Jane Fonda, Keith Ellison, and Bruce Springsteen rallied at a No Kings protest in St. Paul while the Senate passed DHS funding excluding ICE amid accusations of a "rogue militia." Republicans cite 84 days of shutdowns, yet Democrats reject further aid without reforms following the murders of Renee Good and Alex Predty. Meanwhile, President Trump claims Iran is "begging to deal" and pauses energy plant destruction for ten days despite conflicting reports, even as 18,000 strikes cost the U.S. up to $2.9 billion. Callers debate whether this strategy constitutes a "big con" or spiritual warfare, while Marco Rubio urges G7 allies to secure the Strait of Hormuz. Ultimately, the episode highlights deep partisan gridlock and skepticism regarding the administration's diplomatic maneuvers amidst escalating global tensions. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Democrats Move Goalposts on Deal00:05:22
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You can follow updates from lawmakers and action on the House floor when members return here on C-SPAN.
Saturday, actor Jane Fonda and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison joined singer Bruce Springsteen and other celebrities, activists, and elected officials to speak at the No Kings protest against President Trump in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Similar protests are being held around the country.
Watch our live coverage starting at 3 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, and online at c-SPAN.org.
In the wake of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Predty, Senate Democrats were clear.
No blank check for a lawless ICE and border patrol.
This long-overdue agreement funds TSA, the Coast Guard, FEMA, CISA, strengthens security at the border and the ports of entry, and keeps Americans safe.
This could have been accomplished weeks ago if Republicans hadn't stood in the way.
Democrats held firm in our opposition that Donald Trump's rogue and deadly militia should not get more funding without serious reforms, and we will continue to fight for those reforms.
I'm very proud of our Democratic caucus.
Throughout it all, Senate Democrats stood united, no wavering, no backing down.
The government's been shut down in whole or in part by Senate Democrats.
And for what, Mr. President?
For what?
In October, Democrats shut down the entire federal government for a record-breaking 43 days because they couldn't bring themselves to accept a clean, nonpartisan funding extension.
The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down now for an additional 41 days since mid-February because Democrats couldn't take yes for an answer.
They wanted reforms to immigrations and custom enforcement, and Republicans offered to give that to them.
The White House made offer after offer, putting forward a robust list of additional reforms.
The two party leaders in the Senate earlier this morning framing the debate in their own way.
This morning, we're going to get your reaction to the Senate approving this funding for DHS, along with the latest on the war with Iran.
Start dialing in, and we'll get to your thoughts here in just a minute.
Politico this morning frames it this way.
After two months of unyielding negotiations, both parties gave up early Friday on reaching a grand accord to reform and fund the Department of Homeland Security.
Instead, Republicans accepted what Democrats have been offering for weeks.
Cash for all of DHS except for ICE and parts of customs and border protection.
While now the two sides have been negotiating for weeks, pressure has been building on Washington as those TSA lines, airport security lines, have grown longer and longer.
Before this vote took place, President Trump announced that he would sign by executive order money to pay the TSA agents amid this shutdown.
The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, which oversees how money is spent, federal money is spent, had this to say.
If the White House believes they have the authority to pay these workers, then every day for the past 41 days, they have been making a conscious decision not to pay them.
The administration must provide an explanation as to what funding, wrote Congresswoman DeLoro, it is using to pay these workers after falsely claiming it could not do so.
The president held a cabinet meeting yesterday for 90 minutes, making news on several fronts, including the latest with Iran.
Here's the president meeting with his cabinet, insisting that Iran is begging to make a deal.
Just so we set the record straight, because I've been watching the Wall Street Journal's fake news and all these stories that get printed like, oh, I want to make a deal.
They are begging to make a deal, not me.
They're begging to make a deal.
And anybody that saw what was happening over there would understand why they want to make a deal.
Following that cabinet meeting, the president around 4.15 p.m. Eastern Time yesterday posted on Truth Social, as per Iranian government request, please let this statement serve to represent that I am pausing the period of energy plant destruction by 10 days to Monday, April 6th at 8 p.m. Eastern Time.
Talks are ongoing, and despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the fake news media and others, they are going very well.
The president had given Iran a 48-hour deadline and then extended it.
The Wall Street Journal reports this morning, Iran hasn't requested a pause on energy site strikes, according to the mediators there.
There's also this headline from the Wall Street Journal.
The Middle East conflict drags NASDAQ into correction territory.
The stocks fell, set up the Dow Industrials for the worst month since 2022.
The New York Times this morning, Trump extends the Iran deadline as the Strait of Hormuz on the Strait of Hormuz as stocks tumble.
From the New York Times reporting, after a day of escalating threats against Iran to negotiate an end to the war, President Trump said on Thursday afternoon that he would extend by 10 days a deadline for Tehran to open up the Strait of Hormuz.
The President's remarks, which came as financial markets in the United States convulsed with stocks on Wall Street seeing their steepest daily decline at the close since the start of the war, were a marked change in tone.
On a day when Israel said it had killed an Iranian naval commander who played a pivotal role in effectively shutting down the Strait of Formus, Mr. Trump started the day by saying Tehran must negotiate or we'll keep blowing them away.
But by late afternoon, the president said on social media that the talks were going very well.
He said that his postponement of the deadline to open up the strait had come as a result of an Iranian government request and that the new deadline was April 6th at 8 p.m.
The president first made the threat against Iran to open the strait on Saturday, saying he would destroy its power plants if it did not comply within 48 hours, a potential major escalation in the war that risked Iranian reprisal of oil infrastructure, a cost across the Gulf.
The Wall Street Journal reporting this morning that this exclusive as well, the Pentagon weighs sending another 10,000 ground troops to the Middle East.
With all that on the table this morning, we turn to all of you to get your thoughts on DHS funding and the Iran war.
Ron in California, Republican caller, let's hear from you first.
Go ahead.
unidentified
Hey, good morning, Greta.
Just wonderful to see you.
Pentagon Considers More Troops00:15:26
unidentified
You know, I take deference in this issue about the war.
We live in a moral and ethical vacuum in this country right now.
We have a president that is a foul-mouthed, loud-mouthed excuse for a person to begin with.
And on top of that, you know, I think that there's really, to be really honest with you, I think we are in an axis of evil.
And that axis of evil includes Vladi in Russia and Bibi in Israel and, of course, Donnie Jay.
And all of these people together, they're always talking to each other.
They're the only ones that they're talking to each other.
And as a result of that, they attack people and they assassinate leaders of other countries.
They kidnap people of other countries.
And guess what?
Whatever you put out comes back to haunt you.
Someday they're going to come back and attack us and assassinate our people and kidnap our people.
And then what are we going to say?
Oh, well, it's okay.
No, it's not okay.
This is a moral and ethical vacuum of leadership.
And until we get this thing straightened out, I think it's really a very, we're going down a rabbit hole.
And the worst part about it is that our great heroes, the 82nd Airborne and our guys that live right here next to us and the Marine Corps people in Pendleton, are just American heroes of the first order.
And every person that goes there to that every Indian avenue and gets killed is going to be on Trump himself.
Darren, I'm going to leave it there so I can go to Ed.
He's been waiting in Pennsylvania, independent caller.
Ed, share your thoughts with us.
unidentified
Yeah, good morning.
If I was Iran, I wouldn't negotiate with the United States.
They've tried, Iran has tried that tactic a couple times, and they were attacked by Israel and by the United States during the 12-day war.
And Iran made the mistake of letting them stopping the fighting.
And here it is three weeks ago.
There was negotiations going on, and they were attacked again by Israel and the United States.
So I hope that Iran continues its fight until the end.
Iran is in the driver's seat, although Donald Trump would have the people in this country think that the United States is in the driver's seat.
I would just like to say that I've visited Iran three times.
And the reason I visited over the years, and the reason I did that was because I kept hearing about Iran.
It was a rogue state and all that.
So over the years, I've accumulated information on Persia and on Iran.
And one of the things that I was particularly struck with was a comment I heard that an international competition in math and science that Poland and Iran finished 1-2, an international competition.
So I was thinking, I want to go over to visit a country that has an ancient civilization to see what they were like.
And I went over there and I was impressed.
And one of the things that I saw when I met some young girls down in Isfahan was they said they were about 15 or 16 and they spoke broken English.
And one of the girls said, I think the United States is a terrorist nation.
And on another visit, I was visiting a place near Bazouli in the northern part of Iran.
And I was talking to this man that worked at a park.
And he said the United States causes trouble all over the world.
And I would like to call attention, just mention to the people of this country that the United States, I agree with that guy.
I didn't say so at the time.
But so it's time for the United States to back off.
And Steve in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with his military experience this morning.
We want all of you to join the conversation this morning and get your reaction to the latest news on DHS funding and the Iran war.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
The conversation continues here for the first hour of today's Washington Journal.
On DHS, Politico with this headline, DHS shutdown now in House's hands.
And this is what they report.
The Senate called an end to weeks of tortured negotiations, voice voted a bill funding all of DHS except ICE and parts of CBP around 2.30 this morning, essentially delivering exactly what Democrats had asked for in recent days.
But Republicans are promising to come back and fund immigration enforcement with a vengeance in an upcoming reconciliation bill, not just for fiscal 2027, but for many years to come.
What's coming next will supercharge deportations, said Senator Eric Schmidt early this morning.
The filibuster cannot save you.
That was his message to Senate Democrats.
It's not a done deal yet.
However, the Senate-passed agreement faces a treacherous path in the House, which could act on the bill and send it to the president today.
But many House Republicans will not be happy about the prospect of voting on a DHS bill that does not include enforcement funding, especially after Trump moved unilaterally Thursday to start paying TSA agents.
Now, the House will gavel in this morning at 9 a.m. Eastern Time.
And of course, you can watch Gavila Cavill, uninterrupted, unfiltered coverage right here on C-SPAN and the debate that will take place as early as today over this agreement in the Senate to fund most of DHS, excluding immigration enforcement.
The House yesterday passed a funding bill for DHS for the third time in two months.
This bill is different than what passed in the Senate at 3 a.m. this morning.
Speaker Johnson, after that vote, said the vote put Democrats on the record about their willingness to keep DSA defunded.
For the third time now, almost every Democrat in the House, except for four, voted against the bipartisan, bicameral Department of Homeland Security funding bill.
It would reopen DHS and reopen and get our airports running again.
And they did that for one reason, because they are trying to protect criminal, illegal aliens.
That's what this entire debate is about.
And there's no way for them to hide from that.
And they keep putting votes on the board.
I have suggested, and I suggested yesterday in a press conference, we should probably take this vote tally, blow it up on a poster, and put it at every airport terminal around America.
The Democrats just voted for the third time to make you stand in those long lines and to jeopardize our country.
You think of what's at stake right now.
We have noted that the Department of Homeland Security is the third largest department of the federal government.
We have 10 agencies in DHS.
They happen to be all the agencies whose job it is to keep Americans safe.
You're talking about FEMA.
Do you know that our disaster relief funds are being depleted right now?
You're talking about TSA.
You're talking about the Coast Guard.
They're not getting paychecks right now, and that's why we have all this calamity and all of this danger.
So the question for the Democrats right now is: it's a serious question.
How long is this going to go on?
Are we going to wait till somebody brings a firearm on a passenger airplane?
Are we going to wait till we have a natural disaster that we cannot take care of?
This is not a game, but these are not serious people.
And they have demonstrated once again that they are putting the welfare of criminal, illegal aliens above American citizens.
The blame game was in full force on Capitol Hill yesterday with both parties pointing fingers across the aisle.
That was the Speaker of the House after the House had voted for the third time, a long party line vote and approved DHS funding in its entirety.
Meanwhile, over on the Senate, the floor was left open for hours as they continued to negotiate both sides over DHS funding.
Ultimately, at around 3 a.m. this morning over on C-SPAN 2, you would have seen by voice vote the Senate, after days and weeks of negotiations, two months, voting to approve DHS funding, TSA, but excluding immigration enforcement and parts of customs and border protection, which is what political observers say what Democrats wanted all along.
Listen to the House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries on the floor yesterday and why Democrats have been right to hold out for reforms to ICE.
Republicans have decided that they don't want to get ICE under control and instead are forcing TSA agents to work without pay, inconveniencing millions of Americans all across the country and causing chaos at airports throughout the land.
Unacceptable.
Enough is enough.
Republicans can simply bring a bill to the floor to reopen every other aspect of the Department of Homeland Security, pay ICE agents, support FEMA, stand up for the Coast Guard, and make sure that this country can continue to function.
But instead, as we've repeatedly seen, Republicans have decided they'd rather jam your right-wing extreme ideology down the throats of the American people.
We haven't been complicated in the point that we've made to our Republican colleagues about what needs to happen.
When it comes to ICE, we're standing on the side of the American people.
Yes, we will always support securing the border today, tomorrow, forever.
But at the same period of time, immigration enforcement in this country should be fair, just, and humane.
If you have something to say to me, you can say it right now.
That's what I thought.
Immigration enforcement in this country should be fair, it should be just, and it should be humane.
But instead, you're unleashing brutality on the American people, using taxpayer dollars in some instances to kill American citizens, like Renee Nicole Good and Alex Preddy.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries on the floor yesterday saying Republicans can vote on funding for TSA right now.
Well, they will get the chance today.
The Senate approving an agreement to fund most of DHS, but not immigration enforcement, last night by voice vote in a near-empty chamber.
And now that bill is headed to the House.
They could take it up as early as today.
They're gabbling in at 9 a.m. Eastern Time.
So watch right here on C-SPAN for gabble-to-gabble coverage of that debate.
You can also, if you're on the go, take your phone with you, download our free video mobile app, C-SPAN Now, and we are always online on demand at c-span.org.
Susan in Massachusetts, Republican.
Thanks for joining us this morning.
What are your thoughts on DHS funding or the Iran war or both?
unidentified
I just want to say, listen to some of these columns that they're rooting for, Iran.
We've got sick people, and they're mostly the black people and these creepy white people.
So, Mark, according to political observers, they're saying this morning Democrats were able to get Republicans to agree to no funding for immigration enforcement.
So the Republicans agree to that in this deal.
It doesn't include, well, we don't know exactly what's in this legislation.
So we'll find out more today.
There will be more reporting today.
But the reforms, you're saying, they did not get the reforms that they were demanding.
And that's your issue with Democrat strategy here.
There's a common theme in this situation, and that is most of the rhetoric from Iran is about praying.
See, this is a war built on spirituality, okay?
These are praying people.
No amount of missiles, no amount of guns or money can win this war.
This is spiritual.
This is something that people are looking over, and this is a war of God.
And yesterday, if you look at what happened in the UN with three countries voting against that act, I know it wasn't mentioned because it's bottom tier here.
I love America, contrary to what Susan says, and I'm African American.
But that was a very hurtful vote when Israel, Argentina, and the United States all voted against that resolution from Ghana.
This is spiritual, lack of atonement.
The last thing I want to say is that video, those videos that Iran are putting out there ridiculing our president, one where all the countries are looking up in the sky.
You've got Cambodia, Hiroshima, Iran.
It's very significant, and it's scary.
Don't think for one minute that we don't love America.
What we are is we're looking at a war that is not based on money or military.
This is a war that is spiritual and everybody knows it but us.
We say we are praying people, but I don't see that faith.
And there's atonement that needs to be made and there is humanity, humility that needs to be taken and all this get her done and things of that nature.
These are people.
These are human lives.
I don't agree with the Iranian.
I don't agree with their stands and the way they do things.