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Feb. 2, 2026 15:35-16:06 - CSPAN
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C-SPAN 3 Live Coverage 00:13:42
Separate resolutions to hold former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena related to the investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Our live coverage of the meeting is happening over on C-SPAN 3.
We'll have live coverage over on C-SPAN 3.
You can also watch on our C-SPAN Now mobile app and online at c-span.org.
And a very good Monday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in.
Here's where we are on Capitol Hill today.
The House is in at 9 a.m. Eastern.
The Senate is in at 3 p.m.
The Senate has already signed off on that plan to reopen the government.
A vote in the House won't take place until tomorrow at the earliest, and it's no sure thing.
But if Congress does end up making changes to immigration enforcement operations, here are some of the reforms that Democrats are pushing for.
Specifically, they want to end roving patrols by agents.
They want to tighten the rules on the use of warrants.
And they want to require ICE to coordinate with local authorities.
They want to enforce more accountability, a uniform code of conduct, and they want to require agents to take off the masks, wear body cameras, and to carry ID.
Yesterday on Meet the Press, it was Speaker Mike Johnson responding to some of those reforms that Democrats are proposing.
This is what he had to say.
These state and local officials respectfully didn't pull the triggers that left these two Americans dead.
President Trump has even acknowledged that ICE has made mistakes.
Do you think, within that context, any changes need to be made to ICE and the way it's operating on the Congress?
Yes, look, I think President Trump was right to acknowledge that.
I think he's operated in good faith.
He said he wanted to turn the temperature down.
He put Tom Holman in charge there.
He was right to deputize him over that situation.
He has 40 years' experience in border patrol and in these issues.
So I think that this is going to happen, but we need good faith on both sides.
Some of these conditions and requests that they've made are obviously reasonable and should happen, but others are going to require a lot more negotiation.
And you'll support some of those that you say are reasonable.
Yes, in fact, I was in the Oval Office with the President a few days ago when he was on the phone with Leader Schumer, and they agreed.
And Tom Holman was on the other line, and they agreed to most of those conditions.
But the mask, for example, the additional judicial requirement for a warrant would be a whole other layer of effectively bureaucracy.
Remember, the immigration judges have already issued warrants, and that's what the ICE officials are acting upon.
So there's a lot of details in this.
We could get deep in the weeds, but we will do that over the next two weeks.
And I hope that Democrats will be in good faith, as Republicans are, to try to bring some order to all this.
Are there any proposed changes you wouldn't agree with?
They're demanding also roving patrols and body cameras be worn by ICE officials.
I think even Tom Holman has acknowledged both of those things are acceptable and what he was intending to do already.
So I think we're on the path to get agreement, and I really hope that everybody will come to the table in good faith.
Speaker Mike Johnson, that was yesterday on Meet the Press.
This morning, we're asking for your message to Congress on immigration enforcement operations.
Again, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats.
Independence 202-748-8002.
The House in at 9 a.m. Eastern today will go there on C-SPAN when they do gavel in for gavel-to-gavel coverage.
We showed you Speaker Mike Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also talked about the changes that Democrats are demanding being made at ICE and on immigration enforcement operations.
This was on ABC's this week.
What is clear is that the Department of Homeland Security needs to be dramatically reformed.
We share that view, as does Leader Schumer and Senate Democrats, in a variety of different ways.
Body cameras should be mandatory.
Masks should come off.
Judicial warrants should absolutely be required consistent with the Constitution, in our view, before DHS agents or ICE agents are breaking into the homes of the American people or ripping people out of their cars.
We need to make sure that there are complete and independent investigations so that when ICE or DHS agents break the law, they are held accountable, not by the Department of Justice, which has no interest in actually conducting a fair investigation in our view, but by state and local authorities.
And we need to reiterate that the detention and deportation of American citizens off the table and using taxpayer dollars to brutalize everyday Americans or violently target law-abiding immigrant families needs to be off the table.
There's a list of serious reforms.
Will you vote to keep funding Department of Homeland Security for the next two weeks as you negotiate those reforms?
Well, we're going to have that conversation later on today and as we return to Washington.
But the one thing that we've said publicly is that we need a robust path toward dramatic reform.
The administration can't just talk the talk.
They need to walk the walk.
That should begin today, not in two weeks today.
I was Hakeem Jeffries yesterday on ABC's this week.
Today, we are operating in a partial government shutdown, and the path to fully reopening the government is one that is no sure thing.
And it begins today with a Senate or House Rules Committee vote taking place at 4 p.m. Eastern, and then an expected vote on the floor in a reopening package expected to come tomorrow.
Taking your phone calls this morning, lines for Republicans, Democrats, Independents, as usual.
We will go to McKenzie first out of Washington, line for Democrats.
McKenzie, what's your message to Congress on immigration enforcement operations?
Well, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this is both affecting the Latino and foreign language speaking population of my church in this country on both sides, whether you're conservative or progressive.
But my message would be to them is please find a way to bring peace and negoti.
I mean, there is no progress without compromise, is what I have learned in something like this.
And it is incredibly hurtful that this is happening.
Not just my church, but any other church with a large Latino population, including Catholics and Protestants.
Do you have a sense of what compromise looks like?
I believe that MAGA and the Democrats could find some common ground.
There is always common ground, and not everything is black and white as it might seem.
That's McKenzie in Washington this morning.
Jerry is in West Virginia, Wallace, West Virginia.
Go ahead.
Hello.
Go ahead, Jerry.
You're on the air.
Yes, I'm 64 years old, and I have been registered Democrat since I was 18 years old.
And I'm going to have to change my voter registration.
The party has left the American people.
They've become the party for illegal immigrants.
This is the second time they have shut down the government to protect them.
They want to defund the American people's security, but not once have they called to defund their security, which is the Capitol Police that murdered an unarmed woman on January the 6th.
That woman was not threatening or attacking that officer.
And she was murdered.
That's Jerry in West Virginia.
This is Lewis out of Colorado.
Good morning.
You're next.
Good morning, John.
Thank you for taking on the call.
With regard to ICE, you know, every aspect of life should always be improved upon.
So we all should have a continuous improvement program going on.
You should focus a little bit more, I think, on the micro.
I mean, how is it that Ilhan Omar has suddenly become a multi-multi-millionaire?
Curious.
And I understand there's at least one anchor baby in Congress.
So with regard to immigration, I think immigration should be doing immigration jobs and, you know, the corruption.
Washington is the problem.
It is a cesspool of corruption.
And everything in Washington is touched by it.
Thank you.
That's Lewis in Colorado.
This is Gene in Leland, Mississippi, line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Yes.
I feel that everyone needs to be fired.
ICE all the way up the ladder, including Stephen Miller, needs to be fired because they are not for the people.
And that's all I have to say.
That's Gene in Mississippi taking your phone calls this morning, asking for your message to Congress on immigration enforcement operations, having this conversation amid a partial government shutdown.
We call it a partial government shutdown because six of the 12 appropriations bills that fund the government for 2026, fiscal 2026, as they call it, have been passed already.
Six have not.
And it's the six that have not that is keeping us in a partial government shutdown.
The deadline was midnight on Friday night.
A deal worked out in the United States Senate passed five of those appropriations bills, pulled out the Department of Homeland Security funding for a two-week funding extension.
The idea being that there would be a negotiation about new rules when it comes to immigration enforcement operations that could be worked out over two weeks.
Whether that happens or not now depends on the House.
The House would have to approve that plan that the Senate approved late on Friday.
And we'll see if the House can do that.
Some of the headlines on that in this morning's papers.
This from the Washington Post, Johnson confident in his funding votes.
Although if you head to the front page of the Wall Street Journal, they have a very different headline.
The funding to end the shutdown runs into pushback.
House Democrats call for immigration changes before they would support a deal.
Again, it's no sure thing of whether the House approves this plan that would open the door to renegotiate immigration enforcement operations.
In the meantime, we are in shutdown mode.
Although, as Susan Page, longtime USA Today columnist, Washington Bureau Chief for USA Today writes, another shutdown, meh, say many in D.C., the one-time sign of crisis is now relatively common.
She begins by saying, shut down what shutdown?
There was a time when shutting down the federal government seemed like a big deal, but the partial shutdown that started at midnight on January 31st created less buzz over the weekend than the early and almost entirely negatively reviewed Netflix Melania.
She goes on to say this: even though parts of the Pentagon and Health and Human Services Department and transportation departments left without regular funding were ordered to begin their orderly shutdown for at least a few days, we'll see how long this particular shutdown goes.
Susan Page writing in the pages of USA Today.
Maria in Connecticut, Democrat, what's your message to Congress on immigration enforcement operations?
Good morning, everyone.
Be heard.
Good morning.
My message is the following: We are one United States of America, one with 50-plus individual states.
And the trampling that is occurring by overstepping the boundaries, if you will, the boundaries of each state has gotten so out of control and so illegally out of control that,
Maryland's Dictatorship Concerns 00:11:18
you know, looking at those pardons of criminals who were sentenced via our court system, and then our current president pardoned them, followed up with the military being deployed, the paramilitary via ICE, and so forth.
I am an immigrant, sir, and I'm a proud immigrant.
I've been here since 1967.
I came as a child from an environment of a dictatorship.
I didn't understand it then.
I do today.
And we did not vote for a dictator want to be king of the world.
That is not what the United States of America represents.
We have our Constitution.
Let's respect it.
It is not being truly respected.
And it's sad because now we're seeing what we're seeing: people getting killed, homes broken into, no warrants being used.
What is this all about if not a dictatorship?
We didn't vote for this.
The American citizens did not vote for this.
And Mr. President, if you can hear me, please step back, step away, and look at what you are doing to the American people.
American law-abiding people, taxpayers of which I am one.
Mr. President, please look in the mirror and what do you see when you look in the mirror?
That's Maria in Connecticut this morning, line for Democrats.
Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat, was on the Sunday shows yesterday.
He was on Fox News Sunday, and he also talked about Democrats' demands when it comes to changes to immigration enforcement operations.
We're still pretending that ICE is going after dangerous people.
They aren't.
Right now, 70% of the people that they are detaining have absolutely no criminal record.
What is happening?
DHS says 70% of those that are arresting, and that's their number, do have some kind of criminal record.
What is happening in Minnesota right now is a dystopia.
ICE is tear gassing elementary schools.
It is disappearing legal residents into cars.
It is murdering American citizens.
ICE is making this country less safe, not more safe today.
That is an emergency.
That's why today 60% of the American people vehemently disagree with what ICE is doing.
And we have to address that emergency right now.
The Constitution is being abandoned by this administration right now as we speak.
And so our focus over the next two weeks has to be reining in a lawless and immoral immigration agency in this nation.
That's work that we have to do in the next two weeks.
Hopefully it's work that Republicans and Democrats will be able to agree on.
Chris Murphy on the Sunday shows yesterday.
We're taking your calls this morning on the Washington Journal, asking for your message to Congress on immigration enforcement operations, 202748-8001 for Republicans.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
You can call us once every 30 days on C-SPAN, and we are taking your calls throughout this morning.
It's a shorter show this morning.
It is going to go until 9 a.m. Eastern.
That's when the House comes back in session, coming back in earlier this Monday morning ahead of a busy day as Congress attempts to reopen the government from this partial government shutdown.
It was Mike Johnson on Meet the Press yesterday talking about whether he had the votes to reopen the government to go through this renegotiation of these appropriations bills that the House had already passed for fiscal 2026, changed by the Senate last week and now have to be repassed by the House.
This was the speaker yesterday on Meet the Press.
And just bottom line, you think you have enough Republican votes to reopen the government by Tuesday?
Yeah, because Republicans are going to do the responsible thing and fund the government.
You have a razor-fin margin.
That's what I'm getting.
I have one vote margin, yes, for the rest of 2026.
But we're going to demonstrate once again that this is the party that takes governing seriously.
The Democrats play games with this, and I think it's very unfortunate because what they're doing is they're jeopardizing services to the American people.
When you're talking about the Department of Homeland Security, remember what's included in that.
You have TSA agents for the airports.
You have the Coast Guard.
You have FEMA.
We're in the middle of a winter storm disaster on the East Coast.
We can't play games with this.
Speaker Mike Johnson, yesterday on Meet the Press, your phone calls this morning on the Washington Journal.
This is Max, an independent from Maryland.
Good morning.
Hey, good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
A lot of this, and I know these are hard times in the country.
I'm from the D.C. area.
And last week on Friday, they held a vigil and started naming off people who are victims of police violence.
They didn't include, of course, the Ashley Babbitt lady who was killed by the Capitol Police.
She was unarmed as well.
And that's what I mean.
A lot of it's manufactured, divide the country down the middle.
I mean, think about it.
You're singling out Customs and Border Patrol, immigration, customs enforcement.
What about the U.S. Marshals?
Is everybody cool with them?
How about the FBI?
Everybody cool with them.
How about the CIA?
Everybody cool with them?
How about the department, the entire executive branch of the government?
You good with them?
Oh, no, you're not.
Well, those are the executive police officers, people.
You don't like the government.
And see, they're trying to divide everybody down the middle.
The truth is, nobody likes the government anymore.
Thanks.
That's Max in Maryland.
This is Sandy in Columbus, Ohio.
Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'm calling in from Columbus, Ohio.
Yes, I think the Democrats, they only have the choice because they're not working with them to try to do immigration.
What I think is that we need to do it in a fair and humane way.
This is out of hand when you're snatching people out of their workplaces and so forth.
And I would like to make the American people aware.
We haven't got a, just start filing our taxes for 2025.
But in 2024, undocumented immigrants paid between $97 to $100 billion in federal, state, and local taxes.
So if they pay that amount, they should be able to know who is not and in the process of becoming a citizen, even though we can't take everybody, but close the border off for any country if you're going to do it that way.
And that's all we want is a fair and humane system.
Because what are you going to do with their money they paid in in 24?
You're going to keep that, and you're going to tell us that we're cutting off other people.
They paid into the system.
Green card holders already work and they pay in.
So I don't know if people are aware of that, but look it up.
In 2024, they paid between $97 to $100 million in taxes, and they can never get Social Security, Medicare, or any assistance, and a lot of agencies won't help them.
Thank you.
That's Sandy in Columbus, Ohio to Columbia, Maryland.
Carl Republican, good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I am very concerned about what the people are not talking about, which is the cognitive warfare that's being waged against our political parties to turn them one against the other instead of focusing on what problems really are.
How cognitive warfare ever got control of people's brains, put screw worms into their minds, and made them just respond to groups of people just talking on TV to incite them is beyond my understanding.
I don't know if they get some kind of a thrill out of it, really, and there's no benefit.
And the only thing that happens is that people are hurt and broken up.
You hear, for example, in Minnesota, which was a wonderful place when I lived there many, many years ago, that two people were killed.
And because of that, the government, after the second one, the government says, well, we're going to just close down.
We're going to close down the whole nation.
Hundreds of thousands of people go without purpose in their work.
So what I would like to see is somehow cognitive warfare being recognized, being mentioned, being thought of, being brought to an end in one way or another, and have the folks get on with what should be.
I recall that I was trained somewhat in religious background, and there was a group of men, 12 of them in fact, that were all eventually murdered for having good thoughts and good ideas.
And this is what's going to happen here, regardless of their political backgrounds.
Jesus and his disciples were just rubbed out.
And this is what eventually happens to people who seem to be good.
And I can't even know who the other group is doing this and why they are brought to the fore other than just personal greed.
All right.
That's Carl in Maryland taking your phone calls this morning as we operate in a government shutdown.
It's a partial government shutdown.
Speaker's Confidence Wanes 00:02:10
Speaker Mike Johnson saying over the weekend that he's confident he'll have the votes to reopen the government, though his margin in the House is getting slimmer today.
Christian Menefe set to be sworn in today, the Democrat who won a special election in the 18th congressional district of Texas after Rep Sylvester Turner's death last year.
It's going to tighten the margins in the House even more, making it tougher if Democrats don't join Republicans in this effort to reopen the government.
The test vote will happen today at about 4 p.m.
The House Rules Committee is set to meet to come up with a rule that will govern the floor action expected tomorrow on this plan to reopen the government.
That's what's taking place today on Capitol Hill.
Here's a few other events outside of government funding.
At 9.15 a.m. Eastern time today, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States and former Republican Senator Rob Portman will discuss the future of post-war Ukraine.
That's set to air 9.15 a.m. on C-SPAN 2 is where we'll be showing you that.
At 1 p.m., Eastern Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty McCary will join a bipartisan group of policy leaders and community and health care experts to announce Action for Progress, as they're calling it, a national initiative to confront mental health and addiction in America.
Also on C-SPAN 2 today.
4 p.m. today, that's when the House rules vote is going to happen.
And we'll show that on C-SPAN 3.
We're expecting the House to still be in at that time here on C-SPAN.
So the Rules Committee vote taking place at 4 p.m.
Also at 4 p.m., the Rules Committee will debate whether to hold Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress for refusal to comply with a subpoena related to the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein.
So a busy day in the Rules Committee, a busy day on Capitol Hill, and you can watch it all here on the C-SPAN networks.
Path to Citizenship Puzzle 00:03:42
Taking your calls in this first segment of the Washington Journal, about 15 more minutes here of your phone calls, your message to Congress on immigration enforcement operations.
This is Jim waiting in Ohio, line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I have to agree with my Democrat followers.
Nobody is above the law.
We'll say it's stopping.
Think about that when I think about all the illegals that come into this country illegally.
I hope the Democrats are listening, I guess.
Thank you.
That's Jim in Ohio.
This is Joe in Queens.
Good morning.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I was just saying to myself, why don't we think outside the box and try something maybe a little different?
For the illegals that have been here for 10 years or more, and they've been known to be here for 10 years, but they're still illegal.
Why don't they come up with a plan for them to, I'm sure they accumulated some money to pay to come to stay in this country?
In other words, if the government says, give us $50,000, you have a good record, you could stay in this country.
You have to pay because you're using our schools, our hospitals, and you're not paying into the system, but just you're here illegally.
That's about a month.
So it's all about money.
So if they're here 10 years and they accumulate some funds, I don't have the exact number.
You want to go for $50,000 per person, and they have a good record.
You work it out with this kind of system.
They pay, and they'll get legal documentation to stay in the country.
It's about the bottom line: you got to give a little back.
You've been in here, you're making money, and you want to stay.
You're not doing anything wrong.
Maybe there is an option.
Joe, you're talking about sort of a path to citizenship here.
This is something we've debated for decades, 40 years in this country on immigration reform, trying to find some major way of reforming the system that everybody seems to say is broken.
Why is this such a hard puzzle to solve if this is something that you feel like you can come up with a solution that everybody can agree on this morning on the Washington Journal?
Well, you know, you say it's a hard puzzle, but you know what?
If you look at the bottom line of this whole thing, it's not hard.
Get some money, get money from the illegals that are here, a substantial amount that everybody could be happy with, and that both sides could agree with.
He paid.
He didn't commit any crimes.
He's here over 10 years.
I'm not saying anybody's here two, three years.
Don't cut it right now because a lot of stuff they weren't vetted the last two, three years, four years, five years, and we don't know who they really are.
And that's a scary thing.
But if you're here 10 years as a gardener and you're documented here as a gardener, but you're illegal, there are simple But the politicians want to make it complicated.
They just distort.
They like to distort things and make it all so hard.
But the bottom line is pay, get some money from them.
As long as they have a good record, and I don't know the number, again, it could be 50,000, 40,000.
I got your point, but on it being people who are here 10 years or longer, there will be people to say to your plan that it will just encourage people to try to sneak into this country illegally to start that clock ticking in the hopes that That this will happen again in another 10 years,
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