Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, former Trump campaign advisor Steve Cortez on Trump immigration policies, the Latino vote, and Campaign 2026, plus other political news of the week.
Then the founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, David Becker, talks about recent actions by President Trump and his administration involving elections.
Washington Journal starts now.
Good morning.
It's Sunday, February 8th, 2026, Super Bowl Sunday.
We begin on the Super Bowl of politics, federal elections.
Last week, President Trump suggested that the federal government should nationalize elections because he's worried about the ability of states to count votes honestly.
It was a statement that Democrats warned was a step towards the president interfering in a midterm election in which his party is facing stiff headwinds.
So this morning, we're asking if you're concerned about the integrity of the midterm set to take place 268 days from today.
Phone lines are split as usual by political party.
Republicans, it's 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
You can also send us a text, that number, 202-748-8003.
If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on X.
It's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook.
It's facebook.com/slash C-SPAN.
And a very good Sunday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in now this subject of President Trump and federal elections likely to be back in the news today, The Hill predicts, because of the lineup of the Sunday shows this morning.
This is the headline from The Hill saying President Trump is facing heat over his calls to nationalize elections.
One of those who has been vehemently opposed, Mark Warner, said to be both on Fox News Sunday this morning and CBS's Face the Nation.
And then Governor Westmore, the Democrat from Maryland, expected to be on CNN's State of the Union today.
This topic very much likely to come up.
And it all began back on Monday of last week when President Trump was on former FBI director Dan Bongino's program, and he talked about the upcoming federal elections in the midterms.
This is what he had to say.
These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally.
And the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren't tougher on it.
The Republicans should say, we want to take over, we should take over the voting, the voting in at least many 15 places.
The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.
President Trump makes that comment on Monday and then follow-up questions about what he meant by nationalizing the elections.
That happened on Tuesday in the Oval Office.
This was President Trump on Tuesday.
What exactly did you mean when you said that you should nationalize elections?
And which 15 states are you talking about?
I want to see elections, be honest.
And if a state can't run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it.
Because, you know, if you think about it, a state is an agent for the federal government in elections.
I don't know why the federal government doesn't do them anyway.
But when you see some of these states about how horribly they run their elections, what a disgrace it is, I think the federal government, when you see crooked elections, and we had plenty of them.
And by the way, we had them last time, but go to 2020 and look at the facts that are coming out.
Rigged crooked elections.
If we have areas, take a look at Detroit.
Take a look at Pennsylvania.
Take a look at Philadelphia.
You go take a look at Atlanta.
Look at some of the places that horrible corruption on elections.
And the federal government should not allow that.
The federal government should get involved.
These are agents of the federal government to count the votes.
If they can't count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over.
That was President Trump from the White House on Tuesday.
Again, Mark Warner, Democrat from Virginia, the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee in the Senate, is making the rounds on the Sunday shows this morning.
Expect him to say a version of what he talked about on Tuesday, responding to the president's calls to nationalize the election.
When people would often ask me when they were seeing the actions of the Trump administration, you know, do you think we'll have free and fair elections in 26 or in 28?
And my response at that point was, you know, I think you're overreacting.
I have deep concerns about the fairness of our elections in 26 and 28 right now.
I have concerns about the elections in primaries in our country.
I have concerns about the elections that may take place in Virginia in terms of a redistricting referendum.
These kind of actions that have taken place over the last year as we've seen the systemic dismantling of the very protections that were put in place by, again, the first Trump administration, if it doesn't scare the heck out of you, it should.
And then, if you go back to the report, the Bipartisan Intelligence Committee investigation report into the 2016 interference, unanimously agreed to by including the Secretary of State and all of the members of the committee,
it said one of the strongest protections we had about interference in our election system was the fact of our decentralization, that we have these elections carried out as laid out in the Constitution by states and localities.
The idea that now Donald Trump wants to nationalize these elections and have one political party take over that process, this provides a huge danger to our country going forward and the safety and security of these elections.
Mark Warner, that was on Tuesday.
Again, he's on the Sunday shows today.
Wes Moore, Democratic governor of Maryland, also on the Sunday shows today.
He was part of a letter that was released on Thursday through the Democratic Governors Association, a letter signed by all 24 Democratic governors of states in this country.
It was just three paragraphs long.
It said, voting in free and fair elections is the foundation of our democracy.
All Americans deserve to have their voices heard as they exercise their right to vote without interference from the federal government.
It says, President Trump's threats to remove the ability of states to run their own elections is an undemocratic attempt to silence the American people who are rejecting his costly and divisive agenda.
And says, while Trump whines about losing a free and fair election, he's now openly talking about rigging one in the future.
Democratic governors won't let that happen.
That's the setup to a conversation this morning we're having with you asking, are you concerned about the integrity of the midterm elections?
They're coming up quicker than you think.
268 days from today, we will see the midterm elections and we'll be talking about the results in 269 days.
Taking your phone calls onlines for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, as usual.
And we'll begin with Richard, an independent from Cleveland, Ohio.
Richard, good morning.
Good morning.
Hello.
Go ahead, Richard.
Are you concerned about the integrity of the midterms?
Yeah, everybody is.
I'm 70 years old.
In my lifetime, we've never had a president that, I mean, democracy is like trying to go down the drain.
And I just want to make an off-statement comment.
I believe that a lot of those ISIS agents are people that he pardoned on January 6th.
And that's why they got their masks on so they won't recognize who they are.
They're not even trained.
And everybody is concerned about, you know, the voting coming up.
It's just ridiculous.
So that's all I wanted to say.
Richard, do you plan to vote?
To be honest with you, I'm still decisive about it.
Why?
You know.
Why?
Because it's just like rig.
You know, I know that you say your vote do count and everything, but a lot of people that I've talked to have are deterring from even wanting to vote.
Actually, a lot of them just want to leave and go to Canada.
You know, because we've never had this happen before.
And with everything that Trump have done that we know was illegal, and yet nobody is standing up to say it's wrong on the Republican part.
It's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
That's Richard in Ohio.
This is David, Auburn, New York, Republican line.
Good morning.
Are you concerned about the integrity of the 2026 midterms?
Good morning, John.
Well, like every other national election, it's the mail-in voting, the process of that.
They opened that up.
That opened it up big time for fraud.
And before that, it probably was more or less elections.
But let's just look at it this way just for a moment, and I'll get off the phone.
I just want to say this.
You got the Affordable Care Act, right?
The government, they fixed that.
That was a fix.
Look what it costs.
Look at what education costs.
Look at almost anything that they get involved in.
And now they're going to go after housing.
Boy, am I looking forward to that?
What do you think that's going to make it?
If you think it's expensive now, wait till they get involved.
They want to regulate, and so they regulate.
And they're all looking to keep their job.
It really is confusing.
We need a much, much smaller government.
And I guess I would just leave it there.
And let's hope and pray that we have a good, honest election in this upcoming midterm.
David, do you plan to vote?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I vote for everything.
God cat.
I don't care who it is.
I vote for everything.
I know that's the only thing you've got.
And then maybe informed voters will show up for a change and make some of the right decisions.
David, what's your mistrust on mail-in voting?
There are some states in this country that are all mail-in voting and have been doing it for a long time.
Why do you mistrust mail-in voting?
Why did you single that out?
Because they send out the ballots and there's no follow-up.
They don't know who's filling out those ballots.
And then they harvest them and they bundle them and then they find them after the voting's all over.
No, it was, in the old days, people voted.
They lined up.
It was very civic.
It was very good.
We felt like we had something to import.
We had confidence in it, more.
Never perfect, I suppose, but we felt better about it.
I sure did.
I've been voting for a long time, too.
And I've been following this for a long time, this whole process, from political science all the way through the economics.
And it's just, there's so much government everywhere, even on a local level.
I'm wondering even if they're honest.
But that's about it.
You got another question for me, or am I okay to go?
Good to go, David.
Thanks for the call on a Sunday morning.
I wanted to note on mail-in voting.
There have been several congressional pieces of legislation that have been introduced to change voting in this country.
Voter ID being a key component of some of those proposed laws.
The Save America Act is one we've talked about before on this program that you've probably heard of.
Another more recent piece of legislation introduced is the Make Elections Great Again Act.
That's the one that would specifically ban universal vote by mail, along with requiring photo ID to vote, requiring states to verify the citizenship of individuals when they register to vote, stronger voter list maintenance included in the MEGA Act as well.
It would also ban ranked choice voting, ballot harvesting, and requiring states to use audible, auditable paper ballots, some of the provisions of the MEGA Act, the Make Elections Great Again Act.
We'll talk more about it a little later in our program.
Asking you specifically, are you concerned about the integrity of the 2026 midterm elections?
Robert in Texas, Democrat, what do you think?
Yes, I'm concerned with it because I think I called you maybe three or four months ago and I told you that President Trump is not coming out of that White House.
You can already tell with the lies he gets on TV and say how everything is rigged.
It's rigged if you lose, but he's not rigged if you win.
And then on top of that, he's already hiring this militia.
All this money they're spending to hire people to come in.
Number one, I think, if I'm not mistaken, you can find out yourself.
He's giving $50,000 bonuses for these militias he's hiring.
I'll say $60,000 a year.
Robert, what do you mean by militias?
And where are you reading about bonuses for militias?
Insurrectionists that try to keep him in the White House last election.
He didn't hire enough people that's stricter for him.
That's why they got masks on him.
You're saying hiring people into federal law enforcement positions?
Yeah, the ICE, ICE people.
If they didn't have nothing to hide, they wouldn't be hiding their face.
Police don't hack their face, and they arrest people all the time.
These people are doing it, they're lawless.
They're breaking down people's houses, beating up people off the street, beating women.
I mean, I don't understand how can people put up with men beating women and dragging them out of the car.
I don't care what they're doing, unless they've done committed some harsh crime.
People kill people, they almost killed people in that insurrection that happened, but not went to jail.
And then Trump turned around and pardoned them.
They are his militia.
Believe me or don't believe it.
I told you about, I think, three months ago.
Trump will not come out of that White House, and he will not.
Mark my word, he did not come.
He's rigging it right now with just a midterm militia, trying to make sure people don't vote.
And they're going to be around the voting places, scaring people not to vote, and that's going to be it.
You talk about being around voting places and federal law enforcement around voting places.
The Steve Bannon podcast last Tuesday, his war room podcast.
This topic came up in federal elections.
Steve Bannon talking about ICE agents being around polling facilities to look for illegal voters, people trying to vote illegally.
This is about a minute and a half from Steve Bannon's War Room podcast.
The ask here on the Save Act and Make Elections Great Again Act are pretty basic.
A legitimate ID to show who you are to vote.
It is to clean up the voter rolls.
You've had Tom Fenton on here.
There are millions.
There are tens of millions of, particularly in places like Georgia, but all over the nation, there are tens of millions of people on voter rolls that should not be.
They have to be cleaned up.
And the blue states are the ones that are fighting the Justice Department.
And then the last is you've got to go back to the basic law.
If you're going to have mail-in ballots, you have to have signature verification.
You have to have the double envelopes.
You have to do everything so we can't have a 2020.
And the Democrats don't want to play that because they know how to steal elections.
Let's put you on notice again.
ICE is going to be around the polls in the 2026 midterm elections because we are never again going to allow your business model.
Because I only think, I think Jesse Kelly's right.
20% of the country probably votes for Democrats, you know, the credential class.
And of course, the abject poor that they keep on these social welfare programs and never let them off.
That's the Democratic Party based with a handful of oligarchs, the super wealthy.
That's who controls the Democratic Party.
The way that they continue to win elections is they cheat.
If they don't cheat, they can't win.
And now they're sitting there saying President Trump is a fascist.
These are very basic things.
And they're not, we're going to find out today.
Chip Roy's going to come on.
As hard as Anna Paulina Luna people have been working, I'm not so sure the SAVE Act even comes to a vote.
Former Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon there on his War Broom podcast.
So that gets a lot of attention on Tuesday.
And on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt is asked about those comments.
She responded saying this.
Thank you, Caroline.
Steve Bannon recently said, We're going to have ICE around the polls come November.
Is that something that the president is considering?
That's not something I've ever heard the president consider.
No.
Do you guarantee to the American public that ICE will not be around polling locations or voting locations in November?
I can't guarantee that an ICE agent won't be around a polling location in November.
I mean, that's frankly a very silly hypothetical question.
But what I can tell you is, I haven't heard the president discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside of polling locations.
It's a disingenuous question.
Caroline Levitt on Thursday, taking your calls this Sunday morning.
And again, this is a topic: election integrity, the 2026 midterms and nationalizing elections, as the president said, expected to be on the Sunday shows this Sunday morning.
So we're getting your thoughts in this first hour on the Washington Journal.
JJ is in California, Republican.
Good morning to you.
Yes, thanks for taking the call.
I think the elections, Democrats, anybody, they all got Trump's arrangements.
And they're against some of these cities.
They said that you don't need ID to go vote.
And the Democrats knew that.
That's why they imported all these open borders to bring the people in, and then they're going to stick them into the sanctuary cities where you don't need ID to vote.
So that's part of their cheating scenario.
The second one is that everyone who votes against having an ID, that's ridiculous.
How do they know who's who?
You can go to one polling place and place a vote, go to another one, use a different name, place to vote.
Now, here's the punchline: the bail-in ballots, some of the people were complaining that they're getting three or four ballots, and other ones are complaining that the dead people are voting.
So that's part of the part of the rigging.
JJ, do you think the 2024 election was rigged?
No, correct.
And I do.
I think it was rigged.
They counted the ballot so many times, but the fix was already in.
The fix for who in 2024?
Donald Trump won in 2024.
Oh, I thought you were talking about the one.
Yeah, I agree he won because it was too big to rig.
What I'm saying is prior to that.
What was too big to rig?
That was rigged.
What was too big to rig?
The last election when we, this last one, we voted for Trump was too big to rig.
Everybody, when you run against Joe Biden, dementia Joe, and the people vote for him, they had all the power.
And look what happened.
High inflation, open borders, men in women's locker rooms, men in women's sports.
We're against high inflation.
They've been the highest inflation in history.
Did you trust the results of the 2016 election?
No, I'm just talking about the recent one.
That's why Trump won.
Donald Trump also won in 2016.
Oh, okay.
He was going against Hillary Clinton.
And the people, the population, is tired of hearing about Hillary, Hillary, Hillary.
We wanted some new blood.
So we got Trump in there.
There's new thinking, you know.
And that's how that one went, is because we wanted new blood in the government.
But was that do you think that election was rigged?
No, not that one.
No.
So only 2020.
Correct.
That one was rigged.
This other one, they tried to rig it.
This last one, they tried to rig it, but they couldn't because it was too big.
Because who are we going to get?
Word salad Harris?
I mean, yeah, Harris, Word Salad Harris.
And she never had a primary.
They just stuck her in and says, okay, you're going to be the next president.
Who voted for her?
Got your point.
Got your point.
That's JJ in California.
Renee in Westchester, Pennsylvania.
Democrat, you're next.
Good morning.
Yes, I am concerned about the integrity of the 2026 midterm elections because anytime Trump was calling around asking for extra votes from Georgia and a couple other places.
And when you're going through all this to try to stop people from voting, I have an elderly mother.
She votes by mail, but they have record of her voting in person before she became ill.
And she voted many years in person.
And they can check the ID.
And they do have you send in a lot of papers at work that they can check and see who it is.
So that's not true.
Do you think people should present ID when they vote?
Well, there's ways prior that they sometimes check the ID, like your driver's license, and there's other things and other ways that they can check.
So you talk about Georgia and the checks in Georgia.
You made the reference to Georgia.
As this controversy came up last week, Brad Raffisberger, the Republican Secretary of State of Georgia, you've heard of him and his involvement and efforts to defend the integrity of Georgia's vote against claims by Donald Trump that there was rigged elections in Georgia.
So he responded to this latest controversy about nationalizing elections.
This is part of what he said in the Wall Street Journal.
Election administration is the job of the states, but Congress has a responsibility to protect federal elections, and requiring real ID nationwide would help restore that trust.
Today, elections are administrated under vastly different standards, and some states require photo identification and others don't.
He said that this inconsistency about requiring photo identification or not fuels speculation about election integrity and creates fertile ground for conspiracy theories about stolen elections, saying if we want people to trust the vote, requiring an ID at the voting booth is one way to do that.
Would you agree with that or no?
No, because some states, when people vote by mail, they have to send in paperwork to verify their identity prior.
And also, there are things prior that they can check and identify a person.
When my son-in-law moved from another state, this is during COVID, before COVID, and he wanted to vote in person.
He could not because he hasn't voted here before in this state.
And at the time, he wasn't checked out.
So he had to vote in person.
But also, there's not people being brought to this country to vote.
That hasn't happened since my goodness when people were getting off the ships from Ireland and stuff, and he would take them directly to City Hall to vote.
And, you know, it's disgraceful because he doesn't like to lose.
And I feel like he's finding ways to cheat.
And it's not, and I'm sick of hearing about this Trump derangement or whatever.
There are some good Republican politicians and some that are not.
And that goes probably for both parties.
But this is just a bit.
And then when Johnson, who's head of the Republican Party in the House, said, oh, one person is up in the polls, and then the next day they lose.
Well, that's because all the votes didn't come in and they weren't all counted at that time.
I've watched and saw my candidate doing great.
Oh, yeah, you know.
And then later, when all the votes come in, my candidate loses.
And I accept that.
I don't know.
You know, they're trying to either do a big takeover in this country, which they probably are.
And a fellow that earlier said a lot of people thought about Canada or considering, like, where the heck can I go if these people are able to do this and just take over?
And, you know, it's just disgusting.
It really is.
If you lose, you lose.
That's Renee.
That's Renee in Pennsylvania.
John's in Florida.
Independent line.
Good morning.
Go ahead.
Good morning, John.
How are you doing?
Doing well, sir.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, always concerned about all elections, definitely concerned about 2026 elections.
I mean, what do we got?
14 states.
I believe you don't need to show an ID to vote.
That's disturbing.
I know in Somalia, you even need an ID to vote.
And I don't understand why it's such a big deal to not show an ID when you have to vote.
You have to show an ID for damn near everything.
I had to show an ID to sign my little kid up for Little League the other day.
I mean, so I don't understand why these states always fight it.
And, you know, the same states that are always fighting it are the states, California, Minnesota.
I think there's 14 in total, but I forget.
I mean, the question is just why can't we just have state IDs for everybody to go vote?
I mean, it seems pretty simple to me.
So where are you on mail-in ballots?
So obviously, if you're mailing in your ballot, you're not also walking up and showing your ID.
You're putting it in the mail.
Where are you on mail-in voting?
As an ex-military man, I understand that you have to have mail-in voting for some people in the United States, including myself, when I had a vote from overseas.
But I don't care for widespread mail-in ballots like we had in 2020.
You can't mass mail-in ballots to a whole state.
There's got to be a verification system that's airtight so you can account for every person that is mail-in voting.
Just mailing ballots willy-nilly all over the state, that's a recipe for disaster.
And if you look all over the world, you won't find many countries at all that use mail-in voting.
I think France banned it.
Britain, I think, banned it.
So, because it's right for fraud.
I mean, if you even go back to 2020 with Joe Biden with 81 million votes, we've never seen that number ever hit before in our lifetime.
And you'll never see that number hit again because, like I said, there's just too many, there's too much ability to game the system like that.
So, only in limited instances with super tight verification, you know, that's the only way to go with mail-in ballots.
And as far as the elections and then they're counting ballots 14 days after the election, I don't care for that either.
That's right for fraud as well.
Because then you're saying, well, how many more votes do I need to catch up to this guy?
I think everything should be done on Election Day, make it a national holiday, and let's get it done.
I mean, it shouldn't be that hard.
I don't understand we have such problems here.
Thank you, John.
I appreciate you.
That's John in Florida on state voter ID laws.
Ballotpedia has a page that tracks those laws by state.
As of October of 2025, 36 states required voters to present identification in order to vote at the polls on Election Day.
But many states provide for exceptions to those rules.
Of these states, 24 required voters to present identification containing a photograph with certain exceptions.
12 states did not explicitly require photo identification.
The remaining 14 states did not generally require photos, voters to present identification in order to vote on Election Day.
Valid forms of identification differ by state as well.
Commonly accepted forms of ID include driver's license, but also state-issued identification cards, military IDs.
The federal Help America Vote Act requires that individuals in all 50 states who register to vote by mail and who have not voted previously in federal elections in their state, they have to provide either their driver's license or paycheck bank statement, current utility bill, or government document showing their name and address.
Individuals voting by mail must include a copy of one of those documents with their absentee or mail-in ballot.
So just some of the rules if you want to dive deep on how it differs across states.
And again, the reason we have this differing system, as Mark Warner pointed out in his statement from last week, is the United States Constitution.
It is Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution that governs how America votes.
And it's a pretty simple statement, as most things are in the United States Constitution.
There's a lot of law that's been interpreted from it, though.
But Article 1, Section 4, the time, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.
But the Congress may at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing senators.
That was what was written in Article 1, Section 4.
It goes on from there.
But the United States Constitution, always a good document to read.
ConstitutionCenter.org, a good place to read about it and read about some of the legal interpretation as well.
About 30 minutes left in this opening segment of the Washington Journal.
simply asking this morning, are you concerned about the integrity of the 2026 midterm elections?
This is Darrell in Colfax, Washington, Republican.
Good morning.
Yeah, you were just talking about the voter ID.
Every poll that I've seen is like it's another 80-20 issue where by far the majority of the people want to have identification to vote, but yet it still hasn't happened.
And as far as the mail-in bouting, you know, mail-ins go, the state of Washington, once they went to all mail-in voting, there hasn't been a Republican elected to governor since then.
And prior to that, you know, it would rotate between Republican and Democrat.
And Darrell, you think the political makeup of the state hasn't changed just the results of the elections?
Well, it has more recently, but earlier it hadn't.
No, I really think it hadn't.
In fact, if you go back to when Dino Rossi was running for office, in the first few counts, he had won.
And then I don't know what happened in the final count, but finally one count where he lost, and he was a Republican.
And so that's the last time a Republican even came close.
And that was all mail-in.
Do you plan to vote in 2026?
I vote every time.
I don't miss a vote ever.
But it is all mail-in.
And it's convenient, but I personally don't trust it as much as when you go in and with the way we used to and vote.
Darrell, let me read you the provisions of the SAVE Act.
This, again, is maybe something you've heard about it.
Congressman Brian Stile of Wisconsin introduced this act.
He's going to be on the Sunday shows today.
Another reason why this is likely to be back in the news, and you're going to be reading about it tomorrow morning when you wake up.
The SAVE Act requires individuals to present an eligible photo identification document before voting.
It requires states to obtain proof of citizenship in person when registering an individual to vote.
And it requires states to remove non-citizens from existing voter roles.
Are those all provisions that you could live with?
I think they not only live with, I think it should be mandatory.
So you think that is when you start by saying that 80% of Americans support this, you think that is what they support?
Well, I don't know that I've read where that was actually written out in the polls, but the polls that I have seen that say, you know, and it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't matter the demographic.
All of them are a vast majority want voter ID for voting.
And I don't think any of them went specifically and named all the stuff you just read off.
But other than that, yes.
Daryl, thanks for the call from Washington.
Do you think the Seahawks are going to win tonight?
You know, I do.
I just flew back from Boston just the day before yesterday.
And There's a lot of people jumping on the airlines headed to the Bay Area for the game.
And it's amazing how many of those are, you know, their second team is Seattle, like my second team is New England.
You know, so I've rooted for New England when Seattle wasn't in it, and they rooted for Seattle when New England wasn't in it.
So your number one and number two teams are facing off tonight?
Basically, yeah.
That's not a bad sports day for you, Daryl.
Thanks for the phone call.
That's Darrell in Washington.
This is Bahan in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning.
How are you?
Doing well.
Your question is, do I believe in the integrity of the election?
And the question is, we don't believe in integrity at all anymore.
If the administration has no integrity, we can't trust anything that comes through the Republican Party or even the Supreme Court at this point.
There was a time when there was integrity in this country.
And like when I had my, when I first voted, I was, I think, 18, and I went to the poll, and I didn't know I had to bring an ID.
And so the woman there, who's my neighbor, said, you need to go home and get something like your electric bill with your address on it.
And that's what I did.
I went home and got my electric bill, and I was able to vote.
This whole idea that there's something wrong with our elections didn't happen until Trump got into office.
And he made a really big deal about it.
And we found out that there were, what, five cases in the country of voter fraud, and all of them were Republicans?
I really don't think there was a problem, and now they're creating a problem so that they can fix it by putting ice at the polls to make sure that everybody's scared to vote.
Bayan, if you don't trust this process, are you going to go vote in 268 days?
Of course I'm going to vote because I don't think they're going to be able to ruin the vote.
But that's what they're trying to do.
They're trying to keep people from going.
They're making it dangerous.
They're making it doubtable.
We have to doubt everything that happens because the guy at the top is a liar and a felon.
This is the problem.
We cannot trust anybody anymore.
That's why we are not supposed to elect people like this guy.
That's Bahan in Silver Spring, Maryland.
This is Robert in the Lone Star State, Independent.
Good morning.
Looking at a beautiful red sunrise here in Greenville, Texas.
On the integrity of the elections, I think we're creating a mountain out of a molehill.
There's very little election fraud in this country.
All studies have shown that.
I would be more inclined to think in terms if the federal government wants to meddle in this affair of reaching out and exerting additional leverage over elections,
it would be to support ranked choice voting and allow the parties to be open to bringing in additional candidates with different points of view than just Republican and Democrat and see what the people want.
And I think it would be a huge, a huge sobering effect on this country to get us off the toxicity of division by having an independent Independents gain seats in Congress,
Senate, even the presidency, where, you know, they could make it more open to debate among bills of having portions swing back and forth based on the sanity of the argument and the persuasion of the arguments to,
you know, be able to seesaw back and forth to get the best policies that represent, I mean, look, represent the most equitable form of government, the most logical answers to the solutions that are to the problems that we face.
Right now, the majority of the voters in the United States, and all polling will indicate this, all sampling of the country will indicate this.
The largest portion of this country are independents.
They do not like either party particularly.
They don't want to swing far left.
They don't want to swing far right.
To bring back some level of civility to this country, we need to build a consensus.
And opening up the elections to independents to put them on the ballot with ranked choice voting would be a great indicator to the direction that this country needs to move in to improve the lives of everyday citizens.
Robert, does it concern you that one of those election laws that have been proposed, the Make Elections Great Again Act, the MEGA Act introduced by a Republican congressman from Missouri, one of the provisions is to ban ranked choice voting.
I think that's a look.
They just want to hang on to their seat.
That's why people have lost so much faith in government.
It's like you're in and you're in for life, and all you do is, you know, capture the money from the big donors.
And the whole election thing is basically being run by the richest people in the country of who they support and who will do their work for them.
Independents would come in with an open voice and say, okay, but that makes sense.
You know, this argument makes sense and that one doesn't.
So, you know, we're going to place our votes here.
Robert, were you ever part of a party?
When did you become an independent?
Oh, I've been a lifelong Republican.
And I even voted for Trump the first time around because I was getting a little fed up with the system and the dynasty environment that we were facing in 2016 of Bush's and Clintons.
And so I said, well, you know, this country's going down the wrong road.
You know, time for a change.
Boy, it didn't take me two months to realize how big of a mistake my vote was.
But I still had the right to vote.
And that should never be changed from what the Constitution laid out.
And the Constitution in no way ever defines a two-party system.
There's nothing in there about that.
So why don't we make the country more like what the Constitution envisioned, where it opened up people's voting rights to a candidate of their choice.
And ranked party voting seems like the simplest way.
If I had choose one, two, or three, or four or six, how would I rank them?
Robert, thanks for the call.
Thanks for the call from Texas this morning.
Got a lot of folks waiting.
I want to get to a few more.
This is Jamie in Louisville, Kentucky.
Republican, go ahead.
I've lost all faith in the Republican Party, to be honest with you.
But you're still a Republican, Jamie?
Yes, but I've been voting 60 years, and I remember the Bush core hanging chads.
We still have the most honest elections in the world, basically.
However, in 2015, when Trump came down his golden escalator, I had to rethink, I will vote for the best Republicans, which Trump will never be, and I have never voted for him.
And with him remaining in the office, the integrity has been lost with the Republican Party.
The last Republican in 2012, Mitt Romney, the Republicans decided to go with Mondell.
That was when I had to really rethink when I vote Republican who to vote for.
2020, Hillary Clinton got my vote.
2024, despite everything, I voted for Biden.
So you're thinking 2016 and 2020.
Yes.
2024, I did not vote at all for Trump.
Trump is the most dishonest and the most corrupt individual ever.
Have you thought about changing your Republican Party?
Have you thought about changing your party?
Oh, no, because being a Republican, I can vote against the worst and look at the election from that point of view.
But when it comes to 2026, I will not be voting Republican at all because of how the integrity has been lost in the Republican Party since Trump entered.
That I will remain a Republican, but I will not vote for dishonesty.
It's Jamie in Louisville, Kentucky.
You might be interested in today's opinion section of the New York Times, Anton Yeager, with a column, What Happens After the Collapse of Political Parties.
It's a look at what political parties have done historically in this country, the state of political parties right now.
Just two paragraphs from it.
For all its extremity, the Republican Party, Anton Yeager writes, exemplifies a trend affecting all Western democracies.
Since the 1990s, political parties across the West have been hemorrhaging members amid a wider weakening of internal structures, while especially damaging on the left, always reliant on popular support.
The trend affected forces across the spectrum.
And as a void opened between voters and parties, many citizens stopped engaging with them and even decided to opt out of voting altogether.
The result has been a steady erosion of mainstream parties' electoral support.
With this came a financial switch.
Over the same period, Western parties have increasingly relied on external funds rather than membership dues, and this has made them more open to business influence with all the volatility that that entails and liable to capture by cranks and extremists.
Across Europe, traditional parties are shadowed, or a shadow of what they once were, socially uprooted and economically dependent.
They too have been hollowed out.
Politics is everywhere, yet somehow it eludes stable forms, talking about the history of political parties in this country.
Again, that's the New York Times Anton Yeager today.
This is Lee with about eight minutes left in this segment, Charleston, South Carolina, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
You see, desperation.
You know, people get up in the morning from that drunken thing from last night.
They can't put two words together.
You were trying to correct that gentleman about the years of voting.
He couldn't tell you.
You had to correct him.
And this is the mentality we have.
People, I don't know.
Now, I just think what you need to bring about the subject is about what he posted on the video about the president, Barack Obama, his wife, the first lady.
I think that was low, low.
You can't get any lower from an 80-year-old man.
He's desperate.
People that follow him are desperate.
You know, can't even read most of them.
And I'm sorry he said because it doesn't make sense.
It's not adding up to me.
I'm not educated, very educated.
I just have some common sense and some book knowledge.
Lee, that video that caused so much controversy that the president reposted on a social media account, it actually had an election component to it.
And the president saying that's why he voted it, that's why he, I'm sorry, reposted it.
He said, what I saw at the beginning of the video was really, really strong.
It was about fraudulent elections in brushing off the blowback over posting that video.
He said, I didn't make a mistake.
I look at thousands of things and I looked at the beginning of it and it was fine.
And saying he didn't watch the whole video.
It was eventually taken down after getting so much pushback.
But that was an elections issue in the president's mind when he originally posted that video.
Well, if you want to keep thinking for him and you want to give him the excuse that he made, that's fine with you, John.
I'm not giving the excuse.
I'm just saying that's what he said when he was asked about the video.
I know what he says.
Okay, he's been saying a lot of things that wasn't true.
So why are you going to follow this down the rat hole, huh?
The rabbit hole, so to speak.
Why you folks do this?
Now, all he's doing is trying to distract you from all that's going on.
Can't you see?
I mean, all of the people that's in charge, what are they doing?
Okay, they're not doing anything constructive.
It's all destructive.
Okay?
So don't give me an excuse or tell excuse because I'm not going to call in this on this line anymore this Republican mantra because this is what it's all about.
That fella right there, you want in the house, you want him to rule.
He's ruling, okay?
So what is we don't even look at the job markets, look at the health care.
I'm damn bankrupt because of health care.
But yet, you want to talk about what he didn't do at 4 o'clock in the morning, 80-year-old man sitting out.
Give me a break.
Hey, we're going to take him out.
The people are going to rebel.
They're not going to take this anymore.
Okay?
We're sick of these people.
All right.
That's Lee in Charleston, South Carolina.
This is Gene Akron, Ohio Independent.
Good morning.
Gene, you're with us.
Got to stick by your phone.
Gene, we'll go to David in Monks Corner, South Carolina, Republican.
David, good morning.
Good morning.
Yes, monks rhymes with the word monk.
Okay, I want to make some quick points, and please question me on any of them so I can get them all in there.
You've got to remember, people have to remember, elections are so close that any fraud can throw a state's results.
So that's why there's a great concern.
They say there's, you know, only 1%, maybe, but that can be huge.
So, and they say non-citizens already do vote indirectly through their representation in Congress, the number of congressmen, et cetera.
So the same effect could happen in the number of electors in the Electoral College.
Okay.
Let's see.
Like, it's kind of like emergency funding with COVID.
Any emergency or temporary funding or tax becomes permanent.
And my point is that the COVID-type voting became, they want it to become permanent, even though the exceptions to regular voting rules were lifted because of the emergency.
It works so well for Democrats, they want to make it permanent.
You're talking about easing restrictions on mail-in voting during the pandemic.
Yes, and there's a question whether that was done constitutionally because of decisions by judges and governors.
You remember that.
That was a topic here.
And there's another point that you recall Judicial Watch, and you had Tom Fitton on the program.
They successfully eliminated somewhere around 5 million invalid voter registrations nationwide.
Some places were really big, millions.
I think there are even millions in Chicago that were cleared or in Illinois.
And one more point: of all the things that require a voter ID, why are Democrats opposed or make it even a racial issue when it comes to voting?
And you can say that who's president is probably, well, of course, in many people's minds, it's the greatest factor of any decision that we can have.
Look at the opposition to Trump.
So of all the things you need a voter ID for, why Democrats only oppose a voter ID for voting?
So there's got to be a reason for that.
Is it ideological or is it a political position?
So I think those are basically my points.
But I think President Trump won because of the work of Judicial Watch.
And it's about the only political monetary group that I support other than direct candidates and pro-life things.
But Judicial Watch was critical in the last election.
Let me leave it there.
Let me try to get in.
Josie in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Democrat.
Josie, thanks for waiting.
Good morning.
The discussion has been wonderful.
The gentleman from Texas really, really knew his Constitution.
And really, and John, I appreciate you bringing in the Constitution to this discussion.
The integrity of elections.
If I am going to the polls, and I work the polls, I come from, I live in a rural county in Western Pennsylvania.
I work the polls on Election Day.
I'm one of the people who has people register in.
I check off their names and they go off to vote.
I know everyone in my polling station.
Everyone, everyone who comes through that door, because it's a small town, it's a college town.
We have college students voting in our town, and they readily will give us their ID.
I think that what I'm concerned about is this talk now, very brash talk coming from the White House, the integrity of the election of 2026.
I think that we have had problems with elections throughout our history.
I taught history.
I know that we had problems.
The election of 1828, the election, how about 2000 when the Supreme Court essentially made that decision as to whom the winner was in the presidential election.
We have had problems throughout.
And yet, we have managed to find solutions, and people still believe in the power of their vote.
What I have seen is a disintegration of that belief because of the chaos that is spread by the current administration.
To think of Steve Bannon standing there and saying, yes, they'll have ICE at the polls, that is intimidation.
Josie, do you plan to be a poll worker in the midterms in 2026?
Of course, of course.
It's one of my civic duties.
I'm very proud.
I'm very, very proud of the people who come out to vote.
And I always applaud the first-time voters.
So many young people are now turning to voting.
You would be very surprised how they come in and they celebrate their first voting time.
Josie, do you?
I think that I'm just running short on time, but I did want to ask and note a history teacher.
Do you think there's a strong correlation between history teachers in this country and people who go and choose to work the polls on election day?
Do you think that's things that are often in common?
I say I also taught civics.
I think it is, I agree with you.
It's our civic duty.
It's our believing in the system.
And with all the turmoil and chaos that has been created over the last several years, I still believe in the system.
And I do not want any tampering with the 2026 election.
Unfortunately, I think that the current administration is looking at the polling and seeing that there very well could be a major change, a title change.
And they are anticipating that with this talk of needing to have Steve Bannon ICE at the polls, et cetera, et cetera.
That's intimidation.
That's scaring people out of there.
And I support mail-win ballots because there is a large elderly population in our county, and many of those people can't get out to vote.
Even though the nursing homes, et cetera, have transportation to the polls, some are unable, but they still want to participate.
I'm for mail-in, mail-win ballots.
I think that's small D Democratic.
Josie, let me leave it there.
Thanks for the call.
Thanks for all the callers in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
Stick around.
Plenty more to talk about today, including a little bit later, David Becker, the founder of the Center for Election Innovation, will join us.
We'll take back up some of these issues about voting, the midterm elections, and election integrity.
But up next, we're joined by Steve Cortez, a former Trump campaign advisor, author of the Substack newsletter.
Steve Cortez Investigates.
We'll talk about the Donald Trump immigration policies and immigration enforcement.
Stick around for that discussion.
We'll be right back.
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
Today, with our guest, best-selling author Jodi Pico, who has written 29 books about a wide range of controversial and moral issues.
Her books include The Storyteller, 19 Minutes, and Her Latest by Any Other Name.
She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
People come to you and say you've changed their views on certain social issues because of your books.
That's why I write.
You know, it's to start a discussion.
And you can't always have a discussion with people.
Some people just aren't ready to hear it.
But there are a lot of minds that you can change one mind at a time.
Watch America's Book Club with Jodi Picoult today at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's Teasel Muir Harmony on the history of the U.S. space program, from the creation of NASA in 1958 to Neil Armstrong taking his first historic steps on the lunar surface in July 1969, and NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon.
She also looks back on astronaut Frank Borman's Apollo 8 Christmas Eve broadcast in 1968.
Frank Borman was told when he was preparing for this mission and the schedule was short.
He said, he was told, the broadcast will be on Christmas Eve and more humans will be listening to your voice than have ever listened to a human voice in history.
Say something appropriate.
Those are the instructions he got and he thought, you know, what should I say?
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.
The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's Tieselmuir Harmony.
Tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A, you can listen to Q ⁇ A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Best ideas and best practices can be found anywhere.
We have to listen so we can govern better.
Democracy depends on heavy doses of civility.
You can fight and still be friendly.
Bridging the divide in American politics.
You know, you may not agree with the Dark Crown on everything, but you can find areas where you do agree.
He's a pretty likable guy as well.
Chris Kins and I are actually friends.
He votes wrong all the time, but we're actually friends.
A horrible secret that Scott and I have is that we actually respect each other.
We all don't hate each other.
You two actually kind of like each other.
These are the kinds of secrets we'd like to expose.
It's nice to be with a member who knows what they're talking about.
You guys did agree to the civility, all right?
He owes my son $10 from a bed.
I mean, I'm going to pay for it.
Fork it over.
That's fighting words right there.
I'm glad I'm not in charge.
I'm thrilled to be on the show with him.
There are not shows like this, right?
Incentivizing that relationship.
Ceasefire, Friday nights on C-SPAN.
Washington Journal continues.
Back with us this Sunday morning is Steve Cortez, a former senior advisor to the Trump campaign.
He now authors the Steve Cortez Investigate Substack newsletter.
And Mr. Cortez, on immigration enforcement first, it is what we're seeing in Minnesota, what we have seen over the past couple weeks and months.
Is this what Donald Trump promised on immigration enforcement when he was campaigning in 2024?
Or is this something beyond what he promised?
Good morning, John.
I do think it's exactly what President Trump promised.
He was very clear.
He wasn't nuanced about the topic of immigration, that he wanted mass deportations.
And with that as his foundational stance, it wasn't a side issue.
It was the central issue of the 2024 campaign, at least on the Trump side, because of what had happened during the Biden-Harris era.
And so that decision was put before the American people, who effectively rendered a verdict that they did, in fact, want mass deportations by giving Donald Trump every single swing state plus the national popular vote, actually by a significant margin by millions of votes, first Republican to do so in two decades.
So I believe this kind of aggressive enforcement, this kind of insistence on American sovereignty is exactly what the American people wanted after decades of tolerating open borders, porous borders, and real lawlessness regarding mass migration, particularly mass migration from the third world into our country.
How does or should the Trump administration define success in an operation like this?
When do you say the job is done?
Yeah, it's a good question because, right, and it's clearly up for judgment.
That is a judgment call as to when the job is done.
And to some degree, of course, it's never done, right?
We have to continually be enforcing our immigration laws.
That's just how law enforcement works.
But I would say in terms of a measurable success that matters, the thing that I'm paying the most attention to is self-deportations.
We have about 2 million self-deportations right now.
And we know that, unlike a lot of illegal migration data, we can actually track this very well because what President Trump and the administration have done is they've taken that CBP1 app, which was basically used by the Biden administration as a high-tech way to invite mass invasion of the United States.
Well, we've now flipped that technology to use it for good.
And we are incentivizing, as a country, I mean, we are incentivizing illegal migrants to say, hey, if you do the right thing, if you self-report, self-dep and self-deport out of the country, we will pay you.
We're going to give you a financial incentive, which I think is incredibly generous of the American people, $2,600 per person right now, pay for your flight home.
And in addition, you will have the ability, again, as long as you self-deport, you will have the ability to reapply to do it the right way, to come back into our country legally.
Whereas if you are forcibly removed, if you are arrested, you can never, for the rest of your life, you can never apply again.
That's U.S. law.
That's not Donald Trump's decision.
So we know that about 2 million people have self-deported.
If that number gets around, say, 10 million over the course of the four years in office, I think that would be a magnificent victory for the American people because it would probably mean somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 million total illegals have left, 10 million of them, without us having to go through the danger and the expense of having to arrest people in communities.
How do you get to that number of 10 million from, if it is 2 million today?
Why would there be that many more people who are waiting around to self-deport as opposed to take this incentive that you talk about or do it in the first year of the Donald Trump administration?
Sure.
It's a great question, John.
And here's, I think, why.
The first reason is continued enforcement, right?
So in other words, they continue to see that illegal aliens are getting arrested.
So, you know, I think you need sort of carrot and stick.
The carrot side, the incentive side are the incentives to leave.
Again, the financial and near-term incentives, but also the longer-term incentive of you can potentially come back here as a legal resident, and you don't have to look over your shoulder.
You can become an American the right way, as millions of people have done before you.
And by the way, those legal immigrants should be prioritized over these illegals who have cheated the system and cut the line.
So that's the first thing is continued enforcement.
I mean, human nature is such that we don't necessarily respond immediately, but over time, if the illegal migrants see that, hey, the United States means it about this, and I don't want to get arrested.
I don't want to get cuffed.
I don't want to never be allowed to come back to the United States again.
I don't want to go through that trauma.
I want to do the right thing.
You know, perhaps they're convicted internally that their conscience says, hey, I shouldn't have done it this way.
I'm going to take this generous offer from the American people.
So that's the first part of the equation.
The second part is, I think over time, we're going to make those incentives probably more generous because it just makes sense for us just from a financial point of view.
Look, I think the American people are being very humane.
We don't owe illegal migrants anything.
They broke and entered into our country.
They committed a crime against the people of the United States.
But because we are a magnanimous people and because we're trying to be as humane as possible about reclaiming our sovereignty, protecting our streets, protecting our wages, we're actually offering inducements.
But it also makes financial sense for us because there's not just human risk to going out in the community and arresting people to the officers, to the community, but it's also quite expensive.
You know, sending an entire team of ICE or other agents to go and apprehend somebody is incredibly expensive.
If somebody says, hey, I'm going to do this peacefully the right way, it's worth us, I think, as a people investing essentially in that process.
So I think over time, the incentives have already gone higher.
They've already ratcheted up.
I believe it started at $1,000.
We're now at $2,600.
So I think it probably gets the inducements, the incentives probably get more attractive over time as well.
And even with those financial incentives that you talk about, you make the case in the Daily Signal in a column you wrote recently about the economic case for immigration enforcement of where this benefits Americans if these actions are successful.
Explain.
Yes, and I think this is the most important aspect.
There's many reasons that we need to secure our borders and that we need to control illegal migration into this country.
Every country in the world needs to do that, by the way.
And most, by the way, do it very well.
Only the United States seems to get vilified for insisting that we have a right to do this.
But of all the arguments, national security, street safety, protecting our culture, the biggest argument, and I think the most persuasive for the most people is economic.
Part of the affordability crisis in this country, which I think was created by Bidenomics, which has been inherited, but admittedly does continue under Donald Trump.
Part of the affordability crisis is the immigration crisis because we have tens of millions of illegals here doing two things.
First, John, they are competing in the labor market unlawfully and unjustly against American workers.
So they are depressing American wages.
What we have now seen since Trump took office, every single month in office for a year now, real wages have gone up.
And that's what really matters to most people for their prosperity.
Real wages means your pay adjusted for inflation.
So inflation is getting under control.
It's not where it needs to be yet, but it's under control, not like the Biden years, and wages are starting to really rise.
So then you get real wages rising.
And that is the mother's milk of Main Street prosperity.
That's where most people derive their economic well-being because most Americans don't own big financial assets.
So the daubing at 50,000 is a great thing, but it doesn't change the day-to-day life of a lot of Americans.
It's real wages.
They are rising.
A huge driver of that is taking over 2 million illegal workers out of the workforce because most of those illegal aliens came here to work.
When you remove that artificial labor supply, guess what?
Wages rise for American citizens.
That's a great thing.
So that's the first component.
And then the second component is on the cost side.
When those American citizen workers come home from their jobs with bigger, better paychecks, they are literally coming to a home that is finally starting to get more affordable.
Now, this is still a crisis, home affordability, clearly.
But the point is it's starting to get better, especially for middle and lower income folks who are primarily renters.
Rent prices in the United States just hit a four-year low.
And I give all the data in my Daily Signal article, all of the links here.
So I'm not just sloganeering, not just throwing out political mottos.
The numbers, the hard data show us what is going on right now.
And rents just hit a four-year low.
A big part of that is due to immigration.
The reason we know that is in places with the highest concentrations of both legal migrants as well as illegal migrants, places like Los Angeles and Miami, the rents are falling the fastest.
Even the Los Angeles Times, which is not a paper that in any sense pays homage to Donald Trump, a very left-wing, I would argue biased newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, admitted that a big part of rent prices coming down in the Los Angeles area is because the illegals are leaving.
So you had artificial demand for housing, artificial demand for apartment rents.
That is starting to be removed, both through arrests as well as these huge numbers, as I talked about, of self-deportations.
And by the way, you don't have to take my word for it.
I give the stats in this article, asking investors and apartment owners around the country, asking landlords and investors who own apartment buildings.
40% of them say that immigration enforcement is forcing their rents lower.
Now, they're not happy about that, understandably, but regular Americans are.
Working-class folks finally are getting a break on housing affordability.
So, to me, the most compelling, most persuasive argument for immigration enforcement is that it is making your life as an American citizen more affordable.
It's a key fix, it's a key solution to the affordability crisis.
Steve Cortez is our guest, the author of Steve Cortez Investigates a Substack newsletter.
You can see all of his writing as well, CortezInvestigates.com.
And you can call in and join the conversation: 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats.
Independents, it's 202-748-8002.
Several folks already on the line for you, Mr. Cortez, including Rip in Fredericksburg, Virginia, line for Republicans.
Rip, good morning.
I've asked this question.
I've asked this question multiple times, never gotten an answer.
Why, when individuals come from another country, the child of that country, and we pay for them and take care of them, why do we not then delete that cost of said person illegally in our country from the deficit we owe to said country, the parent of that youth or of that human being?
Rip, what do you mean?
What do you mean when you say the deficit that we owe to a country?
Are you talking about just foreign aid that we give to another country?
No, we owe Mexico a ton of money.
We have a deficit to that country.
Are you talking a trade deficit?
Yes.
Why not?
If we owe them any money whatsoever, why do we not then say, okay, your child is in our country.
We're taking care of you.
This is the amount that we've had to pay to take care of that human being.
We're going to delete that from the money we owe you.
If we did that, every country would say, you're not going over there because we're not going to have that deleted from what we owe.
Well, Rip, let me pause there.
Steve Cortez, do you want to jump in here on deficits we owe to other countries?
I'm not sure what he's talking about.
No, Rip, I think it's an interesting question.
I think I know what you're driving at here.
Of course, we do owe a lot of money to folks who bought Treasury bills, who effectively lent the United States government money all over the world.
Now, that's primarily in the first world.
That's mostly Europeans, the Chinese, and the Japanese.
It's not a lot of the countries where migrants primarily come from in the third world, although we do owe some treasury payback, some treasury debt to those countries.
But I think what you're getting at here is that there needs to be consequences, Rip, for these countries who are acting irresponsibly, who are in some cases facilitating or at least allowing a mass of illegal migration into the United States.
And in that regard, I totally agree with you.
And I'll give you an example where I think that's starting to happen.
And that is Venezuela, where, of course, we just took out Maduro, the dictator of Venezuela, and really, I think, a magnificent operation.
The United States military should be greatly lauded for what it did there.
But importantly, the jails of Venezuela were literally emptied.
And it's one of the reasons why a lot of the illegal Venezuelan migrants in the United States have been very criminal in their nature is because they were criminals in Venezuela, Chavez before Maduro, and then Maduro literally emptied the jails, said, you can leave the jail, but you can't stay here.
You need to go to the United States.
Because of Biden's open border, they poured into the United States unfiltered, unfettered, and have brought a lot of misery to this country.
So the point is, okay, now, should Venezuela pay a price?
Yes, absolutely.
Venezuela should pay a financial penalty for that, and they're going to now.
President Trump has been very clear about that, that the oil resources of Venezuela, which are vast, by some estimates, the biggest reserves in the entire world, the oil production of Venezuela, now that we have taken out Maduro, the people of the United States are due a portion of that oil revenue, and we're going to get it.
And by the way, it's sort of a double benefit because not only are the people going to get it, but we're going to sell that.
Most of that oil is sold to China, who is, of course, the foremost enemy of the United States.
Well, we are going to make sure that we charge China a premium for that oil.
They used to get a discount on that oil because the world wasn't supposed to be trading with Venezuela.
So it was essentially a black market operation and Beijing got a discount.
Well, they're not going to get a discount anymore.
As a matter of fact, there's going to be a premium charge for that Venezuelan oil.
America is going to get a piece of it and we deserve it.
So that would be an example, I think, of what you're talking about, that the United States has been badly abused by a lot of countries in the world, particularly some third world nations that have very purposefully foisted their problems upon the United States.
And they should pay penalties in many ways for that, including financial penalties.
In the case of Mexico, for example, Mexico responds very directly when we threaten Mexico economically because the two countries are so deeply intertwined, right?
Our biggest trading partner now, which is a good thing, by the way, and mostly a great trading relationship.
But it means the United States has tremendous leverage over Mexico.
And so at times, Mexico has been pretty responsible at guarding its own southern border so that we don't have such a problem at our southern border.
But then at other times, Mexico has been very permissive and said, okay, all these migrant caravans can come on through as long as they don't stay, as long as they keep going to the United States.
That's totally unjust.
It's not a way, it's not, it's certainly not a neighborly way for Mexico to act.
When they do that, they need to be punished.
I think thankfully now we have an administration that takes that kind of view, that insists on prioritizing American citizens and that will aggressively punish foreign countries when they are not acting in a fair and commensurate way with being allies of the United States.
Out to California, this is Tina, Line for Democrats.
Tina, good morning.
You're on with Steve Cortez.
Good morning.
Yeah.
My question on him is that why is ICE only on the Democratic states for the fact that Donald Trump has stated in news through one of you guys' channels that he is only going after the Democratic states?
Yeah, Tina, listen, that is an excellent question.
And the answer is they're not only the Democrat states.
That's where it's getting attention because that's where, unfortunately, there is controversy.
Why?
Because politicians in Minnesota, Mayor Fry and Governor Walls, have decided that they are going to not only not cooperate with federal law enforcement, but in many ways they are going to resist and try to frustrate and harass federal law enforcement.
So we've had showdowns in places like Minnesota.
But if you look at the actual deportation numbers, where are the numbers biggest?
Texas and Florida.
So ICE is incredibly active in red states.
But the point is it's not controversial there because those governors, those mayors are not acting like renegades.
They're not acting like, frankly, insurrectionists, pretending that federal law doesn't prevail on immigration.
In addition, the arrests there, and again, the volume of arrests is actually far, far higher than it is in Minnesota.
But the arrests there are taking place in a very orderly and generally peaceful manner.
Why?
Because local law enforcement is fully cooperating with ICE, and most of those arrests are happening in courthouses and in jails.
So in other words, the illegal migrant is picked up for a crime, whether it's a minor crime or something very serious.
Local law enforcement in the state of Florida in Ron DeSantis, Florida, notifies ICE this isn't illegal.
We are charging him with XYZ.
Once this is adjudicated, come and get him.
And by the way, you can send one or two ICE agents to go and pick up a prisoner from handcuff, one pair of handcuffs to another pair of handcuffs in a jail, right?
It's basically 100% secure.
It's totally secure for the general public because you're not doing it in the community.
It's cost-effective.
And it's just a sensible way to do law enforcement.
That's happening in red states.
I live in Tennessee.
It's happening here in Tennessee.
There's a lot of people getting deported, but it's not making news because there's not controversy about it.
So that is the difference.
If Governor Walls would act responsibly, if he would follow the law, if he would stop acting like the southern segregationist governors acted in the 1950s and 1960s, and that's what he's doing, if he would stop acting that way, you would see a lot of arrests, a lot of deportations out of Minnesota, but it would be in an orderly and safe manner.
That's what we need all over the country.
How did you read Tom Holman's 700 agent drawdown this past week?
Yeah, you know, I think it was, look, as far as tactics, I'm going to defer to them.
I'm not in law enforcement.
As long as the steady flow of deportations continues, what is the best tactic?
I think that he probably determined, and perhaps the White House as well determined, that a sort of flexing show of force was perhaps inviting too much controversy and too much confrontation there, that you can still be really effective in law enforcement, but do it in a way that is a little less in your face.
And so I think that's what's going on there.
Also, importantly, though, because of federal law enforcement being brave and being insistent, both the Minneapolis mayor as well as Governor Walls have pledged that they are going to start cooperating and start turning over more criminals in the jails rather than ICE having to go and nab them in the community.
So that's what Tom Holman himself explained.
He said, because they're starting to cooperate more, they're not where they should be, but they're not as intransigent as they were, Director Holman said we can start to reduce the federal footprint here.
But I also think it's important, you know, this flood of resources and show of force occasionally, I think is necessary to get back to what I was talking about earlier, which is self-deportations.
To motivate people to self-deport, part of that equation, we want to offer incentives, which we're doing.
Again, incredibly generous of the American people to actually pay criminals to peacefully leave.
But in addition, those folks, those illegal migrants who broke and entered into our country, they need to also see that I am at risk.
If I stay here illegally, I'm at risk of being one of those folks that I see on the news.
So I think at times that show of force is necessary, but for the most part, it probably makes more sense tactically.
And, you know, again, I defer to their law enforcement expertise, but it probably makes more sense tactically to do it sort of in a quieter but still really effective manner.
Jonathan, Independent Line in Philly, good morning to you.
Yes.
It's a lot of information being put out today.
I don't really have strong feelings about immigration.
My concern is that it just seems very ineffective the way the current administration is going about it.
The guests did talk about, you know, maybe other ways of motivating people to leave.
I would just recommend locking up all the employers.
If you hire an illegal immigrant, we're going to seize your business, seize your assets.
We're going to treat you like a drug dealer.
And I promise you, people won't hire them and they'll self-deport.
I don't know if that's good for the economy or not.
I'm an independent.
I suspect that it's not.
I suspect that cheap, exploitable immigrant labor is probably healthy for the overall economy.
I mean, really, that's why the business community of America shipped all their jobs to Southeast Asia.
It's to take care of cheap, exploitable labor.
So as a guest is a little bit weird, the idea that it's going to somehow drive up wages for Americans, I don't think so.
GDP has gone up, Wages have been stagnant for 60, 70 years.
You have two calcified parties, really one corporate party.
One wing of the bird is the Democrats, the other is the Republicans.
They don't put policies forward that help the American people.
They put policies forward that help billionaires.
So the idea, again, that we're going to somehow improve things for American workers, things are going to get worse for American workers.
And I'll tell you why.
One is AI and the other is automation.
So even if you brought some factory jobs back, guess what?
You don't need workers for those factories.
That'll become more and more so in the future.
The two main industries in the U.S. in terms of for hiring, you have retail and you have driving jobs.
Those are gone.
Those are not going to be here in five or 10 years.
So this guy is like living in a delusional past, weird, like he's 50 years to 100 years.
Got your point.
Let me give you Steve Cortez a chance to respond.
Hey, Jonathan, yeah, a lot of information there.
And you certainly make some very valid points.
It's interesting that you say that wages haven't risen for 60 years.
You're right, particularly relative to GDP, right?
In other words, a far bigger share has gone to top management and to investors, to financial capital, rather than to labor.
But it's interesting you mentioned 60 years because what happened 60 years ago?
Well, 1965 exactly was the Immigration Act of the United States, which vastly changed and massively increased third world migration into the United States.
Previous to that, we had decades where there was actually very little immigration to the United States and where we had very strict filters about who could come in, totally merit-based.
You had to bring exceptional skills.
You had to love our country.
So both on the skills side and values, we were very stringent about who came into this country.
I don't think it's a coincidence.
The 1950s, in many ways, were a golden era for the United States.
Very, very low immigration.
We prioritized American workers.
That all changed in 1965 with President Johnson and a then young Senator Ted Kennedy who decided, no, we need mass migration from the third world.
And we've had it essentially ever since, both legal and then as well as illegal.
And the illegal part has more been for the last 40 years since the mid-1980s when President Reagan, somebody who I greatly admire, made the worst mistake of his political career, which was giving amnesty to millions of illegals, which only encouraged a torrent of illegal immigration, of course, to follow.
So it is not coincidental that wages for regular folks, for working class people, have stagnated relative to the economy for 60 years, concurrent to a mass migration from the third world into this country.
I would also argue that it's done tremendous cultural damage to the cohesion of the United States.
We are a much more unified, patriotic, high-trust society before that mass migration.
And by the way, I'm the son of an immigrant.
My father immigrated here legally from Colombia.
So I'm not completely anti-immigration, but I think it needs to be done in a totally different manner than we've done in recent decades in this country.
But regarding wages, too, I want to speak to your point about AI because I think you're making a really critical point here.
And I actually really agree with you, even though you apparently think I'm weird, Jonathan.
That's fine.
Regarding AI and automation, it is absolutely a threat to workers in this country.
You mentioned drivers.
I'm incredibly worried about what self-driving could do to over 2 million Americans, primarily blue-collar men, who drive for a living, who generally make good wages, who can support families with that occupation.
I'm extremely nervous about the future there and what it holds for working class Americans.
And I think none of us know for certain.
Let's just be honest about it.
But what I do know is this.
It is not an era when we need millions and millions of illegal workers.
That's for sure.
Because if anything, we may soon be facing the consequences of AI such that millions of American citizens don't have productive work to do.
So this is a terrible time, an awful time in history.
There's never a good time to tolerate illegal migration, but this might be the worst time of all on the precipice of so much automation, so much AI coming into our labor force.
And clearly the need for human labor, I think almost everyone would agree on this, that the need for human labor, particularly unskilled human labor, is probably or lower skilled, is going to go down drastically.
And what does that tell me?
Then get the illegals out.
I would also argue, by the way, regarding legal immigration, we've really been talking about the illegal side in this discussion.
Even legal immigration, right?
We have millions of workers in this country who are here legally from overseas on worker visas, things like H-1B, the OPT program for young people.
I think those programs need to be phased out for similar reasons, because again, let's prioritize American workers.
We are likely facing a future where we need far fewer workers to be productive for the economy.
And I guess the bigger focus, what I would argue, Jonathan, is this.
What we as a country, and in terms of policy, what we have focused on for decades, is rewarding capital.
And I think we just need to be honest about that.
And capital has done great, right?
The wealthy have never done better than they are right now.
If you own a lot of assets, these are solid days.
Working class Americans, it's been a slog.
It's been very, very tough for working class Americans.
And what I'm saying is we need to stop prioritizing capital so much and start worrying about American workers.
It's right for us long term, for our society.
It's the just thing to do.
It's what builds a strong mass middle class, which America used to have.
We used to have a country where a family could comfortably live on a single income.
We don't have that anymore.
We're not even close to that.
We're not even close to a country where young people, for example, believe that they can buy a home.
I do a lot of polling, a lot of political polling.
And Gen Z folks right now in their late teens and into their 20s, they are incredibly pessimistic about their economic future, and I think justifiably so.
And when we asked them, I just recently polled, did a national poll of Gen Z, and I asked them, do you want to own a home?
80% of them said yes.
We said, do you believe you're going to own a home before the age of 40?
70% said no, that they do not believe they're going to be able to.
That's wrong.
Part of why they're in that predicament, not the only reason, but part of it is because, in a major part, is mass migration.
And for example, you know, there are hundreds of thousands, actually even into the millions of international students who come to this country for school.
Some folks might think that's a good thing.
I don't.
But anyway, they come to American universities.
They automatically, automatically, if they come to an American school, get at least a year to work as a legal worker visa, OPT permit holder in the United States.
If they're in a STEM field, which many of them are, especially the ones that come from Asia, they get three years automatically.
So they're taking the spot of an American at the university.
First of all, I have a new documentary out about exactly this topic about the 300,000 Chinese nationals who are here.
We're educating our enemy.
Well, not only do they get a spot and displace an American for our flagship most selective universities, they then also get to stay for three years and work and displace a young American worker in the workforce.
So I think this is critical.
Getting control of immigration, as I mentioned before, is critical to the near-term affordability crisis we're facing.
We're already seeing a lot of progress because what President Trump is doing, but it's also big picture, really important to restoring prosperity, to restoring the earning power of American citizens, especially those young folks, the young strivers who are just getting started in their careers.
On your new documentary about foreign students in the United States educating the enemy, wasn't the idea of these student visas and the STEM jobs that you're talking about, wasn't the idea to bring in the best and the brightest from around the world, and they will help create more jobs in this country that more Americans can benefit from.
Why would we not want the best and brightest from around the world here?
Yeah, so interesting you ask.
It's the right question.
That was the idea, okay?
And a lot of these awful policies start with the best of intentions, right?
So the intention was, okay, yes, let's get the best.
We have the best university system in the world.
The world wants to come here.
Let's get the best brains from around the world.
What we have seen happen, though, instead, particularly in the case of the Chinese, and I think we have too many international students, period, but I'm most focused on the Chinese because there we're talking about an adversary nation.
I believe the Chinese Communist Party is the existential enemy of the United States in the world.
So the Chinese Communist Party sends 300,000 young Chinese nationals to American universities every year, pays for them to go to American schools.
American schools, because they're greedy and not very patriotic, say, we want the money.
Come on in.
Okay, so what do these Chinese students do?
They come and learn and they generally go to the best STEM schools.
I highlight the University of Illinois, which is one of the best engineering, mathematics, physics schools in America.
They go to the University of Illinois.
Young adults, young people, young Americans from Chicago and Peoria and Springfield, Illinois can't get in.
6,000 Chinese nationals go to Illinois.
They learn these very valuable STEM skills and they then go back to China.
They go back to China to make China wealthier and stronger and to reward the CCP and make it an even more potent enemy to the United States.
In addition to that, and this is critical, many of them, and we know this factually, it's not my supposition, they are spying on the United States.
We are inviting in the children of the enemy, the princelings of the Chinese Communist Party.
And again, it's not my supposition.
We know, for example, at Illinois Tech, one of the top tech schools in the state of Illinois, IIT, a Chinese national was arrested and convicted of espionage.
He was spying on the United States.
He was so important to Beijing that he was actually swapped in a prisoner exchange.
He's now back in China.
University of Michigan, this just happened.
Three Chinese nationals who were students at the University of Michigan were indicted.
They were sneaking bioweapons into the United States, ones that could poison crops.
They wanted to poison the food supply of the United States.
This is incredibly dangerous.
So it's both unjust to young Americans that we're not prioritizing young Americans, but in addition, it's just dangerous from a national security perspective.
I guess what I would also say is this, inviting in true geniuses, okay?
If we want to invite in a true Einstein, okay, I think something like a 1% cap on international students would make sense.
At most selective schools in the United States right now, it's more like 25%.
If you look at the Ivy Leagues, the Stanfords, the Northwesterns of America, it's more like 25% international.
We are paying for these schools, by the way, not just the state ones.
As a matter of fact, the private schools generally get more government aid than the public schools do.
So we're paying for all of them and we're paying to educate this mass of foreign students.
And at some of these elite schools, like Columbia University in New York, Ivy League School, it's half.
Half of the student body is foreign.
Okay, that's not inviting in Einstein.
That's saying we are prioritizing foreign students, I think in part because they want the money, but also in part because they're simply not patriotic and they don't want to prioritize educating Americans.
You know, we're a country of 330 million people.
Nearly every serious innovation in the world, if you look back for a century, has come from the United States.
So, the idea that we don't have the intelligence here, that we don't have the talent, the creativity, that our young people can't cut it, I think the evidence just argues otherwise.
Of course, we have it here, but we need to cultivate it.
And I show in my documentary, Mark Andreessen, who's one of the most successful people in the history of tech in Silicon Valley.
Mark Andreessen grew up a middle-class kid in the Midwest.
He went to the University of Illinois, and he credits that as his launch pad that started his tech, you know, really revolutionary and super successful tech career that made him into a billionaire, that created a lot of wealth for a lot of people, employs thousands and thousands of Americans.
He says, and I play this tape in my documentary, he says, I would not get into the University of Illinois today.
He says, between the DEI nonsense and those standards and the international students, he said, there's no place for somebody like me, for a middle-class American kid, to get into the U of I any longer.
And I think that's totally wrong.
And it's related to immigration.
It's not strictly immigration as defined because they don't necessarily get a right to stay here, but it's very similar.
It's the same lane as this mass migration problem from the third world.
Part of it is inviting them into our universities.
And because a lot of those do turn into immigrants because they get that OPT visa I was talking about, occupational practical theory or training, as it stands for.
They get that OPT.
That often leads to a green card, which then often leads to permanent residency and even citizenship in the United States.
So they're all interrelated, these factors.
For folks who want to watch the documentary, you haven't named it yet.
You can go to Steve Cortez Investigates, The Foreign Student Crisis Destroying American College Admissions, also available on your YouTube page as well.
I'm running short on time.
Let me try to get one more caller.
Steve's been waiting in Florida, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I was in Nashville in the 80s when the construction boom started and undocumented migrants from Mexico were coming in in droves.
And they were coming in at the behest of the corporations and the employers who were trying to undercut American wage and labor standards.
And they, you know, these were people that were just trying to find a way to make a living for their families.
They worked and they worked.
And in the generation proceeding, they started getting promoted in their jobs to management.
They started opening up their own businesses.
They started sending their kids to college.
And basically, they started a life.
And we respected them for a long time.
Then, and the corporations, you know, you said that Americans have the ingenuity, and I agree with that.
And we have the initiative and everything.
I agree with that.
The problem is that American corporations want to utilize it and they don't want to pay for it.
So whenever they were fighting the unions, they were trying to undercut the unions and prevailing wage.
And in the process, these people built lives here.
They raised generations of kids here.
And then one morning we wake up and say, hey, these people are rapists and thieves and murderers, and we need to get them out of here.
And we trap these people, basically.
We trap them because, you know, it's hard for them to lead their lives.
That's my one point.
Well, Steve, let me take that point because I'm running short on time.
Steve Cortez, I'll give you the final two minutes here.
Yeah, Steve, listen, you make some excellent points.
And listen, I agree with you on big business in this country, right?
And I mean, I am on the populist right, so I am no fan of big business.
I think big business has abused American workers.
Big business has abused America, period, through offshoring, through exploiting the labor force, especially when it comes to foreign labor.
And you're exactly right.
Big business, more than anyone, wants cheap foreign labor.
They love this flow of foreign labor to the United States, but it doesn't prioritize our people.
And regarding the folks you're talking about, people who came here illegally, who you found to be good people, of course, there's millions of illegals who are here who are acting like honorable people in the United States.
That doesn't mean it's okay, all right, for a couple of reasons.
Number one, we must prioritize.
There's nothing ethical about putting our people second in line.
Okay, we must prioritize our own people.
If you don't love your own family, you can't love anybody else beyond that.
Let's focus on the American family.
But secondly, for the people who came here legally, people like my own father, it's a difficult process.
It's expensive.
It's time-consuming.
It's an onerous process to come here legally.
It is totally disrespectful to the people who did it the right way, who waited in line, who paid their dues, who came here respectfully and lawfully to the United States.
Totally disrespectful to them to say that we're going to simply allow people to become Americans on their own terms.
No, that is not the way that an orderly society functions.
And we just, we can't function that way.
We need to prioritize American citizens, whether native-born or legally naturalized.
And that is my overarching message.
And that has to be the theme and the driving agenda, I think, of American policy.
If you want to read much more from Steve Cortez, check out his Substack newsletter, Steve Cortez Investigates.
Also, his YouTube page is where you can go to watch that new documentary that he was just talking about.
Steve Cortez, always appreciate your time on a Sunday morning.
You bet.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Coming up a little later in our program, we'll be joined by David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
We'll talk about calls to nationalize the midterm election, what that could mean, and take your calls.
But until then, and for about the next 20 minutes, it's our open forum.
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As you're calling in a couple stories on the crossover between politics and football on this Super Bowl Sunday.
This story from the front page of the Washington Post focuses on the halftime show.
Bad Bunny Show may tell a story about a cultural divide in America.
As millions await his Super Bowl performance, others pan his politics, taking a focus on that halftime show in Santa Clara, California today before a global television audience expected to top 100 million people.
And then there's this column by Paul Putz this morning.
This also from the Washington Post, but it's about Christianity at the Super Bowl defining, defying a trend in America.
Paul Putz writes, when the contest starts, players will be found at various points kneeling in prayer and pointing upward to God in celebration.
Meanwhile, for the fourth straight year, fans watching at home will see the latest Jesus ad from the He Gets Us campaign.
And during the post-game interviews, they'll hear the winners give glory to God while the losers try to make sense of the disappointment, perhaps turning to the Bible for solace.
Paul Putz writes, it's a remarkable shift over the course of a century.
Christian athletes have successfully turned pro-sports and pro-football in particular from a space in which Christians were rarely present into one of the most prominent arenas in American life for Christian witness and self-assertion.
For all the success of the Christian sports movements, he writes, it remains a subculture within the larger ecosystem of pro-sports, talking about Christianity, the Super Bowl, and politics in America today.
Paul Putz in his column.
You may want to read it today.
Open forum, though.
Anything that you want to talk about?
This is Helen in Long Beach, California.
Republican, what's on your mind?
Yeah, I was trying to call earlier.
Okay, on immigration, your prior speaker.
First, I have one thing to say.
I have this.
During the Obama administration, Obama deported 3 million illegal aliens, non-citizens, and there was no outcry, no ICE protests.
So, you know, I'm wondering the current protest, because it's under the Trump administration, could be a lot of inflammatory rhetoric stirred up by the Democratic Party.
I live in California, and I live in Los Angeles County.
They both proclaim themselves as sanctuary states.
In 2017, Governor Brown declared California a sanctuary state.
And I think about two, three years ago, maybe Karen Bass, the mayor of LA, she proclaimed Los Angeles to be a sanctuary city.
Well, let's take a look at Social Security.
I'm looking at the website for supplemental to social, supplemental security income.
When someone enters in, and this isn't stated in the SSI I'm reading from, but when a person comes into this state illegally, it is immediately implied that they are a refugee because California has labeled itself a sanctuary state.
When an illegal alien comes into the city of Los Angeles, it is immediately implied that that individual is a refugee.
When you come into the country as a refugee or you're an asylum seeker, these people will receive Social Security income up to seven years.
So you get seven years of income and you may receive food stamps, health care, so forth, without paying for it.
And you get paid on top of it.
So Helen, bring me to your point.
Okay, the dilemma is with all this immigration coming in, they're double dipping and they're pushing United States citizens out of the labor market and out of the rental market, out of the housing market, because they're working under the table and receiving government benefits paid for by the very people they're displacing.
So, Helen, you may want to read Steve Cortez's column.
It was from the Daily Signal.
It was last week.
And he talks about these issues that you're bringing up.
Daily Signal.
You can find it online in his column, I think, was from Wednesday or Thursday last week.
But go ahead and check it out as we go to Wendell in Delaware.
Democrat, good morning.
Oh, good morning.
How are you doing?
Doing well.
I was calling yesterday, but the picture they had of Obama, I don't know what's wrong with people.
There's no goodwill.
That man's been racist all his life.
Back there in the 70s, he wouldn't need rent places to the black people.
And they always that's Wendell in Delaware.
This is Jim in Kissimmee, Florida, Independent.
Good morning.
Morning, Erin.
I just want to talk about the last phone that talk, you know, that you had as a speaker on there.
He said that they're giving $2,600 to send people back to their country.
No.
And I was wondering if Democrat, Republican, whatever you are, if you give people like on Social Security at $2,600, $11,000, they're making them $1,000 a month, $1,200 a month, some of them.
They'll all vote for you.
And you want to have no trouble getting the other people out of the country instead of paying them to get out of the country.
It just doesn't make sense to me.
Okay?
That's all I wanted to say.
Thanks.
Beth, also in the Sunshine State.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Yeah, I'm going to go back to your first hour when you were talking about voter IDs and kind of give you a history.
I got my first voter ID in the state of Florida in 1972.
It was a little piece of cardboard paper.
So was my Florida driver's license, which I got at 15.
And so was my social security card, which I got from the federal government when I was 13.
In later years, I've lived in Florida.
I've lived in Texas.
I've lived in Ohio.
And I've had an ID on my driver's license with a photo ID from the state that I lived in.
But when I went to vote in Florida, up until I, I think probably about 20 years ago in Texas and in Ohio, when I went to vote, I gave them my paper voter's ID card.
And that's how I voted.
Now, in the last 20 years, I've been back in Florida.
Actually, I've been back for 30 years, but in the last 20 years, I have gotten a voter information card is what my supervisor of elections tells me it is now.
So, Beth, what system works the best?
Well, you had a lady call in yesterday that was from Florida questioning the voters and illegal voters voting in elections.
And I'm going, how does she live in Florida and not have a state-issued Gold Star driver's license or state-issued ID card?
Because the last 10 years that I have been voting in Florida, they don't want my voter's ID card.
They want my driver's license.
Now, when I went on Social Security, when I went on Social Security, I had to take my first name on my birth certificate back that I had not used since I was 13 years old.
And so I couldn't have any name that I had ever been known by because I could take my first name, my middle name, and either my maiden name or my married name.
I couldn't have my middle name, my maiden name, and married name that I have used for the last 50 years.
All right.
That's Beth.
This is John, Tampa, Florida, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Hi, John.
And thank you for this opportunity.
I called to speak to Mr. Cortez, but I was dropped when he left.
And I think C-SPAN is great, but you have a problem, and that is you don't fact-check your callers or your guests.
Mr. Cortez made a lot of misstatements.
And I'm thinking that in the age of AI and all this intelligence, that there could be something done to address that issue.
I know it won't be easy, and I know it may not be real time, but maybe at a later time you could do that.
The other thing that I'd like to point out is that C-SPAN does nothing to do in-depth research on issues.
A lot of the callers call and they think they're stating facts, but they're not.
If you had somebody, let's say you took a week to deal with this immigration issue, we've been talking about it since January.
If you had experts who actually understood immigration law and they could point out things to you, you would know, first of all, like Republicans call all the time and say people should come in legally.
Well, we have asylum laws.
And so if somebody uses an asylum law, they are technically in the country legally, but that doesn't stop ICE from louding up anyway.
ICE is picking up green card holders.
They're picking up U.S. citizens at this point.
So, I mean, if C-SPAN wants to really advance the discussion and make people actually know what's going on, they should have a forum, maybe a week-long forum on immigration, and have experts who actually understand what's going on.
And John, I tell you.
We have experts on this program every day, every week.
And what we try to do is present opinions.
Experts don't always agree with each other, even on the same topic, and we try to give you a sense of their opinions, their expertise across the spectrum, and then let you call in and ask questions.
And so that's the forum we try to create.
But I'll take your point.
We've done that before on other topics of spending full entire three-hour shows or a couple days in a row on a certain topic.
And maybe it's time to do that again.
I remember during the Affordable Care Act debates, we would occasionally do an entire three-hour show on it.
So I'll take your point on that.
But running short on time, was there something else you wanted to say?
Yes, all that is well, John.
But what happens is when somebody like Mr. Cortez or any caller comes in and states something which is patently untrue, and there is no feedback, there is no pushback on it at all.
It allows people to come back the next day and say the same thing.
You know, and that's not pushing the ball further at all.
It's just, we're just regurgitating the same thing over and over and over again.
Every day I listen to C-SPAN and the same points are made.
Well, they should come in legally.
Well, if asylum is part of the legal thing, why doesn't C-SPAN say, well, actually, when somebody comes in and they apply for asylum, which is part of the law, they are technically legally present in the country.
John, you said we've never made that point.
I can tell you, I've made that point several times to people that this is a legal process.
And then there's also political debate of whether that process should change.
That's the whole discussion about whether the asylum process is broken in this country, debates that rage on the House and Senate floor and have for years.
And yet here we are still with a system that it would seem that everybody says is broken, but has yet to figure out a way to come together and fix it.
The system isn't really broken.
It's just that some people like Donald Trump insist on spreading things that are untrue.
And if C-SPAN doesn't counter vigorously and often whatever is untrue, I mean, you could do it.
You could publish and say, well, this claim that people who don't have this status or whatever is not factual.
That way, at least the guests and the callers would know, I can't just come in and just say something that I heard on Fox.
John, I appreciate the feedback, always do.
And we try to create this forum every day for people to call in and be able to give that real-time feedback.
So it's not just us telling you everything, but you having a conversation.
But I appreciate it.
And let's continue to have that conversation as we move down the road.
That's John in Florida.
We have about an hour left in our program.
We'll have a little bit more open forum at the end of our program today.
But up next, we're joined by David Becker from the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
And he's joining us to talk about what it means to nationalize an election, Donald Trump's calls for that this week, some of the election acts that are moving through Congress, all that with David Becker after the break.
We'll see you then.
Fan is as unbiased as you can get.
You are so fair.
I don't know how anybody can say otherwise.
You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country.
I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices.
You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds.
I absolutely love C-SPAN.
I'd love to hear both sides.
I've watched C-SPAN every morning and it is unbiased.
And you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments.
is probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country.
You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions.
Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark.
Best ideas and best practices can be found anywhere.
We have to listen so we can govern better.
Democracy depends on heavy doses of civility.
You can fight and still be friendly.
Bridging the divide in American politics.
You know, you may not agree with Leopard in everything, but you can find areas where you do agree.
He's a pretty likable guy as well.
Chris Coons and I are actually friends.
He votes wrong all the time, but we're actually friends.
A horrible secret that Scott and I have is that we actually respect each other.
We all don't hate each other.
You two actually kind of like each other.
These are the kinds of secrets we'd like to expose.
It's nice to be with a member who knows what they're talking about.
You guys did agree to the civility, all right?
He owes my son $10 from a bet.
Fork it over.
That's fighting words right now.
I'm glad I'm not in charge.
I'm thrilled to be on the show with him.
There are not shows like this, right?
Incentivizing that relationship.
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C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
Washington Journal continues.
David Becker is back with us this Sunday morning.
He's the founder and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, an organization whose mission is what, Mr. Becker?
We work with election officials of both parties all over the country to support them in their work to ensure elections that voters should trust and do trust.
The should trust part is the good news.
Our elections are more trustworthy than ever before for a variety of reasons that we've talked about before.
But unfortunately, there's still many in this country who doubt the outcomes of elections they don't agree with and are obviously fed a lot of disinformation about those elections.
So the public servants who run those elections just do such an important job.
They're working constantly, even when we don't see them working way before in elections like right now, trying to ensure that the voting process is going to be convenient, safe, and secure.
And I want to talk about the voting process this year, but just explain a little bit more when you say you're working with those officials, state and local officials around the country.
Is it in an advisory capacity?
How do you do that?
What are some ways that you've done that?
So first of all, we do a lot of research out there that helps them with their work, research that talks about things, for instance, cybersecurity, issues relating to voter registration databases and voter registration efficient processes.
We put out research that talks about the prevalence of early voting, for instance, and mail voting without an excuse, as well as real innovations in voter registration that has made voter registration so much easier now than it used to be about 20 or 30 years ago, where the vast majority of states have things like online voter registration available now.
And then I also go around and speak with election officials all over the country.
They have a lot of questions and in many cases, concerns about what's happening here in Washington.
And so I'm able to discuss that with them, inform them about that, and also just provide them with some support.
I just admire their work so much.
The work they do is often thankless, and they've been abused, threatened, and harassed for many, many years.
I should also add one other thing we do is we support the election official legal defense network because of that abuse and harassment that's occurred now for over five or six years.
And all of this costs money.
So who funds a project like this?
Large foundations, foundations like the Ford Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and others, and also donations from individuals.
And just as a project worth doing for America as well.
Yeah, we are a 501c3.
We're a nonprofit.
We're rigidly nonpartisan.
I work with Republicans and Democrats all over the country.
And our work is not to advocate for particular election policies that maybe the Democrats or the Republicans like, but really to advocate for the election officials.
So here this Sunday, because Donald Trump started a conversation last week about nationalizing the midterm elections.
What does that mean?
Well, I can't say what he meant by it, of course.
I mean, I can tell you that members of Congress, Republican members of Congress, came out and said they don't believe in nationalizing elections.
Republican election officials, secretaries of state said they don't believe in nationalizing elections.
Many of his allies don't believe in nationalizing elections, and there's good reason for that.
Our founders, when they wrote the Constitution, had just gotten out of a war with a monarch.
And one of the things, one of the themes that flows through the entire United States Constitution is the limits on executive power, the checks and balances that exist between the branches of government.
And they were particularly concerned an executive might try to accumulate more power through the election process.
And so they wrote something into the Constitution called the Elections Clause, Article 1, Section 4.
The times, place, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.
But the Congress may at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations.
That's right.
So the states have the primary responsibility for administering everything around their own elections.
Some states do more male voting, some states do less.
Some states have same-day registrations.
Some states have a deadline before the election date.
There's a variety of different things that different states do.
And the founders were so wise to do that because they created, first of all, that helped support our federalist system.
But they might not have even realized this.
That decentralized system that the Constitution mandates is such a security strength of our system.
It is really hard to tamper with any national election in the United States because we don't run a single national election under a single national authority who says everyone uses the same machines, everyone does the same thing at the same time.
We run about 10,000 little elections in our communities run by our neighbors, members of our community who know us best.
And that is a strength.
It's one of the reasons that our elections have withstood scrutiny every single time and proven to be accurate every single time.
But there are some national ways that we have changed the manner or the registration of elections, right?
I'm thinking the Help America Vote Act or the National Voter Registration Act.
There are national laws that applies to the voting process.
So when is it okay to make a law like that?
And when does it have to be deferred to the state?
When does that first clause of Article 1, Section 4 conflict with the second sentence, the second part?
So I don't think it conflicts at all.
And I think, again, the founders were very wise in how they did that.
The default is that the states get to decide how to run elections.
If Congress chooses to act, they can act, and that will preempt state law.
And it has in various circumstances.
You pointed out, the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, which affected military and overseas voters, and perhaps most famously, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
But it happens rarely.
It's almost always bipartisan, which is good.
And you can tell both parties really respect that the primary responsibility resides in the states because those states know their voters best.
People in Washington state and people in Florida might not want to vote in exactly the same manner in terms of whether they do mail or the number of early voting days or whatever it is.
And so Congress can always act if it chooses to.
The Democrats tried in 2021 to pass a wide-ranging election reform bill that did not pass, did not get through the Senate.
The Republicans have some bills now that I think there are some questions as to whether or not they'll get through the full Congress.
But regardless of whether they move or not, if President Trump wants to dictate election policy to the states, he has one choice and one choice only, and that is to go through Congress and have Congress pass a bill.
So what is going through Congress right now, or some Republicans are attempting to move through Congress, the Save America Act.
It requires individuals to present an eligible photo identification document before voting.
It requires states to obtain proof of citizenship in person when registering an individual to vote, and it requires states to remove non-citizens from existing voter roles.
Do you think those are good national provisions for this country?
So I think, first of all, we should take a look at the extent to which there's a problem that needs to be fixed.
And again, my organization has done a lot of research on this.
You can find it on our website, electioninnovation.org.
But we know the extent of voter fraud in the United States is extremely rare.
It's not zero, but it's pretty close to zero.
And that's the reason, there's a variety of reasons I think Americans take voting very seriously.
The penalties are very severe for election or voter fraud.
But even more so, we have so many checks and balances and redundancies in our process that detecting voter fraud is actually rather easy.
It's one of the easiest crimes to detect, and the penalties are very, very firm.
So if we look at things like voter impersonation fraud, which is what Photo ID is designed to address, it's extremely rare.
It's one of the more foolish ways that anyone could ever commit election fraud.
You're literally presenting yourself in front of someone who would be a witness.
It's very likely that the person you're impersonating might come in and try to vote, which would be a red flag, and that would be investigated right away.
That's just one of the ways that could be caught.
Similar signature, faking a signature on a mail ballot, that's caught when it happens.
It happens rarely, but it does happen, and that can get caught and it will be prosecuted.
And then with regard to non-citizens on the voter list, which is something else the SAVE Act tries to address, there's extensive research on this.
We've done some of this research looking at exactly what the states have found.
And the states, even states allied with President Trump, states that are led by Republicans, have looked for non-citizens on their voter lists using every tool at their disposal.
And during the campaign period of time before the 2024 election, they might have said there were hundreds or thousands of potential non-citizens.
But when they actually started investigating, every single state found tens at the most of non-citizens on their entire list.
You look at a state like Ohio, which claimed hundreds over a course of more than 10 years, and then when they actually investigated it, it referred only six for prosecutions.
In Texas, it appears that there's only a few dozen.
In states like Idaho and Utah, the numbers, you can count them on two hands.
So even with that, what about the Belt and Suspenders argument that why not just have this as another layer of security?
And on the voter roles issue, why not have this as a way to make sure ballots don't go out to people who are deceased and are still on voter rolls.
So there is a really important national conversation that could be had, led by election officials who know this best, about how to keep ineligible people off the lists while at the same time ensuring you don't accidentally take eligible people off the lists.
Because that's one of the big problems here is you definitely want to keep non-citizens off the lists.
You definitely want to find people who moved or who died and get them off the lists.
But on the other hand, you don't want to do it in such a way that you get it wrong and take some eligible people off the list at the same time.
Now, there are answers to that.
That's not the conversation we're having in Congress right now, unfortunately.
But if you talk to election officials, they will tell you, I don't care, the most conservative election official in the country, the most liberal election official in the country, they will agree that they don't want any ineligible people on their lists, but they also don't want to take an eligible person off their list accidentally.
So on the get-it-wrong aspect of it, though, I come back to Brad Raffensberger, the Secretary of State for Georgia, his comments about photo ID as a way to add trust to the system, that this is a system that people have lost some trust in, and having a uniform photo ID system nationwide would just help rebuild that trust.
What do you say to that?
Well, first of all, I don't know whether it would rebuild trust or not.
There's research that suggests it doesn't in the states where it exists.
And the majority of states do have voter ID in place.
And there are states that do it in such a way, again, it is entirely appropriate to try to talk about keeping those rare cases of individuals voting illegally from preventing them from doing it, but also doing it in a way that won't prevent an eligible person who, for whatever reason, doesn't have an ID, can't get an ID.
That does happen in the United States.
And trying to figure out a way to balance those two things.
I think there are states like Michigan, for instance, that has an ID requirement that work really well.
Louisiana enacted a similar one back in the 90s that was actually approved by the Clinton Justice Department that said, you've got to show ID, but if you don't have ID in those rare cases, those few people who don't have ID for whatever reason, you can fill out an affidavit, put out all of your information on it, sign it under a penalty of perjury, and those affidavits can be investigated after the election to determine whether or not there was any potential election fraud.
There's balances that can be made.
Right now, we're not having those substantive conversations mainly because the election officials aren't being part of the conversation.
It's the politicians, whether it's about the Democrats trying to push H.R. 1, the Freedom to Vote Act, the For the People Act in 2021, or the Republicans trying to push the SAVE Act or the MEGA Act that they're trying to push in 2026 now.
We're leaving out a lot of the election officials who actually know how elections work and want to make sure that all eligible voters can vote and only eligible voters can vote.
Come to the MEGA Act and your concerns.
It has many of the same provisions of the SAVE Act, but also it would ban vote by mail, rank choice voting, a couple other issues.
I mean, any attempt by Congress to radically change election law in this country has to be informed by the election officials and not by conspiracy theories about mail voting or non-citizens voting, which we know the actual data on this.
Mail voting is something we've had since the Civil War in the United States.
It gained more prominence and prevalence starting around the 1990s, largely in Republican states, largely in states run by Republicans, because they were worried many of their voters who might have been more rural, more property-owning, older, could really benefit from, or they thought that they could benefit from mail voting.
It was only in 2020 for the very first time that you saw then President Trump as a candidate complain about mail voting as a possibility for fraud, and you started to see Republicans retreat from that really important way of voting because they were listening to disinformation about that.
The simple fact is mail voting is secure.
We know this.
We've got a ton of experience with it.
Different states do it in different ways.
That's entirely appropriate as well.
But I think Congress, Washington isn't the place where election policy is going to come from best.
It's going to be from the states.
Why aren't those voting officials, and maybe they have, we just don't hear about it, proposing their own draft to Congress of reforms.
Hey, this is something that we as election officials have come up with that we think works.
Have they done that?
They haven't because they don't think Washington is the place where they should be mandating election laws.
They know their states best.
They do this in their state legislatures every single session.
They work closely with their state legislators.
They work to ensure that the election laws and procedures in their state are what work best for their citizens and provide the most secure environment.
Why would they come to Washington and say, hey, you should go ahead and mandate something that all of us have to do that maybe doesn't work in our state and actually might be more political than it is process-oriented?
David Becker, our guest, we're talking about elections, election integrity, a great person to have that conversation with if you have questions, especially with all of this in the news and expected to be in the news again today with several of those folks who had concerns about the president's comments about nationalizing the election on the Sunday shows via Fox News or CNN or Face the Nation today.
So likely a lot of these topics coming up in the news today and in the papers tomorrow.
Dee's up first for you out of Calhoun, Georgia, Republican.
Dee, good morning.
Good morning, John.
Thank you for taking my call.
I love C-SPAN and Mr. Becker.
But I wanted just to say that in Georgia, they are so good.
You know, we are so precise with our voting.
Mail in, we have to put our driver's license number on there.
First, we request, and then we mail it, and then they mail it back and request all sorts of info with our driver's license number.
Then we have to mail it in.
Then we get a ballot.
So, I mean, and they're just so on top of it.
Georgia is really, really good and fair.
But also, Mr. Becker, I wanted to ask, Trump sometimes talks that he wants to do a third term election.
My question is, if he could do that, of course, you know, it's not plausible really at the present time.
But could other presidents that had a two-term, such as Obama, Bush, could they also do a third term?
And I will hang up and listen to your answer.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
If they did, I would assume they would have to overcome the 22nd Amendment.
Yeah, I mean, the answer is a simple no.
I mean, Donald Trump can't run for a third term.
No president can run for a third term.
There have been kind of clever theories that have been posed about how someone like President Trump could run for a third term.
But I'll just tell you, I think this is very clear.
I have no doubt that the Supreme Court would rule in this way.
And also, I think the states would prevent this.
Because you remember, the states are the ones who determine the candidate's eligibility to run for office, to put them on the ballot in a primary, for instance.
I think this would be determined in a primary before it ever got to the general election.
And I think it's a simple question, just as if someone who was 18 years old tried to run for president, it's very clear you have to be 35 to serve as president in the United States.
So I think this is a fairly cut and dried issue.
I do want to talk about Dee's point about Georgia elections and how well they're run.
Georgia's elections are actually run extremely well.
I usually point to states like Georgia run by Republicans, Michigan run by Democrats, as states that run their elections extraordinarily well, very clean voter lists using all the tools that are available to them to keep those voter lists as clean as possible.
They have so many checks and balances in place to make sure that their election systems are secure.
They use paper ballots throughout the states and do outstanding state-of-the-art audits on those ballots.
We remember in 2020, Georgia actually counted their presidential ballots three times, three different ways, once entirely by hand, under observation from the parties and the candidates.
So we know what happens in the states.
You've been on this program before, and we've talked about Georgia and Michigan before, but I don't think, I think I've asked you, what state are you most concerned about?
Who runs their elections not so great?
Well, I've got to tell you honestly, I'm not worried about any state.
I mean, the states really are different.
But if Georgia and Michigan are up here, who's lower than that?
I think when you see, first of all, you're not going to get me to tell you which states I'm trying to do.
I keep trying problems.
I'm sorry.
But I mean, look, there are states that politicize this stuff more because in some cases, the secretaries of state are more political actors.
And that's never really constructive because you're serving all of the voters in your state.
There's not an election official, you know, a good election official in the country that wants Democrats or Republicans to doubt the outcomes of their elections.
Our processes are very transparent.
We've talked about this before.
One of the best things, if anyone has any doubts, I'll probably say this again during this hour, is volunteer to be a poll worker.
Go work in the polls.
And we had a poll worker call in in our first segment when we're talking about this, and she makes the same point.
I mean, you learn about all the protections in place.
You learn how impossible it is to steal an election, to tamper with an election on any kind of scale.
There are mistakes that sometimes happen.
A big national election is an instance where we have about 150 million Americans doing something they don't usually do in a process run by about a million volunteers in about 10,000 jurisdictions.
It's never going to be perfect.
But the process is designed knowing that.
And that's why there are so many layers of transparencies and redundancies and checks and balances.
So even if there was a problem, we would catch it later on and we'd get the right outcome.
I remember one of the interesting points that you made on that is that when it comes to Americans' trust about the electoral system, the people who have the most trust in how the elections are going to work, a subgroup is poll workers themselves.
That they have, on average, just a much higher level of trust because they see it and have worked in it.
Yeah, and people tend to have trusted voters generally.
Trust goes up as you get more local, as you ask them, you know, who do you trust?
Do you trust Congress less?
Do you trust your state election officials much more?
Do you trust your county and local election officials much more?
Poll workers much more.
This is one of the reasons decentralization works so well.
It's one of the reasons when I vote, people should vote whatever method is legal and available in their state that they find most convenient and they like.
But I choose to vote early in person because I like going to a polling place.
I like seeing those poll workers, thanking them for their service.
I like seeing how the place is set up and having that community moment where you get to cast your ballot and put it in the tabulator.
We've somehow forgotten that great community aspect of elections.
It's become so political and we're told this is everything is riding on this.
The state of our nation is riding on this.
It's the most important election ever.
We hear that every two years.
But we forget this is this moment where 120, 150, 160 million Americans are all going to go to their polling place in a process run by their neighbors.
My son, who even though was not old enough to vote, served as a poll worker, and get to experience that.
And then we all collectively sit around our televisions or radios or the internet and wait for the results.
And sometimes the results take a little while because elections can be really close now in our closely divided nation.
But it's hard not to get kind of excited about that moment in American history where we have those elections.
Would you agree with the point a caller made in our, again, we talked about this in the first hour of our program today.
He was making the point that two weeks of counting ballots is too long.
Would you agree that trust goes down the longer it takes to count the ballots from Election Day?
What I would say is that we've been taking two to four weeks to count ballots since 1789.
That is the way it's always been.
But we've had better technology today than 1789.
But we still take that long.
And the reason we take that long is because we want to get it right.
I will give the example of California, because California is often used as a state that takes too long.
But think back in the presidential races.
When does media call California?
Media calls California at 801 p.m. Pacific time when a minute after the polls close in California.
Why is that?
Is that because they counted the presidential ballots first?
No.
It's because there's enough data to call the race because we don't need to count very many votes in California to know who won the race because the margin is so large.
The reason it seems like it's taking longer, because it isn't taking longer, it's actually going faster than ever before.
The reason it seems like it is because we have a lot more close elections.
And when you have close elections, you need a lot more data before the media has the ability to call the race.
When the media calls the race does not mean counting is over.
In every state, there are states where there are states where they're calling the race on election night within a couple of hours.
Those people are still counting ballots.
I guarantee you, seven days, 10 days after the election, there are military ballots still coming in.
There are provisional ballots that need to be verified and confirmed.
There are late arriving mail ballots that came in in the last minute that they have to make sure the signature matches and that everything is okay before they open the envelope and count that ballot.
They're doing that job.
That's why certification of the election, which is when the states finally say, yes, this is the final election.
This is who should take office.
In every single state, that takes weeks, and that's appropriate.
So remember when you hear the media call a race, that is not, that has nothing to do with the counting.
That is just telling you the media has enough data at that point.
We had this New Jersey election this past week, right?
And I saw some calling the race for Malinowski, who was one of the candidates in that race.
It was pretty close.
And it turned out as they were counting more ballots, because it takes time to count the ballots and report them up, that his challenger had started gaining ground and actually overtook him.
That's entirely normal.
That happens in close races all the time.
And it's going to take them some time now.
I don't think they've declared a winner yet because they're still getting military ballots in.
They're still looking at provisional ballots.
They're double checking.
They're going to audit the paper ballots to make sure the paper ballots match the counts of the paper ballots, confirm the machine counts.
So they're going to get this right, and that's appropriate.
That's the way it should happen.
A lot of callers waiting to talk to you.
This is Jerry Pittsburgh, Texas, Republican.
Good morning to Pittsburgh, Texas.
I had a question.
Are you familiar with Judicial Watch?
I am.
And then finding 5 million people on the voter rolls that were made or moved.
And on mail-in ballots, absentee ballots, you're talking two different ballots.
Absentee ballots have been around forever.
But mail-in ballots only came in in 2020 election for the first time.
David Becker, I'll let you.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
That's just not true.
Some states call them mail ballots.
Some states call them absentee ballots.
The big difference is whether or not you need an excuse to get a mail ballot, or if they call it an absentee ballot, or you don't need an excuse.
The vast majority of states, two-thirds, allow mail ballots without an excuse.
Red states, blue states.
It's a wide mix.
And how many states are mail-in only?
And when was the first time that happened?
I actually don't know the exact name.
Washington and Oregon were the first states that kind of moved to mail-in only.
In Washington, at least, it was under a Republican Secretary of State.
California and Colorado don't, in other states, Utah has a lot of mail voting.
They're not mail-only.
They offer mail predominantly, but there are in-person voting options in those states.
Arizona has widespread mail voting as well.
They happen to call it early voting instead of mail or absentee.
But it's all the same thing.
We have indeed had mail voting and absentee voting since the Civil War.
In other words, blank ballots that were sent to voters and returned by the Postal Service.
Now they're often returned by drop boxes by the voter themselves to be counted after they're verified.
His other question was about Judicial Watch's concerns about voter rolls and clean voter rolls.
Yeah, I think one of the really important things, we're going to hear a lot of disinformation about elections coming out.
It's an election season.
That's what happens.
Whenever you hear claims about this, ask if they've shown them to a court and what has happened.
Because it's easy to make claims on social media.
It's easy to make claims that aren't going to be checked and scrutinized and cross-examined.
But I can tell you, every time these claims have been looked at, they've failed.
Yes, it's true that voter lists need to be constantly maintained.
That is a federal law.
We talked about the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act before, which require voter list maintenance, which is a really good thing.
I led the effort to create one of the most useful tools to help voter list maintenance, the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, which half the states are in.
And that tool helps them identify people who might have died, who are on their list, people who might have moved out of their state and moved to another state.
That's very difficult data to obtain.
And so whatever, when states can use tools like that, Michigan and Georgia, I mentioned it again, they both use those tools.
They have very good integration with the data that they get from their motor vehicles agencies, which is really important because when people have a life event, they change their name or they move or they come of age.
They go to their motor vehicles agencies most.
And so having great integration with that data is important.
But we have so many checks and balances in place.
I can't even begin to hope the caller will go and volunteer to be a poll worker and see this.
If every time someone has claimed there are massive numbers of dead voters who have cast ballots, every time that's been disproven.
And I think back to Secretary Raffensperger in Georgia, who's done a remarkable job, I think, under a very challenging circumstance and with really close elections.
You see, he actually investigated every single claim of dead people voting because they were wild claims made after 2020.
And I believe, if I'm not mistaken, they found one, and it was a person who had passed away after they sent their ballot in, but before Election Day had occurred.
So at the time they cast their ballot, it wasn't a crime.
Different states have different laws as to whether or not those ballots should count if the person dies in between when they cast in or when Election Day comes.
David, Wisconsin, Democrat, good morning.
Thanks for waiting.
Good morning.
Mr. Becker, I'm honored to speak with you today.
I just want to let you know I became a poll worker for the first time last year, and I learned a lot about how the elections are run.
I always thought it was so simple.
You just came in, everything went smoothly, but there's a lot more behind that.
For one thing, I had to leave my political orientation at the door.
And probably a lot of the people around me probably voted different than me.
But we are, the poll workers, they have checks.
They check each other.
And we had a circumstance where we had a massive ice storm.
We didn't have any electricity, so everybody had to vote on paper.
And it was a long day.
In fact, we didn't get done until midnight that night.
But we got through it.
And we have also, we have voter ID laws in Wisconsin, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to have a driver's license.
There's certain things that qualify.
And people that, you know, these mail-in ballots, they don't get counted if there's no registration there.
They can send in that ballot, but if you're not registered, it doesn't count.
So there's a lot of things going on that people have the wrong idea about.
But I learned a lot and I was very proud to go through that process.
And I'm going to do it again.
And I think it's really a good idea.
A lot of the people that were election workers are getting along in age, and I'm 73.
But I'd love to see younger people involved in it.
And, you know, it's a great thing.
Our elections aren't, there's not the fraud that they talk about.
It's just non-existent.
So thanks a lot for listening to me.
Thanks for the call.
John, I got to tell you, this has happened last few times.
A poll worker will call in during this segment.
It's one of my favorite things to hear these people because I don't often get to see them outside of my polling place.
David, thank you so much to all of anyone else who served as a poll worker.
Thank you.
It is hard work.
You have to go through training.
It's a long day.
Most poll workers get there like at 5 a.m. or so to set up, and it's not unusual there until midnight or later.
How many Americans will volunteer to be a poll worker in a midterm election or a presidential election?
It's really hard to get an exact number.
I think give or take about a million for a major federal general election is about right.
There's counties like Los Angeles that have 5,000 different precincts.
Although many vote by mail, many also vote in person, either early or on election day.
There are many places where voting in person is the primary way of voting.
But there's hundreds of thousands for sure that we rely upon.
And again, my teenage son volunteered before he could even vote.
What I've heard from poll workers time and time again, one of the most meaningful, fulfilling aspects of their job is actually when they can facilitate voting for maybe someone they don't agree with.
It's what makes us such a great country.
We don't understand, although we hear about Congress every day and the partisan battles that are going on.
And oftentimes there are those here in the United States and certainly overseas that are trying to divide us.
They're trying to make us hate our fellow Americans.
And I just challenge any of you, be a poll worker.
I guarantee you, you're going to facilitate the vote for people you agree with and people you disagree with.
And it's going to be incredibly rewarding.
And you're probably not going to do it just one time.
The poll workers who call in tend to be ones who do it year, every two years.
Yeah.
And if you're a parent of a teenager or just a parent of anyone, in many states, if you're 16 or older, you can volunteer to be a poll worker, even if you can't vote yet.
Certainly 18-year-olds can volunteer to be a poll worker.
David is exactly right.
It would be great to get more young people doing this.
More young people are doing this.
Young people often have language skills and tech savvy that maybe those of us who are older might not have.
So it's really important.
And oftentimes, they get bit by the bug too.
And they become repeat poll workers and start doing it throughout their entire lives.
It's really wonderful.
Humble Texas, Thomas, Independent.
Good morning.
You are on David Beck.
Hey, listen, being a poll worker is funny because a lot of times you see your neighbors come in and vote, yeah, which is a great thing.
But what I was telling about is how did Dominion win a case against Fox News for bad information?
And my second question is, during the 60s, the states had to call in the troops to make sure that black people could vote.
I mean, should they do that again or should you just pass the John Lewis bill and call it a day?
And one more thing, it's really hard to get your birth certificate nowadays because they don't want the one from the hospital.
They want it from the state.
So everybody who's going to vote, make sure here in Texas you have a state seal on it.
Thank you, guys.
Sure.
Thanks, Thomas.
So first of all, let's start with the Dominion cases.
And I think broadly, there were several defamation cases brought by those who were harmed by lies about the 2020 election.
Dominion is, I think it's still, it doesn't exist anymore under that name.
It was purchased by someone else.
It's now called Liberty Vote.
I believe it's the second largest voting machine manufacturer.
Their machines, just like the other manufacturers, are certified federally.
They're tested.
They're tested before every election.
We have paper ballots, again, which is a key security mechanism.
98% of all Americans in the United States vote on paper.
They have since 2020.
Louisiana is the only state that doesn't currently have paper, but they're moving towards it.
That paper is recountable.
It's verifiable.
It's audited to confirm the machines work properly.
But back to the defamation claims.
Dominion sued Fox News.
They've sued others.
There have been lawsuits for defamation for lying about the election against Rudy Giuliani, against Kerry Lake, against Mike Lindell.
And in every single circumstance, those who lied about the elections were held liable.
In the case of Fox News, that case never went to trial because Fox News settled the case for $787 million prior to going to trial, prior to having to present any evidence that what they said was true, which would have been a defense, which they did not.
In the case of Mike Lindell, he stood outside the Denver courthouse and claimed he was going to show that everything he said was true.
And then he got inside the Denver courthouse and literally said nothing, presented no evidence that what he said was true, and was found liable for millions.
In the case of Kerry Lake and Rudy Giuliani, before they even got to the point where they could have presented evidence, they both conceded liability.
They both said, fine, I committed defamation and went right to damages phases.
So the lies have had some accountability, which is good.
And the courts have consistently found that these false statements about the 2020 election were lies.
We had dozens of courts confirm the outcome of that election.
So hopefully that answers that question.
On that for a second.
Do we have a sense with federal investigations into voting machines in Georgia, Puerto Rico?
We heard, do we have a sense of what federal investigators are looking for?
Tulsi Gabbard being involved and seen taking a part in those investigations.
Do you know anything about that?
I mean, I know it's been publicly reported, and of course I keep up on it.
But I mean, this is a case of, you know, the president doesn't like the fact that he lost the 2020 election.
He did lose the 2020 election.
We know that.
He did win the 2016 and 2024 elections, and we know that.
2020 was the most scrutinized election in American history, the most recounted, the most confirmed and verified election in American history.
We know who won and who lost.
And yet there are people who are loyal to him that are trying to make it seem as if there's enough questions out there to make those lies somehow true.
I can tell you if they look at the ballots in Fulton County, they'll find the same thing that the election officials found when they counted those ballots multiple times in 2020, and they'll confirm that Joe Biden won the election in Georgia in 2020.
If they look at the machines as they apparently are, I mean, interesting, they chose Puerto Rico because Puerto Rico has no vote for president.
It has no voting member of Congress.
Those machines are no longer being used in Puerto Rico.
But if they look at those machines in Puerto Rico, they might find that those machines have some vulnerabilities.
That's what we're hearing.
But literally every single technological device has vulnerabilities.
My phone has vulnerabilities.
The laptop has vulnerabilities.
The TV you're watching this on right now has vulnerabilities.
The question isn't whether or not a device has vulnerabilities.
It's whether or not you can protect against the vulnerabilities, detect them when they occur, and mitigate against them.
And this is where the paper ballots become so important.
Because if anyone tried to tamper with the voting technology, or if it malfunctioned, which is probably even more possible, although very, very unlikely, because of the audits, again, these are hand reviews of the ballots, looking at the machine counts and confirming they match.
Because of those audits, it would be caught.
A hack can't get at a piece of paper.
And so that is one of the reasons that states over the course of the past 15 years have moved to paper.
Georgia did not have paper ballots in 2016.
In fact, they hadn't had paper ballots until back to 2000.
In 2020, thanks to the legislature, majority Republican, and the leadership of Secretary Raffensperger and Governor Kemp, they moved to paper ballots in advance of the 2020 election.
And thank God, right?
Because that election was very close.
And they needed to be able to show the evidence to people to say, yes, we know how people voted.
We know what the count says.
This is who won.
And they did that several times.
They've counted 5 million presidential ballots in Georgia, having not had paper ballots before for 20 years.
They counted 5 million paper ballots in Georgia in about five days in the middle of November during a global pandemic, with observation from both campaigns and candidates watching them.
That work has withstood scrutiny every single time.
It's really remarkable.
What election officials accomplished in 2020 is still one of the great achievements of American Democratic history, and yet they're still being accused of having been engaged in a mass conspiracy to steal an election.
Time for just a couple more calls with David Becker this morning.
Anthony in Greentown, Pennsylvania, Republican, thank you for waiting.
Go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, John.
Good morning, David.
I've got a couple of things.
I'll be really quick.
You mentioned, I'm glad you mentioned that the Democrats tried to nationalize the election with HR1 with Nancy Pelosi.
That's one thing that you said that I agree with.
The other thing is that James Madison, when he wrote the Constitution, did a great job.
But he did put that clause in there that the Congress can change it.
And he also put a clause, he didn't get a clause that he wanted to get in, which was a federal negative, which prevented states from passing unjust legislation.
Now, during the 2020 election, there was a lot of stuff that went on that was not normal.
And the chain of custody of these envelopes were not kept 100%.
And that's where a lot of people don't trust the 2020 election.
the ballots coming in after the deadline and whatnot.
Anthony, what would it take for you to finally trust the results of 2020 election?
What more do you need to see?
We care about the 2020 election, John, anymore, but I'm just pointing out, he's saying it was the most safest election or purest election ever.
Nobody agrees with that.
Okay.
What I would like to see is the voter ID laws.
I like the Congress, the Bill of Congress is trying to get through the Senate.
And I hope they do a standing filibuster.
But, you know, it's just not true.
And one question I have, when they take the ballot out of the envelope, can they identify it back to the voter?
Because a lot of stuff was taken out before anybody had any chance to count or whatever down in these places like Atlanta and Detroit.
And, you know, there was a lot of mistrust.
That's all I'm trying to say.
Anthony, let me take your questions for David Becker.
Yeah, look, there's a lot of disinformation that flows around there.
And just I go back to the point that I made earlier, which is what has actually happened when evidence is presented in front of a judge and had to be considered.
And the fact is, mail ballots across the country were confirmed before they ever opened that envelope.
They confirmed the signature matches.
If it doesn't match or if there's a question, they put it aside for additional review.
The people who review these signatures are not doing it just one-off.
There's multiple people looking at these.
There are people from different parties looking at these.
They're confirming that these ballots have come in.
Every ballot that was counted in 2020 was counted consistent with the state laws that existed.
There are some states that allow grace periods for ballots to come in after Election Day, but every single ballot that's counted was cast on or before Election Day and postmarked or otherwise confirmed to have been delivered prior to the close of the polls.
In other words, if you put it in a mailbox on Election Day in a state like California or currently Mississippi, and it gets there a few days later and has a postmark on it of Election Day, you couldn't have changed your vote.
It's in the mailing process.
So this is actually a really big point.
One of the things, I hear this quite a bit from people who have been targets of disinformation for quite some time, and it's always supporters of losing candidates.
Sometimes it's Democrats, as in 2016 and 2018 or 2024.
Sometimes it's Republicans, as in 2020.
And they'll often hear these claims like fishy things were going on in the states.
States changed rules.
States didn't follow their rules.
But the fact of the matter is, we knew what the rules were in 2020 and in every other election before.
Not everyone liked the rules.
I'll concede that.
There are Democrats who don't like it that some states require mail ballots to be in on Election Day or not get counted.
There are states where Republicans don't like that there's a few days where they can come back later.
There are places where people like early voting more and don't like early voting as much.
But in every case, we know those laws.
We had more pre-election litigation in 2020 than any presidential election ever.
And those laws were heard by courts.
Some won, some lost.
There were restrictions on drop boxes in some states like Ohio and Texas that Democrats didn't like.
There were facilitations for mail voting in other states that Republicans might not have liked, but courts heard them and they ruled we knew what the rules were on Election Day.
I think your answer is going to be it's whatever works best for states.
But let me try here.
Is this one place where a uniform standard might work on when mail-in ballots need to be in?
If every state, you can run mail-in ballots how you want, but they have to be in by election day because that just helps build trust for the entire system.
Is that something you'd recommend to states?
This is one way we can all set one standard?
I'd love if we were having that conversation, right?
And you and I are having this conversation right now, but that's not the conversation that's happening at the time.
Right, but is that something you'd recommend?
Which why states don't trust Congress?
I think there are many states, blue states, Colorado, other states that require mail ballots to be on Election Day.
But they also match that with extensive early and in-person voting options on Election Day and lots of drop boxes.
So if someone is still holding their mail ballot on Election Day, they can find a place to put it that day and not have to entrust it to the mail.
That conversation could be very good.
And by the way, we don't necessarily need Congress to rule.
There are best practices that occur, and often we, my organization helped facilitate these, where states get together and kind of say, yeah, this makes a lot of sense.
Let me go back to my state and talk to my legislators about it.
We don't need to wait for Congress to act.
We can just get this kind of thing done in our state.
As you may know, this might happen anyway because there is a case before the Supreme Court now, RNC versus Watson, where Mississippi's grace period is being challenged as to whether or not that violates the Constitution or the law.
I have my own opinion on whether or not the Supreme Court should dictate that to the states.
I think...
Are you of the opinion that they should not?
I think the Supreme Court should not dictate.
I think the Constitution and federal law does not mandate that ballots be received by Election Day, whether or not that's a good policy.
I think that it does mandate that ballots be cast and out of the voters' control by Election Day.
And I think putting it in a mailbox, just like we've done for 150 to 200 years, does that effectively and states have made that choice.
But whether I think that's a good idea or not won't matter.
It's going to ultimately be up to five justices in the Supreme Court.
And they may rule, maybe sometime soon, that mail ballots have to be in by Election Day.
I will say if they do that, I hope they do it very soon because for the states that have to change their policies and educate their voters to make sure that ballots don't come in late, they're going to have to work at that.
That's going to take some resources.
So better to get that ahead of time.
Back to my point about litigation.
Figuring this stuff out ahead of time, whether you like the rules or not, is always a good idea.
The more ahead of time, the better.
David Becker, always short on time.
We can come in even when we go five minutes over.
But if you want to learn much more about the work that David Becker does, electioninnovation.org is where viewers can go.
Always appreciate your time, especially on Sunday.
All right, thanks a lot, John.
About 15 minutes left in our program will end in open forum.
Any public policy, any political issue you want, it'll be your calls to end our program.
Go ahead and start calling in.
We'll get to them after the break.
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
Today, with our guest, best-selling author Jodi Pico, who has written 29 books about a wide range of controversial and moral issues.
Her books include The Storyteller, 19 Minutes, and Her Latest, by Any Other Name.
She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
People come to you and say you've changed their views on certain social issues because of your books.
That's why I write.
You know, it's to start a discussion.
And you can't always have a discussion with people.
Some people just aren't ready to hear it.
But there are a lot of minds that you can change one mind at a time.
Watch America's Book Club with Jodi Picoult today at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's Teasel Muir Harmony on the History of the U.S. Space Program.
From the creation of NASA in 1958 to Neil Armstrong taking his first historic steps on the lunar surface in July 1969 and NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon.
She also looks back on astronaut Frank Borman's Apollo 8 Christmas Eve broadcast in 1968.
Frank Boriman was told when he was preparing for this mission, and the schedule is short.
He said, he was told, the broadcast will be on Christmas Eve, and more humans will be listening to your voice than have ever listened to a human voice in history.
Say something appropriate.
Those are the instructions he got.
And he thought, you know, what should I say?
In the beginning, God createth the heaven and the earth.
The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's Tiesel Muir Harmony tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q ⁇ A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Best ideas and best practices can be found anywhere.
We have to listen so we can govern better.
Democracy depends on heavy doses of civility.
You can fight and still be friendly.
Bridging the divide in American politics.
You know, you may not agree with LeDokron in everything, but you can find areas where you do agree.
He's a pretty likable guy as well.
Chris Coons and I are actually friends.
He votes wrong all the time, but we're actually friends.
A horrible secret that Scott and I have is that we actually respect each other.
We all don't hate each other.
You two actually kind of like each other.
These are the kinds of secrets we'd like to expose.
It's nice to be with a member who knows what they're talking about.
Les did agree to the civility, all right?
He owes my son $10 from a bet.
And he's paid for it.
Don't fork it over.
That's fighting words right there.
I'm glad I'm not in charge of it.
I'm thrilled to be on the show with him.
There are not shows like this, right?
Incentivizing that relationship.
Ceasefire, Friday nights on C-SPAN.
Washington Journal continues.
Just about 15 minutes left in our program today.
Open forum for you to call in with your comments in about an hour and 15 minutes at 11 a.m. Eastern.
Did want C-SPAN viewers to know about a press conference we'll be covering.
It's the four astronauts that are part of NASA SpaceX Crew 12 mission.
They're holding their pre-launch news conference.
They're quarantined ahead of their trip to the International Space Station and will be live from their crew quarters at NASA's Kennedy Center Space Center in Florida.
That's again 11 a.m. Eastern for you to watch on C-SPAN.
You can also watch on c-span.org and the free C-SPAN Now video app.
With that ending in your phone calls today, and Barbara's up first out of Oregon, Lebanon, Oregon, Democratic line.
Good morning.
Good morning, John.
It's saying I want to commend you and the rest of your reporters for your professionalism.
I just want to say that I'm a proud member of an Oregon state that was the first to mail in voting since 1969.
And I appreciate the fact that I can sit down and look through the items and check people off.
But I want to make note of something that has kind of troubled me is the fact that the U.S. Postal Service has decided that they have changed for your local post office and it doesn't get, at least here in our state, is that it's not getting the data on it at the local.
It has to go all the way to Portland, which there could be an accident and the mail ballots could get damaged or lost or whatever.
There are drop boxes in town at the local police station, at the substation for the sheriff's office, and at the local library.
And I just wanted to let everybody know that they need to check with theirs, you know, as far as their district or whatever, that if their post office has made any changes.
Hey, Barbara, can I recommend a book for you?
Yes.
We interviewed Stephen Grant about his book, Mailman.
And we did it on C-SPAN's book TV.
But he talks about his year working as a mailman in rural Virginia.
And one of the things he talks about is he did it during the 2020 elections, and he talked about the importance of the mail-in ballots and how sacred those were for the postal workers that would pick them up.
And when those were in the mail, it's an interesting chapter in his book, but it's a great read about life as a mailman.
Well, thank you very much.
I do have a friend whose daughter is a postman, and I do appreciate the professionalism that they do also.
Barbara, thanks for the call from Oregon.
This is Guillermo in Philly, Republican.
Good morning.
Hey, John, how are you?
You okay?
I'm doing well, sir.
Yeah, I'm here again to put in my two cents.
This is it.
This guy that was before talking to you about innovation and research, if there is no problem, why would we need an innovative?
Why do we need innovation if there is no problem?
The other thing is, everybody knows that there is a problem.
Everybody knows there is a problem.
Nobody does anything about it.
However, when somebody tries to do something about it, they all become geniuses.
They all become technicians and architects and engineers.
And they all want to do it this way.
And they all want to do it that way instead of just helping the person who did start to do something about it.
May peace with you all.
That's Guillermo in Philly.
This is Sue, Grand Rapids, Independent.
Morning, Sue.
Good morning.
Say two thoughts from this guy that I just listened to that you had as a guest.
Yeah, I mean, what he's really avoiding is the fact that it isn't the paper handling.
We all need the paper, and we all want the paper documentation, but it is the digitizing from there on, where all of the contracts that are made through states and companies like brings up the past EDS before Dominion in Michigan problems.
That's where that occurs.
And then regarding presented, let me finish, please, if I may.
Regarding the evidence that was presented in court systems, are we really going to start to think now that these judges didn't have political affiliation, even though they suggest otherwise in their previewing evidence or rather not previewing the evidence so that nothing could be ascertained?
I mean, come on.
We all know.
And yes, it was stolen.
2020 was stolen.
Absolutely.
I just didn't, what are the digital contracts that you refer to?
I think we lost Sue, so we go to Norma in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Democrat, good morning.
Morning.
Yes.
Hello.
Yes, ma'am.
I wanted to say a couple of things.
When I was a little girl, I went with my mother to the polling booth where she had pulled down a lever.
And when my great-grandchildren were visiting me, I took them with me to the polling booths.
So that's always been very important to me.
But what I wanted to say, a couple of things.
One, there was four cases of fraud in Florida.
It turns out that they were convicted felons who were given their right to vote.
And then that was contested.
And they made them crazy, but the judge threw it out.
And I also wanted to say that I think the presidential election should be nationalized by eliminating the 12th Amendment so that everybody who votes for president's vote is counted, no matter what state you live in.
The person who gets the most votes becomes president.
And we don't have situations like Al Gore, who lost, Hillary Clinton, who lost, and Samuel J. Tilden, who lost, although they won the popular vote.
So it's the Electoral College.
It's the Electoral College that you don't like, Norma?
That process is to repeal the 12th Amendment.
Thank you.
That's Norma.
This is Robert in Middleton, Mass.
Republican, good morning.
Yes, I agree with the woman who just called in.
I vote in Massachusetts for president, and it means nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Because I don't think any president, I don't know how far back you have to go, hasn't won in Massachusetts ever, I don't think.
So I like the idea.
I think Trump, when he talks nationalized elections, does he mean popular vote?
And I'd feel better going to the polls if I knew when I pull a lever that the popular vote would count when I vote.
And even though it still won't mean anything in Massachusetts, but it may mean something for the Democrats in another state that's close.
But I believe if Trump means popular vote when he says nationalized, I agree with that strongly.
So, Robert, he's talking about you.
When he said nationalized, he's talking about the midterm election.
And there wouldn't be a obviously the president's not on the ballot in the midterm.
So he's talking about just Senate and House elections when it comes to the midterms.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Okay.
I'm talking about the presidential election.
Gotcha.
That's Robert, Massachusetts.
Angela is in D.C., Independent.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning.
I just wanted to mention that it just seems impossible for an election to be stolen mathematically.
And it doesn't seem like people who don't know each other who are working at the polling stations in the 50 states would be able to collude and get themselves brought up on federal charges.
None of that seems likely.
So I voted, for example, for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
And when they lost the election, I had no doubt that it was a fair election.
You can't always win.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that I'm concerned with President Trump saying that he wants to do a total rebuild of the Kennedy Center.
And I'm wondering if he doesn't want to tear it down.
So I hope the Commission on Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission are paying attention and are ready to go to court over this.
And Angela, why so concerned about the Kennedy Center?
Well, I mean, I'm a great lover of the arts.
I've been to the Kennedy Center about 200 times in the last 35 years.
And I mean, just look at the president didn't have a permit to tear down the East Wing, but he had it done.
So I don't feel like he really respects their process of getting permits.
Angela, when was the last time you were at the Kennedy Center?
Have you gone in the past year?
No, the last time I was there was in April of 2025.
And what's the best show you've ever seen at the Kennedy Center?
I think it was that show with a band from Puerto Rico named La Sonora Ponceña.
It was their 70th anniversary, and it was a packed house.
You ever watch any of those Kennedy Center honors shows?
I have.
What's your favorite one of those?
I think it was the one where Carol King was honored.
I forget who were the other honorees.
And Aretha Franklin was playing one of Carol King's songs, and she's also one of my favorite artists.
So I really enjoyed that.
Angela, thanks for the call from here in Washington, D.C.
And we will end it there today.
But of course, we'll be back tomorrow.
It's 7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific.
Now, if you stick with us here on C-SPAN, it's Ceasefire.
Chad Wolf, former acting Secretary of Homeland Security during the first Trump administration, and John Sandwig, the former acting director of Vice during the Obama administration.
They'll have a bipartisan conversation on the future of immigration enforcement in the United States.
that begins momentarily here on C-SPAN.
Welcome to Ceasefire, where we try to bridge the divide in American politics.
I'm Dasha Burns, Politico White House Bureau Chief, and joining me now, two guests who have agreed to keep the conversation civil, even when they disagree.