the sand.
There have been a lot of acts by the Trump administration that have made Europe very uncomfortable, including the recent operation in Venezuela.
You know, obviously the U.S. is changing levels of support for Ukraine, etc.
This conflict was different because it really got, I think, to the heart of European sovereignty and pushed Europe into a corner that, you know, essentially, especially in Denmark, but in other countries, there had to be a kind of reaction to say that this is our red line.
That's what the conflict on Greenland has done.
For the last year, European politicians have been trying to find a way to manage Donald Trump.
Generally, that's by engaging with him, not escalating fights, and trying to play them out for long enough until the Trump administration moves on to something else.
In this case, though, the assault on Greenland or on Greenland sovereignty was so direct, and it gets to the heart of the NATO alliance, it gets to the heart of European sovereignty, that we started to see some very strong pushback, especially from Danish politicians, but also European politicians as well.
Even Mark Carney, who I assume that we'll speak about later, kind of leading this resurgence of, let's say, middle powers of smaller countries that feel like they need to push back against the U.S. aggressiveness.
That speech was notable because some politicians are so tempered to deal with Trump in Europe that they generally saw that as a climb down, that Donald Trump said he wasn't going to use military force in Greenland.
Ultimately, it seems like the U.S. has announced a non-deal.
This is the future framework of a deal.
So there's not even, you know, it's a framework of a deal.
There are a lot of conditionals here.
There doesn't seem to be anything that's really substantively different to the agreement that's existed with NATO back to the 1950s.
But I do think that that rhetoric crossed the red line and that there is a before Davis, before Greenland, and after Greenland aspect to U.S.-European relations.
Stephanie, there does seem to be quite the shift happening with Europe in terms of moving from this policy of kind of placating President Trump to a more almost unified response in opposition to him.
Are European leaders taking him at his word that he's not going to use force or do they believe the things that he's saying?
unidentified
Of course they are taking him at his word because if not, where would we be?
But this has definitely unified the European Union and it is, especially from a German perspective, the idea, coming from our history and the atrocities of the Second World War, the consensus that was built after 1945 is vital to Europe.
And now it had been threatened from Putin.
It is threatened, who is moving or changing borders by force.
And the very power that was protecting and helping Europe that this doesn't happen suddenly questions this principle.
So that is shocking not only to the politicians, to everyone.
And this has unified Europe for now, but of course the European Union is a very complex beast.
For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order.
We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability.
And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.
We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false.
That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient.
That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically.
And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful.
And American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So we placed the sign in the window.
We participated in the rituals.
And we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.
This bargain no longer works.
Let me be direct.
We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.
But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.
The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied, the WTO, the UN, the COP, the architecture, the very architecture of collective problem solving are under threat.
And as a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions, that they must develop greater strategic autonomy in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance, and supply chains.
And this impulse is understandable.
A country that can't feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options.
When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.
But let's be clear-eyed about where this leads.
A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable.
Carney described a rupture to the global system and, as reported here in the New York Times, got a standing ovation for that speech at Davos.
What do you think of this idea of him appealing to other middle powers?
He didn't mention President Trump by name in the speech, but it was clearly all about him.
unidentified
Yeah, it's not quite new, actually.
Romania's Complex Situation00:15:18
unidentified
This has been the links between Canada and the European Union and, of course, Britain, have been strengthened by the politics and policies of Donald Trump in the second presidency all along.
And what he's talking about, this rupture, and that the only solution can be that middle powers work together.
But the challenge of this is, of course, especially if you look at Europe, The capabilities of Europe to defend herself are not enough for now.
So they still need the U.S. as a protecting power in Europe.
But what it has also shown, that another, let's call it, weapon that the U.S. administration is using, which are the tariffs, this time around, it didn't work.
And kind of the U.S. President saw the had to defy the gravity of the markets.
So the Europeans stood firm, they stood together.
They were saying we have also an instrument which is called tariff and we will retaliate.
The markets reacted and the U.S. President caved in.
For now, I'm not saying that the situation is over, but they have tools.
But I still think, of course, they can only fight back if they stand together and stay united.
And this is going to be also a kind of domestic challenge.
We're going to be taking calls for Andrew Roth and Stephanie Bolson soon.
Democrats can call in at 202-748-8000.
Republicans at 202-748-8001.
And Independents at 202-748-8002.
Andrew, before we get to the callers, I want to look at some reporting that's in your paper, The Guardian, about the Ukrainian president saying that a U.S. security agreement is 100% ready to be signed.
He indicates progress after talks with Russia in Abu Dhabi ahead of further discussions this weekend.
Can you talk about the status of that, especially given this changing dynamic of the relationship between the United States and Europe and the calls that the President has made many times for European nations to take a stronger defense role in this regard?
unidentified
Yes, I think that, you know, since the beginning of this, we've heard a number of times that security guarantees are ready to be signed and ready to be signed off on, and yet it seems like a deal never really comes together.
And I think that both sides, the Russians, but especially the Ukrainians, are keen to remain in dialogue and very strongly kind of at the table, not to be seen as the obstacle or the stumbling block to completing what would be something that Donald Trump wants a lot, which is to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
And yet the two sides seem to be extremely far apart.
Based off of those talks in Abu Dhabi, we don't really see an agreement based on territory, which is one of the key questions.
Who will control what if there's a peace agreement that's signed?
The security guarantees are the major kind of factor of negotiations between Ukraine, between the European Union or Europe writ large, and between the United States as well.
And so we've heard that multiple times that, you know, security guarantees are ready to be signed, but the deal seems to be stalled nonetheless by the question at heart of who's going to control what, what territory is being controlled.
So largely at this point, I still see it as a kind of rhetorical device to say that Ukraine is at the table.
Ukraine is not going to be the reason this deal falls apart.
But whether or not that deal is really ready to be signed, I see this more as rhetoric.
Let's hear now from Tim in Westby, Wisconsin on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Tim.
unidentified
Yes, I'd just like to say that I'd like to apologize to the Europeans, for our unhinged and uneducated president, because he doesn't seem to hand diplomacy very well or know what's going on when he steps into the situation.
So in his favor, he's more partial to dictators from the Mideast and around the world than he is to democratically elected leaders.
And I'd like to say one more thing on signing off.
If ICE agents would have been in charge of guarding the Capitol on January 6th, I don't think they'd have broken.
Andrew, your paper also has this story, but I'm sure it's getting a lot of attention in Europe.
What Trump's NATO claims that NATO troops were not on the front line in Afghanistan was another aspect of his comments in Davos that did not land well in Europe.
Obviously, many European members of NATO died in the fighting in Afghanistan.
Andrew, can you talk about sort of the response to that?
unidentified
Yeah, I think that that created a widespread response in the UK and a lot of anger.
This isn't the first time that Donald Trump has said something similar, but this was possibly the worst instance of it.
It came again during a television interview, so unscripted remarks.
You know, this angered both, obviously, number 10, Kirst Armer, the Prime Minister of the UK, sort of referring to the marks as appalling.
And Donald Trump has had to step them back a little bit by putting out a truth social post that, you know, of course, UK soldiers were on the front lines with the U.S., which they were, you know, in both Afghanistan and in Iraq.
But this also just angers a lot of people in the UK as well, in particular Conservatives, people who should be kind of allies of Donald Trump, people who are very pro-military or even have served in the military.
So these kinds of remarks serve to just undercut, you know, what remains of Trump's global support, which is already not that high in the UK.
You know, I went to the White House for comment on that.
And the response from a White House spokesperson was, President Trump is absolutely right.
The United States of America has done more for NATO than any other country in the alliance has done combined.
So this is an administration that often has difficulty admitting when it's wrong or when it's done things to anger allies around the world.
The United States very famously is the only member of NATO that has actually called for the universal defense and people responded, the NATO nations members responded to the call after 9-11.
How did these comments land in Germany?
unidentified
Very, very badly.
And yeah, also because there were other comments by the President when, for example, he talked about Denmark, that Denmark, or rather than Greenland, has had more than two dog sledges to defend Greenland.
And Germany had dozens of German soldiers dying in Afghanistan as well.
But especially when it comes to Denmark, Denmark per capita of the population had exactly the same number of soldiers dying in Afghanistan.
And they were shoulder to shoulders to U.S. military personnel.
And I'm pretty sure that also, even in the military, this cannot go down positively, that the U.S. President doesn't appreciate what other allies have done to help secure what is the West, which was at stake in Afghanistan and Iraq at the time.
I think it is relevant to acknowledge that a Jewish president now aside.
Secondly, I want to compliment Romania, and our whole nation needs to.
And we need to ask why Romanian troops are being withdrawn.
Romanians withstood a social media attack from Russia that elected a president of their country that nobody under 30 had ever heard of.
The Romanian government put a moratorium on all campaigning, and now they have Nakus Sardin, who is the complete opposite of an Orban.
And we should not be removing troops from Romania.
Romanians are terrified, and they have been very, very admirable in the type of government they've elected in the face of the assault on their election process by Russia.
It's very important to say that it was Nazi Germany who were running these concentration camps.
unidentified
So I'm always very careful about making sure that there were concentration camps on what is today, for example, the territory of Poland, but they were Nazi German concentration camps, and certainly not, for example, Polish concentration camps.
I'll just pause for a moment here because I was just looking to see what I could find.
And the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum does have a page on this in particular, the Holocaust in Ukraine, if folks want to find additional resources.
But just very quickly, it says that on the eve of the invasion in 1941, the territory of Ukraine and its current internationally recognized borders was home to one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe.
The fate of those Jews depended on many factors, including the local occupying authority and whether they were among the very few evacuated to the interior of the Soviet Union ahead of invading forces.
While scholars are still researching the scale of the Holocaust in Ukraine, they estimate at least one and a half million Jews were killed there.
The museum is in the process of gathering written records and oral testimony to fully tell the story of what happened in Ukraine during the Holocaust.
Let's now hear from Joseph in Point Pleasant, New Jersey on our line for Republicans.
Just listening to your two guests, I get so upset and mad about my country's not going to be there for Europe.
You can't count on America anymore.
Since the end of World War II, that's all we have done.
unidentified
We have American kids 20 years old buried in France because we had to liberate them from a German dictator.
And my father's cousin, not too far away, my dad's cousin was killed over Yugoslavia to help bail out that lady's country, which was shot down by a German anti-aircraft, and they never found his body.
President Trump, I'm not going to apologize for him like that other nitwith from Wisconsin.
All right, Joseph, I want to give our guests a chance to respond.
Stephanie, first and then Andrew.
unidentified
Yeah, thank you very much for your call and I really appreciate what you say.
And you should really know how especially Germans are forever thankful and grateful what the American nation did and liberated Europe and liberated Germany from the Nazis.
And I'm married to a British father who was a Bomber Command pilot.
So I'm very aware of the sacrifices the United States did.
Still, it is something we all have to consider whether being such close allies over so many years and decades and having created so much prosperity and security on both sides of the Atlantic, we should try not to cause a rupture.
Andrew, I think our caller's sentiment is shared by a lot of people, and this came up quite a bit during the campaign, that many of the president's supporters wanted the United States to be less involved internationally.
Yeah, I think also I appreciate your comments, Joseph.
unidentified
Thank you.
You know, I'm from New York originally, so I'm not going to speak for people from the UK, but I will say that during the campaign, there was a lot of expressions about this question of why Europe is doing so much less, let's say, than the U.S. in terms of supporting NATO, et cetera.
And there has been a kind of course correction on that during this administration.
Europeans have largely raised their spending on NATO, changed their priorities, et cetera, et cetera.
And to a large part, I mean, Europe has stepped back on a number of things that the U.S. has done that might have upset them.
Venezuela is a good example, where the European Commission and others kind of didn't really step in.
They said they were concerned but didn't really get involved.
I think that the discussion was mainly about how this was, in particular, Greenland, was kind of a red line where questions of sovereignty started to get crossed.
So, you know, as was said, there was a joint kind of sacrifice in Afghanistan and for the UK and U.S. and Iraq as well.
And I think that many Europeans are also just perplexed at the moment about what Greenland kind of has to do with that history as well.
The one other thing I would say quickly is that one of the reasons that Mark Carney, I think, spoke out so forcefully is that his election was largely and in part a reaction to Donald Trump's comments about Canada.
And as time goes on, I think that the stronger comments that come out of the United States are going to create leaders who have also been elected in part due to their opposition to the new stature of the United States.
And I think that that's going to be the kind of headwinds we might see more and more in the future.
There will be leaders around the world who have been elected specifically because they present a different worldview.
And I think that that's something that the U.S. administration should get ready for as well.
And then Andrew, if you want to follow up about the question related to free speech in the UK.
unidentified
I think you really have a point questioning why Germany relied so many years on gas from Russia.
And the criticism is absolutely appropriate.
As much the Biden administration as President Trump already in the first presidency was absolutely right that Nord Stream 2 should never have gone ahead.
Germans learned a very, very bitter lesson about this and is now absolutely reforming how energy is provided to Germany.
But have in mind Germany is a country that relies heavily on energy because of our industrial base, of all the machineries and cars that are built.
And you cannot replace so quickly all the gas that's coming from Russia.
Of course, this has been mainly replaced, but that, for example, now is that we switched on the coal again because we phased out nuclear energy.
There's a lot of things German governments and Angela Makekel have done wrong.
And I agree with you, but I think we learned a lesson, or Germany has learned a lesson and is now improving, for example, the energy policies and how to import energy from abroad.
And Andrew, do you want to respond to the caller's points about free speech in the UK?
unidentified
Yeah, I would say that, I mean, a lot of people in the UK would probably agree from both sides.
You know, either you could be talking with people who are anti-immigration and who feel like there's been a crackdown from the government on that, or people who support things like Palestine Action, which has basically been outlawed, and would like to see a more robust kind of UK response to Israel's actions in Gaza.
I do think that this has become an issue specifically now because the U.S. government has decided to make it one.
And this issue is a bit of a wedge in order for the U.S. to kind of impose, or I would say to raise a political issue with the UK.
And as Stephanie mentioned before, a lot of people see it as interference in domestic affairs, whether in the UK or in Germany or in other countries.
JD Vance's speech in Munich earlier this year was sort of a statement to European governments that we can't help you if you're going to run from your voters and sort of a sense that the U.S. government is waiting for especially international groups, you know, right-wing groups that are going to become more powerful within countries across Europe and will eventually support them if the current leaders won't.
So I think the reason this is a big issue right now specifically is because the U.S. government is pushing it.
Milton is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Milton.
unidentified
Good morning.
I'd like to make a comment to C-SPAN after I get done this comment.
I don't know what Putin have on Trump, but I would love to know what it is.
It seemed like President Trump goes out his way to do Putin's bidding.
And I have a gut feeling before the end of his term, he's going to pull us out of NATO.
Look, he insults our allies with that comment recently about the Brits and other Europeans didn't contribute enough to us to win our fights in Afghanistan.
We had European countries that went in there and they lost their soldiers.
I mean, he keep insulting our allies.
And like I say, I don't know what Putin have on him, but he seemed to go out of his way.
Also, C-SPAN, you failed to even cover the story that Trump ordered the takedown of depictions of slavery at Washington's house in Philadelphia.
Stephanie, I'll let you respond to the caller's comments about the European relationship, and then I'll pull up an article about the Philadelphia situation.
But go ahead.
unidentified
Yeah, I don't want to comment about if Vladimir Putin has something on Donald Trump.
I don't know.
It has never been proven, so I'd be very careful to comment on that.
But what I would like to comment on is that I think there is also some silver lining in how Donald Trump approached the NATO question in Europe.
Speaking at least for Germany, Germany for decades was far too complacent about security, stopped spending on military and defense and capabilities, and relied so much on the U.S. mainly to, in the worst case, protect Germany.
So I think it has been a wake-up call.
It has been a positive wake-up call.
And Germany, with the war in Ukraine, really had to, yeah, look herself in the mirror and understand that it has to stand up and spend more on defense capability.
And in that sense, I applaud Donald Trump for raising this.
The story that Milton was referencing is reported here in the Associated Press, the latest update.
Philadelphia sues over the removal of a slavery exhibit at Independence National Historical Park.
Outraged critics accused President Donald Trump of whitewashing history on Friday after the National Park Service removed an exhibit on slavery at Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park in response to his executive order restoring truth and sanity to American history at the nation's museums, parks, and landmarks.
Empty bolt holes and shadows are all that remains on the brick walls where explanatory panels were displayed at the President's House site where George and Martha Washington lived with the people they owned as property when Philadelphia was the nation's capital.
That is a story that Milton was referencing.
Jim is in Sherman, Texas on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Jim.
unidentified
Good morning to the guests.
I want to bring up two issues that cost money: prescription drugs and military defense spending.
Donald Trump has been the catalyst for Europe to change its priorities or efforts to spend for defense.
And I personally don't think it's fair that America is funding most of the medical or pharmaceutical efforts.
So tell me, am I wrong?
Should I feel like it was an unfair situation?
And tell me, if Donald Trump had not intervened, was there already a pathway where Europe was making some changes?
Or should we congratulate Donald Trump on both of these issues?
I will focus more on defense spending because I generally focus more on security issues.
I would say that, I mean, there is a pretty large contingent of people who would say that a lot of groups in Europe hadn't been spending enough on defense spending and that Donald Trump played a kind of instrumental role in terms of changing that.
And I think actually the loudest group that would support that are those who are closest to the war in Ukraine.
You know, the Baltic countries, Poland, have traditionally spent a higher percentage of their GDP on defense spending than Western Europe, and they felt that Western Europe should kind of catch up.
And Donald Trump was helpful for them in that respect.
I do think at the same time, the jury would be out in terms of what that defense spending has been for so far, whether or not the defense spending has actually supported Ukraine, because that's the main issue that some of the U.S.'s staunchest allies in Europe are kind of focused on, remains kind of the issue.
So I think that in the short term, there is a kind of support for Trump's effect in terms of Europe taking spending on defense more seriously.
But I think there is a risk that the Trump administration is eventually going to confront a European foreign policy that becomes much more independent.
You know, if there isn't as much U.S. support, what is a really independent European foreign policy going to look like, and what is that going to mean?
Not just for Ukraine, but also for, let's say, Israel and Gaza or for other conflicts around the globe.
It could make the world a significantly more difficult place for the Trump administration, for the U.S.
And so one of the kind of responses that generally comes up is that the U.S. receives dividends from this kind of security support for Europe.
It gets so much back in terms of partnership, in terms of the ability to project power, and it could lose that if it continues to cut ties.
I would like to know what the man from UK and the lady from Germany think of the influx of illegal immigrants into Europe and the United States since Joseph R. Biden was elected president of this country and what they think of Donald Trump's effort to get rid of the illegal immigrants in the United States.
And are they trying to get rid of illegal immigrants in England and Germany?
It's of course a very complex question and I wouldn't want to compare the situation in Europe with the situation in the US.
What is clear is that Donald Trump has succeeded in minimizing or reducing in a big way the numbers of migrants that undocumentedly passed across the border from the south, mainly from Mexico.
And this is something you see reflected in the polls that people, citizens, voters in the US appreciate.
When it comes to Europe, this was a situation that there were wars in Syria, the civil war in Syria.
A lot of people came to Germany.
Looking back, of course, this has caused a lot of friction.
At least I'm now talking only about my country, about Germany.
We've seen the rise of the right-wing Alternatives for Deutschland, Alternative for Germany party, which is actually currently leading in the polls.
So it has had a lot of effects on Germany.
And even people say in the middle, you might call them independent voters, are questioning if this was the right politics at the time.
I think that in the U.S., I'm going to echo what Stephanie said, which is that there has been a massive change in terms of immigration to the U.S., legal immigration as well.
I've also charted some of the changes that have taken place with ordinary immigration in terms of how difficult it is for people who want to come to the country to get visas, to be able to, in general, interface with the U.S. State Department and with its embassies abroad.
In general, we can see the goal of the administration is to make it more difficult to get here.
In many ways, it's been a popular push in the U.S., specifically in terms of immigration across the border in Mexico.
But we also see scenes and the enforcement aspects of it that took place in places like Minnesota over the weekend.
I'm not going to speak for viewers of this program, but we've heard quite a different number of views, and I think a lot of people are also very angry about what's taking place.
The ways that enforcement is being done is raising the kind of political temperature here.
It does reflect what's taking place in the UK as well.
It's not quite to the same degree, but there is a sea change in terms of UK politics in movement from a traditional conservative Tory party toward reform UK, which is largely focused on immigration.
And we see, on one hand, the kind of ordinary, I think, concern about changing neighborhoods or changing communities, along with elements of kind of far-right propaganda, far-right politics that also come along with that.
unidentified
So, as Stephanie said, it's a really complicated issue, and we're mainly here to chart it at the show.
That is all of the time that we have for today, but I want to thank both of our guests, Andrew Roth, who is the global affairs correspondent for The Guardian, which is, as you said, a global newspaper, but also originally based in the UK.
And thanks to everybody who called in on Washington Journal this morning.
We are going to be back with another edition of the show starting at 7 a.m. Eastern tomorrow.
But don't forget, this evening here on C-SPAN, the top Democratic candidates running for U.S. Senate in Illinois will participate in a debate sponsored by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.
You can watch that debate, part of C-SPAN's campaign 2026 coverage, at 7 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, and online at c-SPAN.org.
Have a great day.
unidentified
A look now at our scheduled live coverage coming up today on C-SPAN.
At 1 p.m. Eastern, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt will be briefing reporters on President Trump's agenda that comes after last weekend's fatal shooting of an American citizen by federal agents in Minneapolis.
And then at 3 p.m., Hawaii Governor Josh Greene gives his state of the state address in Honolulu.
And then at 7 p.m. Eastern, the top Democratic candidates running for U.S. Senate in Illinois take part in a debate that's sponsored by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton, and Representatives Robin Kelly and Raja Krishna Murthy are competing for the Democratic nomination.
You can also watch these events on our C-SPAN Now free mobile app and online at c-span.org.
The U.S. Senate returns on Tuesday from its state work period for votes, facing a government funding deadline on Friday.
Lawmakers are expected to spend most of the week working on the remaining six spending bills funding major parts of the federal government through September 30th, which is the end of the fiscal year, to avert a shutdown.
It includes funding for the Departments of Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and housing, as well as the labor, state, transportation, and treasury departments.
The Senate will also vote on whether to begin work on legislation to require colleges and universities that receive federal funding to inform pregnant students about campus resources to help them carry a baby to term and to care for the baby.
The House is currently on a district work period and is not scheduled to return for votes until Monday, February 2nd.
Watch live coverage of the House on C-SPAN.
See the Senate on C-SPAN too.
And all of our congressional coverage is available on our free video app, C-SPANNOW, and our website, c-span.org.
On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on U.S. policy toward Venezuela after both chambers of Congress rejected efforts to block further military action there without congressional approval.
Watch live starting at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN now, our free mobile app and online at c-span.org.602 for shadow photography on the sequence camera.
Travel through the history of America's space program on American History TV all day on C-SPAN 2, featuring classic NASA films and historical newsreels from past space missions.
Watch Saturday, starting at 8 a.m. Eastern, as American History TV sits down with Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Apollo curator Tiesel Muir Harmony to explore Americans in space from the creation of NASA in 1958 through the early Gemini flights to Neil Armstrong's historic first steps on the moon in July 1969.
She also looks ahead to the upcoming Artemis missions with the goal of returning astronauts to the lunar surface.
Plus, relive the race to the moon, Skylab, and the Space Shuttle program.
And hear first-hand accounts from legendary NASA flight directors Gene Krantz and Gerald Griffin.
The crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send you.
Watch the history of the American Space Program all day Saturday, starting at 8 a.m. Eastern on American History TV on C-SPAN 2.
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unidentified
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