C-SPAN’s Washington Journal (02/21/2026) dissects the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling blocking Trump’s $175B IEPA tariffs, his immediate 10% global tariff under Section 122, and public backlash—from calls framing tariffs as "America First" tools to claims they exploit consumers. Matt Germer debates the SAVE Act’s voter ID reforms amid concerns over disenfranchisement, while Kevin Cerilli highlights Meta/Google trials over child mental health harms, citing 37% of teen girls exposed to unwanted nudity weekly. Callers clash on tariffs, voting rights, and tech influence, revealing deep polarization ahead of November elections, where economic and electoral strategies may collide. [Automatically generated summary]
On Republican efforts to pass the SAVE Act, which focuses on voter identification and citizenship verification.
Also, journalist and founder of Meet the Future, Kevin Cirilli, on the landmark trials facing social media giants this year over alleged harms to children.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next.
Join the conversation.
Good morning.
It's Saturday, February 21st.
Yesterday, in a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court struck down the sweeping global tariffs imposed by President Trump last year.
Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, noted that the power to tax belongs exclusively to the legislative branch.
President Trump called the decision a disgrace, then invoking a different 1974 trade law, announced a new 10% global baseline tariff effective immediately.
And joining us to break down the decision and take your calls is Wall Street Journal reporter Gavin Bade.
He covers trade and economic policy.
Gavin, welcome to the program.
Mimi, I'm so happy to be here.
Thank you.
Let's start with Chief Justice Roberts.
We'll put on the screen a portion of what he said in his decision.
He said this.
Based on two words separated by 16 others in the section of IEPA, quote, regulate and importation, the president asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country of any product at any rate for any amount of time.
Those words cannot bear such weight.
Explain that.
Yeah, I think you've picked out the exact right passage there.
IEPA says that the president can do a lot of things with the economy in an emergency time, but it does not say the word tariff.
And President Trump was relying on this 1977 law to completely rewrite the U.S. Tariff Code, reshape our global trading relationships with every trading partner unilaterally, just by his own power.
And the Supreme Court said, well, you know, while you may be able to regulate imports, you cannot impose tariffs because the law itself does not say tariffs.
And many other federal laws do give the president tariffing powers, but those things are spelled out explicitly.
IEPA does not, and so they struck his tariffs down yesterday.
The three dissenting justices, what did they say?
What was their argument?
Their argument was if you can, you know, basically, if you can, if you can put a blockade on imports, if you can issue licensing fees, if you can do all of the other things that you can do under IEPA, you should be able to tariff.
And they've just, you know, lean very heavily on an expansive view of executive authority, one that did not jive with the majority of the court in this case.
And it's only the IEPA tariffs that have been struck down, not all of the president's tariffs.
Absolutely.
So the AIPA tariffs were about half, maybe a little more, of the tariff revenues that have come in from Trump's second term tariff so far.
There are still other tariffs on individual industries.
These are the so-called Section 232 tariffs.
Those are the tariffs on steel and aluminum, on cars and auto parts, on trucks, on copper, on lumber and certain kitchen cabinets.
So there are still a lot of tariffs that are on the books, and Trump added to some of those yesterday as well.
And we are going to take your calls throughout this hour.
Our guest is with us to talk about tariffs, answer your questions.
If you've got a comment, you can do that as well.
The numbers are, Republicans are on 202-748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
We also have a line for texting.
That's 202-748-8003.
You can also post on social media.
We're watching facebook.com slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ.
Let's take a look, Gavin, at what the President said yesterday, and then you can comment on it.
The Supreme Court's ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing, and I'm ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed, for not having the courage to do what's right for our country.
I'd like to thank and congratulate Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh for their strength and wisdom and love of our country, which is right now very proud of those justices.
When you read the dissenting opinions, there's no way that anyone can argue against them.
There's no way.
Foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years are ecstatic.
They're so happy.
And they're dancing in the streets, but they won't be dancing for long, that I can assure you.
The Democrats on the court are thrilled, but they will automatically vote no.
They're an automatic no, just like in Congress.
They're an automatic no.
They're against anything that makes America strong, healthy, and great again.
They also are a, frankly, disgrace to our nation, those justices.
They're an automatic no, no matter how good a case you have.
It's a no.
But you can't knock their loyalty.
It's one thing you can do with some of our people.
Others think they're being politically correct, which has happened before far too often with certain members of this court.
And it's happened so often with this court.
What a shame.
Having to do with voting in particular.
When in fact they're just being fools and lapdogs for the rhinos and the radical left Democrats and not that this should have anything at all to do with it.
They're very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.
It's my opinion that the court has been swayed by foreign interests and a political movement that is far smaller than people would ever think.
Tariffs and Treasury Challenges00:15:57
It's a small movement.
I won by millions of votes.
We won in a landslide.
With all the cheating that went on, there was a lot of it, but we still won in a landslide, too big to rig.
But these people are obnoxious, ignorant, and loud.
They're very loud.
And I think certain justices are afraid of that.
He wasn't happy yesterday with the ruling.
Let's talk about the other options that he has.
We'll put some things up on the screen.
There is, and then I'll have you go through it.
So Section 122, this places a global tariff of up to 15%, but only for 150 days.
Yes, very important.
Time limited.
And so this is five months.
President Trump yesterday said he would issue a 10% global tariff.
This is kind of akin to his minimum global tariff that he did under IEPA, but he's going to issue it under Section 122.
So that will last for 150 days, and then Congress can extend it if he asks them to take a vote on it, or he can replace it with other longer-lasting tariff authorities.
And that's what we expect him to do.
There are other sections of tariff law that he can deploy after this kind of stopgap period with the 122.
Okay, so there's some other ones.
This is Section 338, allows tariffs if other countries, quote, uniquely discriminate against the U.S.
Yes, and that one has never been used before.
It's been on the books for almost 100 years, and I think that, you know, that would have invited more litigation, so we haven't seen them deploy that particular strategy yet.
And uniquely discriminate, does that mean, like, what is that supposed to mean?
If a foreign country, in the judgment of the president, is treating an American company badly or if they are exporting at a below market price.
Really, it is broad discretion for the president to interpret that.
But like I said, that section's actually never been enacted before.
So we don't expect him to do that in the short term.
And there's also, similar to that, allows tariffs if an investigation finds a country engaged in unfair trade practices.
Then there's Section 232, allows tariffs on foreign products in the interest of national security.
Yes, so Section 232, these are the tariffs we talked about earlier, the ones on steel and aluminum cars and trucks.
Those are going strong.
There's a very broad tariffs.
He's going to keep doing those.
Then the ones you mentioned before, that's what's called Section 301.
That, like 338, it addresses discriminatory practices from a foreign government.
But the thing is, is it takes a long time.
You have to do a full tariff investigation.
You have to write a report.
You have to get comments.
Trump wants to be able to do things unilaterally and instantaneously.
So what we have right now, he's going to kind of do a tariff two-step.
Put in 122 right now.
He can do that immediately, but it's limited for five months.
So that will give them time to do the investigations under Section 301.
And then he can institute those tariffs on the back end, and those will be much longer lasting.
Now, importantly, Section 301, very, very legally durable.
He used this in his first term.
President Biden used it.
It is a much more well-known tariff authority.
So I think that is much legally safer for them to use than this IEPA law that they tried to deploy for the last year.
And the president has used tariffs not only economically, but as a foreign policy tool.
What happens now?
I mean, you know, he would always say, look, you got to do this or I'm going to tariff you.
You got to do this or I'm going to tariff you.
All that goes away now, right?
He does have a little bit less leverage.
This is exactly why Trump's team wanted to use IEPA.
Although it had never been used for tariffs before, they wanted to do it because it is simply, it is just basic presidential unilateral discretion, right?
He could say, I am raising tariffs today, issue a proclamation, and change the tariff codes by tomorrow, right?
These other options, they have more steps in the process.
They're either time-limited, like Section 122, or you have to do a lengthy investigation on the front end, like 301.
So he's not going to quite have the flexibility that he did when he used IEPA, where he could just say, oh, you won't give me Greenland, I'm going to tariff you.
Oh, Colombia, I don't like your approach to migrant repatriation.
I'm going to tariff you, right?
So he's got a little less flexibility now than he did before.
Let's talk to callers and start with Marvin, Philadelphia, Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Yes, you answered most of my questions with the 122, but I'm trying to wrap my head around where do these tariffs and who get charged for the terrorists.
See, what I understand is that countries is imposed terrorists, but the companies that buy the material from the countries is the one that pays the tariffs to the government, which goes down to the consumer.
So basically, I'm getting an understanding that the tariffs that he's imposing is on the American back.
Can you give me a correct answer to my well, sir?
You're exactly right.
The tariffs are, by and large, paid by Americans.
So how this works is when a company imports something from another country, the tariff is charged when that good comes into the country.
It is paid by the importing company.
And so usually what happens is they pay the tariff and they will pass that cost on to the consumer.
Now, Trump's team has said many other things can happen.
Maybe an exporting company wants to keep their market share in the United States.
Maybe like a Japanese car company, they have to pay a tariff, so they cut their price so they can keep market share.
By and large, that is the argument of the Trump administration.
By and large, the economic literature shows us that is not happening very much.
Actually, if you look at import prices coming into the United States before tariffs last year, they're actually stable or up a little bit.
We weren't seeing foreign companies, by and large, cut their prices to preserve market access in the U.S. What that tells us as reporters and as economists is that the U.S. consumer is bearing the brunt of these tariffs.
Let's talk to Lawrence next in Minnesota, Independent Line.
Hi, Lawrence.
Good morning, everyone.
I've got a comment question, and I'm going to hang up and listen.
So, Mr. Bade, in the actual ruling, Justice Roberts writes to, and I think he uses the word perhaps or close to perhaps, EPA, IEEPA is in and of itself unconstitutional, and he references separation of powers and what the frame was original intent of separation of powers was.
So, you know, it kind of goes to what I like about something Justice Jackson said in her confirmation hearings, which was if Congress did a better job of writing legislation, the courts wouldn't need to get involved.
I'll hang up and listen and look forward to enjoying the rest of the program.
Yeah, the history of IEPA is very interesting.
It was actually written in response to an action that President Nixon took to put on global tariffs, and this was Congress's attempt to actually take back some of the powers, right?
And so, I think what you're seeing is, you know, the IEPA statute does allow for very broad presidential authority in times of emergency.
And Trump says that our persistent trade deficits are one emergency, fentanyl trafficking is another, but it does not say tariffs.
And so, using it to completely rewrite the tariff code, they said that was a bridge too far.
You could do a lot of things under IEPA, you just can't do that.
Samuel is on the line for Republicans in Yalanti, Michigan.
Good morning, Samuel.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
My question is, now that the tariffs have been found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and that we have this big, beautiful bill taking a significant amount of revenue from the federal government, what happens with sequestration?
How does that affect the American people, federal agencies, and things of that nature?
Interested in hearing your answer.
Thank you for taking my call.
C-SPANS is awesome.
Well, thank you.
I think, you know, I think the caller is referencing there what happens to the revenue that these tariffs have brought in.
We're looking at upwards of $150 billion collected from U.S. companies and consumers.
The question of where that money goes is actually an open question right now.
The court, kind of strangely, did not say anything about refunding customers or refunding companies for these tariffs in its decision.
So that is going to be worked out through the lower courts now.
President Trump yesterday said we could have up to five years of litigation on that.
There are over a thousand companies that have already filed claims to say, hey, we've been harmed by these tariffs.
If they are found to be unconstitutional, we should be paid back and paid back with interest.
It does not seem that the president is very keen to do that.
So that's a big open question.
I think a lot of companies are waking up still confused about what's going to happen today.
And Justice Kavanaugh mentioned that.
He said that there would be chaos with respect to trying to refund companies or even consumers.
Yeah, there could be.
I mean, this is partially up to the administration as well.
I mean, custom, they would just say no refunds.
Well, then they would get sued again.
So then there would be more litigation.
It would not be too logistically difficult for customs to set up a portal.
And if you had a tariff claim, you could go and claim your refund, right?
It's just an issue of do they want to do that.
President Trump has said he wants to use this revenue for a number of different things, from paying off farmers who were hurt by the trade war to sending tariff checks to everyone.
It's unclear what he's going to be able to do now.
Certainly he will have tariff revenue coming in from other sources, but this big block of $150, $160 billion, we're not sure what's going to happen with that yet.
All right, so I want to show people this website.
This is from the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania.
And what it has here is it says that we project that reversing the IEPA tariffs will generate up to $175 billion in refunds.
Unless replaced by another source, the future tariff revenue collections will fall by half.
And there's some good charts here.
So this is IEPA tariff revenue.
So tariffs just coming from using this IEPA law up to January of this year.
And then this shows the share of IEPA compared to total customs duties.
By January, it says 52%.
So that would be a little bit over half of all tariff revenue coming from that, which has now been struck down by the Supreme Court.
Yeah, absolutely.
So it's a big chunk of change, so to speak.
Let's talk to Ben in Scarborough, Maine, Democrat.
Hi, Ben.
Hi.
Yeah.
No, my question is kind of apropos of a little bit of what you were saying a bit ago, which is like unsurprisingly, like Trump projects that this kind of workaround or doing something the way he didn't want to do before will now be easier and better than this illegal, well now deemed illegal tariff policy.
So I'm just wondering what your guest projects.
And we're used to Trump having confident projections about the future, but I wonder what he thinks kind of what could be the more likely result of this new process that has said won't be as easy, won't be as kind of like up to his opinion about what's going on with that, with the internal affairs of each country.
And yeah, that's basically it.
Yeah, I think what's going to end up happening here, I think if you could think of the IEPA tariffs, it was a blanket tariff that went across the entire world, right?
We were charging tariffs on basically every trading partner.
Instead of a blanket, I think we can think of the next tariff regime as a patchwork quilt.
So you'll have the Section 122 that they'll put in place now, 10% across the board for everyone.
Some important distinctions there.
Canada and Mexico, a lot of their products will be exempt for now, right?
So you'll have 122.
That'll go for 150 days.
And then you'll have all of these different 301 investigations, Section 301.
So what they'll do is they'll do an investigation on every single country that they want to tariff under that law.
And so you'll have a whole bunch of different investigations coming out of the U.S. Trade Representative's office.
Each of them, they will have to justify legally why they are doing it.
That's why they need to have this kind of stopgap right now with 122, because it's going to take them a long time to put those investigations together.
And so you'll have tariffs now, and then they'll follow it up with those longer-lasting tariffs later.
Well, let's hear from the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant.
He was speaking at an event in Dallas yesterday, and he talked a little bit about what you were just saying.
There are 232 and 301 tariffs that have withstood more than 4,000 lawsuits since the first Trump term.
There is something called Section 122, which grants the President five months to install, to put a global tariff on.
So President announced today he's going to put a global tariff of 10%, and then a number of 232 and Section 301 tariff investigations will be started.
Those take a number of weeks and months to implement.
So I can tell you that the total amount of revenue that Treasury will collect this year will be little changed, if changed at all.
So you've already collected around $175 billion or something?
Well, that's since that's under the IEPA tariffs.
But is that going to be in dispute?
Yeah, it's in dispute.
Supreme Court did not rule on that today.
They pushed it back down to the International Tax and Trade Court.
And my sense is that could be dragged out for weeks, months, years.
So we'll see what happens there.
But the look forward, no one should expect that the tariff revenue will go down.
And roughly last year, the existing revenues under the 232s, under the 301s, and some other collection mechanisms were roughly equal to the IEPA tariffs.
Comment.
So according to the Treasury Secretary, nothing to see here.
The same amount of tariff revenue will come in once they put in place their new tariff regime.
It's easier said than done, right?
They have a lot of work to do to get up to that $175 billion or so that they've already collected through IEPA.
So they certainly are trying to project confidence here, but a lot of, the devil's going to be in the details on all these different actions.
And how quickly does the Supreme Court decision take effect?
I mean, is it as soon as it comes out, that's it?
No more collecting of those IEPA tariffs at the ports?
Ostensibly, yes.
We were trying to get answers from customs from the White House yesterday.
Does this mean that they're not collecting these duties anymore?
That is what it should mean.
I think that, you know, the thing that President Trump has tried to do is, you know, backstop that with the Section 122 action so there would still be tariffs being charged.
So I haven't checked in with my importers this morning.
I think that you were, you know, you were still getting charged in the morning yesterday before the decision came down, and then they issued this.
That's why they issued this executive order on Section 122 tariffs in the same day.
Tariffs and Rebates00:07:02
It's so that there wasn't a gap in tariff collection.
Maybe it's on different levels, but there's still some, you know, there's still a tariff to be paid at the border.
Let's talk to William in Ohio, Independent Line.
Go ahead, William.
Well, hi.
First of all, I'd like to thank Judges Gorsick and Barrett for voting with the right thing to do.
And second, I'd like to congratulate the Justice Department for doing such a great job.
Now they're taking back their power.
Now, there's other things that power should be taken too.
That's the Epstein files and the murders that happened in Minnesota by the people.
The tariffs are horrible.
They've been destroying the American economy.
And, you know, and I'm just proud of the Justice Department, especially Gorsick.
And Barrett.
Thank you very much.
The Supreme Court.
That's not the Justice Department.
Yes, but we got that, William.
Dale in North Carolina, Republican line.
You're on the air.
Yes, McMeet.
Is C-SPAN going to have a Republican to come on after this Democrat and talk about what's going on with this?
He's a journalist with the Wall Street Journal, Dale.
But what's your question or comment on tariffs?
You know, I want to quit watching this show.
Y'all are politically motivated.
Sorry you feel that way, Dale.
Jenny Sue in Arizona, line for Democrats.
You're on the air.
Hi.
I just wanted to say a couple of things.
First of all, it's good to hear the Supreme Court finally put some muscle into the various branches of government and put some control over this person who thinks he's the king of the country.
And the second thing is, aren't tariffs always the control of the Congress?
And why hasn't Congress stood up in the past and reclaimed their ownership of this power?
I think that this is, you know, it's notable that this is the first big decision of Trump's second term that really pushed back on his power, as the caller said.
You know, this was a very, they pushed the envelope with this one.
They used a law that had never been used before to completely rewrite the U.S. Tariff Code, for better or for worse.
There are different opinions on whether that's good or not.
But, you know, the Supreme Court said this is Congress's authority.
It is an Article I constitutional authority given to Congress.
And they said that, you know, President Trump overstepped his bounds.
Duke is calling us from Stonington, Maine, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Yes, good morning, C-SPAN, and good morning, Mr. Vade.
I don't really have question anymore.
You've pretty much answered everything that I had, you know, question and stuff.
But I just wanted to say that before this happened yesterday, I had lost total respect for the Supreme Court.
I was just so disgusted with them because it seemed like every time that they turned around while they was going along and kissing Donald Trump's rear end, and it was making me so mad.
But boy, yesterday when they did that, I'm beginning to get a little bit more of my respect back for them.
It's about time that this guy was put into his place.
And I'm hoping and praying to God that this is the beginning of the end of his being such a tyrant and stuff in this country and really in the world in general.
So I'm very pleased.
So I don't have any questions, just one make comment.
Thank you.
Have a nice day.
All right.
And I want to share with you what Speaker Johnson posted on X. Gavin.
He said, no one can deny that the President's use of tariffs has brought in billions of dollars and created immense leverage of America's trade strategy and for securing strong, reciprocal America first trade agreements for countries that had been taking advantage of American workers for decades.
Congress and the administration will determine the best path forward in the coming weeks.
What is it that Congress should do, needs to do for President Trump's agenda?
Well, the easiest thing for Congress to do would be to pass a law codifying Trump's tariffs.
I mean, this is, as the Supreme Court said, this is supposed to be the purview of Congress.
So if Mike Johnson, if the Speaker really wants to do that, he could put a bill on the floor saying, you know, we're going to codify all of President Trump's IEPA tariffs.
The only problem is it wouldn't pass.
He does not have the support even within his caucus to get a bill like that over the line, much less in the Senate where there are more free trading Republicans, right?
But wouldn't they have to pass a law that said the president can do whichever tariffs that he wants?
They could do, I mean, they could do a number of things.
So that he's got the flexibility of saying, I'm going to raise tariffs on you.
I'm going to take away tariffs on this country or industry.
Absolutely.
They could rewrite IEPA to give him the tariff authority, right?
They could institute, they could legislate their own baseline 10% tariff.
They could do whatever they want theoretically with the tariff code.
It is their prerogative as Congress.
The problem is, is Mike Johnson does not have the support for these types of tariffs, for these very expansive tariffs, within his caucus.
It's also an election year.
No one's going to want to take a vote, especially running up to the midterm elections, that's going to raise prices for U.S. consumers.
And that is definitionally what tariffs are supposed to do.
Vincent is in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Republican.
Good morning, Vincent.
Good morning, Mimi.
How you doing?
Good.
I'm just curious that we're getting a rebate from the tariffs, but since the tariff problem is not being solved by the Supreme Court, is that $2,000 still going to come?
Can anybody answer that?
Unfortunately, I don't think so, sir.
He didn't have enough tariff revenue to begin with to do $2,000 checks for the entire American economy, even if he cut out most rich people, right?
Like the money wasn't there yet.
And that would also have to be something that would be passed by Congress.
I don't think that there are the votes to do that.
At any rate, he's got another problem now because he's got to recreate all this tariff revenue with different authorities.
So I don't think, you know, I think the $2,000 checks, he had talked about that, there were never any serious plans to actually issue those.
And I think that it's probably more on the back burner now than it ever was before.
What about the support for American farmers?
He also mentioned that he would use tariff revenue for that.
They had, yeah, they had revenue in another kind of another pot that they were able to do that.
Some of those payments have gone out.
I expect that they will continue doing that.
Some farmers have gotten some relief from some of these trade deals.
They were really hit when, remember when we were really in a trade war with China, you know, probably eight, ten months ago, right?
When our tariffs were 145% on China.
They stopped buying all of our farm products.
It really hit a lot of farmers in the middle of the country.
Now China has started buying a little bit again.
So that's been a little bit of relief along with the payments coming from the government.
Homer in Missouri, line for Democrats.
Trump's Tariffs Revisited00:14:45
You're on the air.
Good morning, Mimi.
And Mr. Bade, journalists from the bastion of liberal left-wing reporting known as the Wall Street Journal.
You know, it just kills me.
You have such a hard time every morning dealing with, you know, certain people.
However, just to watch that man's press conference after he lost the petulance of this man, he's like a 12-year-old that, you know, you took his phone away.
Well, and then earlier in the day when Prince Andrew was arrested and he was asked about that on Air Force One, and I'm getting off the reservation, I know, but he basically blamed the, you know, he said nothing about the victims.
But anyway, Mimi, it's been fun this weekend, and it's right before his state of the union, which he's going to have to look at those justices first thing.
It's going to be popcorn time.
And Homer, we will be covering the State of the Union.
That is Tuesday night.
Our coverage starts at 7 p.m.
The president's speech is at 9 p.m.
But to that point, he did say that they were unpatriotic, fools, lapdogs, and they're going to be sitting pretty close to the president during that time.
Yeah, and actually a journalist asked him would the justices who voted against him in this case, would they still be invited?
And he kind of cracked his smile and said, yeah, but barely, right?
He obviously, there were a lot of sour grapes from the president yesterday.
He does not like to be told no, not by another country, certainly not by someone in the U.S. political system.
It doesn't happen very often to him.
And so I think you saw him, you know, release some anger yesterday.
And I think that it's, it's really when I did some foreign press yesterday, whether it was, you know, in the U.K. or for French media outlets, they were very startled by Trump saying, oh, there's foreign intervention or foreign influence on our Supreme Court.
These things kind of wash over us in the American political context because I think we're used to Trump saying a lot of these things.
But those really had reverberations around the world.
I got a lot of questions from journalists in other countries saying, you know, what does this mean?
Is he going to try to pursue charges against the Supreme Court justices or anything?
I don't think so.
I think he was just letting off a little steam.
Well, tell us more about response from overseas.
And I would imagine that there was a big sigh of relief.
In a way, yes, but everyone is just, there's a little bit of trepidation that he might lash back out and do something even bigger than the IEPA tariffs, right?
And that's what he was saying yesterday: is that, oh, we're going to come back.
We're going to tariff people even more heavily than we did before.
I think that remains to be seen.
Right now, the 10% tariff that he put in place yesterday, that's actually not as high as many countries were paying before.
That's just the baseline.
So we'll have to see when they come out with these new tariff investigations in the months to come if he actually does really double down or if he takes a step back and says, you know, okay, maybe we won't tariff everyone as heavily because again, it's an election year.
They want to focus on tariffs, but there's also a focus from this administration on affordability, trying to bring down prices for consumers.
Tariffs do not help with that goal.
So maybe this gives them a little bit of an exit ramp where they can, you know, put some tariffs back in place, but maybe not put it back to the level it was before.
Maybe take some price pressures off consumers before November.
That is just speculation on my part, though.
We'll see what they do.
On the Independent Line in Newcastle, Delaware, Rosemary, good morning.
Good morning.
How are you doing this morning?
Thank you for taking my call.
The reason why I'm calling is everybody should really be asking the question is how we got here and why the president had to do what he did.
He's like a doctor who knows that basically he has a cancer patient on the table and he has to do radical surgery in order to save the country.
We are a third world country right now.
And yes, the countries that are around the world basically are sucking the life's blood out of America because it's all about power and money.
That's exactly what it's all about.
And Americans need to wake up because if we have a judicial system right now making the decisions for America because the legislative branch is so corrupt, we're in big trouble.
And everybody needs to wake up.
This is not a Democratic nor a Republican issue.
This is a patriotic issue.
And we need to take a look at it that way.
We need to be isolationists again.
We need to have America first because if not, the ship's going to go down.
We can't take care of the world.
We have to take care of America first.
All right, Rosemary.
I think that the caller is expressing a very common sentiment and one that I see a lot where I'm from Michigan.
I saw the deindustrialization happen.
I saw factories close down, friends have to move away.
That's a big issue in the middle of the country in many of these industrial states.
I think that the president is trying to answer those concerns.
The question is, is he doing it legally with these tariffs?
The Supreme Court said no.
And is it actually going to bring manufacturing back to the United States?
That's a question for economists.
I think, you know, if you look.
What have economists been saying?
I mean, has reshoring been happening over this past year?
There have been, you know, the factory construction numbers have ticked up in the last few months.
But if you look at jobs in American manufacturing since Trump's tariffs, we've lost more than 70,000 of them.
They ticked up last month in January, but we're still like 70,000 manufacturing jobs that have been lost since Liberation Day when he first announced the tariffs last April.
So just looking at the jobs numbers, it hasn't come back yet.
Now, Trump's team says, just wait.
There's going to be a lot of factory construction this year.
There's going to be a lot of investment this year.
They're saying we're going to have a rip-roaring 2026 when it comes to factory jobs.
That remains to be seen.
I think no one would begrudge them if that did happen.
It's just, Have they put in place the right policies to make it happen?
That remains to be seen.
Let's talk to Linda, a Republican in Florida.
Hi, Linda.
Hi, how are you?
I just never seen people in the center and the left so much, hate a president so much, that they go against America and the American people, what we want.
I mean, what did we vote for?
We voted for this.
We voted for immigration.
We voted for the tariffs.
We knew this was all coming.
Why is it so hard for anybody to understand this?
This is good for our country in the long run.
I mean, this is, we did tariffs years and years ago.
Why are we letting the extreme left rule our courts?
That's how I see it.
Thank you.
I think that, again, a common sentiment that I'm hearing from many voters, especially Republicans.
I don't know if you can call the, you know, Chief Justice John Roberts an extreme left person, but I think the question is, you know, a lot of people did vote for tariffs.
A lot of people I know voted for tariffs.
The question is, is he doing it within his own legal authority?
You know, we don't, you know, the president can't do whatever he wants whenever he wants, even though Trump would love to do that, right?
Any president would love to do that.
That's why we have the Supreme Court.
That's why we are a nation of laws rather than a nation of men and women, you know?
So it's a question of, you know, you can love tariffs, you can hate tariffs.
He still has to do it within the parameters of the law.
The Supreme Court's the ultimate arbiter of that.
They said he overstepped, so he's recalibrating.
The tariffs aren't going away.
They just are going to do it a different way.
So we got a question from Anthony in Riverside, Illinois, who says, are tariffs regressive in nature?
Raising taxes on poor people?
Yes.
In a word, yes.
Regressive saying that tariffs affect people in lower income brackets more because they spend more of their money on daily consumption, right?
If you're a rich person and you have to pay a little bit more when you buy a coffee maker at Target or something, that's not going to affect you as much as if you're on the lower end of the income bracket, right?
Poorer people spend more of their money on daily consumables.
Tariffs raise the prices for daily consumables more.
So if you have less money, you're spending more on consumption prices.
As opposed to spending more of your money on services at scale.
Yeah, on services, which are not tariffed at this point.
So, you know, I think that that is one of the arguments against tariffs is that you are disproportionately raising revenue from poorer people, whereas normally in most developed economies, you have what would be called a progressive tax system where, you know, taxes go up as a proportion of income as you go higher in higher income brackets.
So not progressive politically, but just progressive in that it's higher on higher incomes.
Tariffs are the opposite.
And so I think that that's one of the arguments you've seen brought to bear against them.
David, Democrat, Traverse City, Michigan.
Good morning, David.
Good morning.
I'd like to make the point that Trump is kind of a different kind of president.
He's sort of a reality TV star, and he's uninterested in policy and anything that takes time.
He just wants to make a show on TV, and he's interested in his personal power and gaining money.
And the tariffs allow him to make a lot of economic decisions come through his personal decisions and allows him and the Trump syndicate to raise New York Times has said $4 billion that they have done contrary to the emoluments clause.
But I'd also like to make the point that he's now past the peak of his power and there's an election coming and the Democrats, we're going to crush you.
And MAGA, you're going to have to crawl back under the rock that you came from.
President Trump has been in favor of tariffs for a long time, even before he was president.
He talked about it.
Yeah, absolutely.
He's always been a protectionist.
He's been talking about this since the 90s, right?
And saying that, you know, first, you know, since the 80s, really, it used to be that Japan was the boogeyman when you had Japanese cars coming into the country and they were really eating the lunch of the Detroit automakers.
You saw the automakers have to pivot, right?
Now the big boogeyman is China, although he's been playing nicer with Xi Jinping in the run-up to this summit that he'll have at the beginning of April.
But I do think that, you know, a number of callers have raised this point that I think is really apt: Trump chose this tariff strategy because it located all the power in the office of the president and him personally.
He was able to set the tone for not just the U.S. economy, but set the terms for all of our global trading relationships.
That's something that many people would say they voted for, but it is a concentration of power in the executive.
And I think that's something that the Supreme Court pushed back on yesterday.
Let's hear from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, talking about plans for in the Senate.
Donald Trump is doubling down on hurting American families by raising their costs.
And his speech, Donald Trump's speech, is just like his tariffs: erratic, disorganized, based on fiction.
He just does not understand what Americans are going through.
Today's SCOTUS decision was a win for the wallets of every American consumer that carried the burden of Trump's stupid trade war, and now he's doing it all over again and hurting the American people.
Trump's tariff tax was illegal, and the courts agreed.
And let's call these tariffs for what they are: a tax on the American people.
The tariffs that Trump imposed a year ago that the courts knocked out, and the tariffs he's imposing now are all taxes on the American people, raising their costs.
Small businesses, farmers, caught in the crossfire from one corner of America to another.
The American people are struggling with higher costs.
And today, Trump said he's going to keep those costs on their shoulders.
The fact of the matter is these tariffs aren't tough on China.
They're tough on American families.
And the court has repeatedly voted on, the Senate has repeatedly voted on a bipartisan basis to reject this illegal trade war.
Congress has the ultimate authority to undo the tariffs that Trump had imposed a year ago and the tariffs that Trump has imposed today.
And we hope our Republican colleagues will join with us in rejecting these tariffs because they're such a burden on American families and the costs that they pay.
Senator Chuck Schumer, and this is what Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican, said on X. Tariffs can be an important and effective tool to address unfair trade practices and help level the playing field with foreign competitors.
Senate Republicans will continue working with the administration and our colleagues in the House to advance our shared goal to strengthen rural America, including South Dakota's farm and ranch communities and the broader U.S. economy.
What are the chances something happens in the Senate with regard to tariffs?
Very low, I would say.
I don't think they're going to come in and legislate a tariff increase, right?
You actually saw them do the opposite last year.
So there's a part of IEPA that allows Congress to go in and review the emergency declarations that underpin these tariffs.
And you saw on three separate occasions last year, the Senate voted on a bipartisan basis to disapprove of these Trump tariffs, right?
The House used a procedural move so those votes didn't come up in the House.
Trump would have vetoed it anyway, but it was a message that there is bipartisan opposition in the Senate to that.
Only a few Republicans came along with the Democrats on that, but I don't think we're going to see any action from the Senate to codify these tariffs into law.
Greg in Texas, Independent Lion, you're on the air, Greg.
Hey, hey, hey, I got a couple comments.
Can you hold for some secret before I get to my question?
Hey, I always be looking at you, but you ever seen that movie, Raquel Welch?
You should, I'm telling you, if they ever make a new movie, you should be the younger Raquel Welch.
I've seen the documentary, but I'm telling you, you should be the youngest Raquel Welch.
Thank you, Greg.
Go ahead with your question.
Okay.
Trump's Tariffs Controversy00:05:03
Now, Donald Trump, he putting tariffs.
I seen a special on CNN, and they're going to have a special about over in Vietnam that he put tariffs on those people because they wouldn't give him, let him build his land, his motels, and his golf courses and all that.
I saw that.
I saw that on CNN.
It's going to be a special on CNN.
And Donald Trump putting terrorists on people that won't bill for him and get what he wants.
So he uses an American citizen.
Also, he is out here, got the Supreme Court to vote against his deal because the fact is that he knows this thing ain't going to work.
So he got them to vote against him, the Republican Supreme Court to vote against him because the fact is that he knew this thing ain't going to work.
So now he got a scapegoat.
Well, I think your caller brings up two good points there.
One is that he's correct that Trump has used tariffs as a cudgel for a number of different reasons, right?
Sometimes it's a trade issue.
Sometimes it's a personal issue.
Sometimes it's, you know, he himself has said, I, you know, he, when the, you know, the leader of Switzerland called him, he didn't like how she spoke to him, so he increased the tariff.
Sometimes it can be a very personal thing that makes him increase these tariffs.
That's why they used IEPA because it was solely at his discretion.
He will not have that much leverage, that much control under these new tariff regimes that they're putting forward.
And that's why they didn't do it in the first place.
Now, I don't know if he, you know, on the other point, I don't know if President Trump tried to get the Supreme Court to vote against him, but there might be a silver lining for him in this.
As I said earlier, they also want to bring down costs for American consumers going into the midterm elections.
If they have to drop, if they have to pull back on some of these tariffs, that might not be a bad thing for them come November.
So we'll see how they calibrate this in the weeks and months to come.
But I wouldn't be surprised if the overall tariff rate at the end of this year was a little bit lower than it was going into it.
This is what the caller is talking about.
The Guardian has this article.
Farmers displaced by $1.5 billion Trump golf course reportedly being offered rice and cash.
It says White House denies suggestions.
Resort in Vietnam presents conflict of interest amid row with compensation, overcompensation rates.
That's in The Guardian if you'd like to see that.
And this is Bill in Massachusetts, Republican.
Hi, Bill.
Hi, how are you doing?
So here we go again.
This is all about globalism.
Like as an example, NATO pays like, what, 5%?
America pays 95% to save the world.
Socialism is what the Democrats are about.
And socialism is globalism.
And socialism is a failed communist system where the government has total control over all the people.
And the people have no freedom and no say.
So Bill relate that back to tariffs?
By the way, Biden should have been executed for treason a lot.
Let's talk to Chris in Omaha, Nebraska, Democrat.
Good morning, Chris.
I'm sorry.
Boy, I'll tell you that.
Did that lady compare him to a brain surgeon, I think, one of them.
And it kind of takes me off my thing because it sounds like, judged on her comments and that last guy, that he has literally lobotomized his supporters.
Anyway, let's get back to tariffs, Chris.
The guy bankrupted a casino.
So how do you do that?
I think his economic policies are probably not that strong.
So anyway, that's all I got.
Thank you.
All right.
Let's talk to Robert, Caspian, Michigan, Independent Line.
Good morning, Robert.
Morning.
This is Robert from the fascist town of Caspian, Michigan, which is next to Iron River, Michigan.
I'm glad to see that the Supreme Court has finally got a backbone again to stand up to this creep.
I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that.
I'll apologize.
But anyway, I'm glad to see him because I was disappointed.
I don't know.
Before he got elected, he talked to the Supreme Court and saying that the president is above the law.
I didn't like that.
The Supreme Court shouldn't have done that.
But it happened.
And to the people that think that they voted for this kind of action, they actually voted to kill people that are in international waters, hanging on to a boat for their dear lives.
They actually voted to kill people like that.
They actually voted for all of this stuff.
I mean, come on, this is ridiculous.
And then that one woman said that she voted for this.
No, she didn't vote for killing people in international waters.
Tariffs and Their Cost00:15:34
But anyway, to get back to the tariffs, the tariffs were affecting me too.
The prices was going up a little bit.
The chocolate was going up around here and a few other things that were going up in price.
I don't know if they'll ever come back down again.
I doubt it because once they go up, they're never going to come down.
But he has affected the consumer industry with the prices on the increases of the tariffs.
That's all I have to say.
Thank you.
Have a good day.
And Gavin, this is James in Alabama who says, according to the Wall Street Journal this week, approximately 90% of the tariff costs have been passed along to consumers.
He asked if that's right.
Does your guest expect that tariffs refunded to importers will be passed back to consumers through lower costs, or will they simply be a windfall for the importers?
I think mostly the latter.
I don't expect, you know, unless it's some sort of marketing gimmick, I don't expect your, you know, your neighborhood corner store to be doing tariff rebates on, you know, on the things that you've bought, you know.
And I also don't expect that many prices, you know, a lot of goods, these prices will be sticky.
And so even if the tariff goes away or comes down, I don't expect a lot of these prices to go down, except for on commodity goods, maybe something like coffee or something like that.
So mostly, if they do get refunds, and remember, that's very much up in the air at this point, I think it'll mostly be a corporate windfall and not really trickle that much down to consumers.
But we'll see.
I want to ask you about investment firms buying the rights for refunds.
So this is in Wired, and the headline is, they bet against Trump's tariffs.
Now they stand to make millions.
And it says, when Trump introduced sweeping tariffs on foreign goods last April, hedge funds and specialist investment firms began to bet on the possibility that the courts might rule that he had violated the law.
They did that by purchasing the right to theoretical tariff refunds at cents on the dollar from struggling importers who wanted to swap the possibility of a future refund for an immediate cash payout.
Yeah, it's a really interesting secondary market that's been going on.
So yeah, if you were an importer, you're having to pay all these tariffs.
A financial firm may come to you and say, hey, you know, down the line, you may get a refund.
We don't know yet, but you might.
And if you do, we'll buy your rights to that refund now for less money, but we'll give you money now basically on the hope that we will get a refund further down the line.
So there's going to be a lot of financial firms who are really keenly looking at this ongoing litigation over these refunds.
But that's legal to do that?
It's not illegal.
Yeah, I think it's certainly, yeah.
I mean, you know, the all's fair and love war in the American financial markets, right?
Tony, Republican line, Columbia Falls, Maine.
Good morning, Tony.
Good morning.
Thank you to you and your guest.
I have a financial question.
Is it better financially for the country in regards to using and collecting these tariffs as the Trump administration has been doing than what it was prior to Trump putting all these tariffs on?
In other words, not for the individual person like me, a couple dollars here and there for goods, more for goods.
Just financially, are we doing better with the tariffs?
I think that's my question.
So thank you very much, guys.
Bye-bye.
Yeah, I think it's a good question.
Certainly, the tariffs are bringing in a lot of revenue to the federal government.
The question is, is this the most efficient way to raise revenue?
People, you know, the Trump administration would say it's great.
Look, we're getting hundreds of billions of dollars.
Critics would say those hundreds of billions of dollars are coming from American consumers, and you might be able to more effectively raise that money with less burden on consumers if you did it a different way, right?
Certainly, if they don't have the tariffs, there'll be less money coming into the government.
But I don't know the overall health of the country.
That's a value judgment that I think other people are going to have to make.
Let's talk to Barry, Hamden, Connecticut, Democrat.
Good morning, Barry.
Yeah, good morning.
I got a question about tariffs.
And it's a fundamental one, but just to explain it in simple terms, and then I have two comments real quick.
One is when a car comes from China, okay, and it comes over to America, for an example, and whatever the tariff tax is, could you please explain how it all works financially from each step, and then it gets to us and how much we have to pay, et cetera.
Two, here's my two comments.
One, I'm glad it's handcuffing Trump a little bit.
I don't know if it's going to help or not.
Who knows?
He is kind of a dictator-ish kind of person, obviously.
But what I don't understand is what Democrats or Republicans is that the reason why Democrats struggle with Trump is his behavior.
You know, we could all disagree on issues and stuff, but it's behavior of the bullying and the name-calling and the sore losing.
And we have a hard time with that.
And then another one is, for some reason, Mimi, on your show, and it's not you personally, is that you always get a comment here and there about how biased C-SPAN is and they don't want to listen anymore.
I think that's outrageous and ridiculous.
I just want to make that comment.
I hope you never take those things personally.
But one more thing is Republicans and Democrats always have problems with the issues.
You know what I mean?
And it's just his behavior.
And I don't understand.
Yep, got that, Barry.
So I think it's a good question.
So first of all, we don't really get cars from China right now.
They're very high tariffs on China, like on Chinese cars over 100%.
And there are also regulations that limit them.
But let's take, but I get what your caller is saying.
Let's take Japan, for instance.
If you're importing a Toyota from Japan, for instance, a lot of Toyotas are made here, but we're taking it from Japan.
As that car comes over, it's going to be on the ship.
It's going to arrive, maybe Port of Long Beach in California.
When it comes off and it goes through customs, that is when the duty will be paid.
It will be paid by the importing company.
And then typically what happens is the importer will pass that cost down to the consumer on the price tag, right?
They may choose not to.
In the car industry, we saw kind of last year there were a number of companies, and I think maybe it was Hyundai or something, they would advertise this is the tariff-free price.
Those are marketing gimmicks.
No one's going to absorb the cost of a high tariff forever.
They might try to do it for a little while to gain some market share, but these are costs that eventually the economic literature shows us again and again, consumers bear the brunt of tariffs.
And it's important to say that is the point.
The point of tariffs is to make imported goods more expensive so that there is an incentive to make more of those goods here.
Now, whether you can actually do that in the United States and be profitable is another question, right?
Maybe with something as big as a car, you can make it in the United States and be profitable and be competitive, right?
Maybe something like a toothbrush, maybe not going to happen.
Maybe it needs to happen in a lower cost economy, right?
And so that's, I think, part of the issue with these tariffs that they have been so broad that they have been hitting things that we don't make here and we're probably not going to make here.
On the Independent Line, Jean is in Yorktown, Virginia.
Good morning.
Good morning, America.
Yes, in regards to tariff, I'm glad the Supreme Court did make that decision because now I'm a retired Army who, 20-year veteran, and now Social Security.
I drive a mini economical car.
I would love to have another car, but I can't afford it.
I just won't pay the price for it.
Everything is just outrageous.
I have a granddaughter that I don't even put in my car because, of course, I want a safer car, but I can't afford to buy one.
I see cars as I drive on the roads, I see car lots that are bare.
So those car dealers, which a lot of them are my mom and pops, or they have been in business for years, they can't even afford to keep these cars on the lots because people aren't buying them.
I see the impact in the grocery stores.
I'm paying more.
Everything has gone up.
Everybody has gone up on their prices from Dominion Energy to clothes.
I used to shop overseas to buy clothes from Style We or those other venues.
I don't buy anymore.
I don't splurge anymore.
I cook because eating out has just got outrageous.
So the tariffs have impacted and affected a lot of American ordinary citizens like myself.
I'm just as ordinary as it can get.
And I would also like to see more being done by Congress to do more to make sure that all the branches of government are doing what they are supposed to do and not overstepping their response.
We got your point.
Yeah, I think this is a really common sentiment that I hear all across the country, right?
Just prices keep going up for any everything.
Cars are more expensive than they've ever been in the United States.
Really, really difficult to afford a new car or even a used car for a lot of people today.
Groceries are more expensive.
Utility bills are going up so, so much.
I hear this all over the place.
And it's because of this expansion of data centers.
They use a lot of electricity.
And so their demand is going up.
Supply is not going up as fast.
So the price is going up for electricity.
This is the Republicans' problem going into the midterm elections.
This is why the tariffs are a very salient issue going into November.
It's because prices are up and people do feel it.
Are there certain sectors that are going to be impacted more by the Supreme Court decision than others?
Like, will we start to see certain prices come down, maybe not others?
Yeah, I think it's tough to say at this point.
We'll see how companies adjust kind of their inventories and their imports right now.
I think what we will not see a lot of change in these big heavy industry sectors.
So like steel and aluminum, those tariffs are still in place.
The auto parts and car tariffs, those are still in place.
Trucks are still in place.
I think you'll probably see, if I can prognosticate a little bit, probably in the smaller consumer goods, you know, something like, I think like a toothbrush or like, you know, soap, you know, your kind of more everyday goods, those may moderate in price a little bit more, but I think the big ticket items are going to remain quite expensive.
Paul, Republican, Winter Green, Florida.
Hi, Paul.
Hey, good morning.
Hey, just a couple of points I'd like to make.
It seems like ever since Trump back into office, there's lawsuits filed on everything.
Why weren't there lawsuits filed on the tariffs?
When Joe Biden was in presidency, he kept Trump's first term tariffs on China and different countries.
Why didn't Chuck Schumer have the Democrats file a lawsuit back then?
And secondly, you know, I think tourists are more about trying to buy American products.
I think that's why Germany charges such a high tariff on United States vehicles when we send our cars to Germany so that their people buy German vehicles.
And that's why Canada charges so much for milk and dairy products because they want their people to buy their products.
Now, what's amazing is Americans want people to have a higher cost, a higher price living.
They want to give people that work in fast foods big money to work in these restaurants that were really meant for high school kids and college kids.
But now, because people didn't do so well in school, they're doing that for a lifetime job.
So you want to give them 20, 30, even some states say $50 an hour.
But yet you go to McDonald's and you pay $15 for a meal that's worth about $4 for your grandkids, $5 for your grandkids.
And people want to complain about prices, but they're responsible for their actions.
So Democrats, all they want to do is they want to fight Trump on everything that he does.
And they want to increase price.
They want socialism in our country.
They want not just socialism because we're beyond that.
They're dictatorship.
And that's scary.
I want my grandkids to have the same rights that I did when I was a kid.
All right, Paul.
Go ahead, Gavin.
Yeah, I think the caller brings up a good point is that President Biden kept a lot of Trump's first term tariffs, kept them around.
There were tariffs on China.
There were certain tariffs on Chinese automobiles that he actually expanded.
But those were under a much different legal justification.
He did not use the IEPA law.
Trump did not use the IEPA law in his first term because of the legal risk.
And just the scope of the tariffs was an order of magnitude less.
We are talking about so much fewer, so many fewer dollars being collected than there was under this tariff regime.
So Trump really expanded the scope of the tariffs.
And that's why you saw the challenges that happened.
But I think the caller puts his finger on an important thing, which is the Democrats are opposed to these IEPA tariffs.
But There's still some consternation.
There's some divide in the party over how far they should go on that.
You know, you go to Michigan, you go where I'm from, a lot of the Democratic Union voters love the tariffs on automobiles.
Maybe they don't love tariffs on their groceries, but they really want to keep those auto tariffs in place.
So there's a lot of nuance to this issue.
It's not just a, it's not black or white.
So when it comes to unfair trade practices by other countries, are there other tools that you can use besides the threat of tariffs?
Yeah, I mean, typically you would, you know, enter these, you know, extended trade negotiations that sometimes would go on for years, right?
I think one of the things that the Trump administration has been very effective about is they have used these tariffs as leverage, and they have been able to get other countries to lower their tariffs on United States goods, to take some of the regulations on U.S. goods off, and to open their markets a little bit more to U.S. products.
There are some long-standing trade issues with the European Union, with Japan, with Korea, that they were able to solve or at least get something down on paper with these tariffs.
So I think they do deserve some credit for being effective on those points.
Whether those agreements will be lasting, I think, is another question.
They do not have force of law yet.
They've not been put to Congress for a vote.
So we'll have to see now that these tariffs are gone how durable those agreements are.
Sales Tax and Tariffs00:03:59
Otis, Independent in Prosperity, South Carolina, you're on with our guest, Gavin Bade.
Good morning.
My question is, like if you buy a $20 shirt at Walmart and my state has a $0.07 on the dollar sales tax, well now when you put the tariff on that $20 shirt and it raises it to $27, how much more are you paying in sales tax at $0.7 on the dollar?
So that's a tax on the consumer, which is us.
Am I correct?
Yes, sir, you are correct.
You'd be paying that sales tax on the price of the good with the tariff.
So if it was $20, you would pay your 7% sales tax on that.
If it goes up to 25, you're going to pay your 7% on that 25%.
So you do kind of get hit twice there because the tariff raises the cost of the good, and then the sales tax is going to be more on that good because it is more expensive.
So you're kind of getting hit coming and going there.
All right.
Well, we'll continue to talk about tariffs later in the program.
Gavin Bade, Wall Street Journal Trade and Economic Policy Reporter.
His work is at WSJ.com.
Thanks so much for joining us.
It's been a pleasure.
Later this morning on the Washington Journal, Kevin Cirilli, journalist and founder of the media and technology platform Meet the Future, discusses the landmark trials facing social media giants this year over alleged harms to children.
But first, after the break, a closer look at the voting changes pushed by Congressional Republicans with the SAVE Act.
That conversation with Matt Germer, director of the governance program at the R Street Institute.
We'll be right back.
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Welcome back to the program.
Joining us now to discuss the SAVE Act and Election Integrity is Matt Germer, R-Street Institute Governance Program Director.
Matt, welcome to the program.
Voting ID Requirements00:14:50
Thank you so much for having me on.
It's an absolute pleasure.
Can you remind us about the R-Street Institute, what you guys do, and your funding?
Yes, so the R-Street Institute is a free market, limited, effective government think tank, largely based out of Washington, D.C., though we've got scholars all across the United States, myself based in North Carolina.
We are funded from a variety of sources, primarily philanthropy and corporations, but I want to emphasize that anything that you hear me say or any of my writings that you read reflect my own thoughts and our research is independent.
Well, let's talk about the SAVE Act.
This is a proposal by Congressional Republicans.
We will put it on the screen.
So just to remind people what the SAVE Act is, it requires individuals to present an eligible photo ID before voting.
So to vote, you would have to have that photo ID across the country.
It requires states to obtain proof of citizenship in person when registering an individual to vote.
That also includes if you change your registration.
And it requires states to remove non-citizens from existing voter roles.
So if we could go through that, Matt, and to talk about first the requirement to show a photo ID in order to vote.
Many states have that, but not all 50 states.
That's right.
Most states at this point have some form of photo ID requirement on the books with different levels of stringency and how they enforce it or what exactly they require.
Though, as you point out, not every state currently uses some form of photo ID.
I think around 14 states in the District of Columbia have no photo ID or voter ID requirement at all.
This would put forward a relatively strict photo ID requirement that would be stronger than what we see in a number of states and would be designed to ensure that folks, when they show up to the polling place, are who they say they are, which is an important provision that a vast majority of Americans support.
I think something like 98% of Republicans support voter photo ID at the polls, and nearly two-thirds of Democrats do as well.
So it really does seem to be one of those issues that, at a conceptual level, has overwhelming support across the aisle.
What it really comes down to is how it's implemented to ensure that this goes smoothly.
Well, I did want to ask you about that, but first on the details of the ID itself, obviously a driver's license is one, a passport is another.
For Americans that don't have either one of those, what are their options for a photo ID?
So most of the bill relies upon government-issued photo ID.
So as you point out, that includes driver's licenses or state IDs, even if they don't allow for driver uses.
Those are the most common forms of ID that folks would bring in.
A passport, as you point out, would work as well.
Military IDs, tribal IDs, and other government-issued photo IDs would work, though I will note it does not include student IDs on the list.
And so if there are college students out there who would maybe rely upon that student ID as their primary form of photo ID, this bill might be the motivation they need to go out and get a state ID or a driver's license.
Well, let's talk about your article that you wrote for RStreet.
It's at rstreet.org.
It says the Save America Act gets the what right, but the how wrong.
What do you mean?
So in this case, this goes to that larger point I made just a moment ago, that this issue of photo ID at the polls, of verifying citizenship for voter registrants, are overwhelmingly popular.
As I mentioned, nearly all Republicans in polling have expressed support for these provisions, and around two-thirds of Democrats have as well, and independents fall somewhere in between.
So there's broad bipartisan support for these ideas, which is a good thing because I think we are in a crisis at the moment of trust in our institutions broadly, but trust in our elections in particular.
And so if we can put forward changes to our election system that imbues more trust and confidence in the results, that's a good thing.
Unfortunately, the way that this particular piece of legislation is written still has some quirks that need to be smoothed out through amendment before it's ready for prime time.
The bill on the photo ID, voter ID side of things, really doesn't seem to do a great job of grappling with things like mail-in voting, where it requires voters to submit a photocopy of their ID, which can be a real challenge for folks who are homebound or otherwise unable to get to a photocopier.
I know most Americans maybe at this point don't have a photocopier at home.
And there are some ways through that, but there's a strong preference for that photocopied ID.
And similarly, not a lot of flexibility for folks who don't have access to an ID, may have lost it due to a natural disaster, something we dealt with here in North Carolina with Hurricane Helene just before the election recently, where folks might have had their ID washed away.
So there are a handful of these provisions that states have around the country that have put forward photo ID.
This bill doesn't seem to envision those.
And I think these are opportunities for fixes before this thing is ready for the president's pen.
And as far as proving American citizenship in person, there's the requirement of being in person.
For those that are maybe disabled or can't get to an election office in person, is there some accommodation for people like that?
The bill does envision in a few parts throughout to ensure that there are compliance with various federal laws around disabilities and limited access to resources, though to your point, the overwhelming preference in the system and the way that it would be designed would be to encourage or require folks to show up in person to verify their citizenship,
whether that be at the Department of Motor Vehicles when they are registering to vote and getting their driver's license or state ID, or showing up to their county elections office with ID if they're the kind of person who registered to vote online or through the mail, which really undercuts the value of registering to vote online or through the mail.
If you still have to show up in person later.
And this gets to a potential suggestion I've put in my piece and that I really think that this bill would benefit from, which is taking the burden of verifying citizenship and trying as much as possible to shift that from individual voters to the government itself.
The government has databases that have records of folks' citizenship, whether that is the DMV as part of that process of folks getting real IDs all across the country or other databases that as much as possible, the most amount of people should be verified on the back end.
And that allows the government to focus their resources on helping those who most need it, who otherwise were unaccounted for in the system.
And as far as if this bill were to pass, what's the timeline for implementation and when would it take effect?
And would it be in place for this coming midterm election this November?
I believe the goal of the sponsors is to have this be in effect for the 2026 election.
The bill, as written, takes effect immediately upon passage.
It gives the Election Assistance Commission, the EAC, 10 days to issue guidance to the states for various parts of the bill.
And it would send election officials all across the country into a scramble as they update their voter registration systems, have to train their staff both at the polling place.
I myself am a poll worker here in North Carolina.
I sit through the trainings that we do each of the election cycles.
And I'll tell you what, they're complicated enough as it is.
And this would send them into a scramble to have to give an immediate update to how to verify photo ID at the polling place.
As I mentioned, something we already do in North Carolina, but would be a new provision in other places.
And the bill has to grapple with the states that allow for same-day registration.
What do you do to check citizenship?
Well, that might come down to poll workers at polling places checking citizenship.
All of these things require training, they require time.
And so you'd really see a mad dash from whenever this bill becomes law until the election season.
Our guest is Matt Germer.
If you would like to join the conversation about the SAVE Act and election integrity, you can start calling in now.
The numbers are Republicans, 202748, 8001, Democrats, 202748, 8000, and Independents, 202748, 8,002.
Matt, I want to play for you, Representative James Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina.
He was on a podcast with Gavin Newsom, and this is what he said.
Don't tell me because I object to this law that they're trying to pass that I'm against ID.
I am not against IDing yourself to vote.
I am against your telling me that the ID that I'm more apt to have in my possession will be no good.
But the ID that someone else had, like a hunting license, and you compare the number of black people with hunting license opposed to white people with hunting license, how many black people, but these things that white people possess, who travel, who use various IDs for travel.
Okay.
These things, we just have to just call them out.
So that's not what this is.
Let's talk about what ID you would have that you don't have to pay for.
Don't put a poll tax on this.
What do you think of that, Matt?
You know, we talked about the types of ID.
He mentioned a hunting license.
Yeah, that's a great question.
And I think there may be some confusion Or alternatively, there may be additional amendment opportunities in front of us here.
My understanding of the way that the photo ID requirements are built is that it requires the ID to be government-issued and include a photo and their name and their address, or perhaps not their address, I'm sorry, but their name, and it needs to be government-issued.
And so, in some circumstances, that might include a hunting license.
I can't speak to specific states and the way that they handle hunting licenses.
But by and large, my experience of working at the polling place in a state that has photo ID requirements is that almost every voter will show up with a driver's license or a state ID.
I'm not sure what ID the congressman carries for himself, but I, you know, I think that what we're likely to see is the most amount of people showing up with just a standard kind of driver's license or state ID.
That said, he puts forward a good point around the poll tax.
I think it's important as we look through this process, one, to note this bill has no funding attached to it to help states get these IDs in the hands of voters.
And two, a major provision that has been required in, I believe, every state that has put forward photo ID on equity grounds is that that state then offer a no-cost or extremely low-cost ID that qualifies for use in the polling place.
And so, here in North Carolina, if you don't have a driver's license or a state ID, the counties offer a voter ID that works for voting purposes that comes at no cost.
And that's a huge requirement in my mind because, as he points out, we should have no poll taxes.
The right to vote is fundamental and it needs to be available to all folks regardless of indigency.
All right, let's start taking calls.
This is Cornell in Westland, Michigan, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Go ahead, Cornell.
All right, James, what is Kevin Clayburn?
He's gaslighting.
That's all he's doing.
It's common sense to have a driver's license, state ID to vote.
That's all we need.
Nothing else, not no fishing license, nothing.
Everybody has a driving license.
Everybody has a state ID.
That's all we need to vote.
Nothing else.
They're gaslighting.
And he's the number one.
Yeah, Aben Newsome, too.
They're gaslighting.
So that's about it.
Yeah, that's, I mean, I think there's actually a point to discuss here, too, which is, you know, as the caller notes, overwhelmingly people have driver's licenses and state IDs available to them.
But it is worth noting that there are millions of Americans who don't for one reason or another.
That might be young Americans who just haven't gone around to getting their driver's license.
They're not yet even 21, so they're not using an ID for, you know, getting into a nightclub or buying alcohol.
They may not have a job yet.
They could be a college student.
These folks may not have a state ID.
My two senses they should go get one, just generally, regardless of whether this bill passes.
They should go out and get themselves an ID.
But you've got that population.
You've got folks on the other side who have retired.
Maybe they are more homebound.
They're not going out and about very often.
Not too many occasions to prove their identity.
They may have an expired ID at home.
I know here in North Carolina, we allow for those kinds of expired IDs to work for seniors.
But there are a number of, you know, there are millions of Americans out there who, for one reason or another, don't have what would be considered eligible ID for this purpose.
And so, you know, I think to the caller's point, overwhelmingly, voters already have driver's licenses and state IDs, and that's a good thing.
But there are still some folks that would need to be sparked into action as a result of this bill if it does pass.
Michael, Syracuse, New York, Democrat, you're on the air.
Good morning, Mimi.
Morning.
I just wanted to say that Donald That the House of Representatives comes up with this nasty bill on trying to get people to make sure that they are citizens.
I live in New York State.
I never showed an ID.
I carry an ID, but I don't need to show one.
Bipsy Donald is out of his mind.
Thank you.
Citizenship Verification Debate00:16:16
All right.
And regarding how safe and secure elections are as far as non-citizens voting.
Yeah, I think there's a great point there that we already have in our system a requirement that folks, and I know this doesn't sound like a strong safeguard, but folks check a box verifying that they are citizens when they register to vote.
The result of that is that non-citizens are made aware in the voter registration process.
If they, for whatever reason, find themselves with that form in front of them, as they're reading through it, a big red flag that says, don't sign here.
And for non-citizens, as they're reading that, especially if they're a green card holder or a visa holder with intent to stay long-term, are keenly aware that if they were to register to vote, this would put their long-term immigration status in jeopardy.
And so as a result of that, the amount of non-citizens actually registered to vote across the country is very small.
Now, to be clear, it's not zero.
We do have non-citizens registered to vote in virtually every state across this country.
And that's a result of both perhaps human error.
It may be a result of nefarious behavior.
It also might just be a result of how our bureaucracy always is run by humans and we are prone to making mistakes.
So that said, there are non-citizens out there.
But as I pointed at the top of our conversation today, verification of citizenship is overwhelmingly supported by Americans.
And it's the kind of thing that would help imbue trust in the system, which I think is a good thing.
Even if there are not many non-citizens registered to vote presently, let alone actually casting a ballot, verifying voter citizenship would give more Americans confidence that our elections are secure.
Excuse me, are secure.
And Matt, just to clarify, is that the crime is actually registering to vote for a non-citizen, not necessarily actually voting.
So you don't actually have to vote to be charged with that crime.
That's right.
And that's in part as well.
As you look through a voter registration form, there are a series of statements that you have to agree to, including that you are a citizen, including that, depending on the state that you're in, that you're felon status, whether you've had your rights restored or perhaps not restored, but that you don't fall into the prohibited categories, that you are at least 18 years of age, et cetera.
And you are assigning to affirm that those things are true.
So you might be subject to perjury.
You also might have, to my point, immigration-related problems as well.
Dan in Vienna, Virginia, Republican line.
Good morning, Dan.
Thank you for taking my call.
The only real ID is one that has your picture and your fingerprint.
That's the only legal way.
It should be administered by the states.
But as long as it has your fingerprint and your photo, in my state of Virginia, where I live, you can register to vote when you get your driver's license, but the clerks don't check and see if you're a citizen then.
That's why non-citizens are voting in the state of Virginia.
But a fingerprint on the ID will solve a lot of problems.
This should have been solved in the 911 Commission when they wanted to get the pure ID after 2001.
They didn't do it.
The Commission didn't set it up across the country, but a real ID has your fingerprint.
That's all I'm going to say.
Have a nice day.
You know, that's an interesting point on the fingerprint.
And I guess I'll note from my own personal experience when I've gone into get an ID at the DMV, fingerprinting may be part of that process.
I do know that when the Real ID Act was passed in the early 2000s, in the wake of 9-11, two of the requirements were, or the two main points of that were increased protocols to confirm identity, that folks getting their ID at the DMV, that their name and their face match up to the same person, that you're not showing up in multiple states under multiple names.
But beyond that, one of the other requirements, and that's germane here, is that the Real ID Act required states to start checking for lawful presence.
That does not mean citizenship.
So you can have a visa or you can have a green card and go out and get a driver's license or a state ID.
But for the vast majority of Americans going to the DMV and getting a real ID eligible ID, they are bringing with them a birth certificate or a passport, something to show their own lawful president's presence, which in this case would be citizenship.
So we do have fairly secure databases across the country.
Sorry, they are very secure databases, but we have fairly robust databases across the country that include citizenship information about voters.
It's a great resource for states to be tapping into when they're putting forward verification processes.
But any state that is real ID compliant is checking for lawful presence as part of that process.
Joe, Democrat in Illinois, you're on the air.
Yes, sir.
Got a question and a comment.
Comment first.
Comment is: way in 2024, there was not any mention of all of it.
All these citizens, illegal citizens, were in the United States, but they all voted for Donald Trump.
I don't think so.
He said it was a landslide.
This man has just stirred up a hornet nest because he's trying to regulate to steal another election, which he did in 2024.
His boys were out doing their homework, and this is what happened.
Now, my question is: I'm disabled.
I can't get out of the house.
I vote for vote by mail.
I've been voting for almost, well, since I'm 80 years old, I voted for John Kennedy, was my first president, okay?
Had no problems at all.
We never heard of voter fraud until this idiot decided to become king of the world.
How do we do this now?
I just voted in my primary here in Illinois.
I put my neighbor took it and put in the voter's box, and I voted.
Now, how am I going to do that if they have to go to a polling place?
How am I going to get there?
Not only that, I'm visually impaired.
I can't read well, so I have to have people help me here to vote.
Now, so what are we going to do about that situation?
All this is a scam to get these people riled up so that they, oh my gosh, we got to race down there, we got to do this, that, and the other.
I'm registered.
I'm registered in my county to vote.
And if they look at my signature, they'll see that that is on the record and I am legally able to vote.
This is all we need.
We don't need when you register, you sign a form.
Your signature is there.
So let's quit beating around the bush.
This man just wants to be king forever.
All right, Joe.
Let's get a response.
Yeah, thank you for that.
And I think you raise a couple of key issues.
And one, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, you know, for one, thank you for your participation in our civic process for the last, wow, 65 years or so.
But, you know, Republicans for a long time have also been pointing to, I'll call them gently, alleged shenanigans, even all the way back to the 1960 election, whether that be in Illinois or Texas.
And I know that this is a subject of discussion in election circles and probably will continue to be for years to come.
That said, to your specific question around how to vote at home and how to vote by mail, the way that the SAVE Act is constructed at present would require you either to submit a photocopy of your ID with your mailed-in ballot or to include an attestation saying that you gave a good faith effort to create a photocopy of your ID and you were otherwise unable to.
And to be fair to the bill drafters, I'm glad that they at least allowed for that escape hatch for the number of people who just won't have access to a photocopier.
But that still is an additional form.
And, you know, the way that forms work, the way bureaucracy works in large government systems, a lot of folks are going to fall through the cracks there.
They're going to send in a ballot that doesn't have a photocopied ID accompanying it, nor does it have a form.
And I'm not sure that we've got the systems ready to go to help remedy those problems and go back and confirm with folks that they are who they say they are.
And so this really does throw into jeopardy voting by mail.
And in particular, it throws into jeopardy voting by mail in those Western states where almost all ballots are sent in by mail.
And we would likely see pretty high rates of rejected ballots in those states.
And that doesn't help imbue trust in the system either.
He talked about signature verification.
How does that work, Matt, as far as maybe in those states that don't require photo ID currently or voting by mail, is signature verification good enough to make sure that that's the person that is actually voting?
So our signature verification processes are fairly strong.
I've participated myself in some trainings on how to verify signatures and the kind of lessons that we teach around the country to signature verifiers.
We have on record, whether it's the result of at the time you get your license and you sign on the little electronic pad or all previous voter records might also be stored.
Those signatures might also be stored into your record to be able to compare.
And without a reference point, it's actually quite hard to try to mimic someone's signature, even if you see it briefly, to try to do it with your own hand can be pretty telling very quickly that it isn't the original voter.
That said, signature verification is one part science, but it's also one part art.
And it is not foolproof.
And so there are some states that have been out there trying to add more robust checks, even to vote by mail systems.
So that might include asking a voter on one of the pieces of ballot literature to include their driver's license or state ID number or the last four digits of their social security number as just another way to confirm that voters are who they say they are and to add more trust into the system.
Signature verification has served us well so far, but I do think as technology advances and as we continue to learn from the laboratories of democracy across the country, we'll likely see additional reforms like those number IDs being added into ballots.
Carissa, Winter Park, Florida, Independent Line, you're on the air with Matt Germer.
Good morning.
Actually, first-time viewer with C-SPAN, thank you for this news channel.
It's unbiased and I'm really enjoying it so far.
My question is, how does this disenfranchise women?
This is a great question, and it's something that has been brought up now for the last couple of years as this SAVE Act has moved forward.
And a lot of folks are very concerned that because the citizenship check requires that folks verify their citizenship, and you could do that with a passport, but for many Americans, it's going to turn to a birth certificate.
And if the name on your current photo ID is not the same as the name on your birth certificate, which I think overwhelmingly would impact women who might change their name when they get married, you would need to provide a marriage certificate or some other change of name form with you.
And so that often is the point of consternation for folks.
You know, I've heard a lot of criticism that Republicans are putting this forward as a way to disenfranchise women.
You know, I guess I'd note that married women specifically actually tilt in favor of Republicans.
I want to say it's something like 55, 45 in favor of Republicans, whereas unmarried women or otherwise separated overwhelmingly tilt toward Democrats.
And so if this is meant to be some kind of system to disenfranchise married women for partisan gain, it seems like the kind of thing that Republicans may not have thought through.
That said, in my own personal opinion, I don't believe this is necessarily intended to disenfranchise women.
I think the requirement to have that kind of marriage certificate to bridge between a birth certificate and an ID is an important consideration.
I don't want to say that this is meaningless, but it's also the kind of thing, from what I understand, again, not a woman, having had to go through this myself, but from the women that I've spoken to and surveys that I've seen, it's fairly common.
Like when you go in, if you move from one state to another and you need to go get a new driver's license, you'll need to bring with you, according to Real ID, your birth certificate as well as that marriage certificate to be that link.
And so it is a pretty common document, hopefully.
Again, if you're listening to me now and you don't know where your marriage certificate is, I would encourage you to go find it.
If this bill passes, you might need it.
But even if this bill doesn't pass, it's just a good document to have around.
All right, one more call for you.
This is Mary in Palm Desert, California, Republican.
Good morning, Mary.
Hi, good morning to both of you.
I have really quick questions on states of California, Arizona, and New York.
And by the way, it's not hard to get your marriage certificate and get and vote.
I had mine changed when I was 30.
And in fact, they found out someone had my Social Security number.
So I'm glad I did it.
Anyway, New York, they're saying people who are not legal citizens are getting driver's license.
That's the first question.
How are they able to vote?
In Arizona, which I am a registered voter, in Maricopa County, you can vote if you're not a U.S. citizen in local school board, city council, mayor-type elections.
Now, how do we keep them from staying out of the national vote?
And in California, where I am right now, my daughter and her boyfriend, who is a Peruvian, became a U.S. citizen, they went to go vote last year.
No one asked them for an ID at all.
So answer those for me, please.
Thank you.
Yeah, that's a great question.
And I appreciate you bringing these forward.
First, I guess I've noted, I am surprised to learn, and actually I'm not even sure that it is true, that Maricopa County at a local level allows for non-citizens to vote.
Arizona, in fact, is a state that has incredibly stringent citizenship requirements in order to participate at the state and local level.
It's a state that requires documented proof of citizenship.
They actually maintain two different voter registration databases, one for folks who have verified their citizenship.
Those folks are allowed to participate in local and state elections as well as federal.
And if you haven't produced the documented proof of citizenship, you are only allowed to participate in federal elections in Arizona.
So I'm not quite sure that the Maricopa point is true, although I'm happy as we wrap up the show, I'll go back and double check to make sure that that's the case.
But Matt, as for the California and New York questions, I do think that's a very important thing.
Just to go back, there are other counties that do allow non-citizens to vote in local or school board elections.
That's correct.
She was asking if you're eligible to vote there, how would you keep those voters out of the federal elections?
Yes, and that's really a great question.
And Arizona provides a good example.
So they maintain a bifurcated voter registration system where they're able to flag whether folks have verified their citizenship.
You know, as you point out, there are particularly local jurisdictions that might allow for non-citizens to participate.
It becomes incumbent on them to not allow those folks to vote in elections in which they're not allowed to participate.
Are they doing a good job?
I suppose audits and reviews that I've seen so far has shown that these non-citizens aren't participating in the elections that they're not supposed to participate in.
I think I've also even seen San Francisco is one of those places that allows for non-citizens to participate in school board elections.
And even with that provision allowing them to do so, very few people, non-citizens actually take advantage of those rights in the elections in which they're allowed to.
So, you know, again, I think there's a real opportunity with a bill like this to go the extra mile and ensure that we have citizenship verification as part of the process.
The big thing is how you do it.
And this bill would really address an important issue, but does need some additional refinement before it's ready for prime time.
Linda Chavez And Meet The Future00:04:05
All right, that's Matt Germer, R Street Institute's governance program director.
You can find him at rstreet.org.
Thanks so much for joining us, Matt.
Thank you.
Coming up, a conversation with Kevin Cerilli, journalist and founder of the media and technology platform Meet the Future.
It's about the landmark trials facing social media giants this year over alleged harms to children.
We'll be right back.
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series, Sunday, with our guest author, former Reagan administration official, and a Library of Congress living legend, Linda Chavez.
She has written a number of books, including Out of the Barrio, An Unlikely Conservative, and The Silver Candlesticks, a novel of the Spanish Inquisition.
She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
How long did it take you to write the novel?
It took me almost 10 years.
10 years.
10 years, yes, to write the book.
I mean, Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace in seven years.
So.
I know.
Well, what can I do?
It's 400 pages, David.
It's not a short book.
All right, well, man.
And actually, it was longer.
It was longer.
I had to cut it.
Yes.
Watch America's Book Club with Linda Chavez, Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific.
Only on C-SPAN.
Members of the United States Congress, thank you very much.
And to my fellow citizens, America is back.
Watch C-SPAN live Tuesday as President Donald Trump delivers the annual State of the Union Address before a joint session of Congress.
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On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
For his book, Five Bullets, Attorney Elliott Williams wrote 95,720 words.
On the back of the cover of the book, writer Garrett Graff sums up the story this way: quote, never has a book about the 1980s felt more like current events than Elliot Williams' journey back to one of America's most notorious shootings, when Bernie Goetz opened fire in a crowded New York City subway.
Unquote.
Then Garrett Graff continues his analysis.
Five Bullets is a haunting examination of our nation's complicated fascination with vigilantes and the politics of crime, close quote.
A lot of the people who were instrumental to this story are deceased.
However, the man at the center, Bernie Goetz, is still alive at 78 and still lives in New York City.
A new interview with author and attorney Elliot Williams about his book, Five Bullets, the Story of Bernie Goetz, New York's explosive 80s, and the subway vigilante trial that divided the nation.
Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb is available wherever you get your podcast and on the C-SPAN Now app.
Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back to Washington Journal.
Tom's Nuanced Take00:14:39
Joined now by the founder of Meet the Future and the podcast host of Hello Future, Kevin Cerilli.
Kevin, welcome to the program.
Thanks for having me, Mimi.
It's great to be here.
So before we talk about this case, tell us about Meet the Future.
What is it?
It's all about covering the future.
So we cover the future's front lines, everything from quantum computing, space explorations, national security, and how to protect the systems of the future.
Yeah, we dabble in UFOs and UAPs as well.
And it's all about just this optimistic vision for the future.
I think the news has been quite depressing recently.
So I think we need a little hope and optimism.
All right.
Well, let's talk about, we're not going to get any hope and optimism.
Let me just make that clear.
It's a weekend.
It's Saturday.
It's Washington Journal.
Yeah, exactly.
So there was the major story this week was out of California, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was on the stand testifying in front of a jury about Instagram and the potential harms to children.
Set the stage for us.
What's that case about?
This was groundbreaking because this is the first time that this has ever happened, particularly with Mark Zuckerberg.
Remember when he testified before Congress just a couple of years ago about some of the same topics, but now he has someone who is specifically targeting Instagram saying that they were negatively impacted when they were a child and that Instagram's tactics, its algorithms, were really crucial to the development of a host of mental disorders from depression, anxiety, all of these different mental health issues.
And it really could be to set the stage for future cases, depending on how this court specifically rules.
So it comes at a time, I think, when this town, Washington, D.C., quite frankly, has been way too slow to wake up to the real concrete concerns and the data about young people and as they relate to social media.
But around the world, there's been bans that have been enacted.
And I know we're going to get into all of that.
But the U.S. has really been lagging behind in terms of laws and regulations for young people online.
Well, let's go back to this particular case.
The plaintiff is identified as Kaylee GM.
She's 20 years old now.
But as far as what she's alleging, isn't it really hard to prove causation instead of just correlation?
Like, okay, there's more depression, there's more anxiety.
But can it be definitively said that this is caused by being on Instagram?
Well, that's going to have to be up to the jury.
But I think in terms of what has come out when you extract some of the information in the case, take for example filters and how filters are being deployed on young people and that leading to body dysmorphia, as it has been alleged, or plastic surgery like filters.
We're all familiar with them now when you scan through and you put them on.
And what image is that projecting, or rather, what values is that projecting to kids?
And so Zuckerberg has been saying, well, hey, wait a minute.
We actually were not targeting folks under the age kids under the age of 13 years old.
But, you know, the data shows that there were millions of young people who were having accounts.
So I hear your point, and it's a real, real question from the legal side of things.
And I'm not a lawyer, nor do I want to be.
But at the end of the day, what's coming out, I think, could really apply real pressure on these social media companies to enact change to better protect kids.
All right.
Well, let's, you did mention that Mark Zuckerberg was in front of the Senate judiciary.
Let's go ahead and play a clip.
So this goes back to January of 2024, and he had this exchange with Senator Josh Hawley.
Here are some information from a whistleblower who came before the Senate, testified under oath in public.
He worked for you, a senior executive.
Here's what he showed he found when he studied your products.
So, for example, this is girls between the ages of 13 and 15 years old.
37% of them reported that they had been exposed to nudity on the platform unwanted in the last seven days.
24% said that they had experienced unwanted sexual advances that had been propositioned in the last seven days.
17% said they had encountered self-harm content pushed at them in the last seven days.
Now, I know you're familiar with these stats because he sent you an email where he lined it all out.
I mean, we've got a copy of it right here.
My question is: who did you fire for this?
Who got fired because of that?
Senator, we study all this because it's important and we want to improve our services.
Well, you just told me a second ago, you studied it, that there was no linkage.
Who did you fire?
I said you mischaracterized it.
37% of teenage girls between 13 and 15 were exposed to unwanted nudity in a week on Instagram.
You knew about it.
Who did you fire?
Senator, this is why we're building all these rules.
Senator, I don't think that that's who did you fire?
I'm not going to answer that.
Because you didn't fire anybody, right?
You didn't take any significant action.
It's appropriate to talk about anything.
Do you know who's sitting behind you?
You've got families from across the nation whose children are either severely harmed or gone, and you don't think it's appropriate to talk about steps that you took?
What do you think?
I mean, it's brutal.
I mean, and this is the type of conversations that are happening at the court case that you're seeing.
And it's this repeated drumbeat of pressure that's being put on these big tech and social media platforms in particular.
But I have to be candid.
When I talk to folks around this issue, they also point the blame at Congress.
And what has Congress done for the last 15 years?
They've done really hardly anything.
America should be taking the lead on this, especially as it relates to regulations to protecting kids.
When you look back historically, Mimi, at some other issues that have protected kids, if you look at, for example, the Motion Picture Association and gradings for various movies that have come out, the public is very much in line with that.
If you look at TV standards as well, and even if you look at the cigarette industry and alcohol industry.
And my fear is that in five or 10 years, we're going to look back and think, what the heck?
And I want to use some other colorful language, but I won't.
Were we thinking in giving our kids and our country access to this, especially when countries like France, Australia, Denmark, have very clearly drawn the line and said you're not going to be able to access social media under the age of 16.
Now, there's some legislation that's been put forward that Governor Gavin Newsom has put forth.
I know we want to maybe talk about that today.
Yes, I do want to talk about legislation, but I want to invite our viewers to join us.
If you'd like to talk about the social media impact on kids, you can start calling in now.
Republicans are on 20248-8001.
Democrats are on 202-748-8000.
And Independents, 202748-8002.
Okay, so there is legislation called the Kids Online Safety Act.
I'm going to put those things up on the screen.
Platforms are required to enable the strongest privacy settings for kids by default.
New controls for parents and educators through a dedicated channel to report harmful behavior.
It creates a duty for platforms to prevent and mitigate specific dangers to minors.
That includes things like promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, etc.
It requires independent audits on how these platforms impact the well-being of kids and teens.
This did pass the Senate in 2024, but it stalled in the House.
Well, it stalled, and I think it's going to have to take pressure from both sides of the aisle in order to get this through.
And this is not, I want to be crystal clear, I'm a journalist, you're a journalist.
This is not about freedom of speech.
I mean, I hear people trying to make that argument.
To some extent, Zuckerberg has tried to make that argument, and I just, I can't square that circle.
This is about kids having access to harmful, harmful information that can really derail them for the rest of their lives in many cases.
But I also want to note something else, is that Washington has been way too slow.
And we talk about this at MTF.tv and Meet the Future quite frequently about how slow Washington has been to realize that these social media platforms in 2026 are very similar to television channels decades ago.
And so I remember when I was growing up, I don't want to date myself, but we had Disney Channel.
Remember, you would watch the Disney Channel and whatnot.
But now these kids are on TikTok, which, you know, there's a whole other conversation to be had about the Chinese Communist Party's influence on TikTok and what's going in on that and foreign governments being able to infiltrate, emphasis on infiltrate, the algorithms that are feeding these kids online.
But these are channels that they are consuming on the platform.
So Washington has been bizarrely behind the era and the moment to meet the future's challenges as it relates to social media.
I want to show you a statement by Alphabet's Jose Casteneta.
He's a spokesperson For Alphabet.
Now, Alphabet owner of Google is also a defendant in the same trial, and they're essentially making the argument that they are protecting kids.
So, this is what he told USA Today: providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work.
In collaboration with youth, mental health, and parenting experts, we built services and policies to provide young people with age-appropriate experiences and parents with robust controls.
So, look, I think, you know, and this is where I think this debate gets not complicated but more nuanced, which is we can't, we as a society, and when I interview folks about this on the show Hello Future, we as a society have to grapple with how do we teach our kids in our country to use technology for good.
I mean, we would have to put our head in the sand if we think that young people aren't going to have access to artificial intelligence or to be using the latest tools and platforms and technology.
But so often, it's the kids teaching the parents or the kids teaching the teachers on how to use technology, and it's got to reverse.
The older citizens need to be teaching the younger people on the best practices on how to do this.
And yes, we all have a part in that, and that includes corporate America.
And a lot of people will say, look, this isn't about the companies, this isn't about the Congress, this is about the parents.
Where are the parents and why are they letting their kids onto these platforms when they're so harmful?
You know, look, I mean, everyone has personal responsibility, but at the end of the day, Congress is the one who right now, I mean, they get to go in the skiffs, they get to see how the algorithms are made, they're getting access to briefings that the public is not.
They know what is coming after artificial intelligence, which is quantum computing.
And so, quite frankly, I mean, I really think that lawmakers and policymakers have failed to communicate to the public what is at stake, and they've done it for decades.
And I think that now they're finally getting pressure from their constituents, but also looking around the world at how other countries are navigating this.
All right, let's talk to callers and start with Tom, Smithfield, North Carolina, Independent.
Hi, Tom.
Hi, yes.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
I'm 68 years old, and when I go out on social media, it feeds off of my interests.
Now, when you're talking about minors having access to the same, pretty much the same content that I have access to, it's a Trojan horse.
If you put any specific question in or curiosity, it feeds off of that and it continuously snowballs and gives you more and more and more because as you respond to it, it perpetuates.
And it's a Trojan horse that social media is.
You have to, as an adult, you have to identify what is potentially bogus and artificial.
But then, you know, as you try to guide your teenage kids, they all have a phone and they use it and interface with each other and share things that they shouldn't be sharing.
But, you know, that's the way it is.
And so, you know, like I said, it's a Trojan horse that is.
Let's get a response for you.
I mean, Tom makes a great point.
When I was a kid, we'd pass notes back and forth in class between, you know, when the teacher wasn't looking or, you know, you'd have graffiti on the bathroom stall.
I mean, now we're living in a 24-7 cycle of social media interaction.
I mean, kids were just starting to get cell phones back when I was a teenager, but now they're getting them very, very young.
And there's real reasons for why parents want to give their kids cell phones, safety chief among them, and many and many of the reasons.
But to Tom's point, it is a Trojan horse.
And I think if Bike Dances TikTok can make kids dance, what else can a social media platform do?
And that's a really scary question, especially when a foreign actor is really one driving the algorithm.
There's been widespread reporting.
Wired had great reporting on this as to how the algorithm for TikTok was different in Beijing than it is in the United States.
So I hear Tom's point, which is a very real one, that the user experience is impacted by what you click.
You are what you click.
But I would also react that there's data that suggests that some of these platforms are actually guiding the user experience down rabbit holes that can be quite dangerous.
So regarding TikTok, you were in favor of that law to force divestiture and sale to an American company.
AI's Dangerous Rabbit Holes00:15:00
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
I mean, candidly, I would have gone one step further.
It should have been banned.
I mean, I grew up in an era where MTV was what young people, what teenagers and young people were consuming.
You know, TRL.
Remember Carson Daly on TRL?
I mean, can you imagine if the Communist Party of China occupied TRL and was pushing what pop culture should be?
Total Request Live.
Many hours before that.
No, I'm older than you.
No, no, no.
But the point is, like, for a government, a foreign government to be peddling pop culture and to get the ages younger and younger, I mean, it's, where was Congress?
Where was Congress?
Both sides of the aisle, by the way, deserve blame for that.
Let's talk to Adrienne in Louisiana on the line for Republicans.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Go ahead, Adrian.
I was thinking about my own childhood, I was about 15 years old, and I like to sit in front of the mirror and groom my eyebrows.
And at that time, I started feeling as if there were, let's say, an older man attempting to reach out to me.
And I noticed that on your show, there was a thing about younger women getting obscene photos of older men that are unwanted in sexual context.
And I was thinking, what if there were a way to put a blurred screen, no matter what phone it's on, to where when it's sent, the picture has no obscene gestures that the kid has to see once it's delivered to them?
Are there some technical ways that kids can be protected, like blurring of photos and things like that?
There shouldn't be a platform that a young person has access to where that is even a part of the conversation.
Let's talk to James in Panorama City, California, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Good morning.
My question is, or comment is that as far as I know, federal and state laws prevent anyone under the age of 18, minors, from being able to sign a legally binding contract.
Yet when you click yes to join these platforms, you're signing a legally binding contract.
You're allowing them to take your information and follow you and get whatever they can from you, which to me is illegal.
Those platforms shouldn't allow anyone under the age of 18 because it's not legal.
You can't, a 15-year-old can't open a bank account on their own.
They have to have an adult worm.
So why can they sign their lives away on social media or anti-social media as I call it?
Well, he makes a great point because in addition to that agreement for the young person and the user, they're also giving their data over.
And these companies then are able to have data on a person from, quite candidly, their childhood through elsewhere.
And that data becomes even more important, especially as the person goes through their life stages and they're trackable.
So consumer data, consumer behavior, it's a whole nother can of worms.
You know, if you think back, and when I interview experts on this about, again, where all of this is headed, it comes down, we're not reinventing the wheel here.
And so if you think of marketing standards that are applicable to young people in the toy industry, in the entertainment industry, the tween market, there are standards that exist.
But for some reason, we've just completely dropped the ball on this large part of our American culture, which is social media.
You mentioned before Australia, that was the first country to ban social media.
So nobody under the age of 16 is allowed to have an Instagram account or TikTok, Snapchat, anything like that.
France is also looking at it.
What impact has that had, or is it too early to tell?
It's too early to tell, but the kids are all right.
You know, there was all of these articles that, oh, they're going to be like, you know, going through withdrawal and that they're not able to like use their phones and that they've been addicted to this.
But the kids are all right.
I mean, nothing, there was no economic collapse.
I hear that argument frequently on the Hill that, oh, if there were restrictions, it would impact small business owners.
Are you kidding me?
I mean, I grew up with Zhanga.
Remember Zhanga, that blog platform?
These platforms have changed consistently, time after time after time.
After Zenga, it was MySpace.
Then it was, you know, the Facebook.
Then it was Twitter.
Now it's X.
Now there's Fred, Blue Sky.
I mean, there's so many different social media platforms.
It's hard to keep up.
But at the end of the day, maybe the kids put the phone down and go outside.
I think it would be okay.
And Australia is a really interesting one because of their proximity to China and everything that has been going on with China and Australia lack of relations, I would say.
And so for Australia in particular to be able to protect themselves on the cyber front, because that's really what this is.
This is a battle for mind share, a battle for ideas.
And so if you have tech platforms that don't share, I'm not talking about your political beliefs, I'm talking about your fundamental beliefs in terms of freedom, in terms of democracy, that's a real, real problem.
I go back to what was circulated on TikTok when former President Joe Biden met with Xi Jinping.
The Osama bin Laden letter suddenly rose the ranks through the algorithms the same time that Biden and Xi were meeting.
I mean, think about that.
The bin Laden letter, the letter to America that he wrote before 9-11.
Yeah.
Yeah, correct.
And there were very clear standards by legacy media institutions that understood how horrible that messaging is and how anti-American that messaging is for all Americans.
And to see a tech platform pushing that to young people is alarming.
Well, I want to show you a portion of Meta Whistleblower Francis Hogan.
This goes all the way back to 2021.
Because part of this case against Meta and Google or Alphabet is how much did they know about the impact to children?
Has Facebook ever offered features that it knew had a negative effect on children's and teens' mental health?
Facebook knows that its amplification algorithms, things like engagement-based ranking on Instagram, can lead children from very innocuous topics like healthy recipes.
I think all of us could eat a little more healthy.
All the way from just something innocent like healthy recipes to anorexia promoting content over a very short period of time.
And has Facebook ever found, again, in its research, that kids show sign of addiction on Instagram?
Facebook has studied a pattern that they call problematic use, what we might more commonly call addiction.
It has a very high bar for what it believes it is.
It says you self-identify that you don't have control over your usage and that it is materially harming your health, your schoolwork, or your physical health.
Five to six percent of 14-year-olds have the self-awareness to admit both those questions.
It is likely that far more than five to six percent of 14-year-olds are even addicted to Instagram.
Last Thursday, my colleagues and I asked Ms. Davis, who was representing Facebook, about how the decision would be made whether to pause permanently Instagram for kids.
And she said, quote, there's no one person who makes a decision like that.
We think about that collaboratively.
It's as though she couldn't mention Mark Zuckerberg's name.
Isn't he the one who will be making this decision from your experience in the company?
Mark holds a very unique role in the tech industry in that he holds over 55% of all the voting shares for Facebook.
There are no similarly powerful companies that are as unilaterally controlled.
And in the end, the buck stops with Mark.
There is no one currently holding Mark accountable but himself.
What do you think?
Well, a couple of things.
I mean, first and foremost, on this issue of the example that she gave about nutrition and the algorithm.
We're living in a time where everyone's talking about generative artificial intelligence, generative AI.
And so I go back to the analogy of when I was a kid and there were television channels for kids that were targeted for kids, Nickelodeon as well as Disney Channel, the two prominent ones.
That was pushing content, pushing shows that were, there were clear standards and it was a much more controlled mechanism.
There were human beings, executive producers, shareholder meetings about what type of products were being put into the marketplace for parents to decide if their children should consume those products.
With generative AI, if you look at the example that she gave, that system hasn't caught up yet because for a young person to be looking at healthy recipes and then suddenly be pushed into eating disorder territory is alarming.
And in the past, that would have been flagged because it would have just been much more controlled.
So the system hasn't evolved.
So where I think this court case in California can have a real significant impact is in, first and foremost, raising the public awareness and consciousness of the issue.
But secondly, hopefully creating a system to prevent this generative AI content from running amok.
Pat in New Hartford, Connecticut, Independent Outline, you're on the air.
Nice show, great show.
I love it.
Listen, I got a problem with the government getting involved in all this stuff.
Where are the parents?
The parents should be involved in this.
The parents should be calling the stops, making the stops, saying what's going on, and finding out what their kids are doing.
You know, people like blaming teachers for everything.
Teachers have them six hours a day, right?
They like blaming, but parents have them for 24 hours a day.
You're controlled as a parent.
You need to control your kids.
And that's a problem.
And you're just throwing everything at the government.
And you know what?
Get sick of the government getting involved in everything.
That's a problem.
That's a main problem getting involved.
So I don't know what your guest is saying, but I think the parents should be educated.
That's the problem.
All right, Pat.
I mean, I totally, I mean, parents have power for sure.
I think my, and Pat, I agree with much of what you said.
My point is that parents are also having to struggle a lot right now.
And so these powerful, powerful pieces of technology that we have now introduced and unleashed for children to use, there has to be some type of standards.
Because the fact of the matter is, if a kid has a cell phone, no matter where they are, and if their parents aren't present or an adult isn't present, they can go anywhere in the digital world.
Whereas they can't get in to go see a rated R movie.
So if they show up to the movie theater, there's a clear line of protection.
With the parents not there, there are clear lines of protections as to what they can access and what content they can consume.
They're on their own with a cell phone.
I'm not sure that that same line of protection exists.
One more call for you.
Gene in Dublin, Virginia, Independent Line.
Hi, Gene.
Good morning.
I like to bring up two issues here.
First one, I was doing a project and looking through campaign contributions.
And imagine my surprise when I found out that the largest campaign contributor in Washington was Alphabet, Google.
So I would really kind of question how many members on that panel and see how much money they're taking from the tech oligarchs, which kind of turns the hearings into a dog and pony show.
The second thing I'd like to mention is someone who has done some teaching.
We talk about parents, and I totally agree.
Parents need to be on top of this kind of thing.
But how many parents know that when their child gets into a classroom, the first thing the teacher has them do is log on to Google Classroom?
How many people parents know that their child is being educated by Google and the other techs?
So I really would like to hear your comment on these things because, as I said, as a techie, it's scary.
And of course, with AI, it's going to get lots worse.
Thank you.
I'll wait to hear my answer offline.
Well, thank you, Gene.
You know, I think, but see, so I hear that, and I understand that, but I also consider myself a realist and an optimist, which is I want American children to be able to compete in the global economy.
And I think everyone would agree with that and be very real.
One of the things that we talk about frequently at Meet the Future and on the Hello Future podcast is that we are living at the start of the fifth industrial revolution.
I mean, think about that.
Just the changes in our lifetime have been so significant in terms of how we interact with technology and one another.
And young people in particular are even more advanced in that regard.
So on the one hand, yes, we need to very much have a balance between protecting kids, protecting folks on the digital frontier, but also we need to celebrate innovation and we need to not have them put behind as it relates to navigating a world, a culture, a society, an economy with artificial intelligence.
So there has to be a medium.
And I think, you know, and this is a whole nother topic, but we go into it with Meet the Future, which is how are we designing a classroom for the future?
And Gene really hit that nail on the head.
How are we redesigning a classroom for the future so that we can continue to lead on these issues for the next several hundred years?
That's Kevin Cirilli, founder of Meet the Future.
He's the host of the podcast called Hello Future.
You can find him at the substack, Meet the Future.
Kevin, thanks for joining us today.
Thanks, Mimi.
Have a go.
I hope you stay out of the snow.
Hello Future Podcast00:03:05
After the break, more of your phone calls in Open Forum.
You can weigh in on the Supreme Court decision yesterday on tariffs or any other public policy issue that might be on your mind this morning.
You can start calling now.
It's 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, and 202-748-8002 for Independents.
Sunday on C-SPAN's Q&A, former Washington Post correspondent Will Haygood, author of The War Within a War, talks about the experience of black American soldiers in Vietnam and the struggle for racial equality both in the war zone and back home in the United States.
He also reflects on growing up in Columbus, Ohio during that time, where he experienced this stark divide firsthand as a child.
And I found myself as a 14-year-old kid running from National Guard tanks during the riots.
I don't think it was until I really got deep into the research of this book that I realized that these two epical moments in American history, Vietnam and the draft, and then riots, that I saw elements of both through my own eyes.
Author Will Haygood with his book, The War Within a War, Sunday night at 8 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.
Book TV, every Sunday on C-SPAN 2, features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books.
Coming up this weekend, at 5 p.m. Eastern, historian and author Justine Hill Edwards receives the prestigious Frederick Douglass Book Prize for her groundbreaking work on slavery and abolition in Savings in Trust, The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedmen's Bank.
At 7 p.m., catch a re-air of America's Book Club as acclaimed biographer Walter Isaacson joins host David Rubinstein to discuss the figures behind his celebrated biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Albert Einstein, as well as his latest book on tech billionaire Elon Musk.
And later, a deep dive into the world of conservative media.
At 8.30 p.m. Eastern, author Jason Zingerly talks about his book, Hated by All the Right People, Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind.
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Insightful stories, influential voices.
Watch Book TV every Sunday on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at booktv.org.
Rick's Update on Fox News00:04:31
Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back to the program.
It's Open Forum until the end of the show at 10 a.m. Eastern.
Of course, the big news is the Supreme Court ruling yesterday on IEPA tariffs.
And the president did react to that ruling yesterday.
Take a look at a portion.
In order to protect our country, a president can actually charge more tariffs than I was charging in the past period of a year under the various tariff authorities.
So we can use other of the statutes, other of the tariff authorities, which have also been confirmed and are fully allowed.
Therefore, effective immediately, all national security tariffs under Section 232 and existing Section 301 tariffs, they're existing, they're there, remain in place, fully in place, and in full force and effect.
Today I will sign an order to impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122, over and above our normal tariffs already being charged.
And we're also initiating several Section 301 and other investigations to protect our country from unfair trading practices of other countries and companies.
And it is open forum.
Just a quick update for you, and then we'll take calls from Fox News.
Potential U.S. military strikes on Iran could target specific individuals and pursue regime change.
It says two U.S. officials spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, reportedly said those are options that have emerged in the planning stage if ordered by President Trump.
They did not say which individuals could be targeted.
That's at Fox News.
If you'd like to read more about that, go to the calls now.
Rick in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Democrat, good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you so much for having me.
Big fan of the program.
Listen every morning.
There's so many issues to respond to.
The most recent conversation you were having regarding the social media impact on children was something that really struck a chord and how we're not really, you know, it seems like a little late to the game in researching how these fallout of having these massively powerful tech giants controlling the algorithm for what we experience on a daily basis for many,
many hours a day.
And I think Macron really got it right when he talked about algorithmic transparency and realizing that you can't hide behind the banner of free speech when you're allowing hate or extremist or misinformation to constantly be propagated.
The danger of this to minors, obviously, deserves an immense amount of investigation, but it seems apparent that the addiction and mental health harms that have come about, we're starting to just be able to see with our own eyes and how it affects us on a day-to-day basis.
Just being exposed to so much content, so many issues, so much of a media cycle, it's really a concerning issue.
I don't want to go too much onto other things, but I would encourage listeners to look at a video online by Nildegrass Tyson called How to Tell What's Real Online.
It seems that our ability to decipher logical fallacies and arguments is really just limiting our ability to consume all this content.
And it could be really helpful if you knew how to decipher a little better what you're looking at on a day-to-day basis and how to tell what the interests of those providing that information are.
Thank you so much for having me.
All right, Rick.
Let's talk to Frank next.
San Francisco, California, Independent Line.
Go ahead, Frank.
Hey, good morning.
Some time ago, a fellow called in and recommended that we should pass one of the original 12 amendments, the Bill of Rights, which would ensure there was a maximum number of people represented by each congressperson.
Million People Per Congressman00:03:29
And in the Constitution, I think it was started at 20, 30, and 40.
And there was provision to go up.
I think there would have gone up higher.
But we have like a million people represented by a politician.
Anyway, I mean, you responded that it would be a mess.
But actually, it would be great if every politician who wanted to run for office basically had to shake hands with every voter and talk to them personally.
And we would have a real democracy instead of the false democracy that the 2014 Princeton University study showed, where popular will has zero effect on legislation unless the popular will, it's not popular will, it's the will of the top 5%.
Anyway, I think the Supreme Court, it's a sham.
And what they're doing, they're not tying the hands of Trump, which is completely extra-constitutional, his usurpation of power, because they're going to find other ways to continue this tax on the poor of tariffs and political, what is it, insider trading, of being able to determine whether tariffs are going to be on or off and people getting rich based on pre-knowledge.
But it is going to tie the hands of the next Democratic president.
I think that's the point of what's going on.
Let's talk to Michael Smithfield, North Carolina, Republican.
Hi, Michael.
What's been going on, Mimi?
Wondering where you are.
How come you haven't called in a while?
Well, I mean, a woman can't take so much, maybe, I figure.
I mean, I call and call, and I said, I need to take a break.
I need to let some other people get in, you know.
I don't want to be a hog.
So what's on your mind today, Michael?
Well, I tell you what, the Constitution is, and, you know, it's been, you know, the president's been campaigning.
So I'm thinking what's going on.
The whole point is that I don't think Democrats should be upset if the Constitution has changed as far as who can run for president and someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger or who could possibly run for a third term.
Now, Barack Obama would be the ideal solution to many problems.
I'm a Republican.
I never had the pleasure to vote for him.
I was a little hard-headed, and I voted straight party when it came to president back then.
But that was a long time ago.
I've learned a lot.
I've matured more.
And I'd like to be able to vote for Barack Obama.
Well, third-time presidency, Tor.
Yes, ma'am, I would.
All right.
Faye, Ethiop, New York, Democrat, you're on the air.
Hi.
I am terrified by what this administration is doing.
I also feel it's a very criminal administration.
They are not releasing all the files.
It's a huge cover-up.
When I watched C-SPAN and I saw Bondi responding to the congresspeople, the way she spoke, if you take that image compared to Jack Smith, which I also watched that hearing, he showed so much respect and composure.
Voting Age Debate00:09:09
And this is a man that wasn't allowed to take Trump to trial.
Okay, the Supreme Court delayed everything.
Okay, I feel the Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell, and a lot of the Republicans have responsibility for the chaos and the corruption that we have now.
I firmly believe that Trump is in the files and it's all a cover-up.
And I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be mean about it, but I really feel that this criminality at such a high extent, he's making so much money off of so many things.
Okay, he's gone into Venezuela, okay, and saying that they're taking people's vote away.
And what is he trying to do now?
He's trying to take people's vote away in the U.S. He's stopping the media from telling the truth.
He's not wanting people to speak up.
How hypocritical is that?
And also, by what we did in Venezuela, which I'm not for that, what they did, we also have turned off the supply to Cuba.
And what has Cuba done to the U.S.?
Why are we making them suffer?
Okay?
I mean, we have caused so much pain around the world in one year.
This is such a corrupt administration, and it's heartless.
And in terms of the Epstein survivors, those women are heroes.
They're heroines.
Okay?
And I really, really am grateful for what they've done because they are going to expose a cabal of rich people, okay, but also a cabal of what goes on in this trafficking world.
All right, Faye, I got to move on.
This is CNN.com with this news.
House Speaker Johnson rejects requests for Jesse Jackson to lie in honor at the Capitol.
It says one of the sources told CNN that the decision to reject the request to lie in honor, which had been made on behalf of Jackson's family, was in keeping with precedent and was not political.
The source said that requests for conservative political activist Charlie Kirk and former Vice President Dick Cheney were also denied.
This is Ann calling us from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Independent Line.
Good morning, Mimi.
I just wanted to make a comment concerning a guest that was on about the SAVE Act and voter ID.
Based on what I've read about that, he was saying that you could use your driver's license or your state ID, but that's not true because not the state ID, not all state IDs and driver's license indicate your citizenship.
So, Ann, there's two different things going on here.
One is to have a photo ID in order to vote.
So, every time you go to vote, you show your ID.
When you register or when you change your registration, you have to prove citizenship.
And you're right.
A driver's license is not going to be enough, typically.
You will have to show like a birth certificate, naturalization papers, passport, that kind of thing.
You see, there's a distinction there.
Okay.
But I was trying to get in to ask him how does that impact people or how will it impact people who are already registered to vote.
If you're already registered and you don't have to change your registration, so for instance, you don't move districts or anything like that or change your name or change your address or things like that, then all you would need is to take your driver's license when you vote and show that this is your photo ID.
Okay, and then I was thinking those individuals who do not have the birth certificates or the real ID, that costs money.
But the affordability issues that everyone is already under, like your one guest who was talking about the tariffs and how he indicated that if you have you purchase something, you're paying your state and local tax on top of the tariff amount.
That's costing the people a lot.
And then if they have to go and get a birth certificate, that costs.
If you had to have to get a passport, that's like over $160 in most instances.
So how is that fair for having the right to vote?
You now have to pay to vote.
All right, Ann.
Howard Rashin, Wisconsin is a Democrat.
Good morning, Howard.
Hi.
I would like to know why no one hung the flags halfway low for Jesse Jackson, but they did it for Charlie Kirk.
I've seen it all in Wisconsin.
And he has been an advocate person of equal rights since modern time.
And I'm upset with that.
That's very improfessional and sort of racist.
Damien, Laurel, Maryland, Republican line, you're on the air.
Hello.
I just want to say, I think we need to raise the voting age to 21 because after watching the high school walkouts to protest ICE, it's you can literally see, especially in New York, these kids don't have a brain.
They can't think.
And they need to really bump up the voting age because we don't need these homemakers voting.
So Damien.
Oh, Damien, you still there?
Yeah.
Oh, I was just going to ask you, would you also raise the age of joining the military to 21?
Because right now an 18-year-old can join the military.
So the argument is if they can't vote, then they should not be sent to war.
What do you think of that argument?
No, anybody who is in the military and who's been accepted into the military 18, they're probably good enough to vote.
I think they have a good, you know what I mean?
They got a good feel of the earth, what's really happening.
But the high school kids, no way.
No.
You know, 8% of Baltimore, Maryland high school students are proficient in math?
Only 8%.
But Damien, most, I mean, once you turn 18, you're either a senior or you've graduated.
Right.
So I think it doesn't matter.
I think the voting, to protect the voting from dumb people, we need to bump up the age to 21.
And that's just my opinion.
Would you, would you put an upper limit?
What do you mean?
mean no voting like in other words if you're older than you know 85 or if you get no it's wrong As long as your mind is good, but if you're, you know, you have dementia, you know, probably you won't vote, you know.
But that's just my opinion.
I know it's not popular, but it is what it is.
All right.
Frank, Independent Line, Staten Island, New York.
Hi, Frank.
How are you doing?
Good morning.
Well, I wanted to talk about the tariffs.
I'm glad I saw the interview with the man earlier this morning.
And I've been against these tariffs for so long, since the very beginning, because I'm pro-capitalist.
I'm really, I didn't really hear the word capitalism today much at all.
But if you are a capitalist and this administration wants to say that they are pro-capitalist, they should not be in favor of the tariffs.
The tariffs are a prime example of government intervention in the economy.
And if you go through the definition of what capitalism is, no capitalist wants to deal with the government with anything.
And a tariff is a tax on the American people.
The importer pays it.
So if the importer wants to get like French wine, right, and some Americans in New York, they want to buy the French wine.
They got to pay more because there's a tariff on it.
So you're being punished for what?
For some whim that the president wants to put through?
It's not protectionism.
And look at the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in the 1930s.
That really worsened the Great Depression.
And Herbert Hoover did this.
Why Tariffs Hurt America00:08:15
And this is one of the worst things ever.
Tariffs do not work at all.
They don't help the American people.
They don't help capitalism at all.
And some congressional news for you from NBC News.
This headline is Representative Tony Gonzalez faces ethics investigation over alleged affair ahead of a tough primary.
The congressman is sparring online with the husband of a former staffer who died by suicide, and his opponent is running ads referencing the alleged affair.
Cindy in Lexington, Kentucky, Democrat, you're on.
Yes, Mimi.
Good morning.
Thank you for C-SPAN, and thank you for taking my call.
My call today is about, I'm actually part of the 35% minority.
I am a Florida native.
Those statistics are true.
You can look at it.
35% Florida native, 65% the rest of the world.
So we've been invaded, but that's not the reason why I'm calling.
The reason why I'm calling is because Florida just signed into law that, or they just approved that the West Palm Beach International Airport is going, they're going to spend $5.5 million to change that name to Donald J. Trump Airport.
And they're spending $5.5 million on that when their state animal, the Florida Panther, is endangered.
The Republicans are slaughtering Florida, and they're spending $5.5 million on changing the name of that airport instead of spending that money on fixing their slaughtered environmental mess they created in Florida.
Florida is no longer paradise.
Republicans made it into a greedy tar, cement, and human being mess.
And I wish you Florida natives would get on there and start talking the truth of what the Republicans have done to Florida.
Boycott Florida.
Billionaires hoard in there to avoid paying taxes.
Mark Zuckerberg just moved in there.
Jeff Bezos moved there.
All these billionaires moving in there.
And you look it up, how many millions of dollars they avoid paying in taxes.
They ripped the Americans off.
Boycott Florida.
Thank you, and have a nice day, Mimi.
And Cindy, regarding the airport, Politico is reporting, Florida legislature approves renaming Palm Beach Airport after Trump.
The proposal will now arrive on Governor Ron DeSantis' desk as the legislature works out how much it wants to spend on a massive rebranding at the airport, mere minutes away from Mar-a-Lago.
And it says the proposal on governor's desk as the legislature works out how much it wants to spend, possibly upward of $5.5 million on that rebranding of the Palm Beach airport.
This is Jeff in King, North Carolina.
Republican, good morning.
Well, hello.
First of all, I'd like to say I'm so glad to have a man back in the White House instead of a mouse like Jimmy Carter, Obama, and Biden.
As far as the tariffs, the international emergency tariffs, the only thing they've done away with, all the other tariffs are still in place because Donald Trump is always three steps ahead of the Democrat Party and the left-wing lunatic media.
Okay?
I think the Democrat Party needs to be done away with, demolished, and destroyed.
We need two parties in this country, the Republican Party and the MAGA Party.
And Jeff, how would you, what's your distinction between the Republican Party and the MAGA Party?
What's the difference?
You got some rhinos in the Republican Party, but we're the MAGA party.
And these tariffs have just brought in $18 trillion worth of business investment into this country.
I don't care about Donald Trump's personality or his behavior.
I care about a man that keeps this country safe, secure, and strong, and won't let nobody mess with us.
I'm so tired of hearing these white liberal women call in every day these stupid black Democrats.
All right.
And for your schedule later, coming up in about 20 minutes, it's Ceasefire.
Today, host Greta Bronner is joined by Republican North Dakota Governor Kelly Armstrong and Democratic Delaware Governor Matt Meyer during the National Governors Association winter meeting for a bipartisan dialogue on top issues facing states and the country, including affordability, health care, and immigration enforcement.
That starts at 10 a.m. right after this program.
And then after that, we continue our coverage of the National Governors Association's 2026 meeting with discussions about supporting military families, affordability, and immigration reform.
That is live at 11 a.m. on C-SPAN.
Don't forget, on Tuesday, we've got our State of the Union address coverage.
We start at 7 p.m. with a preview, and then the president's speech will be at 9 p.m. Eastern Time.
That is going to be live on C-SPAN.
All those you can follow on our website, c-span.org, or on our app, C-SPANNow.
Here's Daryl in Dayton, Ohio, Independent Line.
Good morning, Daryl.
You're on Open Forum.
Yeah, how you doing, baby?
Good.
Just sitting here listening to everything like a buffet of stuff, you know, trying to figure out what I want to talk about.
But do you know 10 European nations?
This is from the Bible.
10 European nations is going to take over the world.
Now, 12 years ago, I was saying, where's this coming from?
Trump gets in there, NATO, NATO, and he goes over there.
He balls NATO out about not paying their money.
Okay?
Then, okay, Biden gets in there.
Trump gets back in there.
And through NATO, through Trump and the war, Ukraine war in Russia, he's made European nations come together.
Just like I just heard a week ago that 10 European nations is going to go on with China for the wind, the windmill thing, you know?
But seriously, this is in the Bible that 10 European nations is going to tickle the world and just, you know.
Where in the Bible is that, Daryl?
It's in Revelation.
You can really meet me.
You can really, it's in the Revelation.
See, that's one of the things part of the old banner of like Rome and stuff.
You know, just check it out with any historian about the Bible, they'll tell you.
And it's very interesting because 12 years ago, I would have been like, like, when Trump first got in there, NATO, I didn't know about that, but he went over there and borrowed out, borrowed them out for not paying any money for the defense center.
Okay.
Also, I didn't know that his two predecessors, Obama and Bush, did the same thing, but they didn't raise hell about it.
But if you check into what I'm saying, BB, you'll see that it's very, the Bible is a bad book.
You take what I'm saying about that.
Got it, Darrell.
Millions Favoring Favors?00:05:11
Bruce, Richmond, Texas, line for Democrats.
You're on the air.
Bruce, are you there?
Yeah.
Hi, Bruce.
Yes.
How are you?
Good morning.
I just want to say that the nation needs to really vet what Trump is doing.
He had six businesses that failed, and now he's failing the country.
This is important to the country and the people of this nation.
That, you know, people died way before Trump ever got into office to get their freedom and voting rights and everything like that.
And I'm just so disgusted that this country is going the opposite way.
He had six businesses that failed, and now he's bankrupting the country.
And this is very important to the country.
People need to wake up in this country and realize what's going on because he's taking us back.
He wants to put black people back in change or people of color back in change.
And that's what's going on.
It's really ridiculous that he's putting children, children in detention centers because they're Latinos.
The only ones that are getting picked up are Latino people and people of color.
I haven't seen one white person get picked up and taken out of this country because they're immigrants.
So this is what I just hope people understand this.
And when it's time to vote, vote your conscience and what this country is really about.
This is a unique country, the most unique country in the world.
And this man is destroying it.
Bruce Allen in Sterling, Colorado, Republican line.
Hi, Alan.
Hi.
Thank you for taking a call.
There's quite a wide variety of things going on here that people are bringing up.
First of all, California is driving the people out of California because of idiotic democratic governmentship in California.
Otherwise, these people would still be in California, and they would still, some of them might be rich, and they would still be doing business there.
But no, our government in California, which happens to be mostly Democratic, is driving them people out of the state.
That's like people that don't want to live in Colorado.
They go north to Minnesota because some of the states, and I'm not sure exactly, Minnesota, I don't know if it has state taxes or not.
Well, they're going to states that are not taxed exorbitantly.
And so there's that issue.
Now, the previous administration gave away millions and millions of dollars to countries to buy their favors.
And that was Biden's regime.
But by their favors, Alan?
What do you mean?
Well, we gave them millions and millions of dollars.
And they turned around and voted against the United States in the UN, in the UN.
Every time they would vote against the United States, even after accepting millions and millions of dollars, trying to buy their, or Biden's trying to appease them to be nice people.
Well, now there are such things as religions that are not going to be nice people.
In their Koran, which is I consider their Bible, they call we need to kill the infidels.
Now, you're not going to be able to deal with religious people, even though they call themselves religious, with that kind of statement in their Bibles, in their Korans.
That is why we are over at Iran trying to get rid of people that build bombs and want to point them towards the United States and blow up my city, blow up your city, blow up everybody's other city because they're infidels.
So, Alan, are you in support of a military strike on Iran?
Only if they don't come to some kind of base reality that we cannot trust them with nuclear weapons.
We cannot trust them.
They will blow us up.
They will send missiles.
President As Far As I'm Concerned00:03:30
And that's why we have a president that is out front of all those situations.
He is out front leading the United States to be safe again, to build up the military.
And it's a logical situation.
And people just do not have the ideology to understand that.
He is a leader.
He's not somebody that hides away in his basement.
Got it, Alan.
Let's talk on the independent line to Ronald in West Wego, Louisiana.
Good morning.
Good morning.
How you doing?
Good.
I want to talk about Jesse Jackson.
First of all, I'm heartbroken over his debt, but he lived a long life.
Many civil rights leaders and liberation leaders haven't lived as long as he did.
And I want to give my sympathy to his immediate family.
He was a great man.
I remember in the 80s when he used to bring hostages home from all over the world.
I also remember his two presidential bids, which he won Louisiana twice.
I was very proud of that.
I see this story about Michael Johnson not wanting to lie in state.
His family, his wife, and his kids are doing very well organizing his services.
I don't think they ever wanted him to lie in state.
Even though it would have been a great thing for Mr. Jackson to lie in state, Jesse Jackson survived eight presidents.
Jesse Jackson was active, was politically active during eight presidents.
And in my head, he was the president as far as I'm concerned.
I want to also give my sympathy to the people of Chicago because I know they love Jesse Jackson very much.
And just want to say thank you, C-SPAN, for allowing me to get on here and speak.
Thank you.
And again, sympathy to the Jackson family.
Steve in Wilmington, Illinois, Democrat, and you're on the air.
After being told by the Supreme Court that his tariffs were illegal, Trump responded that he can do whatever he wants.
Does this sound like someone who understands the Constitution and the separation of powers, or does he sound like a rapist?
Wilmington.
Well, thank you.
Scott in New York, Independent Line, you're on the air.
Hey, good morning, America.
30 days is a long time to wait to get on this show when you got to listen to people call and say the same thing every day.
We know the people that are calling every day.
Two points.
Number one, let's start with Donald Trump and Epstein.
All you need to do is go back to before Donald Trump was elected in the first presidential election, where he was sitting on the bus and he told everybody what he thought about women, and nobody cared.
He could come out and tell most of these MAGA people that he did rape 13-year-old women, and they would not care.
He is above God in their eyes, number one.
Number two, after killing over 200 people in the water and dumping tons of cocaine in the water and doing damage to our water life out there, we have done nothing to stop any of the fentanyl.
I am a year and a half clean off of fentanyl.
I could this day not doing fentanyl, could go out and find fentany if I wanted it.
Eliminate Taxes: A New Way00:03:33
No problem.
They're not stopping the drugs.
I do have a drug plan that would solve the whole everything, but I don't know if we would be able to do it.
Thank you.
And do you got any questions for me?
No, I don't, Scott.
But I do have the BBC with this headline.
The government, so that's the UK government, considers removing Andrew from royal line of succession.
And just so you know, Andrew, the king's brother, remains eighth in line to the throne despite being stripped of his titles, including prince last October amid pressure over his ties to pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
John is next on the Republican line in Minnesota.
Hi, John.
Hi there.
I was just your previous guest, you guys were talking about maybe doing something with internet companies or whatever.
Yep, social media companies.
Social media, yeah.
And I was just wondering, you know, I don't, you're going after them, but you're not going after the like in Virginia, the governor, they're putting all that LGBTQ stuff into the school system.
And you're not going to be able to, your kids aren't going to, you aren't going to be able to get your kids out of that.
They're going to be able to take all those courses when they promote all of the whatever, the gays and all that stuff, and I don't think it's right.
Okay, Ben is next in Paris, Kentucky.
Line for Democrats.
Good morning, good morning, how are you good?
I just wanted to bring up the topic poverty.
I think if we could end poverty, it could make the country a more, better place.
And here's some ways to do it, price caps across the whole economy, all products, all services.
Eliminate taxes, give the people money and then educate them on the purpose of work.
Eliminate taxes, Ben.
How would you raise revenue for the, for all those services?
How would you raise revenue?
Right, I mean, how would?
What it is?
It's a new way to think about money, a new way to think about the economy.
I believe the government, the money, is essentially just a number.
So you could essentially, if you put price caps, made stricter price gouging laws, if you put crice caps across the board, making it where prices could, could not rise, and educate the people on the importance of work, so we have the things in society we need, then the government could essentially give the people as much money as they wanted.
You know, I think that's how you take care of the American people.
It's a new way to think about things, but with those ideas, taxes could be eliminated.
So that's one of the all right Ben, let's talk to Mike next in Tampa Florida Independent.
You're on the air, Mike.
Oh, how do you do?
Biden's Military Base Spending Concerns00:05:19
I listen to what everybody says and I respect what they say.
Being born in Washington DC and growing up there and then moving up to New York City to go to school, having a lot of friends and show business around that show business crowd, show business what I would say is this, a lot of people that I hear out here they want the world to be a certain way, they'd like it to be a certain way, but the reality is it's all about the money and it's all about hard power,
and that's hard to live with.
I mean, it's it, it's unfortunate, but that's just the way it is.
You know, hard power and money.
When these decisions come down, you have to be able to live with it and say, well, you know that's, that's just the way it is in this world, like in Israel or or here or any country, and that's really all I have to say about it.
But I listen to all these people and I, you know, I hear what they're saying, I hear you, but I also go back to the same thing.
It's all about the money and what drives it throughout the world, and the, the decision, hard power, when it comes down, and either you can live with it or you can't, and it's, it's unfortunate, it's that way.
I use that Unfortunate, you know.
But that's pretty much all I have to say about it.
All right, let's go to the Republican line in Atlanta.
Barbara, good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
And there's been so many subjects that have been talked about since I, you know, first got on the line.
What I was wanting to address was just two things by different callers that were never, you know, sometimes they come in with all these dollars and stuff, but nothing's ever said on the flip side of the coin.
For instance, in Florida, she was complaining about the cost of renaming that base after Donald Trump.
But Biden spent between, yeah, well, airport, I'm sorry.
Biden spent between $39 and $62 million renaming military bases, and the military bases estimate it's higher than that.
And now they're going to go back and change them back.
So this is just warfare between our two between the Dems and the Republicans that it is ridiculous, but both of them are at fault.
And then to the gentleman that was fussing about them not sending any whites over or getting them out of our country, I don't know if that's true, but I will tell you, they're not taking a legal immigrant in this country and sending them back unless they have committed a crime.
They are sending people that are here illegally that are not vetted.
We know nothing about them.
They've separated families.
And my daughter works at a local hospital, and I'm going to tell you the money that is being spent on illegals coming in with no insurance, no immunizations, no nothing.
They come in, some of them have a baby.
They're in the NICU for six months, billions of dollars.
And who's going to pay that?
Because they don't have any insurance.
They don't have anything.
And so the underlying cost of illegals being in our country is greater than even the media ever tells.
And I really hate that.
I wish we could all get the full picture, but not everybody knows somebody that works at a hospital or a doctor's office.
And, you know, maybe nobody is reading up on any of the Democrat wasteful spending because they're Republican and vice versa.
And I really hate that.
I wish we could pull together.
We all want the same thing.
We want our family to be healthy and safe, and we'd like to make a living.
You've got to work to make a living.
And the guy that was quoting scripture, Jesus was the first one to say, if you don't work, you don't get anything.
So he maybe needs to look that up too.
Celeste, Democrat in Pennsylvania, good morning to you.
Good morning.
Thank you.
I was just watching, you know, I watch your state all the time, but I was watching it and I just saw in the news that President Trump has promised East Palestine, the place where we had that terrible, terrible train wreck with chemicals and everything, the chemical spill here there in Ohio.
Yeah, Palestine, Ohio.
Yes.
Yes, yes.
I'm like, I don't know, 15 miles from it.
But anyhow, 10 million.
Okay.
Well, that's what he says.
Now, when they talk to the people there, and certain people, they're like, the people, are we going to get that money?
Or where is this $10 million going to go?
You know, who will get it?
The people who suffered in the town or will go to the swamp?
Or, you know, like, where's the tariff money?
All that money.
Who knows?
They may, we may not, I'll die before I find out.
I'm too old, you know.
But is this seem normal?
That's all I had to say.
I just heard lady before me and sword to God bless her.
Trump's $10 Million Promise00:01:17
You know, we're all in this together and how we can be on such opposite ends and seeing the same thing, different channels.
I watch them all, and I'm telling you, it's crazy.
But thank you for listening to me.
All right, Celeste.
And regarding that, this is Spectrum News.
Trump announces $10 million for economic recovery in East Palestine.
That is a Thursday evening social media post where he mentioned that for economic recovery in East Palestine, Ohio after that train wreck.
Well, that does it for us today.
Thanks for watching, everybody.
We will see you again tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern.
Now it's time for ceasefire.
here it is.
Welcome to Ceasefire, where we look to bridge the divide in American politics.
I'm Greta Broner, in for Dasha Burns.
Joining me now on either side of the desk are two guests who have agreed to keep the conversation civil even when they disagree.