Clay Siegel and Dana Stroll analyze the escalating Iran conflict, noting 20 million barrels of daily oil disruption and hardline leadership shifts despite 400kg of remaining enriched uranium. Simultaneously, the Save America Act debate intensifies as Senate Majority Leader John Thune pushes for photo ID requirements and citizenship proof, sparking clashes between Trump's fraud claims and Schumer's warnings of disenfranchisement. While global energy prices face historic volatility and strategic petroleum reserves dwindle, domestic political tensions over election security and voter roll access dominate the discourse. [Automatically generated summary]
Coming up on Washington Journal, Dana Stroll, research director for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on the significance and challenges of the U.S. and Israel's military alliance against Iran.
Then, Clay Siegel with the Center for Strategic and International Studies discusses how the Iran conflict is affecting energy markets and gas prices in the U.S.
And Chicago Tribune reporter Robert McCoppin will preview Primary Day in Illinois.
Washington Journal starts now.
Good morning.
It's Tuesday, March 17th.
The Senate is poised to begin work this week on the Save America Act, the Republican-backed elections bill that would add new federal requirements for registering to vote and casting a ballot.
Majority Leader John Thune is expected to bring the bill to the floor for a procedural vote and extended debate today, even though it does not have the 60 votes needed to advance.
Supporters of the legislation say it strengthens election security.
Critics say it restricts access and overrides state authority.
For the first half hour of the program, we're asking, what changes would you like to see in how Americans vote?
Here's how you can share your thoughts.
Democrats, call us on 202-748-8000.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
You can send a text to 202-748-8003, include your first name in your city-state.
And you can reach us on social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and X at C-SPANWJ.
Welcome to today's Washington Journal.
Let's start with what's in the Save America Act.
We'll put that on the screen.
It requires individuals to present an eligible photo ID before voting.
That would be for all voters.
It requires states to obtain proof of citizenship in person.
When registering an individual to vote, that would also include if you're changing your registration, and that would be in person.
And it requires states to remove non-citizens from existing voter roles.
That's the current Save America Act.
Well, here is Senate Majority Leader Jon Thune.
He was speaking to reporters last week about his strategy on this piece of legislation.
Do you run a risk of being on the wrong side of President Trump and your resistance to do this talking filibuster tying the Senate in knots for weeks?
We don't have the votes either to proceed, get on a talking filibuster, nor to sustain one if we got on it.
But that's just a that is just a function of math.
And there isn't anything I can do about that.
I mean, I understand the president's got a passion to see this issue addressed, as we all do.
Does he understand that, though?
Well, we've conveyed that to him, but we'll continue to make that argument because I think it's important that everybody understand that this really is about the votes.
It's about the math.
And for better or worse, I'm the one who has to be the clear-eyed realist about what we can achieve here.
And so we'll continue to convey that.
And I think that we're going to have the fight on the floor.
We're going to vote on this.
We're going to put it up.
And we'll give the Democrats the opportunity to cast their vote on whether or not they think non-citizens ought to vote in American elections.
And so that debate will happen.
But like I said, I can guarantee the debate.
I can guarantee a vote.
I just can't guarantee an outcome.
President Trump told me yesterday that it would take Democratic votes to pass the Save America Act.
Do you think the MAGA base has an unrealistic expectation of passing that legislation without Democrats?
I think there are a lot of optimistic views about what Democrats may or may not do.
We all know, because we deal with them every day, that the Democrats are not all of a sudden going to decide that this is something they want to be for.
That was Senator Thun.
This is a Marist poll that was taken a few days ago about election security.
And it says that many Americans express confidence in their local and state governments to conduct fair and accurate elections in November's midterm elections.
However, the proportion has dropped since 2024.
More than six in 10 Americans think ballots will be counted accurately.
And when it comes to the biggest threat to safe and secure elections, about one in three mention voter fraud.
Here are the numbers that came out.
If you are very confident or confident, that was 66%.
Not very confident or not confident at all came out to 34%.
Let's go to President Trump now, who was in the Oval Office, and he was asked, or he was talking about the lack of support from Democrats and some Republicans for the Save America Act.
The problem is we have a couple of Republicans.
They shouldn't be allowed.
They're horrible people and they're willing to vote against anything.
And we have all the Democrats who vote against it.
So I think it hurts the Democrats to vote against it because I'm going to instruct all the Republicans to say that so-and-so that they're running against voted against the saving of our children from transgender mutilation, right?
That's pretty unpopular.
They want men and women sports.
That's pretty unpopular.
They want voter ID, but the Democrats don't.
Everybody wants voter ID.
Everybody wants proof of citizenship.
And most people don't want mail-in voting because they know it's a fraud.
Touches too many hands.
I mean, the postman gets it.
This one gets it.
That one.
So these are all issues that are in the 90s to 100.
I would say some are virtually 100%.
And the interesting thing is they're that way, not only with the Republicans.
I'm not talking about leadership.
I'm talking about that way also, most importantly with the people.
The people of our country want voter ID.
The people of our country want proof of citizenship.
And that includes 88%, 89% of Democrats.
And I think the Republicans, Eric Schmidt, Rick Scott, Tim Scott, I speak to so many of them.
They all want it.
I hope John Thune can get it across the line.
He's trying.
I mean, he told me this morning, I spoke to him, he's trying.
I think it'll be a very, very bad thing for our country if they don't.
We're just asking for basic things.
That was yesterday in the Oval Office.
And we'll go to calls now and start with Jay Lynchburg, Virginia, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Hey, good morning.
And yes, I am a true independent.
So when I speak on this, I think it is very common sense that we should have voter ID laws.
And every aspect of our lives is governed by voter ID.
I just really don't understand why so many people are opposed to the idea, as well as I think the messaging on why they're opposed to it.
So I'm a black man.
There's nothing preventing me from going and having a driver's license.
Nothing's preventing me from having an ID or anything that will require me to go vote if voter ID was legislation.
So when people say, oh, well, black and minority people would be impacted by this, one, it's a racial dog whistle of patriarchy to make them think that they're better than everyone.
But more importantly, I don't understand why people are opposed to the idea of voter ID, considering the amount of fraud that happened in 2016, as well as 2020 and 2024, because we understand that it is an issue.
So Michael.
Yeah, Jay, what do you think about voting by mail?
Because that is something that the president has wanted to restrict or completely do away with.
What do you think of that?
So I, again, I agree with that aspect too, because I just saw in my area a mailman threw three bags of trash and three bags of mail and a drag dumpster.
It's a flawed system.
If we really wanted to fix our elections, our election integrity, we would have elections for a week in that first week of November, make it a federal designation to allow people to go vote, and people have one whole week to vote.
If you can't vote in a week, you weren't supposed to be voting in that election anyway.
And no, people who are not U.S. citizens should definitely not be voting in elections.
I think we all can universally order universally.
That is already a felony to register if you're not a citizen.
That is currently on the books.
Jason, Burke, Virginia, Independent Line, good morning.
Good morning.
I will have to ditto Jay, who just spoke of his feelings towards this.
I think there should be no question at all that people need to show ID to be able to vote in the United States of America.
That is exactly why we've had the problems we've got and we've got the corruption going on in these states that have provided license to people that shouldn't be having driver's license.
And that's why that second ID or proof of citizenship is required.
We need to correct this.
We need to vote this in, and it needs to be done before November.
Otherwise, the Democrat Party is going to do anything they possibly can to take power and continue to destroy America.
Jason, let me ask you this.
This is in the Hill.
It says that the GOP and Trump clash over absentee voting in the Save America Act.
It says that President Trump's push to eliminate voting by mail without excuses, such as illness or military duty, or a component of the Save America Act, has put him on a collision course with Republicans from states where absentee voting is widespread and popular.
It says that the Save America Act's core reform would be to require people to show, we know that, birth certificate, passport when registering.
That generally has strong support.
But language to dramatically restrict voting by mail is becoming a sticking point with some Republicans.
What do you think of that, Jason?
Mimi.
Yeah.
Mimi, that is because what took place in 2016.
And just like what's taking place out in California right now, where they showed yesterday or the day before, people getting, standing in line, getting paid to vote for somebody that they don't even know who they're voting for or for what.
Until we get every American citizen to have proof of ID, update our voter logs by showing citizenship.
Oh, no, that's not what I was talking about, Jason.
No, I was talking about voting by mail.
We can't have absentee voting until we know exactly who's a citizen and who's legally able to vote.
Once we know who those people are, then there should be a way that they can do absentee voting.
And I think that's a really difficult question to answer because there's so much fraud in the paper trail.
Unless we have the voter cards inked and we know exactly who we're sending them to by people that are citizens of the United States, that's the only way that absentee voting can be done.
All right.
Charles is next.
Toledo, Ohio, Republican.
Hi, Charles.
Good morning.
Morning.
I think the Democrats just want to cheat in the election.
Okay.
Did you want to add anything to that?
Hung up.
Glenn, Cottondale, Alabama, Democrat, you're on the air.
Yes, ma'am.
What happened to the motor voter bill that Bill Clinton passed in 1993?
If you read it, it takes care of everything that Trump wants to do right now.
Okay, so tell us about it.
Okay, it covers if you go get your driver license, you're automatically arrested to vote.
Okay, and you like that because you can get a driver's license without being an American citizen, though.
I understand that, too, but the bill, if you read the bill, it covers everything that American Act that he's trying to push through right now is already law.
Okay, this is, I think I see it.
It was 1993, right, Glenn?
Right.
Okay, so it's called the National Voter Registration Act of 93.
It says that it sets forth certain voter requirements.
Okay, well, let's take a look at it and see.
Yeah, it's motor vehicle agencies.
We'll take a look.
There's a lot of text here.
But meanwhile, let us take a look at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
He gave his assessment on what would happen to the voting process if the Save America Act was passed.
Republicans won't tell Americans that their bill would wipe out the most common ways Americans register to vote.
No more registering by mail.
No more voter registration drives at churches or on college campuses.
No more registration when you get a driver's license.
Under the SAVE Act, Americans would be forced to register in person, even though only 6% of Americans registered in person to vote in 2022.
And Republicans want to make this the only option.
And they won't tell Americans that a driver's license or state-issued ID would no longer be enough to register.
Indeed, many Americans would need additional paperwork like a passport or a birth certificate.
Fewer than half of Americans even have a passport.
Millions of Americans do not have easy access to a birth certificate.
If you change your name after marriage, you could run into problems too.
And now Donald Trump says he doesn't even want vote by mail.
Tell that to seniors.
Tell that to disabled Americans.
Tell that to Americans who live in rural communities far from an election office.
Put simply, the SAVE Act is designed to make it harder to vote and easier to steal an election.
Disenfranchising Voters00:14:49
Okay, so here's the response to Glenn about the motor voter.
This is so what it says is that each state must include a voter registration form as part of an application for a state driver's license.
However, it just says that, so it says a voter registration application must state each voter eligibility requirement, including citizenship, and that it contains an attestation that the applicant meets each requirement and state that the penalties provided by law for submission of a false voter registration application require the signature under penalty of perjury.
So here's the thing.
This is attestation.
It does not prove citizenship.
So it does not force you to produce a birth certificate or a passport in person to show this.
This just requires that you attest that you are an American citizen under penalty of perjury.
And of course, that is a felony if you do register and you're not an American citizen.
Hope that answers that.
Tom, Long Island, Independent Line, you're on the air.
Good morning, C-SPAN.
I don't know what they're talking about with this information and giving everybody the information to get your license and your birth certificate.
I had to go get my birth certificate the other day.
It cost me $10 and about 15 minutes.
It was the easiest thing to do.
I had more trouble in motor vehicle trying to get my license straightened out than I did getting my other paperwork.
It's such a lie that the Democrats are acting like this and trying to stop this bill.
I want the Save America Act passed.
I want our elections to be secure.
I want people to be treated equally.
If you're an American citizen, you should be allowed to vote.
And if you're not an American citizen, you should not be allowed to vote.
Okay, so here's another perspective.
This is the Brennan Center for Justice.
It says that new Save Act bills would still block millions of Americans from voting.
It says that when this article, the Save America Act, included a provision that would also require voters to show documents such as passports every time they vote.
So that is not the case right now.
It's just ID.
So it says, Republican lawmakers, it would say, show your papers requirement for voter registration.
The first effort to pass SAVE Act last year failed in the face of nationwide public opposition.
These new bills are yet another effort, it says, to undermine Americans' freedom to vote and make this unpopular policy the law of the land.
We're getting your input on that, what you think of the Save America Act, if you think that it would disenfranchise voters or if you think it would make our elections more secure.
Robert, Republican in Park Falls, Wisconsin, what do you think?
I'm all for voter ID.
And I also believe that there should be a one day in-person voting.
You gotta all the way till November to get whatever you need to be done.
I've been voting since 1978.
Every election, I don't know, I never had a problem.
So, Robert, when you let's talk about the one day in person.
So, if on that one day you're sick or you're traveling or your car breaks down or whatever, would you like to have the option of maybe voting for a week, as the previous caller said?
Yeah, possibly.
And the only way I think absentee voting should be done is if you're overseas in the military or something.
You know, years ago, people used to walk for miles and days to go vote.
And now, you know, you're even saying we need a week.
I'd like to find out who got elected and not have to wait like three weeks to find out, you know.
I think a lot of these stories, especially getting the birth certificate and how quickly and efficiently somebody got it, are kind of just anecdotal stories.
I bet that the guy from Long Island never really left Long Island and he knows exactly where to get his birth certificate.
But a lot of folks move around.
A lot of folks, they're social security agencies move around locations and things of that nature.
They don't necessarily know where to find things.
You know, this State of America Act, there's a lot of nuance to all of these, I guess, voting in states because, I mean, states kind of control the way that the voting process and registration works.
A lot of folks are using, I guess, part-time whole logic with how this will work.
There's a lot of nuance to it.
And I kind of wish some of these folks that call in, I just wish you'd kind of call them out and let them understand that it's not just as simple as showing your driver's license or whatever it is.
And voter fraud, really, over the past 20, X amount of years, really, unlimited amount of years, there's been very, very little voter fraud.
And the vast majority of folks that actually do it are Republican agents that try to kind of initiate this fraud.
Very, very few documented cases.
In the end, we're just dealing with Donald Trump, who refuses to accept that he lost the election in 2020.
I think he refuses.
He cannot admit defeat.
And that's why, even talking about Iran, he's just going to keep on driving us down into the ditch.
But yeah, I just wish you'd be a little more, you'd kind of respond to some of these folks with their simplistic view of how this voter saved act is going to actually work because it will, in the end, disenfranchise voters.
And if you're American, you shouldn't really want that to happen.
All right, John.
Let's talk to Lance, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Democrat, you're on the air.
Good morning, Mimi.
How are you this morning?
Good.
I'm 72, and I remember when voting was just one day.
To start off, though, I would really like to kill this argument that says, well, it's illegal to vote if you're not a citizen.
It's illegal to commit murder.
It's illegal to use your car and rob a bank.
It's illegal to take drugs.
And that doesn't stop it.
They give this argument like, well, it's illegal for non-citizen students to vote.
Right.
Like, that makes a difference.
If you want to break the law, you break the law.
You know, to think that because it's against the law.
Yeah, no, I understand that.
But to what aim?
I mean, to what end?
Like, is it really worth it to register to vote and risk five years in prison?
Like, what are you gaining?
Nobody gets five years in prison.
The newspapers, the mainstream media, they don't cover any of this.
They don't go investigate it.
Most of this happens in Democrat-controlled cities.
How much are they trying to do it?
Come on.
Mamdani had a snowstorm in New York.
He wanted two forms of ID to shovel snow, but not to vote.
Not to vote.
You got to be kidding.
Okay.
It's kind of hard to get a birth certificate on disability, to get social services, food stamps, disability.
So, Lance, you have to show two forms of ID.
Okay, so tell me what you are in favor of.
I hear you saying you want people to show ID in order to vote.
You want proof of citizenship in person to register or change your registration.
What else?
Any other changes you would like to see?
Well, if you looked at the act, I'm disabled.
There are provisions for absentee votes for people who are disabled in the bill.
Okay, but President Trump wants to take that out.
So would you be in favor of that?
Would you be OK?
Stop disabled people from voting or soldiers or people who are out of the country.
You want to limit the amount of people who are just doing it.
If you're traveling, when voting comes around, too bad.
If you really want to vote, you change your plans.
So, Lance, that's not what.
You get so this is what the Hill is reporting.
It says President Trump's push to eliminate voting by mail without excuses such as illness or military duty.
Right.
And others include disability.
The bill itself says people who are disabled, these are the reasons they give.
If you're in the military, if you're disabled, trying to stop people from voting.
That is currently in the bill.
You're right.
But the president would like to take that out.
Well, the president would like a lot of things.
He'd like a rose every morning on this.
That doesn't mean he's going to get it.
Let's talk to O'Dallis in Florida, Republican line.
Go ahead.
Hi.
Okay.
I guess you're talking to me, O'Dallis.
So I just want you to know that in Florida, we've been doing it like this over 20 years.
We have to show ID.
We have to have a voter registration card and we must sign before we vote so that they can look at to make sure that the signature on the driver's license and the one that we're signing in front of the person matches.
I was not born in the United States.
I am an American citizen and I've been voting for many, many years.
I have never had a problem.
And we've been doing it this exact same way.
You're saying that the president doesn't want people in the military.
He said that if you are in the military, you would be able to vote.
That's how we do it here, too.
What we do here and what he would like to do is to make sure that you request, you're requesting it, not automatically getting it, or you're not going to be able to vote online.
People that are disabled, they request, you request it first before you get it, before you're able to vote.
This nilly-willy, we're just going to send everybody one in the mail and the harvesting of ballots.
And one other thing, Mimi, that you're not really understanding here.
In California, Gavin Newsom made it illegal for anyone, but anyone in California to ask for an ID to vote.
This tells us everything you want to know about the Democratic Party.
They gaslight Americans every day of the week, telling them all of these pathetic lies about this and all the other issues.
Schumer is saying, oh, no, like they want, you know, like it's the Republicans want to make it harder to vote.
No, no, no.
The Republicans want to make it harder to cheat.
And the Democrats want to make it easy to cheat.
Okay.
You cannot even ask in California.
Okay, so let's talk about the mail part.
So this is Politico, and it says Republicans are eyeing major election changes.
Trump's mail voting crackdown isn't one of them.
It says GOP lawmakers prefer a more targeted approach as a president rails against mail-in ballots.
It says that President Trump is pushing Congress to end mail voting as Americans have come to know it.
So far, Republican lawmakers aren't heeding his calls.
It says Trump has long railed against the expansion of vote by mail, arguing despite scant evidence that it is rife with fraud and suggesting it was responsible in part for his 2020 election loss.
It says other Republicans don't see it that way.
Many of their own voters have voted by mail consistently for decades.
So far, the type of blanket ban on mail voting Trump wants has not gained traction on Capitol Hill as GOP lawmakers counsel for a more targeted approach.
Al in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, Independent Line, you're on the air, Al.
Yes.
Hi, good morning, Mimi.
How are you doing today?
Good.
So I just, so I think, you know, my epiphany is Trump derangement syndrome on both sides, Republicans and Democrats, meaning, as what they say about the Democrats don't want anything that Trump is doing, and the Republicans will just take what he gives.
And so I'm calling about mail-in.
So I've served in the military for 30 years, and the only thing that I did was mail-in ballots.
And so having access to be able to vote for me was absolutely critical.
And to take that away from service members, from disabled folks, from seniors that are stuck in their senior centers that can't get out, I think is a travesty.
Now, I don't think anybody wants non-citizens to vote.
I think that's not the issue.
We don't want anyone that's not a citizen to vote, but how do we control it?
And how do we make sure that we have fair elections?
And so that's all I want to say.
So, Al, do you feel that there is fraud in the mail-in voting system?
No, so you know.
Or that it opens itself up to the possibility of widespread fraud?
No, not my experience.
I mean, can it happen?
I guess it can.
I'm not going to say 100% that it can't happen.
And then you had a gentleman earlier that talked about a mailman throwing votes.
Well, he said, throwing things away and whether or not it was mailing ballots and things like that.
But for me, I don't know of any case that there was fraud associated with my mail-in ballots.
As a matter of fact, although I've retired, because I've gotten used to mail-in ballots and we settled in Maryland because we lived all over the place and all over the world, I like mail-in ballots.
So when it comes for me to register in my county and register to vote at the state, local, and federal election, it's just an easy couple of things for me to do.
And I get it into the mail and it's done.
And I love that system.
All right.
Let's hear from Senator Barrazo.
Safeguarding Elections00:15:46
He's the majority whip Republican of Wyoming, Wyoming, responding to Senator Chuck Schumer's concerns about the Save America Act.
Mr. President, you need to show an ID if you board a plane.
Got to show an ID if you go to a sporting event and buy a beer.
Why would you not have to show an ID to vote and to vote in the United States Senate?
And then to hear the minority leader, I mean, it's astonishing.
I wrote it down.
He said, no more voter registration when you get a driver's license.
As if there's something wrong with that.
19 states give driver's licenses to people who are in this country illegally.
So of course I don't want those people to be able to be registering to vote when they get a driver's license.
I don't want them to get a driver's license.
Minority leader thinks that's business as usual.
Give the illegal immigrants a voter of driver's license and sign them up to vote one step after another.
We don't care if they're here legally or illegally.
Sign them up.
Maybe they'll vote for us.
That's the Democrat position in all of this.
Mr. President, the bill that we're going to be addressing this week on the floor, the Save America Act, that's the way that we can have safe, secure elections that reflect the viewpoints of the American people.
So, when I hear what's fringe, what I think is fringe is the Democrats in this body, and I think every one of them is going to stand with the extreme wing of their party who want to allow illegal immigrants to vote and have an influence in the elections in this country.
It's absolutely wrong.
This week, we're going to put every one of them on the record, Mr. President.
And by the time this is over, every American is going to know that the Democrats are the party, that they are the party of illegal immigrant open borders and illegal voters.
We're taking your calls on this topic of what changes are needed to the U.S. voting system.
Debbie and Norristown, Pennsylvania, Democrat, good morning.
Good morning.
First of all, we have the real ID that we had to show all kinds of documents that the government had to scan into their system.
Second of all, says security has all our information.
It's just another way for the government to control all our data in the system to keep an eye on America.
And with voting by mail, they would have to come with the national holiday for everybody to take off to go to the polling places, which will cost a fortune for businesses and people that have to work.
So that's the theory I have.
They already have all this information.
You have to have a real ID to travel.
And they had scanned all these documents in.
I just think the government just wants more information and they want more money for a special license to vote.
All right, Debbie, let's talk to Scott next.
Pennsylvania, Republican, you're on the air, Scott.
Hey, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
A couple of points.
First, I am 100% for the SAVE Act.
You should have to show up in person with an ID to cash your vote.
As far as mail and ballots are concerned, I think it should be the exception and not the rule.
Imagine taking the most precious thing that you have, say something you want to pass down to your children, a photograph, an heirloom, something, but don't give it to them.
Stick it in the mail.
Hope it gets there.
That's paramount to what our vote is.
It's one of the most precious things we have.
So you should absolutely show up in person.
For disabled, for military, absolutely the mail-in balloting.
I was in the military for a long time and voted by mail and ballot, but those are exceptions.
Also, you played a clip from Senator Schumer recently.
Play the one from 1996.
It was a totally different story.
He was for voter ID then, but not now.
So what has changed?
What did he say in 96?
He said that he was for voter ID.
I mean, you can find that clip everywhere that he is for voter ID, or he was in 1996.
But what has changed?
Perhaps the influx of 20 million Americans that the Democrats just let our borders flood into our country?
And you don't think that they're going to show up, some of them at the polls?
We need to safeguard our elections.
And you can look for that clip that the caller is referring to on our website if you do a search.
I don't know if it's there.
I haven't looked for it, but you can take a look.
This is what Kristen says on Facebook.
She says, automatically register all U.S. citizens to vote when they turn 18.
Wonder what you think about that.
Here's John, Grenada Hills, California, Independent Line.
Hello, Mimi.
Hello, America.
Look at the man that's pushing for this, Donald Trump, the man that won't even admit that he lost the 2020 election.
He's just super afraid that he's going to get crushed.
And that's the whole reason.
What really is the skull buggery in this is the requirement that states hand over their voting records to the Department of Homeland Security.
That's like so big, brother, that it just can't happen.
And it's not going to happen.
Americans are not going to tolerate the voting registration rolls and all that stuff handing over to the federal government.
This is just a big scam.
It is a scam by Donald Trump.
There is almost zero evidence that there is fraudulent voters happening in America.
I want the Republicans to come forth and give us your statistics, you know, from the legitimate agencies that say.
Now, the Heritage Foundation found that they're super conservative, found that there was almost no fraudulent voting in America.
So the whole thing is a smokescreen for Trump to be able to deny when he loses the election.
It's just some puffed up thing to let them know that the election was fraudulent, and that's what the intent is.
So the previous caller, John, respond to the previous caller who said that this was all the undocumented people that flooded into the country during the Biden administration.
They're all going to, not all of them, but a good number would go and vote and change the election towards Democrats.
No, that's wrong.
There's no history of that at all.
I mean, America has had immigrants in this nation for a long, long time.
And there's no evidence that immigrants, the penalties are too severe.
And the Heritage Foundation didn't come up with any evidence that illegal immigrants vote.
And it just doesn't happen.
And I'm in California, and you have to go register to vote.
And so when you register, that's when you show your ID and the certificates and all that thing.
Each state is different.
Trump just wants to put some kind of log jam in the thing that he can say that the election was unfair and that he can try to be president for another four years or do whatever he's going to do because the man is his heart is black.
All right, John.
And here is what the caller was talking about, the previous caller.
Schumer embraced ID laws to counter fraud in the 1990s, but now calls voter ID Jim Crow 2.0.
That's at the Washington Times, if you would like to read that article.
And this is Stephanie, Baltimore, Democrat.
Hi, Stephanie.
You're on the air.
Good morning.
I am really happy that the person that spoke before me said what they said because I was going to say the same thing.
I would love to see the proof of all this fraud that they're claiming has happened in the last few elections that, again, the Heritage Foundation has proven is not occurring.
So that's one.
And two, yes, I think we do need to cut down on voter fraud.
And I think the first way we need to cut down on that is by vote, is by having tougher laws around voter intimidation that is preventing people that are legally allowed to vote to go to vote because that is occurring more than what all these people are claiming is occurring.
And then beyond that, if this ridiculous, yes, big brother type act were to pass, never mind disenfranchising any person who has changed their last name.
We're disenfranchising, you know, hundreds of thousands of people experiencing homelessness that don't have their documents, that don't have a way to get these documents, that don't have the money to get these documents, because a lot of people experiencing homelessness do not, you know, do not have a safe place to store their ID documents, and so thus would not be able to vote.
And I just, you know, between you and me, I'm fairly certain there's no reason why people experiencing homelessness should not be allowed to vote.
And Stephanie, you said you're worried about voter intimidation.
What have you seen?
What kind of evidence of that do you see?
I've seen people just at the polls just giving a presence.
You know, and beyond that, they've said that they're going to, they're already training, you know, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE officers to be there at the polls this year, which is terrifying to me.
And that in and of itself is going to prevent hundreds of thousands of people that are not white from going out there, citizen or not, you know, especially considering what they're doing to U.S. citizens that speak Spanish or, you know, that look a little bit different.
You know, it's, it's, and I really do want to say one other thing is, well, two other things.
One, Chuck Schumer may have said that in 1996.
I didn't, I don't think I supported gay marriage in 1996.
And I am a queer, trans, non-binary person.
So people's views can change.
It's a surprising thing that occurs over the course of time.
It's been 30 years.
All right, Stephanie.
Let's take a look at Texas Democrat Julie Johnson.
She addressed concerns about how the passage of the Save America Act might affect certain people.
The Save America Act makes it harder for Americans to vote.
As a member of the Subcommittee on Elections, my responsibility is to protect access at the ballot box, not to restrict it.
That is why I offered several common sense amendments to preserve online voter registration, ensure due process when an eligible citizen is denied the right to vote, mandate that citizenship only needs to be proven once, and allow the use of an expired passport to register to vote.
My amendments sought to limit the harm that this bill would cause and ensure that every citizen has accessible and secure way to register and cast a ballot.
This seems normal to me.
This isn't about ID.
This is about access.
This is about procedures that will minimize the inconvenience to the United States citizens to cast their ballot.
Despite these facts, Republicans on the Rules Committee unanimously blocked these amendments from even being considered.
That tells you everything you need to know.
This isn't about making it easier for Americans to vote.
It isn't about so-called election integrity.
It's about tilting the playing field.
Republicans are losing support because voters aren't buying their ideas.
Instead of changing their policies, they're trying to silence the American people at the ballot box.
It's not working for their rigged gerrymander districts.
It's not working for this effort to try to preclude people from registering to vote.
If you really cared about people registering to vote, you would have online voter registration.
You would make it to where people didn't have to go to one registrar's office in the middle of a county only during working hours when they're working their own shifts and they're not able to get there.
How are people expected to register to vote under these rules?
If you really cared, you would open it up.
You would make online registration the rule and the law of the land.
It is shameful.
It is undemocratic.
And I urge my colleagues in this chamber to vote no on this bill.
And I yield back.
Going back to your calls, Dave in Valdosta, Georgia, Republican.
Good morning.
Morning.
I just wonder, do you have any idea how many states have 100% mail-in voting at this time?
100% mail-in voting means everybody in the whole state votes by mail?
Yes.
I don't think there's a state that every single citizen votes by mail.
Like no in-person voting?
My home state of Washington state has since about 2011 has been they mail out ballots to everyone.
Okay, no, that's different than everybody actually voting by mail.
Right.
Okay.
So you're saying.
The access is there.
You just represent just talking about access.
And that was there.
There's access right there.
But my point is what I was trying to make.
If you knew how many states vote like that, 100% basically, mail-in votes, then you go ahead and find out how they vote.
I think if you look into California, Oregon, Washington, they're all terribly blue right now.
I grew up in the eastern part of Washington state, and we used to be fairly conservative.
Now it's since King County and Pierce County, Tacoma, Seattle areas with population has just taken over the state.
So the access is, you know, I think we have two representatives now.
The rest of them, and I don't know when the last time we had anybody Republican statewide elected.
So you think that they're voting Democrat because they get to vote by mail?
Are you drawing that connection, Dave?
Rural Voting Access00:16:19
No, I think if you see that, if you see that happening time and time again, you're going to have to say, well, maybe they figured out how to do it.
And so if you don't have access, they're talking about access.
Well, Dave make sure they have access.
Okay, so here's what we were able to find, Dave, on that.
So this is from the NCSL.
That's the National Conference of State Legislatures.
It says, in mostly mail elections, all registered voters are sent a ballot in the mail.
The voter marks the ballot, puts it in a secrecy envelope or sleeve, and then into a separate mailing envelope, signs an affidavit on the exterior of the mailing envelope, and returns the package via mail or by dropping it off.
It says, eight states and Washington, D.C. allow all elections to be conducted entirely by mail.
California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington State.
Two states permit counties to opt into conducting elections by mail: Nebraska and North Dakota.
Nine states allow specific small elections to be conducted by mail, including Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming.
And four states permit mostly mail elections for certain small jurisdictions.
That's in Idaho, Minnesota, New Jersey, and New Mexico.
And there's a table here below that you can take a look at.
So go to ncsl.org and you can look into all of that.
It's Dr. Gilbert, Toledo, Ohio, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
How are you doing?
Good.
Okay, this voter ID thing is kind of crazy because I believe Trump wants to steal the election.
Somehow, he's tried to talk states into gerrymanding their state so they could win because they want more Republicans to be in office so they can run their illegal government by themselves.
Now, about illegal aliens voting, I'm very upset about this because my dad, who was an American and his grandfather, I believe, came to America.
They were about the third boat to ever land in America.
And he chased the American Indians from Mexico City back to where they were born in the United States.
Texas, Arizona, Idaho, all those states, California.
And my mother was born in America.
And my grandkids have 98% American Indian blood in them.
And she never voted, and my dad never voted.
Okay, and my dad was in every war in World War II, every battle, major battle he was in there.
And he never voted.
Most illegal aliens, so-called, which became illegal aliens when Trump was the first time in, never vote.
They don't want any connection with the government.
They don't even go to get health care.
They go to, if they need an operation, that's where they go to the doctor.
Otherwise, they go to a medicine man, a person who takes care of them.
Somebody that my mother went to because the doctors couldn't cure her.
She had to go to a white witch doctor.
And they do have black magic and they do have white magic.
I think we got your point.
Tess, Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania, Democrat, you're on the air.
Yes, I had a problem a couple years ago.
My mother is at 100 and I was at 80 and we went to get real IDs.
My mother had no problem getting hers, but it was like a poll tax for me.
We both had expired passports.
And I couldn't get a real ID because I couldn't find the document that changed my name when I started school to my stepfather's name.
And so I can get a passport to vote, but if I needed it, but I have my original red voters registration and wanted to change my name, there's no problem.
But someone would not be able to get a real ID would have to pay $150 to prove their identification.
And that's not fair to women.
And as far as people voting, I think anyone would register to vote, but I don't think anyone else would actually get there and try to vote in person if they weren't eligible to vote.
That's just crazy, especially an illegal alien.
They're not going to take that chance if they're here illegally.
And I remember when I used to be a Republican, I was told to promote mail-in voting.
Now the Republicans are against it.
They need to make up their minds.
So, Tess, what did you end up doing?
Did you renew your passport?
Yeah.
But you just had to pay $150 to do all that.
No, I renewed my passport.
But it was crazy because, like I said, my mother's 100.
She could get her real ID, and she did.
And we always voted in person.
But at, well, I'm 82 now, but I could not get a real ID.
I'm trying now to find the documents.
All right, Tess.
Let's hear from the top Democrat in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, who talked about what he's planning to do on this legislation in the House.
Like House and Senate Democrats have repeatedly made clear, we should fund TSA, fund FEMA, fund the Coast Guard, fund cybersecurity operations within the Department of Homeland Security.
Republicans in the House and the Senate have rejected it.
They're playing games as they always do.
So that's why on Wednesday we're going to launch this discharge petition.
It's the first day that it becomes ripe to advance Congresswoman Rosa DeLaura's bill.
And we'll just need a handful of Republicans to join us.
And guess what?
Despite all the cynicism, all the skepticism that has existed throughout this Congress, as if Democrats were knocked on our back heels, we've repeatedly won discharge petitions.
And if it comes to it, we're going to win this one as well.
And so to me, we can do this the easy way.
Why doesn't Mike Johnson and Republican just agree to put the bill on the floor?
It will pass overwhelmingly.
Hakeem Jeffries talking about DHS funding, and this is Scott in New Jersey, Republican.
Good morning, Scott.
Good morning, Nimi.
How are you?
Good.
So one of the things that I think is kind of funny, both you and one of the previous callers did it, and it is that you pointed to the fact and said, well, the consequences are too severe.
The reality is when it is that you have people that have entered this country illegally and have shown a propensity to break the law, it is that they're more inclined to do so again.
And when it comes down to it, you're 100% correct.
Punishment procedures work quite well, but they only work when it is that they're actually put into effect.
And you could see across the board, I don't care what law it is we're talking about, there are a number of laws that are not necessarily being enforced.
So, I mean, that entire argument is just kind of silly.
But the previous caller just before talking about the hard time that she had in getting this real ID, but it is that, well, I was able to update the passport, she's almost making the case for the fact that although she had difficulties in acquiring one, she was able to get another form that would be deemed acceptable.
And I'm going to use it.
I assume when you go into your place of work, you probably have some form of an ID.
I have kids.
I know that they have IDs just to go to school.
I've worked with people with special needs.
They go to public libraries.
They need to have ID.
What I'm trying to say to you is the thing is there are so many people in this life that it is that for just very simple things require an ID and they're able to do so.
No, no, I understand.
It's just the previous caller was saying that, yes, she did, she was able to get something else, but she had to pay $150.
And she felt that that was unfair.
She would only have to pay $150 in order to do the real ID.
However, she was able to renew the passport.
Because she changed her name.
So she was not able to do that without the $150.
But, Scott, I want to ask you this.
This is what Karen says on Facebook.
She wants everybody to have a mandatory vote, national paid holiday, and five mandatory debates, public debates.
What do you think of that?
What do you think of making it a paid national holiday to vote?
Since that's absolutely bizarre, and right now I believe you're hijacking my segment.
All it is that I want to say is the fact that it is a very- Lynn, St. Mary's, Georgia, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Okay, so I come from California.
And in California, they do automatically send out ballots.
I have a family member who works with people inside of nursing homes and such.
And also with his spouse, what he does is they all sign.
He fills it in and turns it in.
And I don't think that's correct.
So that's why I don't think that the mail-in ballot is really secure.
Because if you can hand your mail-in ballot to someone who gives your signature, but then they go ahead and fill it out however they want, you're not really voting.
And that's what I have a problem with.
I do love the idea of mail-in ballots when it comes to the military that are overseas because I want the opportunity for everybody to be able to vote.
But I do think that there is an issue when it comes to just the automatic mail-in ballot because it can be manipulated.
All right, Lynn.
And Samantha on Facebook says, personally, I'd like to see popular vote only.
And Rose says, voter ID shown and one-to-one ratio of Democrat to Republican poll watchers at every precinct.
Sola says, in person only, except for deployed service members.
Valid identification required.
Make Election Day a federal holiday so people can vote without the rush or long lines.
Let's get rid of the party system.
And we said that one already.
So here is Dennis in Toledo, Iowa, Democrat.
Yes.
Now, if they want the Republicans want people to have to go and vote at their places, I like to remind them there's a lot more people in the United States now than when Kennedy ran against Nixon.
So they have to have the polls open for a few more days because how the heck people are going to vote when there's a lot more people now voting and they keep talking about illegals.
Well, I think the best way to lead is it's Trump who brings these bimble women in here.
And that's my comment.
All right, Dennis.
And let's talk to Emery in Pennsylvania, Republican line.
Go ahead, Emery.
Okay.
I'm 75 years old.
I'm going to be 76.
The first time I voted, I voted with an absentee ballot from Denang Air Base, Republic of Vietnam.
That was in 1972.
You had to be 21 to vote.
Now, here's the thing: I've never missed an election in my whole life.
I've had to work out of state.
Now that Pennsylvania has A deal where you can have a melon ballot because my legs aren't that good anymore.
And I went to this melon ballot.
And now, all of a sudden, you people want to disenfranchise me from being able to vote.
I've already been, I don't have to go to jury duty for medical reasons, either for the federal or the state.
But to just get a whole bunch of people to decide who can and who can't.
I've stood in lines before.
I can't stand in lines anymore.
And I'm a registered Republican for my whole life.
And I'm starting to believe that the president is losing it.
I voted for him three times, but when I see him on TV anymore, he is beginning to scare me.
He ran and raved, and he didn't even go to Vietnam.
He wasn't in the military.
And all of a sudden, they're trying to take my constitutional rights away from me.
That's voter registration.
And I'm a registered Republican.
And Mr. President, you know, if you pass this thing, how many retired senior citizens will not vote?
And guess what, Mr. President?
You might lose the elections.
All right.
If you have any questions, just ask me and I'm ready to go.
Yeah, no, I got your point.
And this is what President Trump said on Truth Social.
This is from March 8th.
He said this: In order to pass the Save America Act, an 88% issue with all voters, it must be done immediately.
It supersedes everything else.
Must go to the front of the line.
I, as president, will not sign other bills until this is passed and not the watered-down version.
Go for the gold, must show voter ID, proof of citizenship, no mail-in ballots except for military illness, disability, travel, no men and women's sports, no transgender mutilization for children.
Do not fail.
That was posted on Truth Social.
And here is President, sorry, here's House Speaker Mike Johnson.
He was at the Republican Party's annual retreat in Florida.
This is what he said.
It's not ready.
Let's go to Ruth in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Independent Line.
Yes, I would like to say that I'm 79 and I voted a long time, even voted for when Nixon ran the worst president until Trump.
Now, I'm just saying that this whole thing with voting is just his way of getting out of office with having the Republicans there too.
So I'm just also saying that a man who refused to show up five times when he was asked to go to be in the military refused.
Five times.
Doctors said his little foot hurt.
Now, I just don't understand why military follows a man who's a draft dodger.
But getting back to the voting changes, Ruth, anything that you would like to see changed in how the U.S. votes?
The voting is fine as far as the mail-in ballots, because that is a way for everyone, everyone Trump, to vote, not just his few Republicans.
Draft Dodger Controversy00:03:58
Because you know what?
I think the Republicans are going to suffer too, because there's a lot of Republicans who also want a mail-in ballot.
So they're not going to get theirs either.
And they're probably my age.
They're not going to run to vote for him.
He's being his usual insane thought.
It's all about winning.
All right, Ruth.
Here is Speaker Mike Johnson talking about President Trump's threat to not sign any new legislation until the Save America Act is passed.
President Trump has said that if Congress can't send him the Save America Act to his desk, then he's not going to sign anything else into law.
Is this the end of legislating for this cycle as we know it?
No, it's not.
And I'll talk with him about that.
We'll work with him.
As you know, under the Constitution, if legislation was sent to the President's desk and didn't sign it for 10 days, it would become law automatically.
But I understand what he's trying to emphasize, the importance of this priority, how critical it is to not just to him, but to the American people and to all of us.
And so it takes no convincing among House Republicans to agree to that priority.
But I think he wants to send a signal to the Senate in particular that he's very serious about this, and I think the signal has been received.
And this is what Ernie said on Facebook.
Do away with the Electoral College.
It's the only system that uses that count system.
A football team from one state versus another didn't achieve more points with a goal solely because they are from a specific state or a swing state.
Vicki in Shacope, Minnesota, Democrat, good morning.
Hi.
Hi, it's Shakopee.
Shakopee.
But thank you, anyways.
I thought they did so much checking and rechecking with the voting in the past elections and they found nothing wrong.
And it seems to be working really good.
The thing that I keep hearing over and over is they think all these illegal immigrants are going into the voting areas.
I don't think they're doing that.
They're afraid to even go out to restaurants and to stores anymore.
The last place they're going to go is to a big public government building and show their face and vote.
I think the voting seems real safe.
Even though Trump got voted in, I don't understand that that's the only time I thought it couldn't be real.
Could all of us Americans, could so many Americans vote Trump in?
I just, that's the only thing I don't believe.
It's not the people out there voting that's going to cheat on voting.
It's the big people out there buying the votes, buying the politicians, the big corporations running it.
I think it's safe the way it is.
I think we need to focus on other things besides the voting, like our clean water, our clean air, our schools, our poor people.
Thank you for taking my comments.
All right, Vicki, one more call.
David, Southview, Pennsylvania, Republican.
Go ahead, David.
Yeah, in Pennsylvania, we can have a mail-in vote if we request it, because I worked out of town a lot in my life, and that's what I used.
Which was all you got to do is request it, and it was all good.
And David, you don't need to give a reason.
You don't need to say, I'm disabled, I can't get to the polls or whatever.
You just get one.
You did need a reason.
All you needed to do was request it.
Now, would you be in favor of having to give a reason?
So if you're not, for instance, disabled or ill or overseas for military, you would not be able to get a mail-in ballot.
Would you be in favor of that?
No, I don't think so because sometimes I wasn't out of town working and I was able to go to the poll and do it personally.
All right.
Free Idea Exchange00:02:22
And that does it for this segment, this topic.
But later in the program, we'll talk about the Iran conflict's impact on energy and gas prices with Clay Siegel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
But first, it's a discussion on the significance of the U.S.-Israel alliance against Iran with Dana Stroll of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
We'll be right back.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back to Washington Journal.
Joining us now is Dana Stroll.
Iran Existential Threat00:13:48
She is research director for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, former Assistant Defense Secretary for the Middle East during the Biden administration.
Dana, welcome to the program.
Great to be here with you.
So just start, please, by telling us about your background in the Middle East and your role at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Sure.
So as the research director, I'm responsible for everything we're doing at the Washington Institute.
We have an amazing group of scholars and fellows, many who are subject matter experts in very specific issues related to the Middle East, and many who have served in both Republican and Democratic administrations in very senior policymaking roles, Defense Department, State Department, National Security Council, you name it.
So we bring all of that expertise together and try to make the best recommendations for U.S. policy going forward in the Middle East.
And your specific backgrounds, what you bring to this.
So before the Washington Institute, I was the top civilian official in the Pentagon in the previous administration, responsible for U.S. defense policy in the Middle East.
And I've also served for many years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
So always Middle East policy, but from different vantage points From the Senate, from the Department of Defense, and always working across a big U.S. government team working with the State Department, working with the National Security Council and our intelligence community.
Well, I want to start with the latest news to come out of Iran, which is Israel announcing the killing of Ali Larajani.
Can you tell us who he was and the significance of his killing?
Yeah, it's quite significant.
So he's the Secretary of Iran's National Supreme Council, and he has both been one of the lead negotiators for Iran on the nuclear file designated by the now deceased former Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini, and he's been one of the most loud voices of the Iranian government both before this current war and this war, toting very hard lines about the Iranian government's approach to this war, its threats across the Middle East,
and the attitude of the regime going forward toward negotiations.
And this is significant because in the context of this current war, both what Israel has been doing and the United States, part of this is about weakening and even collapsing the Iranian regime.
For the first day of the war, one of the big operations that Israel did was a decapitation strike, which both killed the Supreme Leader but numerous other, up to 40 top officials.
And since then, the Israeli government has been quite clear that they are going to continue to target Iran's top military and political leaders.
And this is another one this morning.
So, what impact will his death specifically have?
You called him hardline.
Is there anybody in the regime that's not hardline?
It's very unlikely at this point.
If you think about it, for the Iranian regime, they were weakened before this current war, both because of the last two and a half years of grinding war across the Middle East and they're more vulnerable and exposed domestically inside Iran.
They just perpetrated the largest massacre in the history of this regime against the Iranian people in mid-January.
So they're vulnerable and now they're under a massive attack.
Most of their conventional military capabilities are being wiped out.
And historically, the previous supreme leader played more of a moderating or balancing role between the different power centers in Iran.
But as the ranks of the senior leaders are thinned out and given this experience of war, what we're left with is more hardline and more of an IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which are the protectors of this religious, religious government, religiously motivated government in Tehran.
So we're likely actually to see more hardline people without these voices that have experience engaging with the West.
We've got a question for Dana Stroll, Dana Stroll, on the events of the Middle East.
You can go ahead and start calling in now.
Lines are bipartisan.
Democrats are on 2027488000.
Republicans 2027488001.
And Independents 202748802.
We will start taking your call shortly.
You wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs earlier this month focusing on the fact that the U.S. and Israel are in now a truly joint military operation.
What's the significance of that?
Well, generally, the U.S. military works in coalitions.
So if you think about a little over a decade ago when ISIS, the world's most fearsome terrorist army, took over parts of Iraq and Syria, or you look back to the first or second Gulf Wars, it was really the U.S. military who designed the entire operation, was providing all of the intelligence, figuring out what was going to happen when, and then looking to coalition partners to plug in wherever they could in a U.S.-designed U.S.-led operation.
This is different.
This is two partners equally sharing the risk.
Israeli lives both over Iran, the Israeli military, and Israeli civilians in Israel are very much at risk.
U.S. military forces are at risk.
We've already had several casualties since the beginning of this war.
But what's clear is that there's a division of labor.
You have Israeli defense forces going after certain targets, U.S. military going after other targets, U.S. refueling tankers, refueling Israeli aircraft, but really working in a partnership.
And that is different than how the United States traditionally or historically fights, especially in the Middle East.
Does this mean that this will be a new way of fighting globally, or is this just kind of a one-off?
Is this a unique situation?
I think it remains to be seen.
So, what's clear from President Trump and what he said about wanting allies and partners of the United States to put more risk, bring more to the fight, is that what he's talking about is something like what we're seeing here.
And he would like to see that in other theaters.
And most administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have always pushed for our the United States network of allies and partners to bring more to the fight.
But I think this one is unique at this moment in time.
And the other element of the piece I wrote is that while the military partnership is deepening, there's more political criticism of this relationship on the right and the left.
Well, one criticism, and what critics of this war will say, is Netanyahu got Trump into this war, and that this is all kind of Israel's doing.
Do you agree with that?
Do you agree that President Trump's hand was kind of forced or coerced into joining this war?
I don't.
First of all, President Trump, it's very clear he's the decider on everything.
No one is telling him what to do or when to do it.
Secondly, it was Trump in January who made the decision to do this massive military buildup that we saw happening all through January and February until the point in which he decided to start these hostilities.
And number three, the threats from Iran are actually not new.
We've always been, when it comes to the Middle East, really concerned about Iran's nuclear program, Iran's missile program and drone program, its support for terrorists and non-state groups all over the Middle East.
And this is something the United States has been focused on for decades, working with our partners in the Middle East, outside of the Middle East, and with Israel.
All right, let's talk to Sam.
He's calling us from Thousand Oaks, California, Independent Lines.
Sam, you're on with Dana Stroll.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
My question is on the origins of this tensions between the U.S. and Iran.
I know that frequently the media says it started in 1979 with Khomeini coming in and overthrowing the Thra, but as someone who lived there, I grew up there in the 70s.
The people I spoke to there, they trace it back all the way to the 50s when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossa Khi.
So I'd just like to hear your views.
That's their perspective.
What is your perspective?
Thank you.
Thanks for that question, Sam.
So I think the United States has a very fraught history when it comes to the Middle East and dictating political outcomes about how societies and governments across the Middle East should or should not govern and organize themselves.
And certainly U.S. involvement in Iran from 1953 and the ouster of Mossadak, as you note, I think is a very troubling episode in the U.S.-Iranian relationship.
But at this point in time, what I think is really important to focus on is what are U.S. national security interests.
And what we want is a stable Middle East at peace with itself, peaceful relationships between countries, where societies and governments can figure out and self-determine for themselves.
And with the Iranian regime that's been in place since 1979, what they've done is cultivate a network of terrorists and non-state groups, and then Bashar al-Assad and Syria, who kept societies across the government weak, and they were arming and funding and training them to attack the United States, to attack Israel.
And now what we're seeing is they're actually attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure across the Middle East.
So at this point in time, I think the question is, what should the United States be doing to leave the Middle East in a more stable situation?
And is what the United States doing right now going to leave the Middle East in a more stable situation?
I think it's very unclear what the outcome is going to be.
Is it going in that direction?
So the problem is if you listen to the U.S. military, they have reports about the destruction they're causing to Iran's nuclear program, to Iran's missile program and drone program.
The Navy, we keep hearing from Secretary of War Hegseth and President Trump himself that we've sunk the Iranian Navy.
Except the threats to the Middle East are there.
There's still missile attacks and drone attacks that are successfully causing fires across the Middle East and destroying infrastructure and death.
The Strait of Hormuz is still closed.
Basically, unless you cut a deal with the Iranian regime, nothing is transiting and it's having tremendous negative impact on global commerce.
And now we have the likelihood that the regime right now in Iran looks intact and is likely to be more hardline, more angry, and less willing to negotiate with the West.
And I think the history of Middle East, of U.S. experience in the Middle East is that nothing ends with the military instrument and nothing ends when the fighting stops.
There always has to be a political process on the other side of that.
And right now, I just don't see where that off-ramp is.
Sue in Georgia has a question for you.
She says, I absolutely despise the Iranian theocracy as I do all authoritarian regimes.
With that being said, is it not fair for the Iranian populace to regard an illegally nuclear-armed Israeli government as an existential threat to them?
Well, I think if you listen to what Israel and the United States are articulating as their goals in this war, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has said he wants to collapse, he wants to create the conditions for regime change in Iran, and he's actually spoken directly to the Iranian people and said that he wants to create space for them to rise up, overthrow the rest of the regime, and figure out what they want for themselves.
President Trump has largely said the same thing.
The challenge is right now, the Iranian people aren't going to come out on the streets because there's bombs and airstrikes all the time.
And a lot of the kinds of tools you would want to provide a society the opportunity to figure out what comes next, organized opposition, ability to communicate, are not the tools that either the United States or Israel are bringing to bear.
Another part of your question I think is important here is that Iran has directly said it wants to wipe Israel off the map.
So Iran and its activities are an existential threat to Israel.
Israel has never said it wants to wipe Iran off the map.
What it said is that the actions and behaviors of this regime are an existential threat to Israel.
Let's talk to Ted.
He's calling us from Buena Vista, Colorado, Independent Line.
Hi, Ted.
Yeah, good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
You know, we have little business going through war with Iran.
You know, the problem is that Donald Trump wants to build his facilities in Gaza and by building his facilities in Gaza, we cannot have peaceful contractors going in to Gaza and Palestinian territory while Iran and all their proxies are running around and will attack all the contractors.
Palestine should become a separate state, like Israel should be a separate state.
And we have a problem in the Persian Gulf right now.
And our leadership in the military is just what the language is.
I mean, they bombed that island in the North Persian Sea and where they distribute the oil out of Iran.
And the other day, Trump said, I'm going to go back and keep bombing that place just for fun.
Karg Island Strike00:15:46
I mean, you know, and then Cory Booker in last night, he said it's sorry about what the American soldiers have died in the planes and American deaths, but he did not mention the 130 girls that got killed in Iran.
He should have said just as much about the girls that got shot in that school, and they're depending on AI to do the intelligence when the intelligence was bogus.
I mean, we should be listening to leaders like Leon Panetta, who knows the world mechanics of war.
And we need, you know, the biggest problem we have right now is this is a distraction and we're leaving Alaska vulnerable.
I mean, who's to say Russia and China could just land in Alaska because we're not taking care of our whole countries?
Okay, Ted.
Ted, you bring up some really important issues.
So first of all, I think all casualties, all civilian casualties in war are terrible.
And there is not as I don't think there's sufficient focus on the level of casualties.
And I agree with you that American leaders, both our political leaders and our military leaders, should be consistently expressing condolences for the loss of life.
In particular, with the episode in, I think, one of the earliest days of this war on the school that killed 140 Iranian girls, which was next to an Iranian military base.
First of all, these things happen in war all the time.
It is something that the U.S. military has unfortunately had incidents like this in many wars.
In Afghanistan, this has happened in Iraq.
This has happened.
But I say that in this case, it was outdated intelligence.
Right.
So let me just say first of all.
That was like at least 10 years old, though.
I agree.
So first of all, there is a process for investigating how these accidents happen.
And there's a process of both investigating how it happened, holding those accountable, and being transparent and public about the mistake, and then what is happening to rectify that mistake, and also offering payments to the families.
One of the challenges in this case is that we have a political administration who, rather than say we're going to hold on any public commentary and let that investigation happen, came out and said it wasn't us.
And now we have a lot of outside chatter about was it an AI target, what exactly happened.
The U.S. military has actually appointed a general officer to investigate this outside of the responsibility of the U.S. forces in the Middle East to look at the entire incident, figure out how that intelligence was wrong, how the decision-making occurred, and what should happen next.
My personal view as someone who served in the Pentagon is that we should let that investigation take place.
And while we let it take place, it is really unhelpful for our leaders to be talking about it and speculating when we know that there's an investigation taking place.
He also mentioned Karg Island.
Yeah.
So let me again say, so Karg Island both has Iranian military infrastructure and it has economic and oil infrastructure.
And it is a very important apparatus element of how Iran exports its oil to market.
What President Trump announced last Friday night was that the U.S. military had taken strikes on U.S., sorry, on Iranian military installations on Karg Island, but it had intentionally not targeted the economic and energy infrastructure because that is for the Iranian people and for the future.
But what they were also signaling the United States is that we could target that energy infrastructure if we want.
So you, Iran, stopped targeting energy infrastructure in the Gulf, in the Middle East.
And what we saw immediately after those strikes on Karg Island is that that is not what happened.
The Iranians actually continued to target energy infrastructure in the UAE and other places.
And Israel is targeting oil facilities in Tehran.
So last week.
So there seems to be some disconnect between the U.S. and Israel.
I do think this is an area of divergence and an area of disagreement between the United States and Israel.
And what we saw last week is that Israel said it had targeted fuel storage facilities that were used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, these IRGC, in order to facilitate their operations and that these were fuel storage depots that the Iranian regime was profiting from.
So that was the Israeli explanation.
And we actually saw the U.S. administration come out, the Trump administration come out and say, we don't support this.
The oil infrastructures for the Iranian people stop.
And we haven't seen Israel do that since.
Darryl, Independent, Gwen Oak, Maryland, you're on the air.
Good morning, first time caller.
Excuse me.
My question to your guest is: last year, the Israelis attacked Iran and bombed a lot of their missile sites.
And B.B. Netanyahu came to the White House where Donald Trump was caught on a hot mic and stated that it would be spring for his attack for Iran.
So B.B. Netanyahu basically came to the United States last year and basically begged, urged Donald Trump to go to and attack Iran because he said it was basically defanged.
Their missile sites had been taken down.
And it was caught on a hot mic with Donald Trump said spring.
So now we're in spring.
So how does your narrative Adjust to all of this.
Thank you.
Thanks for that question.
So you're talking about the 12-day war last summer, which was mostly Israel, an Israeli-designed operation that lasted for 12 days, and you're right.
They went after a lot of Iran's missile infrastructure, some of its nuclear program, and some decapitation strikes.
And essentially, Israel eliminated most or degraded most of Iran's air defense over the course of those 12 days and enabled the U.S. Military to come in with one specific operation, because only the U.S.
Military has B-2 bombers that can carry a very special munition, that can go deep into the deeply buried nuclear enrichment facilities that the Iranian regime had buried under mountains where it was enriching all of this uranium which you need to make a nuclear Weapon.
And so in this case, and I want to make a distinction about what I said earlier about the U.S. and Israel in this joint operation now, is that last summer it was an Israeli operation where the United States came in for 24 hours.
This is different.
And I agree that there's something problematic from the language used last summer till now.
Last summer, President Trump said we obliterated Iran's nuclear program and that there were claims about the degradation to Iran's missile program.
And what we saw since last summer is that the Iranian regime, rather than try a different course of action, doubled down, was working to rebuild its missile program.
And it was going to rebuild its missile program in order to then try to reconstitute its nuclear program, which is why Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu came to Mar-a-Lago in January, December of this past year to speak to President Trump about what should happen next.
So I think there were some estimates of how much damage had happened last summer.
And given the level of threat and destruction we've seen from Iran's missiles and drones now, clearly we need to go back, I think, and ask our leaders in the United States what the assessments were from last summer and why they were off and why we're seeing such potent threats now.
And there's about 440 kilograms of enriched uranium in Iran.
Are we able to reach our objective of Iran never being able to have a nuclear weapon if that enriched uranium stays in the country?
Well, if the U.S. objective is to prevent Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon capability and they have, as you say, 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, then we haven't accomplished our objective of making sure that Iran is pushed so far back from that.
And so I think this is a big element of the debate right now.
Everything that we're doing militarily doesn't have an answer for what to do about those 400 kilograms.
And it's going to be challenging for President Trump to say, to the extent that he can say, mission accomplished, I've prevented the Iranian regime from destabilizing the Middle East if he doesn't have an answer for the disposition of those 400 kilograms.
Jennifer in Illinois has this question for you.
How many Israeli soldiers have died in this war so far?
Are Israeli soldiers going to put boots on the ground in Iran like American soldiers are being sent to do?
First, do you believe that American soldiers will eventually need to be on the ground?
this again my personal view is it it's not the first question we need to ask is what is the objective can the objective are you not clear on that Well, to me, the Trump administration continues to change the line about what the objective is.
When this started in January, when the military buildup happened, President Trump said this was about freedom for the Iranian people.
Then we had six weeks of nuclear negotiations.
Now it's changed to a military objective.
And if you listen to our military leadership, like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Kane, he says the military objective is to prevent Iran from projecting power across the Middle East.
That is different from regime change, regime collapse, freedom for the Iranian people.
President Trump is now talking a lot about freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, this strategic choke point.
And so I think a challenge for the American people is to understand exactly what the objective is.
When it comes to ground forces, there's different kinds of ground forces.
And again, here, what we haven't heard is a clear articulation from the Trump administration about what they would need to do that would require ground forces.
There's been rumors in the press about occupying Karg Island, seizing Karg Island.
There's been other speculation about using ground forces for something related to that highly enriched uranium.
That's a very high-risk operation, and it's unclear what that would look like and how fast we could do that, given that the Iranians still clearly have missiles and drones and an intact security service.
So I think these are really important questions that Americans should be demanding answers to.
Ernest in Silver Spring, Maryland, Republican, you're on with Dana Stroll.
All right, thanks a lot.
I was calling because I want to express my opinion about what's going on in the Middle East.
My understanding is that for years and years and years, Israel has been taking, killing Palestinians, taking their land.
I'm not against war, period.
Let's face that.
I hate to see people die.
However, you cannot continue to take people's land and expect to have peace.
You're never going to have peace as long as you keep taking people's land.
I'm not going to let nobody take my house.
You would not let anyone take your house.
This is the major cause of the problem in Israel and the Palestinian area.
Gaza, guess what happened?
Right after the war started, they started moving over there taking the land.
Why?
Why do people need to take other people's land?
That is the major problem.
As far as the nuclear bomb goes, they preach and preach and preach about North Korea, North Korea going to bomb us.
Time to get nukes.
North Korea has been nuked for, what, seven, eight years now?
And guess what?
Nobody talks about it.
It is not about the nukes.
It's about taking land.
All right, Ernest.
Let's get a response.
So I think there's two separate issues here, Ernest.
First of all, when we're talking about taking land, I think it's important to be really specific about which land we're talking about.
Do we agree that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish democratic state in some of the land and that there are parts of the land that should be part of a future Palestinian state in the West Bank in Gaza?
What we haven't heard from Iran is any articulation of Israel's legitimate right to exist.
And actually, sometimes we haven't heard that from other parts of the international community.
The idea that Hamas's October 7th attack on Israelis is more important than Iran's nuclear weapon capability and what Iran has done all across the Middle East.
To me, that's a challenging way to look at this.
I think on the one hand, we need to insist that there's a viable pathway for a two-state outcome between Israel and the Palestinians.
And we can also condemn Iran's illegal pursuit of the nuclear weapon capability, Iran's cultivation of terrorist networks across the Middle East, and that Iran is using ballistic missiles and drones to attack civilians and civilian infrastructure across the Middle East.
We can do both of those things.
You talked about the idea of projecting power and the proxies.
There is currently a war going on between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Beirut is being hit.
A lot of people have been displaced and killed there.
How does this end?
How does this play out?
Does Israel keep going similarly to what they did with Hamas in Gaza and just do a scorch earth policy until Hezbollah is completely crippled?
Well, I certainly hope not because in Gaza right now, we actually have 47% of Gaza that's still controlled by Hamas.
And Hamas is stealing humanitarian aid.
They are ruling by brutality, shooting people in the streets, and in no way are accepting that Israel has a right to exist at all.
In Lebanon, you actually have leadership in Beirut, including the president, Josef Aoun, who's called for direct negotiations with Israel to stop this war and figure out a way for peace going forward.
So one is we have political leadership in Lebanon that we can work with.
And number two is that what's clear about right this minute is that Hezbollah, at the direction of Iran, chose to start attacking Israel again so that Israel would have to fight on two fronts, not just Iran, but also Lebanon.
Hezbollah Two-Front War00:09:05
So I think there's differences, and I certainly hope that what is happening in Gaza isn't what's going to happen in Lebanon.
There's other, there's paths here that include political processes and negotiations.
Elaine Savannah, Georgia, Democrat, you're on the air.
Good morning, Mimi.
Morning.
Good morning, Dama.
Good morning.
I'm a first-time caller.
Well, welcome.
Go right ahead.
Thank you.
I have more of a comment.
You know, I call because Norman, I just listened, but I'm kind of like the last caller in his perspective that, you know, why are we taking because we have, you know, power of the military to use them to pillage other foreign countries that have less viability to fight back against us?
All right.
We got your comment, Elaine.
And here's Buddy in Philadelphia, Republican line.
Go ahead, buddy.
Hey, how are you doing?
I just want to say that they said death to America, death to Israel.
They want to exterminate the Jews.
I'm a Christian.
And they want to exterminate the Jews.
They want to exterminate America.
And Palestinians, they had schools, little kids, how to exterminate Jews.
They never mentioned that.
They think these people are innocent, but they're not.
And you have to keep on going.
When you go to war, you go to win.
And it's no joke.
My father was in Korea.
All right.
And if you don't hit the homeland and you don't hit the leaders, then you're not going to win.
But in World War II, when they went, because my uncles were in the invasion of Normany, you don't hit Hitler, you don't hit the Gestapo, you don't hit any of them, you're going to lose.
But, you know, no such thing as a fair fight.
All right.
And Buddy mentions the ideology behind the regime.
I mean, you can bomb buildings, you can bomb facilities, but how do you change the ideology?
I think one of the most important things we heard in Buddy's question is that we need to win.
And the challenge right now is what does it mean to win in this war?
So the ideology, exterminate the Jews, death to the United States, death to Israel, is a huge problem.
Right now, some of the Iranian apparatus can be defanged, can be degraded, can be set back.
But can you change the ideology?
Can you change the orientation of the regime with military force only if this regime or like part of the regime of residual elements of this regime are left intact?
Here's the challenge right now.
Since on the first day of this war, the former supreme leader, now deceased, Ali Khomeini, was killed, his son has taken over.
His son, Mustabah Khomeini, in the first day of this war, lost his father, his mother, his wife, his brother, his sisters, and I believe some in-laws.
And he's rumored to be quite injured himself.
And he was responsible for cultivating the rise of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, their financial empire, and their direction of force both in the region and against the Iranian people.
So he's more beholden to the IRGC.
So is that ideology likely to change if he's left in charge of the Iranian government after this war?
And that is the huge challenge.
So what do we mean by winning?
And are we bringing the right tools to this fight in order to win and leave the Middle East, not just Iran, not just Israel, but the entire region in a more stable situation?
On the Independent Line in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, John, good morning.
Hi, Mimi.
I just wanted to make an observation and ask kind of a question or kind of comment question.
I just want to say I saw that you never really entered the Twitter post about if Israel put boots on the ground and also how many Israeli soldiers have died on the ground.
You kind of deflected away from it.
But no, that's just a comment to you.
But it also seems to me a lot made between the alliance between Israel and the USA and the intelligence sharing that goes on.
But to me, it seems like a lot of the alliance supports Israel's own problems, a lot of the issues, and not all of them.
In the Middle East, we would have had, we kind of had because of Israel's stance within the Middle East, the kind of aggressiveness.
They're kind of like, you know, I'd say our bully kid brother beating up on little people.
And when they pick a fight with people who can defend themselves, they call on us and our soldiers to go and die.
I mean, how many children have died in Gaza?
And how many children will die in Lebanon?
And are you proud of your support for that?
Go ahead, Dana.
Thanks for that question.
And thanks for flagging the question about Israeli soldiers killed in action.
So there have not been any soldiers of Israel killed, right, or service members, I should say, because this is mostly an Air Force operation, killed in Iran in this current war.
But Israeli military have been killed recently in Gaza, in Lebanon, and obviously over the course of these years of fighting since October 7th.
Number two, I agree with you, the death of all children is deplorable and terrible.
And one of the real challenges with protecting the lives of children is that the enemies, and by enemies, I mean Iran, Iran supported Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran supported Hamas in Gaza, shield themselves with children in schools, in mosques, in other civilian areas.
And so they're deliberately putting civilians at risk in order to maximize the death and destruction when Israel takes these strikes to get either the weapons, the equipment, or the leaders.
And it's absolutely terrible.
And I wish that all, both enemies, well, I really wish that adversaries would stop using children as human shields.
Bill in South Carolina, Independent Line, you're on.
This me?
Yes, go ahead, Bill.
You're on.
Okay.
I'm a veteran of combat.
I was in Vietnam in 72.
You know, Israel, I think, and Iran are always going to hate each other.
They've been fighting each other for 2,000 years.
But when I see politicians say that Iran is dangerous, of course, and Iran is a rogue country, but they're not an imminent danger.
And we see that they have ICBMs, and they've got 60% enriched uranium, which puts them very close to a bomb.
At what point do we call them a danger, an imminent danger, when they've got a warhead or an ICBM that is nuclear?
You know, Israel cannot protect the world, and Iran is at war with the free world, from what I see.
Okay.
So we're running out of time, but we got your question.
Go ahead.
So, Bill, first of all, I want to thank you for your service to our country.
Second of all, I do not think that Israel and Iran will always hate each other and that it goes back 2,000 years.
In fact, in the time of the Shah, there were relations between the Iranian government and Israel.
And there's actually been multiple examples in the Middle East of political leaders taking huge risks for peace, from Camp David, the Egypt-Israel peace accords, Jordan and Israel, the Abraham Accords about six years ago, the United Arab Emirates in Israel, Bahrain and Israel, Morocco and Israel.
So I actually think that wise political leadership and a proactive vision for economic integration, peace between peoples is possible in the Middle East.
And finally, I think that the challenge right now is that Iran and its activities have always been a threat.
This regime and its activities have been a threat to the United States, to the Middle East, to the world, and that includes Israel.
But the issue of whether there was an imminent threat, which gives President Trump the authority under Article II of the Constitution to go to war like this without coming to Congress and seeking an authorization for the use of military force, is a real issue.
And in my view, we did not hear an articulation of the imminent threat.
You're right about the enriched stockpile of uranium, but one could make the case that there was more time to explore diplomacy or build a coalition before going to war.
Imminent Threat Authority00:03:51
That's Dana Stroll, research director for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former Assistant Defense Secretary for the Middle East during the Biden administration.
Dana, thanks so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me on today.
Joining us next is Clay Siegel of the Centers for the Center for Strategic and International Studies and how energy and oil prices are being impacted by the Iran conflict.
We'll be right back.
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Global Energy Impact00:14:57
Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back to Washington Journal.
Joining us now to talk about the impact on global energy of the Iran conflict is Clay Siegel.
He's Energy and Geopolitical Geopolitics Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Clay, welcome.
Hi, Mimi.
The International Energy Agency said recently, quote, the war in the Middle East is creating the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.
Do you agree with that?
Yes, it's true.
We've never faced a situation where all oil and gas exports from the Middle East Gulf have been paralyzed, even halted for a period of weeks.
Even in the original oil price shock from the early 1970s.
And another big difference then was those countries made a political decision to throttle oil supplies.
And as soon as they were done and reached their political objectives, they just reversed it.
In this case, the threat is, and the consequences from it are a lot more formidable.
First of all, we're talking about 20 million barrels per day of oil.
That's crude oil and refined products like gasoline and jet fuel that are cut off from the world.
And then on the natural gas side, you know, Qatar is a really important exporter to the world, and they produce 10 billion cubic feet per day.
Both of those volumes, the oil volume and the gas volume, happen to both be 20% of the world market for those two commodities.
So this is quite a serious situation with these exports now paralyzed and unable to exit the Gulf with a few exceptions for several weeks now.
So continue then with that, what happens when that oil and gas doesn't flow into the market.
It doesn't get to its destination.
Sure.
So the oil and gas that comes from the Middle East supplies customers all over the world, but the region where the lion's share of these energy exports go is Asia.
It's Japan, which gets 78% of their oil from the region.
Korea, 62%.
China, almost half.
And so those countries have an outsized dependence on the region.
When it stops flowing, they have to draw down inventories, which is basically oil that they have on hand in storage tanks.
And the markets start to perceive that the supply is not going to be flowing from that part of the world.
And eventually the refineries are facing a physical shortage of crude oil.
That's the stuff that they run through the refinery in order to make the fuels.
And when that happens, they have to think about paring back their operation.
We call those run cuts.
And that means that they're going to be producing less fuel.
So that effect is starting to happen already in Asia.
And it's just going to get worse if the Gulf stays closed to exports.
So that's Asia.
Why does it impact the United States?
And why are we almost immediately paying more at the pump?
Great question.
Well, first of all, it does affect countries like the United States and others around the world because oil is a global and fungible, meaning it's largely substitutable commodity.
And there's one global market for it.
And just imagine like one big tank of oil or pool of oil that countries from all over the world take according to their needs.
When there's a supply disruption in one region, it means that because of market forces, the area that's short is going to pull supply from other regions.
For example, in the Atlantic basin and the United States area.
Now you're right that the United States has some advantages that are indemnifying us and protecting us from a larger shock so far because we produce a whole lot of oil and gas right here at home.
Now that can help us in the short term, but it's not going to give us a complete protection from those global forces at work.
You're right that gasoline prices are already moving higher, but they're nowhere near the high watermark that we saw in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine made us fear that we could be losing five, seven million barrels per day.
And famously, we got to the first time $5 a gallon nationwide average.
It was a lot higher in certain states.
So even though we've gone from like about $3 a gallon to $380, it's a noticeable increase, but we're nowhere near kind of that $5 territory that we saw in 2020.
If this continues, will we get to $5?
In your opinion?
Yeah, the fear is if we continue to have most of that oil shut off from the Gulf.
And there are some cargoes that are getting through now, so there's some silver lining here this morning.
But if we still have the lion's share of that oil cut off, I do think that we're probably looking at higher gasoline prices in the months to come.
Some are getting through.
Who's getting through?
How much?
I mean, tell us what's happening in the strait right now.
Here's the state of play.
The state of play is that, and it sounds hard to say this from United States interests perspective, but Iran is in control of the Strait of Hormuz and the larger Middle East Gulf, and it's paralyzed the cargoes that normally move through in order to get to world markets.
That's the reality of the situation.
The United States is working very hard to get those export flows resumed, but it's kind of a high hurdle because the Iranians are approaching it with what we call an asymmetric strategy.
They know that they don't have the Air Force or the missiles or other capabilities that we do by a long shot, but they do have the ability, if they want to keep fighting, to harass shipping, to fire on ships, which we've seen, and to fire on assets, facilities in the region that are so important for loading the ships.
As long as that situation continues, where Iran has the capability to hit the ships and the facilities, and it also wants to keep fighting, this could go on for quite some time.
One of those two things needs to change in order to wrap this conflict up.
If you'd like to join our conversation with Clay Siegel of CSIS about the oil market and the Iran conflict and the impact to oil, you can start giving us a call now.
Democrats are on 2027488000, Republicans 202, 748, 8001, and Independents 202748802.
President Trump has called on other nations to come and defend the Strait of Hormuz, to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
Some nations have already refused that call.
What do you think of that option and will that work?
Well, the sense that we get right now with substantially no countries answering the call and signing up to help is I think there's a feeling in the international community that the United States and Israel initiated this conflict and they are all having to live with the consequences.
And I would surmise that some of those governments of the countries that are not yet pitching in would probably like a return to diplomacy and to see a ceasefire at least being discussed, if not immediately agreed, before putting their assets and their personnel in harm's way.
And so I think that that's probably the general disposition of some of these governments that we've called upon.
In terms of how an escort mission would go, the idea is that these tankers that are carrying oil and gas are basically sitting ducks.
And they need to move through that Strait of Hormuz safely, they need security.
And so they need naval assets like warships to clear the path of mines.
And they need to be on guard for those key Iranian threats in that narrow waterway.
Speedboats, tiny little fast attack craft like gunboats that are very hard to detect sometimes, and then also drones which are flying in from various parts of Iran, in some cases very far inland, and hitting ships in the Gulf.
So we need protection from the drones, protection from anti-ship missiles that are in coastal batteries along Iran's coast, and those mines.
Those are the key threats to watch for in any naval escort operation of the tankers.
So is it possible that the shipping companies say, even if you give us a U.S. Navy escort through the strait, we're not going to risk it?
It is possible.
I want to explain that it's not all or nothing.
And each one of these ship owners and ship operators is making its own independent decision about the safety of its equipment and certainly its people.
And so there won't be like an on-off switch, right, that says that all the traffic is back on or off.
I think that eventually a sense that security, maritime security is being restored in the Gulf and the Strait will give more confidence to ship owners and operators to gradually try things out.
And nothing reinforces success like success.
So when a lot of the ship owners that are stuck see good results and see a few ships getting through under a future naval escort, I think it will be a snowball effect and encourage others to follow.
That's the glass half-full perspective on what could happen here.
So talk about the role of shipping insurance and the impact that that has on the oil markets.
Yeah, this is a really interesting one.
So ships are facing the risk of casualties, whether it's a tragic oil spill or, God forbid, the loss of personnel, of crew.
And so for both the ship and the crew and the cargo, these guys need to be heavily insured against losses.
And of course, the Mideast Gulf was never free of loss, of lost risk, but it multiplied by a huge factor once a hot war broke out in the region.
So the insurers of those ships and their personnel raised the premiums that they all pay.
And one of the initiatives that we're thinking about in Washington is backstopping the reinsurance market for those ships, movements, and cargos in the hopes that that would encourage some of these guys to come back into the market.
The trick, though...
What's the reinsurance?
The reinsurance just basically says that they'll be made whole in the event of a casualty and it's protecting the underwriters, right?
And so the idea is if you give them more confidence that they won't face bankruptcy or severe losses in a claim, that that will encourage the owners to come back into the market.
Here's the problem though.
That's really, so far as we understand it, only helping the insurers against their potential risk.
But what about the buyers of the insurance policy, right?
The ship owners and operators.
Even if the insurer is made whole in the event of a catastrophe, the ship owners don't want to have losses and they certainly don't want to risk their crews.
I mean, I have driver's insurance.
You probably have auto insurance.
But if I know somebody's going to be shooting at me in my car, I'm probably not going to be enthusiastic about getting out there on the road.
I'm going to stay put.
That's the situation that we have today when those ship owners and operators are thinking about the insurance problem.
Let's talk to callers.
We'll start with Alan in Ocala, Florida, Republican.
Good morning, Alan.
Good morning to you all.
My question is, America is basically self-sufficient with oil.
We don't buy from the global market.
We're getting our oil from under our land.
So why is America being charged full price for oil?
We should probably be paying something like $2 a gallon or $1.75 a gallon.
And what we sell to the open market gets charged at market price.
So this caller has a great point.
Let me clarify a couple of important details.
It's true that since the 1970s, when we had that first oil price shock, we are far less dependent on imports of oil to run the United States.
But we are far from completely independent.
We still import several million barrels per day of oil from other countries, a lot less from the Middle East than we used to.
We still get a little bit.
But we import substantially 4 million barrels per day from our neighbor to the north, Canada, which is very important for the efficient running of the refining system in the United States that allows us to have those low gasoline prices that the caller referenced.
So we are less dependent on imports, but we still do import certain kinds of oil, especially heavy, higher sulfur oil, that our refineries are most geared to process.
But it's still, I want to go back to the point that I made in the beginning, we're somewhat indemnified from these global shocks, at least for a short period of time.
But because it's a global commodity and because commodities flow to the areas with supply deficits and higher prices, that's how efficient markets work, it's eventually going to come to our prices as well.
So related to that, Jimbo in California says, does your guest know if the president could outlaw sales of American produced oil from being sold outside the country?
And aren't we the largest producer of oil?
Okay, great question.
So we are the largest producer, but not the largest exporter.
So we produce a little more than 13.5 million barrels per day.
So we are in the number one position.
And the caller is right.
We also export a lot of oil.
The way we're monetizing these tremendous resources in the United States, one of the ways that President Trump refers to when he talks about energy dominance is to make our resources, oil and gas, available to the international market.
So we export about 4 million barrels per day.
It's true that one of the policy accommodations that's being talked about here in town right now is the idea of limiting or potentially even banning those exports of U.S. oil, whether crude or refined products, to our oil companies' customers in the international marketplace.
I think it would be a really bad idea.
I think it would be devastating for the U.S. oil companies.
Why?
Well, because for them to be severed from their international customers means that they can't sell their oil at the right prices.
And that means that there's going to be a glut here.
They would turn down production, and it would take a long time to get that higher again, to get the people back into the oil patch, to turn those wells and those fracking operations back up, and eventually it would cause higher prices here.
I know that sounds counterintuitive today when we're thinking about enough oil in the United States and shortages, but oil goes in cycles, and it's very predictable that if we have an artificial glut that is forced by a government policy, it's going to backfire on consumers and businesses in the United States.
Al in Massachusetts, Independent Line, you're on the air, Al.
Morning.
Morning.
Strategic Petroleum Reserves00:09:40
I'm wondering how in the world my president, I didn't vote for him.
My fellow Americans did, so that makes him my president.
How my president could actually think he could get into a war with Iran.
He keeps saying 47 years.
Okay, let's look at it on the other side of that.
For 47 years, we kept them from having a bomb.
For 47 years, they may have been care rising, but they were not destroying everything.
Now, my president has got me in the middle of something that I have no idea what the outcome is going to be.
And that frightens me.
That frightens me for my children.
Do we want our oceans splattered with oil?
That's just what could happen in the Straits of Hamor.
I know it, you know it.
Thank you, ma'am.
All right, Al.
And the question that a lot of people have is: how long would it take for oil prices and gas prices, more importantly, to consumers, to come down if the Strait were to reopen, if there was a political settlement, let's say the war was over?
Based on what has already happened during the past three weeks, it's going to take a period of many weeks to get back to normal production levels, shipping levels, and then these countries receiving the oil in order to get prices back down to where they were before the war.
And gasoline, I'm afraid I have the bad news.
We say in the business the prices go up like a rocket and down like a feather.
And the gasoline wholesalers who have to pass on those prices to retailers are going to take a while before the crude oil that they purchased at higher prices, that's their feedstock, is normalized.
And so that higher cost that they incurred to get the crude oil at high prices works its way through the system, usually over a period of weeks, sometimes even months.
Let's talk to Bill, Akron, Ohio, Republican.
Hi, Bill.
Hello.
Yeah, I have a question for the gentleman that's talking right now.
We understand the situation that we're in.
Do we have somebody that may come up with a solution?
It's kind of blackmailed, basically, is what Iran is using on us.
And so far, we're up against the wall.
It's the devil or the deep blue sea.
So we need to, as a country, understand we prefer the oil as opposed to a nuclear bomb.
But that's not our decision to make.
That's the decision that has to come from Iran and agree with us in the Western world that we prefer the oil, but what are our choices?
That if we open up this Hormonal Strait.
Yeah, the Strait.
If we're to open that up to let the oil flow again, it will benefit their country plus the Middle East because of the money they get.
Or we can do, like has been done before, just get pallets full of American money and give it to them.
All right.
The caller makes a great point, which is Iran also has a huge stake in getting energy exports restored from the Gulf and through the Strait because their economy largely depends on their own oil exports, which were about a million and a half barrels per day before this conflict started.
Now Iran in control of the Gulf and the Strait is allowing some of its own oil cargoes to get to its customers, which is primarily China in recent years.
But the idea is eventually we are going to get to a political settlement that is amenable to both sides.
I don't know how long that's going to take, but when it does, it has to restore confidence in export flows, both for the international community, those Arab Gulf producers that produce the lion's share of that energy, and also Iran.
That's the ultimate outcome here.
Going back, though, to the winners and losers in this, who is benefiting from the closure of the strait?
One word, Russia.
Russia has been facing a lot of adversity now that we've observed the four-year anniversary of its war on Ukraine.
And during that time, the international community, including Washington, have imposed sanctions on Russian oil, which has reduced the price of oil that Russia gets for its oil sales.
And that helps to limit Putin's options in perpetuating that war on Ukraine.
But now that the Middle East oil has been largely cut off from the Gulf, we are undertaking a program of waivers to make some Russian oil available to the international marketplace to offset this supply disruption and substitute for the Middle Eastern oil.
It's only being done in a limited capacity right now for this oil that's already kind of parked on ships at sea.
But the direction of travel is to alleviate pressure on Russia through its oil prices.
That's one big win for Putin here.
Another big win is we are going through so much of our high-quality ammunition and munitions in this war, like air defenses.
That means less available for NATO in the service of defending Ukraine.
So on both counts.
So about how much can Russia make from just from the sanctions being eased?
Well, it has the potential to make, I mean, billions of dollars over the course of months.
It depends on the duration of this outage.
Whenever we look at a supply disruption, the winners and losers are determined from two factors.
The volume that's disrupted and the duration of the conflict.
It's just a multiplication problem.
So I would surmise that in Moscow right now, planners are thinking how much higher prices for their key crude oil can endure, enabling them to kind of backstop the budget deficits that they've had because of all of the expenditures on Ukraine.
Line for Democrats in New Mexico.
Charles, you're on the air.
Yes.
This is about global impact on the energy market.
Yes, go right ahead.
This is all Trump's doing.
This is a war of choice by him.
I think Israel and Russia's got something against them, so he will do whatever Russia wants.
All right.
And this is Robert in Salem, Missouri, Republican line.
Good morning, Robert.
Good morning.
I had a question for your guests about the flow of oil into Asia.
Is China a backer of Iran?
And if so, why are they not putting pressure on Iran to open up the straits to get the flow of oil to their country?
Thank you.
Well, it's a great question.
And we don't know that China is not applying that kind of pressure on Tehran to try to wrap things up or at least make some more exports from the Gulf accessible to their market.
I said before China has an outsized dependence on this region.
China imports about 11 million barrels per day from countries all over the world and about half of it from this region.
So they must in Beijing be really concerned about a supply disruption from the Gulf and look for creative ways to bring it to an end quickly.
In the meantime, it seems like maybe China has worked out some kind of arrangement that's allowing, that's motivating Iran to allow some of these Iranian shipments to get out of the Gulf.
And I think that that's a trend that we're going to see if this supply outage continues, specific countries going on a one-to-one basis to Tehran and trying to negotiate side deals to protect their flow of energy from the region and get it started again.
Let's talk about the strategic petroleum reserves.
Can you tell us first the history of that?
Where did it come from originally?
Sure.
So the SPR, as we call it, was created in the wake of that first big oil and energy price crisis in the 1970s.
And policymakers here decided that we needed to hold a certain amount of reserves just in case there was another supply disruption so that the markets could be insulated against that kind of shock.
And this was in the context of an international decision, the creation of the International Energy Agency, which is based in Paris.
It's an organization of basically the OECD countries of the world to agree to hold these reserves and to coordinate their release in case there's a big disruption.
The SPR has been used a few different times, maybe a half dozen times over history, everything from disruptions in the United States caused by hurricanes to get extra oil to the refineries, and also in the case of geopolitical disruptions like in the Middle East.
The largest drawdown from the strategic reserves took place in 2022 under the Biden administration, 180 million barrels.
And that's the reason why it's only at about 60% of its capacity right now, around 415 million barrels.
So that's the quick background on the SPR.
So why hasn't it been completely replenished?
Middle East Oil Supply00:16:16
Another great question.
Because the bigger the cushion, the more insurance you have against the supply disruption.
The problem, though, is it's designed to draw down and deliver the oil to industry quickly in the event of a crisis.
But the plumbing is not designed to refill quickly.
It would be great if you could bring oil in during good times and low prices at the same rate that you draw it down during a crisis.
But that's not how it was designed and it's not how it works.
And that means even though both President Biden and President Trump have made efforts to gradually refill the reserve, it's just kind of moving at a snail's pace when you try to refill.
So going back to that the energy crisis of 1973, some of our audience will remember the long lines.
Is that where we're heading?
The lines, there's no gas left for you to fill up your car.
Is that possible now?
It's possible, but that's not my base case expectation.
I don't think that we're looking at long queues or lines to fill up our cars at gasoline stations, unless in certain cases that is motivated by consumers that are kind of getting panicked, maybe about if they hear about a supply shortage in a certain region, like a certain city, or hear rumors that prices might be spiking soon, that might send people to the pumps to try to fill up.
But in terms of the United States not having enough gasoline on hand to fuel people's cars, I don't think we're facing that anytime soon.
Let's talk to Miriam in Farr, Texas, Democrat.
Hi, Miriam.
Yes, hi.
I don't know.
It's just so interesting because we're the most powerful nation.
We have the most smartest people in our military.
And I don't understand why they did not foresee this issue.
It's weird because nobody saw that coming.
And now that we have bombed Iran, now it's like it's come to light the powerful leverage that they have over the whole world.
And we had not realized that, and now we realized it because of the war.
And that's just really, really interesting because now we're like scrambling to figure out what we're going to do to like stabilize the energy productions of the world.
And so I think that that was really stupid of us, of us Americans, or at least the leadership here in the USA, of not having to foresee that issue.
I mean, what the hell?
We're spending like a trillion a year, and we have the most smartest people in the military, and they could not foresee that.
All right.
What do you think, Clay?
Well, it's not the case that no one foresaw a situation like this.
If you'll permit me, the center did publish a report before the war back on February 18th that said, if Trump strikes Iran, mapping the oil disruption scenarios.
And we're in the business of looking ahead to see what could happen to affect our interests in a case like that.
We did look at the risks for shipping as well as the facilities that are coming under attack.
You know, the conundrum that we have now that the kind of the genie is out of the box is how to restore stability in the region.
But I think Miriam's point was nobody in the administration seems to have foreseen this and prepared the American people.
You know, President Trump did prepare the American people in his video message saying there will be casualties, and that's that happens in wars.
He didn't say anything about the disruption to the oil market.
Do you think that he maybe he should have and prepared the American people for this?
Well, I mean, you know, that's a subjective, maybe political decision.
I think that the president was, I think, according to reporting right now, he has conceded that the level of fighting back by Iran, which includes these strikes on energy-carrying ships and facilities, was not anticipated.
And thought that they, with such an overwhelming attack by the United States forces, the Israeli forces, that they would basically roll Iran and the regime was likely to fall.
I think maybe it was influenced by the quick military success in Venezuela and maybe the uprising recently that we saw in Iran that tragically was put down by the regime forces there.
That these people, as soon as they saw forces coming to the rescue, I think was the president's term, that things would turn for the better in Iran.
But sometimes the best battle plan doesn't survive first contact with the enemy.
That may be a case here.
Let's talk to Brad, International Falls, Minnesota, Republican.
Good morning.
You're on with Clay Siegel.
Yeah, good morning.
The very first thing I happen to turn on the TV today, and I'm hearing him talk about the oil reserves.
There's never been a president, never, other than Joe Biden, that pushed down the oil reserves that we had by like 180 million barrels.
So it isn't like, well, all the presidents are doing it and this and that.
Uh-uh, that's not how it works.
Joe Biden, he's the problem or was the problem.
And then when we're talking about, you know, how the war is going, I mean, you people don't have enough sense that that isn't what you should be even talking about in today's world.
And I just think that there's something wrong with Democrats.
So very good.
Thank you.
Goodbye.
Well, that 180 million barrel drawdown was quite significant.
And, you know, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has become something of a political football here in town.
Both sides kind of accuse the other of being poor stewards, bad managers of the system.
But kind of what comes around goes around, and every president and administration wants to have an effective cushion against an energy supply disruption.
We still have a potent strategic petroleum reserve now, and over the next few months, we're going to see it put to the test to deliver for the American people.
Terry in Florida, Democrat, you're on.
Oh, we lost Terry.
This is what Lynn says in Massachusetts.
She says, I agree with Germany.
This is not NATO's war.
This is Trump's war.
And Sue in New Jersey said, if the new regime in Iran is worse than the last, how can we expect conditions to improve?
How will our relationship change?
What are you looking at, Clay?
What are you going to be watching on this topic?
Well, one of the most important things to watch for, I think, is the fate of this Islamic Republic of Iran regime.
Quite a few of its leaders have been eliminated in recent days.
I understand another one potentially even today.
And so whether the regime survives in its current form is a really important item to watch.
Because if it, so on the plus side, if they are still there and they want to eventually negotiate a way out of this, it's good to have a counterparty to negotiate with.
And it seems like the Iranian regime has already outlined several points that it wants to get in any ceasefire, including security guarantees, including the withdrawal of U.S. forces, compensation for what's happened here.
And so at least we have a counterparty to negotiate with.
If the regime is gone and things start to fragment in Tehran, or even worse than that, start to fragment throughout the geography of Iran into certain regions and maybe strong men calling the shots in certain parts of Iran, like the oil-producing provinces versus the others, I think it becomes a lot more complicated for us to promote our interests.
All right, that's Clay Siegel, Energy and Geopolitics Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
His work is at csis.org.
Clay, thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you, Mimi.
And coming up next, it's Open Forum.
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Welcome back.
It is Open Forum.
Looking forward to hearing what is on your mind this morning.
A couple of things for your schedule at 10 a.m.
So, right after this program, 10 Eastern military officials will be testifying before the House Armed Services Committee on the U.S. military presence in North and South America and challenges faced in the hemisphere and the military budget.
That's at 10.
That's over on C-SPAN 3.
And then at 3:30 Eastern, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Richard Corell, and the Commander of U.S. Space Command, Stephen Whiting, will testify on the posture of strategic forces next year as Congress considers funding for the Defense Department.
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Well, this is Mark in Aspury Park, New Jersey, Republican.
Mark.
Hi, everyone.
Hi.
Hi, Mimi.
Your last guest was great.
He gave some real good information to a lot of people.
But I was just wondering, with all our Arab partners that are over in the Middle East right now and all this oil that's supposedly not going around, Most of those Arab partners are wanting it to happen and want America to help it happen.
I don't think Iran has too many friends anymore, and I think it's going to open up within two or three weeks, and gas will be starting to come down, except in California, where there's 85 cents tax on a gallon.
I think people in America should start looking at all these things that are taxed extra on top of what the price of gasoline that we're paying.
And that's about all I can say.
Are you saying, Mark, that Iran is incentivized to reopen the strait because they don't have a lot of friends left?
What was your point on that?
A lot of their old friends are not their friends anymore.
And I think they're the ones that are losing the money too, also, not just Iran.
Iran might not even be able to pump out any more oil within the next couple of days.
So we'll find out what happens.
I hope everyone.
All right.
Let's talk to Homer in Louisiana, line for Democrats.
Yes, thank you for accepting my call.
I wasn't aware was reached instant the other day when the still started, we were charged to start charging the gas, but it cropped up within a matter of minutes.
And so I wonder why, sound like to me, it's just greed.
They just pop it up.
It wasn't really necessary.
You give us a little time anyway for it to reach.
I just don't understand.
And then, furthermore, all in all, I'm 87 years old.
But this didn't go all the way back to them killing unions 31 years ago.
They go to sit everything on seas to fight the unions here in America.
That's where the problem started.
And thank you for letting me express myself.
All right, Homer.
Jeffeth in Bronx, New York, Independent, you're on Open Forum.
Yes, thank you for hearing me.
I just want to ask the gentleman there that you have, does he know about the powers that rule this earth?
What do you mean, Jeffeth?
I'm talking about the Persianites and the Medonites and the Romanites.
Okay.
Yeah, this is Persia.
Stephen, Internet in New York, Republican, you're on the air.
There's a third of this country that will support Donald Trump no matter what.
There's a third of this country that will support the liberal agenda no matter how far.
There's a third of this country also, like myself, who believe in legal immigration, but we don't believe ICE should be killing American citizens.
We believe in gay rights, but, you know, the trans thing, that should be between them and their doctor.
But the third of the country that will stand with Donald Trump no matter what he does, when they say the enemy is at the gate, they never say what side.
That's the enemy at the gate, and they're on the inside.
And I think there should be an investigative reporter tracking crypto accounts to see how much money was paid to Donald Trump by the Saudi and Israel to use the American military as a mercenary group.
Thank you.
Let's hear from President Trump.
He gave these remarks just before an event at the Kennedy Center yesterday.
We strongly encourage other nations whose economies depend on the strait far more than ours.
You know, we get less than 1% of our oil from the strait.
And some countries get much more.
Japan gets 95%.
China gets 90%.
Many of the Europeans get quite a bit.
South Korea gets 35%.
So we want them to come and help us with the strait.
We have it in very good shape.
The countries, I said, we've already taken care of Iran, but now because of the fact that literally a single terrorist can put something in the water or shoot something or shoot a missile, a small missile, and it's fairly close range because it is a tight area, which is one of the reasons they've always used that as a weapon.
Iran has always used that as an economic weapon, and it's not going to be able to be used very long.
International Response Concerns00:02:46
Numerous countries have told me they're on the way.
Some are very enthusiastic about it, and some aren't.
Some are countries that we've helped for many, many years.
We've protected them from horrible outside sources.
And they weren't that enthusiastic.
And the level of enthusiasm matters to me.
We have some countries where we have 45,000 soldiers, great soldiers, protecting them from harm's way.
And we have done a great job.
And when we want to know, do you have any minesweepers?
Well, would rather not get involved, sir.
I said, you mean for 40 years we're protecting you and you don't want to get involved in something that is very minor, very few shots going to be taken because they don't have many shots left.
But they sort of would rather not get involved.
I just want the fake news media and everybody else to remember that that was said because when I've been a big critic of all of the protecting of countries because I know that we'll protect them and if ever needed, if we ever needed help, they won't be there for us.
I've just known that for a long period of time.
That was President Trump yesterday.
And this is Catherine, a Democrat in Battleboro, Vermont.
Hi, Catherine.
Good morning.
I just want to respond briefly to what President Trump just said in that clip that you aired.
I mean, the fact of the matter is that our allies have bled in every war we have waged since 1947.
So his grievance that, you know, they don't ever protect us is just, I mean, you know, it's pretty clear.
He has a kind of complex that we have been, you know, we have been taken advantage of, and it just doesn't line up with the facts.
I mean, I think in terms of the response of the Allies now, it's worth pointing out that in April of 2025, which he declared Liberation Day, he kind of said we were going to break free, you know, from the international order, basically, the global order, that we didn't, you know, we didn't need other countries, that they'd been ripping us off, and we were going to now start tariffing them.
And so I don't think he has responded with respect to our allies in recent, since he was re-elected.
So, I mean, I think that's, we have to think about that as part of the mix of how countries are responding to us.
Undocumented Voting Claims00:02:24
But I wanted to comment briefly on the SAVE Act, and that is that the problem of undocumented immigrants voting in elections is pretty minuscule.
I think it was the Heritage Foundation that did a study and found 100 cases in multiple years, which kind of makes sense because if you're undocumented, are you really going to risk voting?
I mean, it doesn't even make sense that that would happen.
And the final thing I want to ask, and I really have not been able to get clarity about this, but I have heard that the SAVE Act has provisions relating to federal access to state voter rolls.
And to me, that's where the real potential problem comes in.
Yes, as the caller before said, you know, it is possible to get a birth certificate.
That's not an impossible thing.
It is an additional step that might deter people from doing that, or a passport, which is more expensive than $10.
But if the federal government can, you know, purge the voter rolls at the last minute, they could take people off the rolls without enough time to actually get the documents that they would need to re-register before an election.
So the idea of the federal government having access to state voter rolls and being able to clean up state voter rolls is really a frightening prospect, I think, for the safety and security of our elections.
And I would also, I don't know if you've played the clip of President Trump promising Republicans at their meeting recently that if they pass the SAVE Act, they will absolutely win the midterms and they will win by a landslide in 2028.
So he's, you know, really, and other Republicans have said this too.
They think that passing this act will give them an electoral advantage.
But they haven't really explained why that would be the case because we know that there aren't scores of undocumented citizens who, I mean, not undocumented immigrants who would vote for Democrats voting in elections and tipping, turning elections to Democrats' favor.
Rural Homelessness Crisis00:04:57
So I. All right, Catherine.
I got to move on.
So we're going to go to Alexander, Yorktown, Indiana, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Good morning.
So as a high school student living in a rural community, I find myself frustrated seeing the homeless population because a lot of the safety nets that were previously in place were basically gutted.
And I'm not saying like, oh, I hate seeing homeless people.
I'm saying it sucks that they're in like such a place where they don't have like the safety net to be put into a place where they could get proper help.
You said you're a high school student, Alexander.
What grade are you in?
Senior.
You're a senior, and what are your plans for after you graduate?
After I graduate, I plan to study computer engineering at the University of Maine.
And you're calling today over the homeless issue in the United States?
Yeah, and how there's a lack of proper safety net for them.
Is that a big problem where you are in Yorktown?
Yeah, I'm a biker.
Yeah, sorry, I'm a bit nervous.
No, it's okay.
I'm a biker, and riding along the river, I saw about like 10 homeless people.
And it sucks that they don't have a place to go.
And in Indiana, it's currently like 16 degrees right now.
All right.
Appreciate you calling in, Alexander, and good luck next year.
Scott, Marietta, Georgia, Republican, you're on the air.
Hi, I think that what people are not looking at properly is the reality of what Iran having a nuclear bomb could be.
Iran doesn't have to develop ballistic missile delivery capability.
Everyone knows that a missile launcher can be built into a container and shipped to the USA on a cargo ship.
So Iran could take out San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C. from short distances from a cargo ship with containers.
That would be a loss of probably 40 million Americans and would basically devastate the country.
Why aren't people talking?
No one has mentioned the details and the absolute horror of Iran being able to launch a nuclear capability.
All right, Scott.
And the UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer spoke yesterday about the conflict in the Middle East and his country.
The conflict in Iran and across the Middle East is now entering its third week.
So I want to take a moment to set out how we're responding to this crisis and standing up for the British people.
Our priority is always the national interest.
And so we have been clear and consistent in our objectives throughout this conflict.
First, we will protect our people in the region.
Second, while taking the necessary action to defend ourselves and our allies, we will not be drawn into the wider war.
And third, we will keep working towards a swift resolution that brings security and stability back to the region and stops the Iranian threat to its neighbors.
I want to see an end to this war as quickly as possible because the longer it goes on, the more dangerous the situation becomes and the worse it is for the cost of living back here at home.
That was the UK Prime Minister.
Rhonda, Kansas City, Missouri, Democrat, you're on Open Forum.
Good morning.
My name is Rhonda, and I would like to address a few things.
And I'm going to try to do it in an organized manner to not be wasteful of your time.
The war in Iran is totally poor planning on our part.
They're just saying poor planning on your part will not create a crisis online.
That's all the other countries are saying, is that we didn't include them into any of the planning.
We acted like we were all do it all by ourselves.
So they're saying, go ahead and be what you are.
And then I also wanted to address the fact that cheating, oh my God, how do we keep ignoring that what Donald Trump is laying out is straight out cheating for the voters.
Poor War Planning00:05:38
And he tried that with gerrymandering in California.
And look what happened.
I mean, in Texas, and look what happened in California.
We responded.
Quit acting like we're stupid and we're going to go along with everything that he wants.
I mean, basically, all civics are being ignored.
All laws are being ignored under this administration.
We have a president who's been convicted for 34 felonies.
Under his representation, I think all felons ought to be given a lift.
He let all of the criminals who get to January 6th walk free.
I think considering that our president is the highest convicted person that I know and that I don't know, that he ought to let all the felons free.
And I'm going to wrap this up real quick because I definitely don't see anything wrong.
And I know this might not be popular with other countries defending themselves.
For us to believe that wars are anything other but devastating other than and that they're totally expensive is just ridiculous on our part.
I thank you for giving me a tarot.
All right, Rhonda.
Steve is an independent in Indiana.
Good morning.
Yeah, good morning.
I just want to comment on, well, the Middle East first.
NATO and the United Nations.
Apparently, all they see is America as a piggyback.
As far as the price of gasoline, the price is logistic.
Americans are about a third grade level understanding oil industry and spot markets and very confusing to them.
And finally, why the networks, the media, give Schumer, and of course, Trump, it's not an equal battle.
Americans need to understand on their own that it's all about public relations, and elections are so far away that it won't even matter what's going on right now, because Americans have the, they don't study things enough and their attention levels are not any higher than their dogs.
So what are you saying is not going to matter for the elections?
That, because it's so far away, this war right now will both.
And do you think Steve, if the price of gas is still high or even higher by then, it it could impact the elections?
Well, look at it.
We, we have a summer, we have a celebration of 250 years.
This war will be long over.
The politicians are setting up, it's an election year and Americans attention span is not that long because they're constantly being dealt falsehoods by both sides of the political spectrum.
In the media it look, people have their lives to live.
You know they laugh at Trump and they look at guys like Schumer as buffoons.
So it's not hard.
It's hard to understand economics.
I mean, like I said, it's logistics.
It's not the price of gasoline, all right.
And this is the latest on the war in Iran.
This is from NBC NEWS that Israel says it killed Iran security chief Ali Larijani.
It says Iran did not immediately confirm Larry Johnny's killing.
Tehran also did not confirm Israel's claim to have killed Soleimani, the head of the Basage military used to suppress protests.
That's at NBC NEWS.
Debbie Huntington Beach California, Republican.
Good morning, good morning.
Yes, I wanted to talk about the voting issue.
This isn't the first time it came up.
Back in 2008, I believe, there was talk of voter fraud, And so I took the time off of work to go and work the polls, just so I could see for myself.
I think there were some very small gaps where people could take advantage of.
But also, we have to remember that we are setting the example for the world.
And I think that we have to try and make sure that our voting is as secure as possible to set that example.
And also, my mom lived with me at the last years of her life.
She died over 25 years ago.
This last year, I received a letter from the voting registrar asking if she moved.
Now, there's just no reason that they shouldn't have figured out before now that she had passed away.
You know, Social Security figures it out, everybody else figures it out.
So it's not being taken care of properly.
And this is the most important responsibility as a citizen is voting.
So that's why I do think it is very important.
Also, yeah, I am very saddened by the war.
We were told no new wars, but unfortunately we have this situation.
And also, I am very thankful for C-SPAN.
I'm thankful, you know, for our free speech that our forefathers thought of.
You know, we have people out there like Elon Tucker who are pushing for free speech issues.
And I think we have to really remember how we got here.
Senate Seat Race00:04:36
And we hopefully, you know, can make us last another 250 years.
All right, Debbie.
And we're going to just pause on the calls for a few minutes because it is a big day in Illinois.
There's a primary going on.
And so we're going to talk to Chicago Tribune reporter Robert McCoppin.
Robert, welcome.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Thanks for having me.
All right.
So it's Senate, House, and Governor's Races, primaries going on today.
Let's start with the Senate.
Tell us what's going on.
Well, Dick Durbin is retiring.
So there's a rare opening in the Senate seat in Illinois.
And so we have three primary candidates: Raja Krishna Murthy and Juliana, who is a congressman here, and Juliana Stratton, who's a deputy lieutenant governor, and Robin Kelly, Congressperson.
So there's been a lot of back and forth between those candidates.
What are polls telling you about who could win it?
Well, Krishna Murthy and Stratton seem to be leading the polls, but there's just been a recent mini controversy over an endorsement by the late Jesse Jackson because Juliana Stratton had claimed the endorsement of Jesse Jackson, who recently died, of course.
But then the family came out and said, no, we're not endorsing anybody.
That was just a draft endorsement that was never supposed to go out.
So that's been kind of a late-breaking development.
But all the candidates have been flooding the TV with commercials on their own behalf.
And what about Representative Robin Kelly, also in that race?
Could she be seen as a disruptor?
Where do you see that going?
Yeah, she could be.
Certainly.
I mean, she's Promising to fight like hell for voters.
And she's a longtime congressperson from Chicago and the South suburbs.
So she has a good base.
So yeah, there's no telling which way that could go.
So with Representative Christian McMurthy vying for a spot in the Senate, his seat is up for grabs, too.
What can you tell us about the candidates running for the 8th District?
Right.
So Melissa Bean is back.
She was a member of Congress for three terms back in the 2000s.
She had defeated a longtime Republican incumbent Phil Crane, if you remember him.
And she held office for three terms before she was upset by Joe Walsh in a red wave back in 2010, I believe.
And she blamed her defeat on voting for Obamacare.
She had helped vote to pass the Affordable Care Act.
And the Republicans came in after that.
But she is also accused of being Wall Street's favorite Democrat because she since went to work for J.P. Morgan Chase and Mesarow wealth advisors.
And she had also, she had created, helped to create the Dodd-Frank Act, which created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
So she has been attacked by a progressive candidate.
These are the Democratic primaries, of course, that will, for the most part, decide these races.
And she's been attacked by the more progressive candidate, Junaid Ahmed, for accepting, for being one of several candidates in Illinois who has been getting funding from APAC or getting commercials from APAC for their campaigns.
Millions of dollars.
There's been $60 million.
The Tribune reported, my fellow Tribune reporters, Jake Sheridan and Olivia Olander, reported about $60 million in outside money pouring in to Illinois for these races.
And finally, Governor Pritzker is running for a third term.
Progressive Primary Attacks00:08:32
What can you tell us about that?
Well, he is going to win the Democratic primary, obviously.
And there's several Republicans who are competing for the chance to face him in November.
And the leading candidate is Darren Bailey, who ran against Pritzker four years ago and lost by a big margin.
So that's a tough uphill climb for the Republicans now in Illinois, which used to be, used to have Republican governors, but has become much more blue, of course, in recent years.
All right.
That's Robert McCoppin, reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
You can find his articles at chicagotribune.com.
Thanks so much for joining us, Robert.
Thank you.
And it's back to Open Forum and our calls until the end of the hour when the House comes in.
By the way, the Senate also comes in at 10 a.m.
That's over on C-SPAN 2.
If you're interested in the Save America Act, that will be discussed.
That's on the schedule for them to discuss today.
Bill in Maryland, Democrat, you're on the air.
Yes, good morning, and thank you.
I was just recently listening to, looking at YouTube, I guess, some presentation that form, I don't know when it came on, but I mean when it was posted, but I saw it last night from former President Clinton.
And he presented a fairly clear analytical perspective concerning the situation in the Middle East.
And also he gave possible, I think, about three or four different possible solutions.
And the thing that I found very fascinating about this, it was not with any toxicity.
And you might say, well, he's just trying to make the president, the president administration look bad.
I didn't think that.
I think even though he may not have reached out to the present administration, I think he was trying to play it out in the public and let the U.S. citizens see what's happening.
But I think it just seemed like to me that it would be something that if we could, if former President Clinton and the president administration can sit down and see if they can iron out some possible things that might be able to work as a solution, I think that would be great.
I mean, we have so much division, you know, in our country now.
And it would be great if something like this could happen.
I think it would be very good on the part of President Trump to be receptive, to at least consider looking over it behind closed doors or however you want to do it.
But it sounds very impressive to me after looking at all that we say.
All right.
Thank you so much for letting me share.
All right.
And this is Jason, Independent, in Springfield, Oregon.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I wanted to talk about mail-in voting.
Trump's been saying so often, I've heard him say, that no other country has mail-in voting.
There's at least, I think, 34 that I've researched and found out, and it's fairly common practice, including like Germany and New Zealand.
And I just would like to encourage people to fact check just about everything he says because sometimes they feel like he just goes off the cuff in what he thinks and presents it as fact.
All right, Jason, let's talk to Brian next, Republican in Pennsylvania.
Hi, Brian.
Hey, how you doing?
I'm not actually a Republican.
I just called him on this one.
No, no, no, no.
You got to call on the right line, Brian.
So we keep it fair.
Leon in Dallas, Texas, Democrat.
Go ahead, Leon.
Yeah, I wanted to mention and talk about how I'm listening to some of these Republican and Independent callers blame Biden for the war.
And it's an example of how misinformed, uneducated, and not smart they are, not overlooking the obvious and trying to blame it on a previous president.
That's why the world is in chaos now, because Trump's supporters have no concept of reality.
They believe anything he says, and he uses that to put himself in a position to where he implements these policies, which are going to draw our young men and women into a war.
When I listen to Keir Stahmer, on the other hand, he's a more pragmatic leader who governs for the people as opposed to himself.
And if we continue down this path, we're going to run into another Iraq, another Vietnam.
And we don't need that kind of issue, especially when you tell the American people that you're going to end all the wars, you're going to lower inflation, and you do the exact opposite.
All right, Leon.
Pat is up next in Miami, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Hi, good morning.
I have four quick things, if you will allow me.
Number one is because it hasn't been in the news in a while, we've forgotten that part of this war is being paid for by a gift of a 747 to Trump.
Number two, real quick, is regarding voting.
You had a previous caller calling saying that Gavin Newsom passed something that you didn't have to show voter ID.
And for clarification, he passed something like that relating to local elections where they would not go and change already standing laws for the state.
Number three is Cuba.
And I heard something bone-chilling, which we're familiar with by now, where Trump says that Cuba is there for the taking if he wants to.
Not because it's needed, but because if he wants to.
And the last thing again with voting roll, you had a previous caller that says that she had a problem with federal access to the voting roles.
I totally agree with her.
It should be kept separate.
Thank you so much.
All right, Pat.
Let's talk to Rick.
Sorry, Rick in Coat Kill, New York, Independent Line.
Hello.
Thanks for taking my call.
Just a few things.
First, I want to thank God for our allies telling Trump what to do and where to go.
He should have contacted them and planned as all other presidents did before military activities with them.
I'd like to ask anybody out there if they understand that the price rising in our gas pumps three days after bombs were dropping has no relation to the oil that was blown up or the Straits of Vermuz or anything else.
This was simply price gouging.
And Trump could sign an executive order prohibiting that and making that a problem immediately.
And I also want to throw out thank you to the past caller talking about getting all the getting some input from past presidents.
Of course, they'd have to do that without Trump because Trump would never take advice from another president, especially Democratic presidents.
But even if they got together by themselves and came up with a plan or several plans on how to help, they're smart enough to get that information to him without him taking a beating with his ego.
Thank you for listening.
All right, Rick.
And previous caller mentioned Cuba.
This is the Associated Press that says an island-wide blackout hits Cuba as it struggles with deepening energy crisis.
House Communication Order00:00:17
And that's it for us today.
Here is the House.
We'll see you again tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.
The House will come to order.
The chair lays before the House a communication from the Speaker.
The Speaker's Rooms, Washington, D.C., March 17, 2026.