Nick Troiano and President Trump dominate Washington Journal on April 2, 2026, as the administration claims victory in the Iran conflict while facing bipartisan gridlock over the Homeland Security Department. Guests debate the efficacy of "Liberation Day" tariffs, which economists say have raised household costs by $1,700, alongside calls for election reforms like open primaries to curb special interest influence. Ultimately, the episode reveals deep fractures in American politics, ranging from skepticism over NATO's future to fierce disagreements on whether economic pain stems from inflation or trade policy. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Source
Participants
Main
donald j trump
admin08:28
e
elise labott
10:12
g
greta brawner
cspan33:33
Appearances
d
d john sauer
01:21
john thune
sen/r01:27
m
marco rubio
admin03:25
Clips
b
barack obama
d00:02
b
bill clinton
d00:02
c
chief justice john roberts
scotus00:23
g
george h w bush
r00:02
g
george w bush
r00:04
j
jennifer levasseur
00:21
j
jimmy carter
d00:03
r
ronald reagan
r00:01
tom cotton
sen/r00:24
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Voice
Speaker
Time
Text
Trump's Primetime Address00:03:24
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Jeff Ferry of the Coalition for a Prosperous America and Michael Negron of the Center for American Progress talk about President Trump's trade agenda and the lingering global and domestic impacts of his Liberation Day tariffs announced a year ago.
And Unite America Executive Director and author Nick Trojano on election reform efforts and his book, The Primary Solution, Rescuing Our Democracy from the Fringes, which proposes abolishing party primaries.
Washington Journal is next.
Join the conversation.
Tonight, I'm pleased to say that these core strategic objectives are nearing completion.
President Trump in his first prime time address to the country tells the American people the war is nearing its end.
Good morning, everyone.
It's Thursday, April 2nd.
Welcome to the Washington Journal.
Let's tee up the conversation for our first hour this morning because it's your turn to tell the President in Congress what you think of the Iran war.
Here's how you can join the conversation.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
And Independents 202-748-8002.
You can also text at 202-748-8003 or post on facebook.com slash C-SPAN and on X with the handle at C-SPANWJ.
Before we get to your calls, here are the headlines dominating the news cycle this morning.
President Trump, in that prime time address, defended the Iran conflict as necessary.
And the Washington Time notes he is also considering exiting NATO over the lack of support from our allies.
NASA's Artemis II lifted off on an historic moon mission yesterday, and C-SPAN was in wall-to-wall coverage with the preparations and successful launch.
The four astronauts have started an historic 10-day journey looping around the moon for the first time in 50 years.
In the nation's capital yesterday, the Supreme Court heard the arguments for and against President Trump's restrictions on birthright citizenship.
The president appeared in the courtroom, the first time a sitting president has done so.
C-SPAN brought you every minute of the oral argument.
Check it out on C-SPAN.org.
Political observers believe the justices are poised to uphold the legal principle.
And across the street from the high court, Senate and House Republicans announced a deal to move forward with legislation to reopen the Homeland Security Department, coming back to the very same bipartisan agreement that President Trump and House Republicans rejected last week.
Finally, House Democrats sued to block President Trump's executive order, restricting mail-in voting and arguing that the Constitution empowers only the states and Congress to oversee who is eligible to vote.
We're going to get your response to President Trump's prime time address, the first he has done in his second term, telling the American people that this conflict is coming to an end.
Here's a little bit more of what he had to tell the American people last night.
Democrats Sue Over Voting Order00:11:06
unidentified
For years, everyone has said that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons, but in the end, those are just words if you're not willing to take action when the time comes.
As I stated in my announcement of Operation Epic Fury, our objectives are very simple and clear.
We are systematically dismantling the regime's ability to threaten America or project power outside of their borders.
That means eliminating Iran's Navy, which is now absolutely destroyed, hurting their Air Force and their missile program at levels never seen before, and annihilating their defense industrial base.
We've done all of it.
Their Navy is gone.
Their Air Force is gone.
Their missiles are just about used up or beaten.
Taken together, these actions will cripple Iran military, crush their ability to support terrorist proxies, and deny them the ability to build a nuclear bomb.
Our armed forces have been extraordinary.
There's never been anything like it militarily.
Everyone is talking about it, and tonight I'm pleased to say that these core strategic objectives are nearing completion.
As we celebrate this progress, we think especially of the 13 American warriors who have laid down their lives in this fight to prevent our children from ever having to face a nuclear Iran.
Twice this past month, I have traveled to Dover Air Force Base, and it's been something I wanted to be with those heroes as they returned to American soil.
And I was with them and their families, their parents, their wives, their husbands.
We salute them, and now we must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives.
And every single one of the people, their loved ones, said, please, sir, please finish the job, every one of them.
And we are going to finish the job, and we're going to finish it very fast.
We're getting very close.
I want to thank our allies in the Middle East, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain.
They've been great, and we will not let them get hurt or fail in any way, shape, or form.
For years, everyone has said.
President Trump, last night in his address to the country and this morning on the Washington Journal, your reaction to what you heard.
Junior in Michigan, a Republican.
We'll turn to you first.
Junior in Michigan, please mute your television.
Go ahead.
President Dilly.
Yes.
You know, I'm a lifelong Republican, but this is just crazy what we're doing here.
I mean, everybody keeps saying Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
Well, I'm going to say, why not?
No one's ever going to use a nuclear weapon.
No one.
There is no winner.
Let them have it.
I mean, look at North Korea.
They now have it.
I guess Trump forgot to send them a love letter.
Listen, no one's ever going to use this stuff.
How do you know that?
We're over there murdering people.
And what do you say to people who say, eliminate the threat?
I'll sleep better at night if you eliminate the threat.
There is no threat.
Listen, a nuclear weapon will be, and this is for all the Christians out there.
Read your Bible.
The Bible tells you there will be fire in the sky like man has never known.
That is a nuclear weapon.
That is the only thing it will be used for to stop Christ.
But it will not work.
Okay.
People say that.
The Republican in Michigan this morning reacting to the president's remarks to the nation last night.
We'll go to James next in Tennessee, Independent.
James?
All I heard was a bunch of lies.
Just how's this man do?
Now, he talk about how he go in a war real fast, but he was a coward when it come down to going to Vietnam.
I was jafted.
He was jafted, but he claims not to have robbed him.
James, political observers note the president didn't use the word war last night.
No, well, okay, he didn't use the word war, but it's time to go and kill the people and children.
What you think it is?
Murder.
That was murder then.
If it wasn't a war, you just attacked somebody that wasn't doing anything.
That was murder.
And it's on him.
And God's going to punch his sticking ass one day.
Thank you.
Harry in Suitland, Maryland, Democratic Caller, your turn.
Yes, I want to talk about Trump talking to the United States citizens, telling us that Iran got $1. something billion dollars from Obama.
The truth of the matter is, the money belonged to the Iranians.
It was seized.
And basically, we were giving them back some of their money.
The president needs to be truthful with American people and stop making the story out.
The money was the Iranians.
It belonged to them.
It was seized.
And it was part of the nuclear deal the Obama administration brokered.
Right.
And brokered and gave them some of their money back.
It wasn't we paying them any money that didn't belong to them.
It was their own money that was seized and we returned some of it back to them.
All right, Harry there, Democratic caller with his thoughts in Suitland, Maryland.
Front page of the New York Times: Iran's skeptical of war talks.
According to multiple U.S. intelligence agencies who have assessed recent days that the Iranian government is not currently willing to engage in substantial negotiations over ending the U.S.-Israel war, the assessments say the Iranian government believes it is in a strong position in the war and does not have to accede to American diplomatic demands, the officials said.
And while Iran is willing to keep channels open, they said, it does not trust the United States and does not think President Trump is serious about negotiations.
Kenny in Staten Island, New York, a Republican.
Kenny, welcome to the conversation.
Your response to President Trump last night.
Hi, thank you.
My response to, I'm a Republican, not a MAGA, by the way.
My response to President Trump's address yesterday was oatmeal.
It was as complicated as oatmeal is.
50% of what he said is all lies.
The papers and media seems to be slanting towards carrying his lie.
I see the title of you, Iran's skeptical of war talks with U.S. Why would that be?
Maybe because we've had peace talks with them at the same time, bombing them or bombing them right after or right before conclusion of peace talks.
We bombed them.
So should they be skeptical?
But that's not included.
We're skeptical.
We're skeptical because we've attacked them three times during peace talk number one, number two.
The war is that Gulf is not going to open automatically.
It's been decades of national security policy to keep those straights open no matter what.
Many o just found a president stupid enough to believe his lies and went in there.
Remember, we've been hearing about Iran having nuclear weapons for years and years and years and years.
It's just a bait thing.
And like I said, Trump is the only stupid guy to go in and actually do this.
Kenny, did you vote for President Trump?
No, no, I couldn't.
I couldn't.
There's no way.
National security reasons, I could not vote for this guy.
He's just destroying NATO.
He's attacking our allies, propping up the dictators.
You know, war is war.
This is what, an excursion?
Putin was a special operation.
All dictators have cover names for war.
And you paint an elephant pink, red, whatever you want to paint an elephant.
It says that beyond oil markets, abandoning the strait would represent a historic downgrade of the ability of the United States to project power, effectively dismantling its long-standing security guarantee in the Middle East and beyond.
unidentified
Asian countries are reeling from the downturn in energy supply.
The Philippines declared a national emergency last week.
unidentified
Sri Lanka has instituted a four-day work week for state institutions and schools.
And even China, one of the best prepared countries for the oil crisis, with reserves more than 100 days, has moved to cap a rise in retail gas and diesel prices.
From the Wall Street Journal, what Iran's control of the Strait of Hormuz means for the global economy.
There's 90,000 Somalis there that all voted to put Ilhan Omar in so they could steal our tax money through all these programs.
You're saying 90,000 Somalians had that sole motivation.
That's disparaging to an entire group of people.
Senate Debate on Motion00:04:57
unidentified
Greta, their Bible says to kill the non-believer 226 times.
Are you going to defend that too?
What does the Christian Bible say?
Who the hell cares what the Christian Bible says?
Are you going to take the Muslims over us?
What's wrong with you people?
So that's the, in your mind, that is the choice here.
Greta, we've had four terrorism attacks in the last month by Muslims.
Don't call them radical Muslims.
Their book says to kill us 226 times.
They mention war 117 times.
They mentioned white women are lower than dogs.
How does that make you feel to be lower than a dog?
Do you like that?
All right.
Would you like to have your Rob's thoughts there in Port Crane, New York, Independent?
Happening in the Senate just moments ago.
Here's Politico's headline.
Senate gives House a second chance to deliver DHS funding.
The early morning vote in a mostly empty chamber paves the way for an end to the record-setting agency shutdown.
Over on C-SPAN 2, just moments ago, the Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Republican in South Dakota, had this to say on the Senate floor.
Mr. President.
The majority later.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be recognized.
Without objection.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal proceedings be approved today at the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and that the Senate be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.
Without objection.
Mr. President, I ask the chair lay before the Senate the message to accompany H.R. 7147.
Chairman's is for the Senate.
Message from the House.
The Chair lays before the Senate this message from the House.
Resolve that the House agrees to the amendment of the Senate to the bill entitled H.R. 7147, entitled an Act Making Further Consolidated Appropriations for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30th, 2026, and for other purposes with an amendment.
Mr. President, I move to table the House message.
The question is on the motion.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
All opposed say no.
The ayes appear to have it.
The ayes do have it.
The motion is agreed to.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Without objection.
Mr. President, I understand that there is a bill at the desk that is due for a second reading.
The leader is correct.
The clerk will read the title of the bill for a second time.
S4277, a bill to make appropriations for U.S. immigration and customs enforcement.
Mr. President, in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of Rule 14, I would object to further proceeding.
Objection is heard, so the item will be placed in the calendar under Rule 14.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourned to then convene for pro forma session only with no business being conducted on the following dates and times.
The Senate stands adjourned until 1 p.m. on Monday, April 6th.
unidentified
In a nearly empty chamber this morning, just moments ago, the Senate moved to, on a bipartisan deal that was rejected by President Trump and House Republicans last week.
Politico says now the bill is headed back across the Capitol.
The Senate approved Thune's motion Thursday to set aside the House's plan, an eight-week all-DHS stopgap bill, and instead give it a second chance to pass the Senate bill, which omits funding for ICE in parts of customs and border protection that Democrats oppose.
Speaker Mike Johnson signed off Wednesday on this two-track strategy, effectively capitulating after torching the Senate bill Friday as a joke.
But he could still struggle to move it quickly given the early opposition from some members on the right flank of his conference.
Now the House will gavel in for a ceremonial session this morning at 8.30 a.m. Eastern Time, and you can watch that on C-SPAN 3.
Harold in Tennessee, Democratic caller, work back to the President's remarks last night to the American people.
Your thoughts.
Ma'am, we're in trouble.
Speaker Johnson Signs Off00:15:30
unidentified
It was just the same old thing.
It was, you know, just hollering out of control, screaming, I guess.
You told.
Old Joe Biden don't look so stupid now, does he?
People evicted something here that, and I don't know how we got at Warwick.
He don't know how.
We had no end game.
Anytime you go into a war, you've got to have an end game.
And they have nothing, but I don't know what they're going to do.
But the Republicans up there are the ones that enable him to do this until the Republican House and Senate stand up to this man.
And I would say possibly remove him and put JD Vance now because the man is the job is too big for the man.
He is too big for.
I've said that all along, and it's just proving gasoline is going to go through it.
It's really hurting people.
People here in these little towns, like where I'm at, they're hurting from this because, and now he's talking about, see, something said something about doing away with daycare, let the states all pay for it.
These poor people, working people, has got to have some relief from this man.
But again, Joe Biden did not look so bad now that went around and talked about how crazy he was.
Harold, when you say the American people are hurting from this, you're talking about the Iran war.
What?
Because of oil and gas prices?
Yes, ma'am.
The oil and food.
You know, the food is going to follow the price of this oil and gas.
It costs so much to get things shipped, and you're going to see them start putting more and more shipping fees onto these grocery stores.
And it ain't the only place for it to go.
It's back to the people.
The people don't have enough money now to buy groceries.
They're talking about cutting food stamps.
Well, the only one that's going to hurt is women and older people that get this supplement of their income.
And they want $200 billion more dollars, $200 billion.
We've already butchered insurance.
We've got these stupid tariffs.
Harold, I'm going to jump in because we're getting away here from what the president had to say on the Iran war.
The president did address gas prices here at home.
This is what he had to say.
Many Americans have been concerned to see the recent rise in gasoline prices here at home.
This short-term increase has been entirely the result of the Iranian regime launching deranged terror attacks against commercial oil tankers in neighboring countries that have nothing to do with the conflict.
This is yet more proof that Iran can never be trusted with nuclear weapons.
They will use them and they will use them quickly.
It would lead to decades of extortion, economic pain, and instability worse than we can ever imagine.
The United States has never been better prepared economically to confront this threat.
You all know that.
President Trump addressing the rise of gas prices in the country after the U.S.-Israel conflict began more than a month ago.
Kenny in Kentucky, Republican.
Hey, morning.
Morning.
I tell you, I think everything will be fine in a little while.
Everyone gets crazy over prices rising.
Well, that's just how it goes, I mean, when you have something like this going on.
But all the Democrats, they get crazy and fighting over anything.
And just like talking about getting the people paid, like Coast Guard and all that, that should be a number one thing just as much as it says wars.
But the Democrats know you got to have so many votes, and all the Republicans they vote yes, but the Democrats vote no, and they blame it on the Republicans.
And you know, that's the truth because you've got to have so many votes, and it takes a few of those dummies over on the other aisle, especially that poor old Chuck Shuler.
They need to put him in a clock.
Kenny, no, let's stay away from name calling.
Make your argument.
Well, I'm telling you, honey, I mean, this like they do everything.
Okay, they tie everything up because they know the votes.
You got to have so many votes.
And they can go in and say all they want about the Republicans.
The Republicans are voting yes to pay the people.
Okay.
But they're saying.
All right.
Kenny there in Kentucky with a Republican.
It does take 60 votes in the Senate.
Washington Times, Washington Post, excuse me, this morning, nearly six in 10 Americans opposed the conflict in Iran across five recent surveys, interviewing over 10,000 Americans, according to a Washington Post analysis.
A Pew Research Center poll in mid-March found 59% said they believe the U.S. made, quote, the wrong decision in using military force in Iran, while a Fox News poll found 58% oppose the current U.S. military action against Iran.
We're getting your reaction to the president's address last night to the country.
Neil in Ohio, an independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Yes.
The bias from this network is crazy.
I don't know where to start here.
All right, Beverly, Bellwood, Illinois, Democratic caller.
Beverly?
Oh, well, I hope I don't ramble, but it seems like I was just making a comment to your lady that put me on the phone that every time I call in, I always get you.
For some reason, I always get you.
I can't get in unless it's you when this other moderator I can't get through.
So, how are you doing this morning?
I hope I don't ramble.
But my point is about the war, I don't trust anything this president says.
And he projects anytime he talks, he's going to project whatever is going on with negative.
He's going to project it on somebody else.
He just never wants to tell the truth.
Iran, he started this war.
He's projecting that Iran is a criminal because they're doing this and they're doing that when actuality is America.
I mean, we're bombing over there like crazy.
I mean, we started this.
So, why are you saying that they're the enemy?
We're the enemy.
We are the enemy.
All right, Beverly, I'll leave it there.
Karen in Michigan, Republican, it's your turn.
Hi, I'm calling out your fake lifelong first caller Republican who said Iran should have a nuclear weapon.
That's ridiculous.
President Trump has our complete and total support.
He is doing exactly what we elected him to do and exactly what he said he would do.
He has a mandate to do this from us, the Republican voters who elected him in.
Locally, we're going to be getting rid of these radicals who said nothing when Biden increased our costs for our fuel and our groceries.
They sat silent.
They not only sat silent, but they doubled down on the cost by implementing Green New Deal.
They pipelines.
They attacked our gas and fuel production.
Thank goodness President Trump is back.
So, Karen, let me ask you before you go: what is a successful end to the Iran war?
What does the president need to do, in your opinion?
He's done it.
He's already done it.
Has he eliminated the nuclear threat?
Do you have access to his intelligence?
I don't.
We don't.
We don't know what they know.
He has done exactly what we voted him in to do, has dismantled them.
Has set them back to the Stone Age.
And guess what?
The entire world benefited from what President Trump just did.
And everybody can just sit back and say thank you.
But you know what?
These progressives, especially in the Ann Arbor area, are so pro-terrorist, it is mind-boggling.
They locked down, they shut down the Quad not too long ago with their encampments and got to America.
30 miles away, and they have siblings of Islamic terrorists who just tried to bomb and murder how many Jewish children?
Are we that?
Do we have that much zero memory?
Zero memory.
Karen in Michigan, Republican caller on our line for Democrats.
Paulette is in Florida.
Hi, Paulette.
Hi, how are you today?
Morning.
So what did you think of the president's address to the nation last night?
A lot of rambling, like he always does, and blaming other people.
Well, again, like you said, he did start it.
But I really want to know who's getting rich, who's really making money from this war.
Like what country is really making money.
And they keep saying it's over.
They obliterated.
They obliterated.
Okay, so why are we still fighting?
Why are you still sending people over there?
You know what I mean?
And it's always blaming another country and blaming different ones when you have to take the responsibility to that.
He messed up.
He tried to call it and he messed up.
And now he don't know how to get out of it.
So he just la But I do have one question real quick.
Paulette, I'm going to leave it there.
Paulette, a Florida Democrat.
More of your calls coming up here and your reaction to what you heard from the president before he addressed the nation.
The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, posted a video on X, and this is what he had to say, breaking down the reasons for why the U.S. went to war with Iran.
Many Americans are asking, why did the United States have to attack Iran now?
Well, let me explain.
Iran wants to have nuclear weapons.
Of that, there is zero doubt.
If what they truly wanted, which is what they claim, is nuclear energy, well, they could have nuclear energy like all the other countries in the world have it.
And that is you import the fuel and you build reactors above ground.
That's not what Iran has done.
They build their reactors and their facilities deep in mountains away from the public glare.
And they want to enrich that material.
The same equipment that they could use to enrich material for energy, they could use to quickly enrich it to weapons grade.
So it is clear that they've been offered every opportunity to have a nuclear program that allows them to have energy, not weapons.
And every single time they have turned it down.
But why the attack now?
Well, what was Iran trying to do?
Iran was trying to build a conventional shield, in essence, have so many missiles, have so many drones that no one could attack them.
And they were well on their way.
We were on the verge of an Iran that had so many missiles and so many drones that no one could do anything about their nuclear weapons program in the future.
That was an intolerable risk.
Under no circumstances can a country run by radical Shia clerics with an apocalyptic vision of the future ever possess nuclear weapons.
And under no circumstances can they be allowed to hide and protect that program and their ambitions behind a shield of missiles and drones that no one can do anything about.
This was our last best chance to eliminate that conventional threat, that conventional shield that they were trying to build.
And the president made the right decision to wipe it out now.
That is the goal of this operation, to destroy their conventional missiles and their drone program so they can't hide behind it and finally have to deal with the world seriously about never ever having nuclear weapons.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio laying out the reasons why the president decided to go war with Iran.
We're getting your calls this morning reacting to what you heard from the president last night.
Joining us to discuss that more is Elise Labbitt, who is a global affairs journalist and founder of the Cosmo Politics substack.
Let's begin with what the president had to say last night.
First of all, your take overall on the speech.
Well, I don't really think we heard anything new from the speech.
These are things that the president said in kind of snippets between the beginning of the war and now.
I think it was the speech that Americans were looking for a month ago.
Why did we get into war?
What are the objectives?
What are the end game?
I think the objectives maybe are a little bit more clear.
He talked about the Navy, he talked about the Air Force, but he didn't talk about the, and he talked about the nuclear threat, but he didn't talk about the end game, Greta.
And I think he said there's another couple of weeks, but we still don't know what success looks like.
And I just listened to Marco Rubio.
He was talking about the conventional threat and the fact that conventional weapons, missiles, drones was a little bit different than what the president said.
The president emphasized the nuclear weapon.
And in foreign policy and national security, you talk about a nuclear shield or a nuclear umbrella.
The idea that if you have a nuclear weapon, no one wants to go after you because you don't want a nuclear weapon used against you.
That is what a nuclear deterrent really is.
Now he's talking about the conventional weapons.
And if that being the focus, then they're talking about just going after those missiles, those drones, the Air Force, and not going after the nuclear threat.
So I'm a little bit confused as to what the end game is.
There's two more weeks.
Undoubtedly, in terms of this conventional threat, the regular weapons that we see, the missile launchers, that's been very successful.
They've gone after over a dozen thousand targets.
But that nuclear threat is still there.
And if that was one of the main goals, you just have a few more weeks in terms of President Trump's timeline.
If you want to get rid of that nuclear threat, which is really going underground and looking for that, we've heard about this thousand pounds of enriched uranium.
It's really fissile material that could be used for a nuclear weapon.
That would take, as we've been saying, some troops on the ground to have to go after it.
Why is that?
Why is it difficult to get after this uranium, this material, and obliterate their nuclear threat?
Why is that difficult?
It's difficult because it's buried deep, deep, deep, deep underground.
So even if they now have these B-52 bombers, and that carries tons of thousands, tens of tons of thousands of missiles, weapons, bunker buster bombs, then you have to go and take the material.
They don't have a big, it would be nice if we had a big crane that could just take it up.
Deep Underground Uranium Threats00:15:25
unidentified
That would take a limited, and when we say limited amount of troops, it's still troops, Greta.
It's still about 10,000 troops, 20,000 troops at least.
It still puts troops in harm's way.
So when people say, oh, it's a limited, a limited ground operation, what they mean is it's not a ground invasion like we saw with Iraq, like 150,000 troops.
But that doesn't mean it wouldn't take U.S. troops.
And so in these next couple of weeks, if President Trump wants to credibly say that he's eliminated the nuclear threats, it would have to include some of this material.
The president said, oh, well, last night, it's deep underground.
And if we see them trying to rebuild, we can always bomb them again.
In parlance of Israel and the national security community, they call it mowing the grass.
And that means, you know, the grass gets higher.
Iran goes to rebuild a nuclear weapon.
You just go in and you bomb them again.
But it took several weeks of the U.S. and Israel bombing Iran to get what they call air superiority, air dominance, which is basically control over the airspace of Iran.
If they wanted to go back again, are we going to have to spend several more weeks at war with Iran down the line to mow the grass?
Mowing the grass isn't just, you know, you take out a lawnmower and you go, that's really quick.
But mowing the grass in terms of Iran would be much more difficult than it would in, say, Gaza or Lebanon or Syria.
Did you hear the president last night talk about a ground invasion?
I did not.
And again, he did not talk about what they call boots on the ground, but he talked about eliminating the nuclear threat.
And a lot of military experts that are following this say, if he wants to do it, this is really the last chance.
So, you know, what you see is, is there going, that would certainly cause an escalation.
It would put troops in harm's way.
And it would extend that two-week timeline.
So if they don't put boots on the ground, however limited it may be, I won't say a small amount, because it's not a small amount, it would certainly extend the...
But if you're continuing to what they say bomb them, hit them very hard, they're mostly talking about the conventional weapons.
It could be going after nuclear sites.
But again, getting that storage of enriched uranium, that's the one thing that I think people are looking for right now.
Our people also, the American people, did they want the president to have regime change in Iran?
And has he successfully done that?
Because you hear from the Defense Secretary that there is regime change.
Marco Rubio has given interviews where he doesn't seem to be singing from the same sheet of music.
He's not saying regime change.
Well, the American people, as we know, and you've heard from the callers, they're very varied in terms of their opinions.
So it's not a monolith.
You know, the Iranian people have suffered at the hands of the regime.
The regime has been the largest sponsor of state terrorism.
Some Americans might say, yes, we have to get rid of that regime or we'll never get rid of the threat and the Iranian people will suffer.
Others say this is not our war to fight.
I think that regime change means that there's a whole new system.
This is not regime change.
And it wasn't regime change in Venezuela, for instance.
You got rid of Nicolas Maduro, but you still have the people around them, even if they're being more cooperative.
In Iran, it's much different because you have the supreme leader, but he's not the one really running the country.
We haven't even heard from him.
But it's this revolutionary system.
And so everybody's kind of singing from the same script and has the same goals.
This is what you would call leadership change.
So note the Iranian Revolutionary Guards that we've been hearing about, the very deadly and lethal security services that mostly are for foreign wars.
But they're also in very much in control of the country and in control of the economy.
Many things that the president says we're going to go after, they're in control of it.
So it might hurt the people if the U.S. goes after it, but they're still in control of these things.
And it's not a regime change.
It's not a regime change.
I heard last night someone say something, and I think it's one of the military experts, and it's very true.
You don't change a regime if you switch one Ayatollah for the other Ayatollah with the same name.
And the Iranians certainly want regime change, but there's not an organized opposition that anybody can really kind of help to take over the country.
And when you look for, speaking to, I interviewed an Iranian historian named Arash Azizi the other day, and he said, listen, revolutions come from the military defecting to the opposition.
Those are the ones, those are the people with the guns.
And those people are looking at the opposition and they're saying, you know, I might have it better off here because I don't know what I'm getting.
I don't know who I'm defecting to.
So I would say it's not regime change.
It's, you know, figurehead change.
Finally, Elise, when you look at the Strait of Hormuz, what is this administration and the president saying about what's next?
If this conflict were to end and the Strait of Hormuz is not opened, what then?
What are our allies saying?
You know, this is the thing, I think, that we didn't have this problem before the war.
The Strait of Hormuz was open.
And so this is a product of the war.
And now the President is saying, because the Iranians are not playing ball on that, the Iranians are in effectively in control of it.
They're letting ships go by, but ships that they're friendly with.
And it's what you call now they have a toll booth that you have to pay them.
The president said last night, you know, we don't really need that oil.
And the Europeans and others didn't really help us.
So if you need the oil, you go get it, cherish it, cherish that Strait of Hormuz.
In theory, the U.S. doesn't import a lot of oil.
The President is right.
We're pretty oil dependent, but that has nothing really to do with the oil prices.
So we may not need that oil, but we need more oil on the global market for oil prices to go down.
So if we leave the Strait of Hormuz, we're still going to be paying exorbitant amounts of money.
And then it goes to the whole thing we've been hearing about the Allies, that the U.S. is not there for them.
And it just really creates this.
I mean, people are looking for American leadership right now.
No, the President is right.
We can't be the world's policeman.
But this is a product of the war that the U.S. and Israel were in.
Even though neither the U.S. or Israel need that oil, they do have some responsibility.
And it could just be getting a coalition of the willing to have some other countries deal with it.
And we did see that the British Prime Minister is organizing a conference.
I think it's a virtual conference of about 30 nations.
How can we all get together and open up the Strait of Hormuz together?
Interestingly enough, the U.S. is not at that meeting.
That's happening today.
That's happening today.
And the U.S. is not at that meeting.
What does that mean?
Are these countries going to make a deal with Iran, which would further undercut the whole reason for the war?
China is very involved now.
This just gives China a little bit more in the Middle East, they call it WASTA, power in the region.
It gives Russia more power in the region.
So just walking away from the Strait of Hormuz might seem like the thing to do right now when the U.S. is so overburdened with the war.
The president's talking about Cuba next.
U.S. forces are very burdened, but it will not decrease oil prices.
Elise Lavitt, thank you for your reporting and insight.
She's a global affairs journalist and founder of the Cosmopolitics substock.
What did you make of the president's address to the nation?
Thank you.
I think he was very succinct and clear-cut in the goals of the Iran war.
And if I could point out, not to insult anyone, but I've heard callers last month, they'll call in and say, Iran, Iran.
There's no such country known as Iran.
If you look up Wikipedia, it'll tell you that Iran is incorrect.
It's Iran or Persia.
I prefer Persia, I think, anyway, because of ancient history.
But I think that the point people are missing, and if they would read more and educate themselves, the 2025 book by Scott Anderson called King of Kings and a 2016 book called The Fall of Heaven, all related to the history of these problems in Persia, will help you understand the origin of this.
And the point is that if you go back to 1979, our sovereign territory of the United States, we were invaded, our embassy, and nothing happened, nothing was done.
And so for 47, and basically that's an act of war.
So for 47 years, look at what's happened.
And as Henry Kissinger pointed out in his book in 2014, World Order, Iran basically ceased to be a country and has become a cause, the cause of radical Islam, Shiite Islam.
And if people understand that, you have to realize that for 1,400 years, the imperative of the radical Islamist jihadists has been the establishment of a global caliphate.
And then the options are either convert Islam or be put to the sword, so to speak.
We moved to the States when the revolution happened in Iran.
I was 13 then.
When I became a U.S. citizen, I was always a Republican.
Until Donald Trump was nominated for the Republican Party and I switched, I became a Democrat.
And I did vote for Biden.
I did vote for Harris.
And when Donald Trump, when Venezuela was taken over and changed there, I warmed up to Donald Trump.
After the attack on Iran, I've become more leaning towards Republican right now.
And if the election, if presidential election were held today, I'd definitely vote for Marco Rubio, regardless who was the Democrat candidate.
Marco Rubio, because of what reason?
Because he has articulated so well why the United States had to remove Chavez from power.
He has articulated so well why the United States had to attack Iran.
The President hasn't articulated that well.
And I think if from day one, this Oval Office speech that he gave last night, had he done that the night before the war started or on that same night, the people's opinion would be different.
I was in Iran last year, two weeks prior to the June 13th war.
I was there for a month and I hadn't been back in 25 years.
And I was in Tehran and I saw all these massive condominium buildings, wealth.
I asked, I said, who has the money to buy a $5 million condominium?
You know, import duty on cars is 100%.
Roys, Roises, Bentley's, Porsche's, they said it's all IRGC money.
It's all the oil money that the IRGC has.
So it has been a difficult challenge.
But the fact that President last night said that, you know, we don't really care about the straight of Hormuz, I think a lot of this is militarily blustered by saying that we don't care about the strait to tell the Iranians that you can keep the strait closed, you know, just playing poker with them.
Okay, John, I want to play that moment for our viewers.
The president addressing the U.S. oil production, saying that the U.S. won't need to rely on the Strait of Hormuz.
Remember, because of our Drill-a-Baby drill program, America has plenty of gas.
We have so much gas.
Under my leadership, we are number one producer of oil and gas on the planet without even discussing the millions of barrels that we're getting from Venezuela.
Because of the Trump administration's policies, we produce more oil and gas than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined.
Think of that, Saudi Arabia and Russia combined.
And that number will soon be substantially higher than that.
There's no country like us anywhere in the world, and we're in great shape for the future.
The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormo Strait and won't be taking any in the future.
We don't need it.
We haven't needed it, and we don't need it.
We've beaten and completely decimated Iran.
They are decimated, both militarily and economically, and every other way.
And the countries of the world that do receive oil through the Hormo Strait must take care of that passage.
They must cherish it.
They must grab it and cherish it.
They can do it easily.
We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on.
So to those countries that can't get fuel, many of which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, we had to do it ourselves.
I have a suggestion.
Number one, buy oil from the United States of America.
We have plenty.
We have so much.
And number two, build up some delayed courage.
Protecting Global Oil Supplies00:12:14
unidentified
Should have done it before, should have done it with us, as we asked.
Go to the strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves.
Iran has been essentially decimated.
The hard part is done, so it should be easy.
And in any event, when this conflict is over, the strait will open up naturally.
It'll just open up naturally.
President Trump on the Iran war in his first prime time address of his second term.
We're getting your reaction to what the President told the American people this morning.
On Capitol Hill, Chuck Schumer, the Democrat leader in the Senate, saying, has there ever been a more rambling, disjointed, and pathetic presidential war speech?
Donald Trump's actions in Iran will be considered one of the greatest policy burdens in the history of our country, failing to articulate objectives, alienating allies, and ignoring the kitchen table problems Americans are facing.
He's completely unfit to be commander-in-chief, and the whole world knows it.
Steve Scalise, who's a Republican leader in the House, tonight, President Trump laid out an incredibly compelling case to the nation for Operation Epic Fury.
The Iranian regime's long history of terror murdering Americans demonstrates why it was necessary to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon.
Thanks to President Trump.
What do all of you say?
Stephen, Illinois, Democratic caller, we'll hear from you.
Hi, good morning.
Good morning.
I think we're behind the curve a little bit on our drone program.
There's a drone dominance program that's just starting, and drones is the way of the future.
And I wish we would have had maybe 300,000 of our own drones to go into Iran.
And I think Obama made a mistake giving them that money.
But what I'm really concerned about is these missile cities.
I haven't heard many people talk about the missile cities.
They have 12 or more cities full of missiles under mountains all over the country.
And I don't know how we're supposed to get into those.
So I think it's going to be a long, terrible slog.
And Australia has 47 days left of oil, and they're out.
Our allies are hurting.
Thank you very much.
All right.
We'll go to Rick next in Idaho, Republican.
Hey, Rick.
Greta Elsie, this is Rick Hatchon, retired Marine Nap, Idaho.
Elsie, this is for you.
History can never be replaced.
Let's ask Chuck Schumer why the Democratic president Truman in 1952 gave nuclear technology to Iran.
Unfortunately, President Trump, you have the responsibility of the present to correct the problems of the present based on a Democratic mistake of the past.
The next question you have to answer, Chuck Schumer, is why did Bill Clinton give Iran, or not Iran, but the world, NAFTA?
And unfortunately, we have to pay for all the bunk oil that China comes in and gets from our ports.
They had 332 ocean-going cargo ships in 1992.
They grew their fleet to 5,152.
U.S. Merchant Marine Naval Academy, that's your reference.
It can be verified.
And America had 1881, and we dropped to 222.
My message is simple: get wise to the ways of the world, America, and you get mean about me and American.
20 years of Marines, seven years in other countries, and the world doesn't care about us.
All they care about is gimme, gimme, gimme.
Greta Elsie, Elsie, that's your homework.
Thanks for your hospitality, America.
And Elsie, the answers are in the history books.
Thanks for listening.
All right, Rick's in Idaho, a Republican caller.
As we told you at the top, the Washington Times and their front page story this morning notes that the president is mulling a NATO exit over the dearth of aid from our allies.
Senator Chuck Schumer on X yesterday, I can promise this: the Senate will not vote to leave NATO and abandon our allies just because President Trump is upset they wouldn't go along with his reckless war of choice.
And then he notes, thank you to Secretary Rubio for sponsoring the bill in 2023 requiring a two-thirds vote of the Senate to make sure clueless presidents couldn't act on a whim.
And the Democratic leader tied to his post on X, this archival ex post from then-Senator Marco Rubio.
December 14th, 2023, no U.S. president should be able to withdraw from NATO without Senate approval.
Thankful my colleagues in Congress passed this bipartisan measure.
Ned in Maryland, Independent.
Good morning to you, Ned.
Hi, can you hear me?
We can.
Okay, great.
Being 69 years old, I have to write down a list so I know what I'm talking about.
And of course, I don't know what I'm talking about.
What's interesting to me in listening to these calls is it's very hard for me to be objective anymore.
My dislike of this president runs so deep when I hear he could say the sky is blue and I wouldn't trust him.
What's going, my feelings are all over the map.
What I'm worried about is two things.
Trump is saying he's talking with a reasonable regime.
It makes me wonder if he's talking to people who want to overthrow the government from within.
And that to me sounds like what was going on in Saigon under President Diem in Vietnam, and he was overthrown.
And I think that's where the whole Vietnam issue started to turn south.
The other thing is, if I'm an Iranian leader, and I don't want to make these guys sound like nice guys, because I'm an erstwhile Republican and a confused conservative, I might be thinking, well, wait a second.
The one power in the region that has nuclear weapons doesn't want me to have them.
And the one power in the world that's actually used nuclear weapons doesn't want me to have them.
What gives?
And that's the uncertainty I feel.
Lastly, I feel like President Trump basically thought he was a military genius after Venezuela and thought he could pull this off and got more grandiose.
And I think what we're seeing is people by necessity are making him twist in the wind.
That is my very biased point of view.
All right.
In Maryland, and Lamar in Ohio on our line for Democrats.
Hi, good morning.
Wow, that was a very interesting take that last caller had.
But I just wanted to, I wanted to actually get a chance to speak with the lady that was on, Elise Labat.
I think that was her name.
Elise Labatt.
Yes, I actually wanted to get a chance to speak with her and ask her a question.
But it's just three quick things I needed to comment on.
First of all, about this war and how this last time this president went in, there's not been much talk about, hey, listen, this guy said everything was done in June when he did it.
That's number one.
Okay, get that out the way.
But the thing really about it is, is that they keep saying Iran keeps chatting a death to America.
And I haven't seen them lately do anything really to hurt America.
They say it, yeah, a lot of countries and a lot of people globally say things.
Okay.
But I'm looking at in this country, in the last 10 years, there's been young white men that has shot up and killed many kids in schools than any other Iranians or anybody else has done.
Have they done anything about that?
And this thing about nuclear weapons, trying to tell somebody exactly they can't have nuclear weapons when you have them.
People want, just like they want to protect themselves, they have to have something to deter countries from just invading and taking them over also.
You don't see the United States or any other country attacking any other country that has nuclear weapons.
So basically, nuclear weapons is just a deterrent to keep people away from them.
All right.
Lamar, his thoughts in Ohio.
Ann in Eastern Pennsylvania and Independent.
Hi, Ann.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I found this speech last night fairly incomprehensible.
But to build up on the last gentleman's point, I also find it odd that suddenly the justification for this is that we've been at war with Iran for 47 years.
I think over the last 47 years, Iran has terribly killed more than 1,000 Americans.
I believe the numbers are around there.
Every year, more than 45,000 Americans die for lack of health care coverage.
Yesterday, I was in the supermarket, and an older lady in her 70s who works there to make ends meet, was asking me what she would do in order to be able to afford groceries, given that prices have gone up so much and gas is over $4.10 a barrel here, a gallon here.
And the president this week gave a speech at a religious breakfast of some kind, which sounded not religious at all, in which he said, we're such a great country.
We can't be worried about Medicare and Medicaid and daycare and health care.
Lack of health care kills 45,000 Americans a year.
Iran has killed 1,000 in 47 years.
You tell me what our problems are.
Thank you so much for your time.
All right.
Ann in Eastern Pennsylvania.
Dave's in Michigan on our line for Republicans.
Hi, Dave.
Yes, good morning, Greta.
It's a pleasure to listen or with you this morning.
I watch C-SPAN every morning.
I love this Washington Journal.
What really amazes me about people is they don't do their research on the history with Iran like your previous caller had just talked about the amount of people that have been killed.
A lot doesn't come out.
I know you people do publicize at the fact the amount of people that they've killed their own people in Iran.
And it's the thing that it needs to be, you know, observed.
And people need to educate themselves.
I think it's a great job that the president is doing.
It's amazing to me how many people question, well, why didn't you tell us?
Why didn't you tell us?
Well, I'm going to rob a bank today, so I'm going to send them a message that I'm going to come and rob their bank.
How good is that going to do, you know?
But you've got to keep, it's amazing the people in intelligence, how quiet they are.
I'm a veteran myself, and I know the ins and outs of a lot of things, but it's the fact that people question too many times about something that you're not going to come out and tell them, yeah, we're going to come in tomorrow and bomb you.
And they will eventually find these things.
There are people that can look into stuff special ops and stuff like that.
So I think the American people need to basically, especially educate themselves, read more.
And no offense with what you do on TV here and stuff like that, but some of the news channels, it's just amazing how many stories come out and stuff like that.
Dave, we have to leave it there.
We are up on the top of the hour.
Coming up on the Washington Journal, Nick Troiano, executive director of the Unite America, will be discussing efforts to reform elections, the president's executive order on mail and ballots.
But first, Jeff Ferry of the Coalition for a Prosperous America and Michael Negron of the Center for American Progress will discuss the president's trade agenda one year since Liberation Day tariffs were announced.
Stay with us.
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Tariffs and Consumer Prices00:14:52
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Washington Journal continues.
We want to welcome to our table this morning Michael Negron, who is a senior fellow for economic opportunity at the Center for American Progress, and Jeff Ferry, who's a chief economist at the Coalition for Prosperous America.
Thank you both for being here as we talk about trade tariffs.
I want to begin, Jeff Ferry, with the effective tariff rate this morning, one year after the president announced Liberation Day tariffs.
You want to know what it is right now?
Yeah.
Right.
Well, I was looking at trade figures for 2025, and the average effective tariff rate was about 7.25%, which is up about five points from what it was the previous year.
And is that because of the Trump administration's tariff policy?
Oh, absolutely.
Donald Trump has, there's no question he's raised tariffs more than any president has done.
Well, the last time it was done was in the 1930s.
The Smooth Holy Bill in 1930 raised tariffs significantly.
And what does that mean for the cost of goods?
Greta, that's the wrong question.
Okay.
Okay.
The right question is what's the purpose of the tariff policy and is it succeeding?
And the answer is for America to achieve economic growth, it needs a certain amount of insulation from cheap foreign competition.
And is the tariff policy succeeding?
The answer is somewhat.
There's plenty of evidence that the higher tariffs are delivering us results in industries like automobiles and steel.
Now, is the tariff policy perfect?
No.
I have many criticisms of it, which I'll be happy to get into with you.
As far as prices go, tariffs will ultimately raise prices.
What has been interesting and surprising to myself and many economists over the past 12 months is what a small, tiny impact tariffs have had on consumer prices.
We have a consumer price problem in this country.
It is primarily due to domestic things like rent and house prices and medical costs and food costs.
It is not due to the tariffs.
It's not due to the tariffs.
Absolutely not.
So what do you say to economists who say that it is?
Most economists who comment on public policy are highly political.
I mean, look, my views on economists are very well known.
Economists have been giving this country bad advice for half a century.
Economists are like doctors in the 18th century.
Doctors killed more people in the 18th century than they helped survive.
One of my heroes, Thomas Jefferson, lived to 83, bless him, because his policy was to avoid doctors at all costs.
And that was after a doctor killed his wife, Martha.
My view, and it's interesting that Donald Trump is correct about this.
He's not correct about everything, but he avoids advice from economists.
And there are a few of us who actually understand how this economy works.
And I'll be happy to share some of that with you today.
Okay, well, you might get some interesting mail from economists after today's program.
Michael Negron, did I ask the wrong question?
No, you asked the right question.
And there's also an important broader question as to how is the economy doing.
Unfortunately for everybody here, I am not an economist, and so I am not suffering from that affliction that Jeff talks about.
But when I think about a year ago today when the president was in the Rose Garden, he had the poster boards behind him with the country-by-country tariff rates.
And I think of what he promised, a golden age for the economy, a resurgence in manufacturing, the data show the complete opposite.
What we've seen is a $1,700 increase in cost borne by households due to these tariffs.
We've seen small business importers see an increase in more than $300,000 in tariffs paid in 2025 through early 26 compared to the year prior.
That's a tripling of what they were paying.
We've seen the job market slow considerably.
We only saw the creation of 181,000 jobs in 2025.
That is the worst year for job creation outside of a recession year since 2003.
Manufacturing is down 100,000 jobs since the president came into office.
And so the data are telling a story of an economy that is not doing well.
It's doing worse than expected when the president first took office.
And I think tariffs are a major culprit for that.
Why?
Why are the tariffs the culprit?
Well, tariffs are a tax.
And what the president has done is impose a sweeping set of universal taxes on incoming products on a theory, I don't know if you believed it, but on a theory that foreign governments were paying those taxes.
But in fact, American consumers and American companies were paying those taxes.
There's a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that found this.
Goldman Sachs has done analysis that found that businesses pass about 70% of those tariffs to consumers and eat about 30% themselves.
It's a tax.
And when you tax things, you slow it down, you harm it.
And so that's been the impact.
It's not to say that you can't have targeted tariffs that are coupled.
I suspect it's the point that Jeff and I would agree on, that when you have tariffs that are coupled with smart policies to promote industries that are suffering from that kind of cheap good competition, that that's a good thing.
But that's not what this is.
This is an across-the-board set of universal tariffs.
The policies change frequently.
The president imposed 130% tariff on China, on Chinese products that was in place for a few months, then he flipped and lowered it, which was a good thing.
But that type of instability, that type of breadth, sends bad signals to consumers, to businesses, and that has contributed to this economic slowdown that I don't think people were anticipating when the president first took office.
Jeff Ferry, I'll let you respond.
But first, I want to go back a year ago today when President Trump at the White House announced these Liberation Day tariffs.
This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history.
It's our declaration of economic independence.
For years, hardworking American citizens were forced to sit on the sidelines as other nations got rich and powerful, much of it at our expense.
But now it's our turn to prosper and, in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt, and it'll all happen very quickly.
With today's action, we are finally going to be able to make America great again, greater than ever before.
Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already.
We will supercharge our domestic industrial base.
We will pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers.
And ultimately, more production at home will mean stronger competition and lower prices for consumers.
This will be indeed the golden age of America.
It's coming back.
We're going to come back very strongly.
President Trump, one year ago, promising the golden age of America.
We're getting your thoughts this morning, your comments, your questions on the president's tariff policy.
Here's how you can join us this morning.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
And Independents, 202-748-8002.
We're joined this morning by Jeff Ferry, who's the chief economist at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, along with Michael Nagron, who's at the Center for American Progress, a senior fellow for economic opportunity.
Jeff Ferry, I want you to respond to what you heard from the president there.
Did he tick off a bunch of metrics?
Did he accomplish those goals?
Well, I suppose the answer is in at least two parts.
First of all, I would say a tariff policy is necessary and essential for America to resume economic growth.
Secondly, I'd say it's too soon to judge the success and failure of those policies.
Third of all, I'd say I don't agree with the Liberation Day tariffs.
I agree with the focused and targeted tariffs which he has also enacted.
We call those in the Washington jargon the Section 232 tariffs.
What he's talking about there are the IEPA tariffs, which the Supreme Court overturned.
And I'll be happy to explain the difference and why I don't think that's...
Yeah, go ahead.
Go ahead.
Okay.
So President Trump really has two theories, I would say.
One is that we need to use tariffs, and I prefer to call it insulation from cheap foreign competition in order to rebuild industries that are essential for two things, economic growth and economic security.
And he's got another theory, which is that tariffs will eliminate our huge trillion-dollar trade deficit.
I think the latter theory is wrong.
I don't think that by levying tariffs on 140 different countries, you will eliminate our trade deficit, unless at the same time, you take other macroeconomic actions like eliminating the federal budget deficit and just controlling the economy to reduce the demand for imports at the same time.
So the Liberation Day tariffs won't work, and I'm happy the Supreme Court overturned them.
Have they done damage before you move on?
No, I think it's been noticeable how little damage tariffs have done at all.
And part of the reason is that as you asked me absolutely rightly at the beginning, what is the effective tariff rate, despite all the nonsense you read in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, last year it was about 7%.
Now it's probably the same.
And I don't see it rising dramatically at any point, right?
Yes, there will be new tariffs introduced this year, but the effective tariff rate might still stay 7%, which is not sufficiently different from other countries and not sufficiently different to our past to have much of an impact, positive or negative.
I think we need higher tariffs on industries that should be a focus for this economy, because the only way we can raise the living standards of the working class and the middle class is through more economic insulation and through rebuilding those industries that are critical to this country.
So those are the targeted tariffs.
Right.
The targeted tariffs should be actually raised and we should have growth targets for those industries that matter, whether it's microchips or automobiles.
And of course, President Biden introduced 100% EV tariffs and those are pretty much the highest tariffs.
Let me tell you one story, okay, about targeted industries.
Last week, there was a meeting here in D.C. of folks in the tech industry, including folks who make printed circuit boards.
And there was a gentleman there from, I think it was Minnesota, which at one time was a center for making microchips and related parts.
And he's got a company, they employ about 20 people, down by 50% from 20 years ago when we had a very large tech manufacturing industry in this country.
He told me that the day that President Trump a year ago announced 125 or 140 percent tariffs on China, he woke up the next morning with 48 emails in his inbox from potential customers saying, we need a quote from you urgently to make printed circuit boards.
The tariffs then went down to 25 percent and all those potential customers vanished, said, sorry, sorry, Phil, we're no longer interested.
Okay, so if you have the right level of tariffs, you will get business in America, and all these jobs are high-paid jobs with benefits in areas that need more jobs.
And Michael, you are shaking your head.
You agree with targeted tariffs.
What other industries would you say the president has done a good job in targeted tariffs?
And where else would you like to see the president target?
Well, I think general, so I liked Jeff's example on electric vehicles, because that was not only the tariff on these super cheap Chinese electric vehicles, but it was accompanied by industrial policy.
It was accompanied by incentives to support consumers buying those electric vehicles.
They could get it at the point of sale, a cash on the hood type incentive when you're buying the car.
And so we saw purchases of domestic electric vehicles more than triple from 2022 to 2025.
That is an example of how when you do these types of interventions, that's how they should be done.
But what the president has done is very broad.
And even these targeted tariffs on steel and aluminum and lumber using these more targeted authorities are having negative effects that I think are outweighing the examples that there are going to be examples like the ones that Jeff is citing of people saying, yes, I got more business.
But on the other side of it, for example, the China tariffs, lots of small businesses that have lines of manufacturing in China that help them survive, help them offer products in the economy now.
And many small businesses were struggling with that.
And so I think that is an example.
Another area where these tariffs are having a negative effect is in housing, in homebuilding.
We did an analysis at the Center for American Progress that found a combination of steel, aluminum, lumber tariffs, tariffs on fixtures, was going to result in 450,000 less homes being built between now and 2030 because it's just making it more expensive to build homes.
And the number one thing that we need to be doing as a country to get the cost of housing down is to just build more homes.
And so as a general matter, the president should be targeting these tariff policies.
But what he has done almost consistently has been overly broad.
And that has not been good for the economy.
All right.
We've set the table.
Let's have our viewers join us for this conversation.
Lynn in Columbia, Maryland, an independent.
Lynn, good morning.
Go ahead.
Two quick questions for your experts.
I don't read the Wall Street Journal that often, but I kind of check them every now and then as the arbiter of the golden mean of American capitalism.
They are using the acronym TACO, T-A-C-O, or I've seen the phrase the taco trade to describe market speculation driven by the erratic character of Trump's tariff policies.
Small Business Survival Challenges00:16:15
unidentified
And my other question is, doesn't it open the door to sort of insider trading and corruption?
Like, couldn't Howard Luttnick call his son and say, hey, son, short sell these stocks.
The president's about to turn on or turn off a tariff in a particular area.
And I'll hang up and listen to their answers.
All right.
We'll get a response from both.
Jeff, why don't you go first?
The problem with a lot of these discussions, Greta, and our guests on the phone, is that it's hard to separate the economics from the politics and people's feelings about Donald Trump, who arouses very strong feelings in many people, and he enjoys doing that.
Now, you're actually right that all government policy raises the possibility of government officials doing insider trading and taking advantage, and that should be protected against.
But, you know, again, the core issue here is that in 1860, this country enacted tariffs, high tariffs, and until 1929, we had the strongest, longest period of economic growth probably in all known human history.
And tariffs played a key part in that.
In other words, insulation from cheap competition.
So we need that.
We need to, as the caller says, we need to do it legally and fairly and avoid insider trading.
And as far as taco goes and changing tariffs, yes, Trump does change tariffs too often, and I'm very critical of that.
I think we need consistent tariffs so that industry can plan and make investments in this country to create good jobs in this country.
Michael?
Well, I think what we're seeing play out both in terms of Trump trying to manipulate the market, making statements, and we've seen it in the course of this war in Iran, where every few days he tries to suggest the war is about to come to an end, hoping to get prices of oil down.
But it doesn't last because people see through the fact that the policy is not changing.
In fact, the war seems to be escalating just based on the statements the president made yesterday.
So he is, in fact, in many instances, made statements to try to influence the market.
But what it really points to is just the risks inherent in such a sweeping regime that is coming from claims on almost unlimited executive authority to do it.
And that he can then dole out exceptions.
He can dole out benefits based on people lobbying his administration, coming to him.
And that just feeds into a sense of corruption, in a sense that the system continues to be rigged, despite the fact that the president, in fact, made his claim to fame, was talking about how it was a swamp.
He was going to drain the swamp.
The system is rigged.
And so we're seeing that play out, particularly in real time now, with the use of prediction markets.
We've seen that in the run-up to the deposing of Maduro in Venezuela, to the attack on Iran, where there was a flurry of trades ahead of those actions.
Who would have anticipated the exact timing of it?
But they're made, and these markets allow people to essentially make bets anonymously using crypto.
That's why we've seen a number of folks in Congress call for restrictions and that kind of insider trading.
A former boss of mine, Rob Emanuel, who is now out talking about issues nationally, he proposed a ban on insiders using prediction markets.
And so it just calls into stark relief the risks that come with an administration that is claiming unlimited executive authority to undertake all kinds of actions without consultation, allows them to do things without really any notice.
And if you're on the inside and you know, there are ways in which you can leverage that knowledge to make money.
When it comes to tariffs, the Supreme Court, as you noted, Jeff, slapped down the president on sweeping tariffs and said, you don't have the authority.
How is that playing out since that decision was made?
Well, I think the president's response has been to say to the U.S. trade rep Jameson Greer, we need more, we need broad tariffs under a different authority.
And right now they are holding an investigation into Section 301 tariffs, which are tariffs based on the argument that foreign countries are overproducing and flooding America with goods.
And I think that investigation is very likely to end up with the affirmative solution, the affirmative decision that yes, these foreign countries are doing that.
And I think that is a true statement.
And therefore, they will levy a new set of broad tariffs, which as Michael and I have both said is probably not the right way to go.
We prefer focused tariffs.
And focused tariffs, are they, in your minds, legally sound?
The president has the authority to do these targeted tariffs.
Well, he's the one with the law degree, so I guess.
It's tied up in the authority, right?
232, an investigation is required, 301, there has to be a national security link.
But what it does is it requires process.
It requires an analysis to be done, a documented rationale.
And that, of course, can be challenged, right?
Someone can file a lawsuit and challenge that basis.
But at least there is some record and some statutory authority.
Where in the cases we saw with these AIPA tariffs, the president was using this existing authority in a way in which it had never been used before and did it so quickly, so rapidly, that the federal government collected more than $200 billion in these tariffs using this now illegal authority, creating two problems.
One, the administration just passed a mass not just passed, but last summer passed this massive budget bill adding trillions to the deficit on an assumption that tariffs would deliver a lot of the revenue to help mitigate that impact.
And two, you have all these businesses and you have many folks claiming consumers have the same entitlement to refunds from these illegal tariffs, which one, what's the process going to be?
And the president seems to have conceded it's going to play out in the courts, which is not a whole lot of clarity if you're a business owner.
You're wondering, well, what's next?
Not only is he still talking about tariffs, but am I entitled to a refund?
If so, how am I going to get it?
But second, it just portends more of a roller coaster for people.
We'll go to Tracy next.
Florida, Democratic caller.
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
I am just really providing a bit of a testimony.
I had the pleasure for the last 20 years of helping my husband and I working for our small business to help it grow from 12 people to at its maximum 50, a small online company.
And we weathered every five years.
There was always a new challenge for the business.
A small online business started to have competitors, Amazon and just larger competitors funded by private entities.
And we were able to weather, well, the challenge of the Trump administration's first tariff impacted us because in fact we did source products from China and were able to do that.
And as a result, we employed staff of almost 50 in a rural part of the country and were able to provide some health care, a retirement plan.
But his first round of tariffs really hurt.
Then COVID happened.
But I tell you, when these tariffs came, the new round of tariffs came upon us that were so sweeping.
My husband and I both saw the writing on the wall.
So we both lost our jobs last year.
I'm in my 50s.
He's in his 60s.
And we saw it coming.
But perhaps it just speaks to the fact that companies like the ones we helped grow, I'm not sure if they can survive in this environment.
So I just wanted to provide that testimony about certain small businesses, the challenge of survival in this economy.
Thank you, Tracy.
Thanks for taking my call.
Yeah, you bet.
Tracy there in Florida.
Jeff Ferry, your reaction to hearing her testimony.
Well, I'm certainly sorry to hear about the loss of her job and the demise of her business.
I think she raises the point of sourcing goods in China.
I think we should talk about China for a moment.
This country has become extraordinarily dependent upon imports and particularly dependent upon China.
We cannot make antibiotics and many other important pharmaceutical drugs without inputs from China, which by the way usually go to India where they get turned into tablets and pills and then sent to this country.
We need to do something about that because we cannot build, we cannot run a $30 trillion economy being completely dependent on a country that is at best our rival and at worst an outright enemy.
And so we need to take some action.
And so, you know, this process started when Donald Trump came down that elevator in 2015 and as I mentioned before, went through not only the Trump administration, but the Biden administration and back to the Trump administration.
We need to reshore these industries.
Tariffs play a role in that.
I think many of the tariffs were too draconian.
And, you know, well, I'll stop there and I'll talk some more about that next time.
But I'll yield to Michael for a moment.
And Michael, if you could, just you alluded to this earlier, the impact on small businesses.
And Tracy was really referencing that.
If you can just give us a 30-second response, because the house is about to gabble in.
I just want to note for our viewers where they can go to watch that.
But go ahead.
Yes, well, I'm thankful that Tracy shared her story because it illustrates how theory can run into the realities of action.
And when you're a small business, you are trying to succeed.
You're trying to build a business.
You feel obligations to your employees.
And so you find the right opportunities.
Her business found an opportunity that depended upon supply chains from China.
And by imposing these huge tariffs, it really messed with her business.
And that is real consequences for real people.
She was trying to do live the American dream, and this is an example where American policy got in the way because it's short-sighted and misguided.
We're talking about the president's tariff policies here this morning, marking the one-year anniversary of the so-called Liberation Day tariffs.
The House is gaveling in for a ceremonial session here this morning.
It should be brief, and you can watch it over on C-SPAN 3.
unidentified
Here on C-SPAN, we're going to continue with the conversation on tariffs.
Rashad and Woodbridge, Virginia, Republican, let's hear from you.
Hello, how are you doing?
Thank you for taking my call.
I just wanted to be as brief as I can.
I have a problem I want to state and a question, and I'll be done with that.
So, the problem, last year before Trump took office, I was billing at a rate of $100 an hour as a small business in the IT industry as a solution architect.
Soon as Trump took, I'm sorry, some context.
I was turning away at least two or three good, high-paying solution architect jobs a week just to keep the one I had because I just had a lot of options.
As soon as Trump took office, I got let go from the customer that I had because Microsoft, Amazon, Google were either in the process or predicting layoffs.
So, my company, who I was working with, is Hitachi, they are partners, so they just had to let hundreds of people go.
I was unemployed the entire year.
So, from February of last year till February of this year.
In addition, at that time last year, there's a problem.
I had two jobs I was working through.
I was actually in the final employment stage for State Department jobs and a DCSA.
Now, that's the problem.
Currently, I'm taking a job at 40% less and two levels down just to make ends meet.
Now, here's my question: The IT industry seems to be shrinking rapidly.
And I know these gentlemen are talking about how tariffs can help the economy and grow the economy, but at what cost?
We're losing IT people from the industry at record paces.
I myself want to get out of IT because it's too volatile, and businesses aren't innovating, so I can't get a job until this chaos comes to an end.
So, I'll just end that.
Thank you, Rashad.
Michael, I'll go to you first.
Yes, well, first, I'm just sorry to hear about Rashad's troubles over the last year or so.
And, you know, I think this affirms his experience, it's affirming statements that I've made about the way in which the president's tariff policies and really other policies.
I suspect part of what he's also been affected by is it could be cuts at the federal government level, the layoffs of lots of federal employees, the federal government may pull back as a customer for his line of business, the fact that AI is growing so rapidly, and we have an administration that is very permissive about AI wants to deregulate.
And so, but what we're seeing, I think, more broadly is just the president's leadership, economic leadership, has been fairly chaotic.
And that we have the broad sweeping tariffs, we have the military operation in Iran, we have desires to annex Greenland.
There's just a lot of unpredictability, and that has had an economic impact.
And unfortunately, Rashad has suffered from that.
But what we need is a steadier hand and some balance in Washington to hopefully get the economy back on track.
Jeff?
Well, I don't think tariff policy has anything to do with Rashad's problem.
I'm sorry to hear about the problems.
I myself was in the IT industry years ago, but between 2000 and 2016, I worked for a tech company in Silicon Valley.
My advice to Rashad would be to buy a bunch of shares in NVIDIA if he understands technology and then find a nice balcony down there in Woodbridge to watch the Ocoquan River and he'll get rich that way.
But more seriously.
How can people afford NVIDIA right now?
NVIDIA's fallen quite a bit in the last couple of months.
I think it's worth a look.
But more seriously, he's right that there's a lot of upheaval in IT, okay?
It's, you know, Microsoft and companies like that and Amazon are laying off people.
Why?
Because three or four years ago they hired too many people because their senior managers live that way and do that sort of thing, and he's paying the price.
And he'd like to get out of IT.
Well, I would like to see lots of other industries thriving in this country.
This country has become too dependent upon IT and software.
And you see this in Washington.
Too many people are working in IT.
Are trying to understand the software systems that the Pentagon has bought.
What we need are other industries, whether we're talking about basic industries like steel or sophisticated industries like medical devices.
That's what we need to see grow in this country, in other centers from Washington and San Francisco and Boston, in the middle of the country.
The video, by the way, I just was told by our producer, $175 a share.
Go to Emmy, who's in Georgia, Democratic Collar.
Yeah, you're right.
Who can afford those stock prices, right?
Easy to say when you have money, but when you don't and you're struggling day by day, it's hard to come up with that.
Anyway, what I called about was, you know, I remember back in the 80s or 90s when the jobs started going overseas.
What was the main reason?
Companies were complaining that they had to pay for employees a livable wage, benefits, and all these other perks, and they couldn't afford to do that.
So the jobs went overseas because it was cheaper that way.
Now, all of a sudden, we have come back full force saying, oh, hey, we're going to bring manufacturing back.
How long is it going to stay before these companies start whining and crying again?
Separating Politics from Economics00:12:20
unidentified
And the funny thing is, they were able to get rid of the employees, but the CEOs and the people in charge got more money, got higher salaries.
So I want when you guys start putting these numbers together, then just think about the average worker.
Emmy, let's take your thoughts, Jeff.
The average worker, and she knows how much the CEOs in the C-suite are making.
Emmy, I think you're absolutely right.
If it were up to me, we would fire my good friend who teaches introductory economics at Harvard right now and let you teach the course.
You're absolutely right.
In this country where we pay the average manufacturing worker today about $35 an hour, which is roughly eight times more than that person gets paid in Mexico or Malaysia or China or Morocco, we have to have some form of insulation to maintain and grow those industries, and that has to be long-term and permanent.
And although manufacturing is just a small part of the total economy, the secondary effects of having strong industries that can hire other people in other industries will permeate through to the entire economy.
And I know because, you know, I'm old enough to remember, I grew up in the 50s and 60s.
My dad worked in the printing industry, and he earned more money than his father had ever earned in his life.
And then I graduated college, and I went to a job, and within a couple of years, I was earning more money per year than my dad ever earned in his life.
Okay?
And a lot of people don't understand this, but I'm actually a Democrat and I support economic insulation and economic growth because it's the best way to bring long-term well-being and higher standards of living to the working class and the middle class.
Emmy is absolutely right that this is a challenge.
She's absolutely right that independent of all the insults that people trade with each other about who's cheating and who's not cheating, we have a high wage, high living standard economy, and we need some form of insulation to continue that and grow that.
That's the core economic point.
Thank you, Emmy, for your question.
We're going to go to Peter, who's in Valley Cottage, New York, Republican.
Hi, Peter.
Yes, good morning, Greta.
Gentlemen, Mr. Furry, that woman was spot on.
I tend to agree with you more.
I just want to make a couple of points.
Some of them you discussed a little bit, but basically, inflation is due to monetary policy, quantitative easing, so on and so forth, according to Milton Friedman.
Also, from what I understand, because I read the Wall Street Journal, I get a mixed bag from them, but originally these higher tariffs were supposed to get other countries to reduce their tariffs so we had a level playing field.
And also, according to the president, we've gotten between $6 and $10 trillion in investment coming into this country.
A lot of the car companies are building plants here, but these things take time.
It doesn't happen overnight.
And the main thing that concerns me is national security.
You know, we can't be having our drugs being manufactured overseas like what happened during COVID and we couldn't get stuff that we needed.
So I tend to like free trade, but I also like a level playing field.
And I tend to agree with you, Mr. Furry, that this is a good thing overall.
All right, Peter, we'll have Michael respond to you.
Go ahead.
Yes, well, look, I think Jeff and I have expressed agreement around the wisdom of tariffs in a targeted way.
But what we're seeing now from this president has just been an overly broad set of policies, and the results are just not there.
The manufacturing sector has contracted for nine consecutive months after Liberation Day.
It's rebounded a little bit, but it's certainly not healthier, less jobs in that sector.
And so the results that we're seeing right now just aren't good, and the American people don't like it.
Polls regularly show more than 60% of voters don't like the tariffs.
Americans don't trust the president's economic stewardship when it comes to inflation.
There was a CNN poll earlier this week that showed 72% disapprove of his actions on inflation.
That's worse than Jimmy Carter, worse than Joe Biden, who I work for.
And so people aren't really buying it.
And at some point, if the promise is it's going to get better, it's going to get better, just give it another year, give it another two years, you're going to find yourself without a majority and out of the White House.
And so the problem with these policies that are so sweeping, that are based so strongly in theory, is that when people actually experience them, when a tariff is a tax, it's a tax that a business pays when the product comes into town.
Somebody's going to pay that tax.
And it's not just going to be the business.
They're going to pass it along to consumers.
And so we're seeing that effect in aggregate.
That's why the economy is slowing down, the job market is slowing down, and manufacturing is struggling.
The caller said it's monetary policy that increases inflation.
I don't really think that we can say that.
I think we're seeing just that that revenue is coming from somewhere.
People are paying higher prices.
We've seen inflation after starting to moderate come back down to that 2% target that the Fed has been looking for when the president first took office.
It's been very sticky around 3%.
We saw the personal consumption expenditures index in January around 3.1% core.
That's not counting food or energy.
And that's January.
That's pre-this war.
That's pre-this next round of tariffs.
I don't think you can point to monetary policy for that because we saw a real inflection once the president enacted his tariff policies.
All right.
Tom's next.
Fort Worth, Texas, Independent.
Oh, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
First of all, I want to appreciate C-SPAN for offering this kind of healthy conversations.
And we really benefit from this kind of thing that we listen to.
Some of us, I want to appreciate your two guests over there for the discussion.
And I do have more of a comment than the question, but they can chime in and maybe correct whatever if I didn't state the idea rightly.
But Mr. Jeff over there said that we should be able to learn to separate politics from economics.
I just thought that that is not possible because whatever we do, our life is based, political decisions or economic decisions are based on our current political environment.
And so whether we talk in macro or macro, we still base it on what is happening in our environment today.
So it's kind of hard as policymaker, economic policymaker to separate the both.
Okay, let's take your point, Tom.
Jeff?
Well, I agree with Tom that you cannot separate politics and economics, but yet we have to.
We have to, in our analysis, say what are the right economic policies and then look for politicians who can implement those policies.
And, you know, Michael keeps citing the fact that inflation is around 3% right now, and he's absolutely correct in that, and that's too high, and that's a problem.
If you want to get into a macroeconomic discussion of how we do it, well, I'll say one sentence.
We need to reduce the federal budget deficit.
Under Joe Biden, we had roughly $7 trillion of expenses and $5 trillion of revenue.
Under Donald Trump, we have $7 trillion of expenses and $5 trillion of revenue.
So nothing's really changed.
The federal budget deficit's too high.
Consumption is too high, actually, in this country.
We need to do something about it.
I'm still like the man, the Greek man with the lamp, laundering around looking for the politician who'll say that to the people.
Actually, your former colleague, Ram Emanuel, is somebody who's getting close to that.
In what way?
I mean, we heard the president talk when he first started talking about tariffs and we took over saying, do the American people need five dolls?
Do they, I mean, can they just have one or two?
But is it okay for the American president to decide in this democracy how much you should consume?
Of course, individual decisions are up to individuals.
They can decide what job to take if there's a job on offer, and they can decide how to spend their money.
But as economists, we have to try and enact the policies that make a difference, right?
Let me ask you this question, Greta.
That's a beautiful blue dress you're wearing.
Would you rather have 20 dresses in your closet or rather be part of an economy that's going to give even greater prosperity to your children and your grandchildren?
I think you'd probably, I don't know about your family at all, and you don't need to tell us, of course, but I think your answer would be you are concerned about the future because you're a sensible person.
Now, today in this country, we every year consume $1 trillion more goods than we produce.
So as Bob Lighthizer, an expert on these subjects, said to me once, we are trading our children's future for a pile of cheap T-shirts and cheap flat screen TVs.
Now, is that the right decision?
I don't think it is.
We need policies to reverse that.
We'll go to Dallas, Texas.
John, a Republican.
Hi, John.
Yes, I'm just wondering about the increasing cultural divide in the country.
Christopher Lash talked about this in 92.
You have this managerial elite that's becoming increasingly out of touch with regular people.
I'm wondering how is that connected with their jobs and their careers, which are so tied to colloquism and international trade.
Thank you.
Okay, well, these will be the final thoughts.
Michael, why don't you go first?
Yes, well, I think we do have a growing divide in this country, and it's unfortunate.
It's something that I think often political leaders to try to take advantage of that divide worsen.
They pursue rhetoric that furthers the divide.
I would just say on what we were just talking about, I think if you're in a position where your economic policy, the justification of it is saying you need to buy less stuff, I don't think that is a winning economic policy.
There has to be a way to pursue in a measured fashion policies that will strengthen the domestic economy without taking away choices from the American people.
And I think if that's what you're resorting to, that probably is a recognition that you're kind of out of excuses.
And so that would be my point on the president's Marie Antoinette-like statement that parents should buy less dolls for their children.
Jeff Ferry.
I think that's unfair characterization of Donald Trump.
I think he genuinely is concerned about working people at times, and he shows that in his comments, including the comment about the doll, which is a fascinating comment.
I think that this country got rich.
Industries matter.
Having the right industries beginning really in the 1860s and 1870s, right up through 1973, is what enabled the growth of a working and middle class and counteracted the globalism which the caller is talking about.
I think he's absolutely right that a managerial elite, which has all of its employees in China or somewhere else, doesn't care about the American people.
I saw that transformation at Apple Computer when I lived in Silicon Valley, and I was very sad.
I preferred Apple when Steve Jobs had his employees in Sacramento, and they were American workers, and he cared about them.
And then it transformed into something different.
We have to get back to a country that cares about its working and middle class.
Jeff Ferry is the chief economist at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, and Michael Nagron, who is a senior fellow for economic opportunity at the Center for American Progress.
Defending Working Class Interests00:09:57
unidentified
Thank you for this conversation this morning and coming to our table.
We appreciate it.
It was a good one.
Thank you.
Thank you, Greta.
We're going to take a break.
Coming up in about 30 minutes, Nick Troano, who is executive director of Unite America, will join us to discuss election reform.
But first, after this break, your reaction to news of the day will be in open forum.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We are getting your reaction to news of the day.
Let's start with the headlines that are dominating the news cycle this morning.
The Washington Times front page on the president's address to the nation last night says it would be intolerable for Iran to have nuclear weapons and defending his decision to go to war.
They also noted that he is considering exiting NATO over the lack of support from our allies.
NASA's Artemis II lifted off in an historic moon mission yesterday and C-SPAN was wall to wall in coverage of preparations and the successful launch.
The four astronauts have started on an historic 10-day journey looping around the moon for the first time in 50 years.
And in the nation's capital yesterday, the Supreme Court heard the arguments for and against President Trump's restrictions on birthright citizenship.
The president appeared in the courtroom the first time a sitting president has done so.
C-SPAN brought you every minute of the oral argument.
Check it out on C-SPAN Now, our free video mobile app, and c-span.org.
Political observers believe the justices are poised to uphold the legal principle.
And across the street from the High Court, Senate and House Republicans announced a deal to move forward with legislation to reopen the Homeland Security Department, coming back to the very same bipartisan agreement that President Trump and House Republicans rejected last week.
And finally, House Democrats sued to block President Trump's executive order on restricting mail-in voting, arguing the Constitution empowers state and Congress authority over who is eligible to vote.
And we're going to be talking about election reforms and the president's executive order on mail-in ballots coming up here on the Washington Journal.
Until then, your reaction to those headlines.
Crystal in Philadelphia, Democratic caller Crystal, will go to you.
Yes, good morning, America.
With the Supreme Court yesterday talking about immigrants having children, Barron will be considered an anchor baby.
But previous callers saying that he had gotten laid off.
Myself was laid off from his job of how many years, a month after Trump and Musk was running the country.
He traded in his stocks and stuff, but still hasn't found a job to sort of match what his pay was.
And Trump is busy, you know, thinking about his ballroom, cheap, gaudy-looking gold embellishments for the White House and sending other people's fathers and moms, sons and daughters to war.
Where's Baron and he should be front of the line?
All right, Crystal.
Let's listen to a little bit of that oral argument at the court yesterday.
The congressional report that we cite in our brief talks about certain hotspots like Russian elites coming to Miami through these birth tourism companies.
unidentified
And I mean, here's a fact about it that I think is striking.
Media reported as early as 2015 that based on Chinese media reports, there are 500, 500 birth tourism companies in the People's Republic of China whose business is to bring people here to give birth in return to that nation.
I think it's, I quote what Justice Scalia said in his Hamdan descent, where they have, where their interpretation has these implications that could not possibly have been approved by the 19th century framers of this amendment.
unidentified
I think that shows that they've made a mess.
Their interpretation has made a mess of the provision.
Well, it certainly wasn't a problem in the 19th century.
No, but of course, we're in a new world now, as Justice Alito pointed out to you, where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who's a U.S. citizen.
unidentified
Well, it's a new world.
It's the same Constitution.
It is.
And as Justice Scalia said, I think in the case that Justice Alito was referring to, you've got a constitutional provision that addresses certain evils and it should be extended to reasonably comparable evils.
You heard there, Chief Justice John Roberts, responding to the President's Solicitor General defending the president's order on restricting birthright citizenship.
The headlines this morning say the Supreme Court justices appeared ready to disagree with the president on the birthright citizenship restrictions and poised to uphold the legal principle.
Let's go to Charles in Ohio, Democratic caller.
unidentified
Charles, your reaction to news of the day.
Well, it's not news of the day, but in 1980, when I was working in the oil field, I voted for Ronald Reagan.
And the great Ronald Reagan shut down the oil field and started buying oil from Iran.
And we had the great Iran-Contra deal.
And then Daddy Bush got in there and they started paying corporations or giving tax breaks to corporations to move production overseas to keep the people from emigrating to the United States to take their jobs.
So then, after we got that, then we got the great Newt Gingrich, and they had the great NAFTA deal that Clinton had to sign because Newt Gingrich was in charge of the Congress.
And now we're going back to tariffs and everything else.
Yes, I'd like to comment, first of all, illegal entry to the United States during Trump's first term, 2016 to 2020, that when these heinous acts occur, I wish they would go back and find when entry did occur.
It could have been Obama or whenever.
It's always blamed on Biden, but it may or may not be that case.
A second thing is a wake-up call to Democratic lawmakers.
If you can't sell health care over warfare, you're not trying hard enough.
And also, with Social Security, lift any cap.
Winning Issues for Democrats00:02:12
unidentified
It's ridiculous.
There's any cap on it.
It'll be healthy.
The young people paying into it now need to know it's going to be there.
In case you missed it last night, the President addressed the nation the first time in his second term, outlining the Iran war after one month of fighting between the U.S. and Israel and Iran.
Here's what he had to say about the U.S. operation in Iran, saying that it is nearing completion.
unidentified
For years, everyone has said that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons, but in the end, those are just words if you're not willing to take action when the time comes.
As I stated in my announcement of Operation Epic Fury, our objectives are very simple and clear.
We are systematically dismantling the regime's ability to threaten America or project power outside of their borders.
That means eliminating Iran's Navy, which is now absolutely destroyed, hurting their Air Force and their missile program at levels never seen before, and annihilating their defense industrial base.
Taken together, these actions will cripple Iran military, crush their ability to support terrorist proxies, and deny them the ability to build a nuclear bomb.
Our armed forces have been extraordinary.
There's never been anything like it militarily.
Everyone is talking about it, and tonight I'm pleased to say that these core strategic objectives are nearing completion.
As we celebrate this progress, we think especially of the 13 American warriors who have laid down their lives in this fight to prevent our children from ever having to face a nuclear Iran.
Twice this past month, I have traveled to Dover Air Force Base, and it's been something I wanted to be with those heroes as they returned to American soil.
Strategic Objectives Nearing Completion00:02:40
unidentified
And I was with them and their families, their parents, their wives, their husbands.
We salute them, and now we must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives.
Every single one of the people, their loved ones said, please, sir, please finish the job, every one of them.
And we are going to finish the job, and we're going to finish it very fast.
I want to thank our allies in the Middle East, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain.
They've been great, and we will not let them get hurt or fail in any way, shape, or form.
unidentified
President Trump in his address to the nation last night, reaction from Capitol Hill, the lead Democrat in the House, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, posting, the American people are sick and tired of the chaos, high costs, and extreme Republican agenda.
Donald Trump must end his reckless war of choice in the Middle East now.
Les in Dodge City, Kansas, Republican.
Les, good morning to you.
What's on your mind?
Oh, yes, good morning.
They had been talking, this message is for the farmers in the country that they have been talking about fertilizer and how hard fertilizer is to get and how it's too high priced.
I used to be a security guard at an ammonia and hydrous ammonia plant just outside of Dodge City.
And so we do have fertilizer, and there are numerous cattle plants and feed yards in the area.
And we used to take cattle, cow chips, grind them up, and mix them and spread them out over the field and mix them in.
When the farmer would plow up the field, that fertilizer would mix in and be excellent fertilizer.
So they can't say they can't get fertilizer that it's not there.
Les, I will leave it there.
Jennifer in Ohio, Independent.
Jennifer, what's on your mind this morning?
Well, I'm just curious as to the anchor babies.
Do these anchor babies, when they leave the country, do they get the SSI?
Do they get Medicaid and all the benefits?
Do they carry that with them?
Are we paying for their medical care in whatever country they're in?
President Health Concerns Arise00:05:23
unidentified
All right, Jennifer in Ohio, Independent, with her questions.
We are a few minutes into the market opening up.
This is from yahoo.com.
The stock market today, the Dow, SP 500, NASDAQ Futures Stumble after President Trump says war with Iran not yet over.
Chris in Oregon, Democratic caller.
Hi, Chris.
Hi.
My opinion is birthrights citizenship is for all of us.
Not these, what they're trying to say is all these people are coming in from foreign countries and having babies and using it as citizenship.
And what do you think we are as American citizens?
We rely on our birth certificates for being American.
If they take away birth certificate rights away from one, they will do it away from all.
And as you said, these four astronauts pictured here in the Washington Post are on a historic journey, 10-day loop around the moon.
unidentified
Richard, what do you make of this flyby?
I think it's just unreal.
I just love what they're doing, what y'all did.
And I just want to thank y'all so much.
I watched the show, and yesterday was pride.
It wasn't, I hate this, I hate that.
It was just so much pride.
Thank you so much, C-SPAN.
All right, Richard.
Benny in Florida, Democratic caller.
Benny, good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
Hey, Benny, can you mute that television first before you talk, all right?
Mute the television.
All right, we're listening to you, Benny.
Go ahead.
Oh, yeah.
Well, my message is very short.
I think that this president is sick.
And I know Mr. Kennedy doesn't believe in vaccines or anything like that, but I think he needs to get his doctors together.
They need to come up with a vaccine for the president because he's very sick.
All right, Benny, we're going to hear from RFK Jr. and the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldon.
They're going to be announcing this afternoon, 2 p.m. Eastern Time, an announcement regarding microplastics.
They are saying this is a major announcement on microplastics.
So you can watch right here on C-SPAN, 2 p.m. Eastern Time.
C-SPAN now, that's our free video mobile app, or online on demand at c-span.org.
Jason in Benton, Arkansas, an independent.
Hi, Jason.
Good morning.
Thank you all so much for taking my call.
I tell you, I'm just, I'm a registered Republican voter, but the more and more I think about this, I am an independent because, I mean, Donald Trump has made me so mad with some of the lies that he's told.
I mean, if we've annihilated Iran's military, who are we fighting?
I mean, there's no war without a military unless we're fighting another war on terror, which will never end.
And then he keeps saying that we don't need foreign oil.
Well, if we don't need foreign oil, let's tap into our own resources.
And like he said when he campaigned, drill, baby, drill and drop these gas prices.
I'm paying almost $5, almost $4 a gallon now for gas.
And two weeks ago, I was paying about $350.
I mean, it's going up like crazy.
And it's doing nothing but hurting the American people.
And then you've got people that work for Homeland Security that aren't even getting paid.
I mean, this is, what is, he's saying he's doing this for the American people, but I think he's doing it for his own pocketbook.
All right.
Well, two different issues, Jason, as you noted.
Controlling Americas Resources00:11:01
unidentified
I mean, we have the U.S.-Israel strikes against Iran that have happened about a month ago.
And as the president said last night, it's nearing completion, but you're looking at a few more weeks at least of Operation Epic Fury that's happening there.
And then, as you noted, the impasse over funding for the Homeland Security Department.
Congress, the Republicans, control the House and the Senate.
And up until yesterday, they couldn't agree on how to move forward.
Democrats have been objecting to funding the entire Homeland Security Department.
Now they have agreed to a deal that was brokered, a bipartisan deal that was brokered in the Senate last week, which is to fund all the agencies but ICE and the customs border protection.
House Republicans rejected to that last week, and the president did as well.
And then yesterday, the Speaker of the House said they will move forward on that.
7 a.m. Eastern Time today in a near-empty chamber, Senate Majority Leader John Thune was on the floor and he once again put forth that agreement of funding most of Homeland Security TSA agents, but not ICE and customs and border protection.
So that on the congressional side, Jason, two different issues.
I do want to show you and others what Marco Rubio had to say yesterday.
The Secretary of State, ahead of the president's prime time address on X posted this.
Many Americans are asking, why did the United States have to attack Iran now?
Well, let me explain.
Iran wants to have nuclear weapons.
Of that, there is zero doubt.
If what they truly wanted, which is what they claim, is nuclear energy, well, they could have nuclear energy like all the other countries in the world have it.
And that is, you import the fuel and you build reactors above ground.
That's not what Iran has done.
They build their reactors and their facilities deep in mountains away from the public glare.
And they want to enrich that material.
The same equipment that they could use to enrich material for energy, they could use to quickly enrich it to weapons grade.
So it is clear that they've been offered every opportunity to have a nuclear program that allows them to have energy, not weapons.
And every single time they have turned it down.
But why the attack now?
Well, what was Iran trying to do?
Iran was trying to build a conventional shield, in essence, have so many missiles, have so many drones that no one could attack them.
And they were well on their way.
We were on the verge of an Iran that had so many missiles and so many drones that no one could do anything about their nuclear weapons program in the future.
That was an intolerable risk.
Under no circumstances can a country run by radical Shia clerics with an apocalyptic vision of the future ever possess nuclear weapons.
And under no circumstances can they be allowed to hide and protect that program and their ambitions behind a shield of missiles and drones that no one can do anything about.
This was our last best chance to eliminate that conventional threat, that conventional shield that they were trying to build.
And the president made the right decision to wipe it out now.
That is the goal of this operation, to destroy their conventional missiles and their drone program so they can't hide behind it and finally have to deal with the world seriously about never ever having nuclear weapons.
The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, with why we went to war with Iran.
Robert in New Jersey, Republican, let's hear from you.
Well, what we just heard there is very interesting because, well, we had to attack them now, he says, because if not, they would have had a missile shield.
Well, what are they using now?
The Strait of Removes is theirs.
They closed it.
We won't even fail anything near there because of risk it'll be sunk.
So this is very interesting.
You know, I voted for Trump, and I guess you could say I was completely hoodwinked.
I thought that, you know, him putting Tulsi Gabbard into the DNI position would mean that he would, you know, think more along the lines of the strategy and getting us out of foreign rules.
I mean, this, not talking about cutting health care, people, this war is costing us $1 billion a day.
$1 billion a day.
And they have done nothing.
He's letting Israel lead us around by the noses.
Meanwhile, did you just hear Netanyahu?
They will not be putting any troops into Iran, but our troops will be going into Iran.
I think this is insanely foolhardy and destructive to our country.
We'll go to John next, Johnston, Pennsylvania, Democratic caller.
John.
Good morning.
Yes.
I'm talking about the pathological fixation that Trump has on immigrants.
You know, since Columbine, there have been 84 shootings in schools, and all those were done by, they weren't done by immigrants.
They were done by angry white guys with a red mix.
The other thing is, too, for four years under Biden, all you heard was the open borders, open borders, open borders.
And that was by the Republicans.
The Democrats, I never heard one Democrat say that the borders were open.
And all of a sudden, you know, it's a Democratic thing.
So, I mean, that's kind of crazy.
I think Biden had a program or a bill that would have provided 1,500 border patrolmen and more judges, and that was shot down by, guess who?
Donald Trump.
So let's keep that in mind, too.
Don't forget, all the people that shot at him and Charlie Cook weren't immigrants.
They were angry white guys.
That's my comment for today.
Thank you.
Alia in San Diego, Republican.
We'll go to San Diego on our line for Republicans.
Is it Alia?
Yes.
Good morning.
My name is Alexei.
And I'm calling regarding to, I would like to make two comments.
And one is our president is a great president who is helping the Iranian people.
And I think with all these things that are happening, there is no trust to the Iranian regime, the current regime.
They will lie.
They will be not telling the truth.
So I hope with all the things you are going through, they will remove and change the regime.
They will not be able to help anybody.
They will be destructive, unkind, and not real.
So I hope and I pray for our president, which he has been trying to help Iranian people.
Okay.
And the other, thank you.
All right.
Ali, I'm going to move on to Steve, who's in Springfield, Virginia, on our line for Democrats.
Steve, thanks for waiting.
It's your turn.
I have a theory, and it's about Trump.
And I kind of believe it involves Russia and China and the Americas in total, including Greenland.
I think what he's trying to do is he's trying to just take over the Americas, have America take it over and run it and control all the resources that are there.
As far as that goes, Europe and the Russia there, I believe he's letting Russia go ahead and move into Europe if they want to.
And he's going to pull out of NATO in order for that to happen.
And as far as China goes, I believe he's going to eventually remove himself from Taiwan.
He doesn't really want to have those types of wars.
He's dividing up the world to China, Russia, and Americas.
And that's what I believe right now, anyway.
Okay.
Matt in New York, Independent.
Matt, what's on your mind?
Yeah, hi.
You know, I'm just calling in to try to like do something to pick everybody up.
The United States of America is great.
The world is great.
We're all great.
Let's get together and fix this planet, all right?
Peace on.
Bill in Jacksonville, Florida, Republicans.
How are you?
Thank you.
Reason I called three points, if I may.
I think had the Republicans, or Trump here, brought in the name North Korea, it might have added some gravitas to the situation.
And I thought Rubio gave a good speech, but the problem is if we just bomb out the stuff, does that mean in three or four years we have to come back in and refight the replacement stuff?
Lastly, I understand there's a movement afoot bipartisan in both the House and Senate, making April 1 henceforth and forever designating as the official Trump Recognition Day because of his being the best president ever.
Thank you.
Pat in New York, Democratic caller.
Hi, Pat.
Good morning.
I'm a little confused.
I'm confused because we were told that they had obliterated the weapons in Iran some months ago.
Now I'm trying to figure out how did they accumulate all these weapons back so fast.
And if North Korea, I think, has nuclear weapons, why haven't we approached them also?
Okay.
Diane in South Carolina, also Democrat.
Diane, go ahead.
Hi.
So I would like to talk about insurance and Israeli insurance, health insurance that they supply to their people.
Everybody needs to go online and check it out.
It talks, everybody has to buy into it, and it's based on your income.
And there's other insurances that you get.
You can purchase beyond that, but everybody there has basic insurance.
Okay.
And it's based on your income.
And we deserve it just like they do.
All right.
Diane with her idea for all of you.
We're going to leave it there in open forum.
Take a break when we come back.
Nick Trojano, Executive Director of the Unite America, will be here to discuss election reform and his book that proposes abolishing party primaries.
Stay with us.
We'll be right back.
Friday on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, a bipartisan conversation on the Iran conflict with Mick Mulvaney, former Trump White House Chief of Staff and former South Carolina Republican Congressman, and Steve Riketti, former counselor to President Joe Biden and chair of the Biden 2020 presidential campaign.
He'll join our host Dasha Burns to also discuss the ongoing partial Homeland Security shutdown and key issues facing the nation.
Nick Troiano Returns to Discuss Reform00:02:22
unidentified
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This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.
Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A.
The Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum's Jennifer Levasser, discusses the history of the 135 mission space shuttle program and takes us on a tour of the Space Shuttle Orbiter.
There are well over 20,000 tiles on this vehicle, and about 80% of them are original to Discovery's very first flight in 1984.
So some of this evidence goes all the way back to 1984.
And it's really, and it's one of the funniest things about being the curator.
Solving Federal Election Problems00:15:51
unidentified
Sometimes people will look and say, well, it looks really dirty.
That's the evidence of all the hard work that happened.
The Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum's Jennifer Levasser.
Sunday night at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q ⁇ A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Washington Journal continues.
Joining us this morning is Nick Trojano.
He's the executive director of Unite America and also author of the book The Primary Solution, Rescuing Our Democracy from the Fringes, here to talk about election reform.
Nick Trojano, let's begin with a new poll that was conducted recently.
And when they asked your confidence in your state local governments will run a fair election, 34% said they were very confident or confident.
66% said they're not very or not confident at all.
Your reaction.
Well, I think Americans should be confident that they'll be able to cast a ballot in a free and fair election this year, but they shouldn't be confident that vote will actually matter because most elections by the time that November rolls around will have already been decided in low turnout party primaries.
And that's the core problem with our election system today.
It's again not about whether we can trust if our ballots can be counted.
They will.
It's about whether we can trust if our elected officials and the candidates running to represent us will actually listen to us.
Because the sad reality is that it's only a small fraction of voters in the party base that actually have all the influence because of the way our system is designed around party primaries today.
And what role does gerrymandering play in that and the fights in states like Texas and California that have played out this year?
Well, partisan gerrymandering is a scourge on our democracy because what it essentially means is that politicians are choosing their voters rather than the other way around by virtue of how they're drawing lines for our congressional districts.
And in an unprecedented way, we saw this year states actually do that mid-cycle, not after the next census, but actually in the middle of the decade.
And it's been an arms race between both parties now to see who can gerrymander more, the result of which is that neither party is going to ultimately net out with much of an advantage.
The voters lose, however.
92% of U.S. House districts this year will be uncompetitive in November, which means 92% of our elected officials will be decided in the primaries that are happening right now when fewer than half of voters will be participating than compared to November.
And even worse, in 16 states, close to 17 million independent voters are going to be locked out of these elections that they pay for altogether because of closed party primaries.
So gerrymandering is a problem.
Party primaries exacerbate that problem.
The good news is that these problems can be fixed at the state level around the country, either through state legislatures or citizen ballot initiatives.
And that's when voters are taking power into their own hands to say that our democracy should represent them, not these political parties.
So what you were citing at the top was the Cook Political Report.
And according to their analysis, 399 of 435 seats, or 92%, are safe for one party in this midterm election.
Again, that is the problem that we're facing.
In fact, we call it the primary problem in our politics today.
Again, November's elections will determine which party controls Congress, but these primaries that are happening right now will determine everything else, who gets elected, what issues they'll prioritize, how they will govern.
So it's really important that people vote in the primaries.
And it's even more important long term that we make sure these primaries are open to all voters and that candidates must win a true majority support to get elected.
Without doing this, we're going to be sending good people into a broken system where the incentives are to pander to their party base rather than work together to solve problems.
And that's why two-thirds of Americans right now don't feel represented by Congress.
Again, this is a fixable problem by virtue of the way that we design our election system.
When you call for an open primary, how does it work?
Well, in an open primary, every voter, every eligible voter will have the freedom to vote for any candidate that they want in every taxpayer-funded election.
There are five states that have what we would call open all-candidate primaries, which means on a single ballot, you get to choose your favorite candidate.
It could be a Republican for governor, a Democrat for Senate, maybe an Independent for your state legislature.
Then the top candidates advance to the general election where whoever wins majority support gets elected.
You know, under this system, there's more competition, which means that there's more accountability and better representation, which will produce better results on the issues that we care about, whether it's on health care, education, immigration, or growing debt.
If we want to fix any of those problems, we need to fix our political system because the system determines the incentives by which our leaders will govern.
How do you solve the problem, though, in that type of primary, where if you have more competition from Democratic party, in other words, you have five Democrats running, maybe only one or two Republicans running, and that Democratic vote gets diluted among those five, and perhaps the two Republicans are at the top of the ticket, the outcome, and it's those two Republicans that then advance.
Well, obviously, some people are concerned about that scenario that may potentially could play out in the California governor's race this year, but I don't think that's likely to happen.
I think what will happen is that more support will consolidate around the front-runner candidates, and you're likely to see more choice, more competition, rather than less come the general election.
Some states like Alaska, for example, have improved upon that top two system, for example, by advancing the top four candidates to the general election.
Other states have experimented with using ranked ballots, which will produce an instant runoff in these elections to ensure or to mitigate against the risk of vote splitting.
No matter what system we're looking at, we have to compare it to the status quo.
And the status quo right now is that fewer than 8% of voters nationally are deciding over 90% of our elections in these low-turnout party primaries.
We need to get rid of that system and replace it with one where every voter has a meaningful say in who represents them.
So what do you do?
How would you get states to adopt what you are suggesting?
You said only five states do it right now.
Yes, and that number is larger than it was just a few years ago because citizens at the state level can champion these reforms.
Alaska in 2020 passed a citizen ballot initiative that replaced its party primaries with all candidate primaries.
Citizens can also put pressure on their elected officials in state legislatures.
Last year in New Mexico, for example, there was a bipartisan bill that advanced to open the primaries to independent voters such that this year, over 330,000 voters in New Mexico who are unaffiliated with either party can vote.
There's similar bills like that in the state legislatures, including in Pennsylvania, for example.
So the good news is that no matter how broken the system seems today, we still have the tools to fix it.
It requires citizens getting involved to make those changes.
And how would independents play a role in an open primary system?
Well, independents are the largest and fastest voting bloc in the country today.
You know, they're turned off by the party purity on both sides, the inability to solve problems.
They don't feel at home comfortably in either political party.
But they're the ones that are most disadvantaged under the current system.
You know, in 16 states not even having the ability to cast a ballot in a primary.
So when we advance open primaries in all candidate primaries, independents will get more power and more voice in a system.
And I think that's a good thing because right now we see the partisanship and the polarization dominate in Congress.
And that's the biggest tragedy in our politics today.
It's not that we, the people, are hopelessly divided on issues.
It's that our Congress remains so, even when we can find agreement.
And that includes on tough issues like immigration.
Most Americans want to see a secure border, a modernized immigration system, a humane way of treating those that entered the country illegally.
But we've been vacillating between one extreme and another, between open borders under the prior president, between masked federal agents in streets under our current president.
That's not the type of policy that most Americans want to see.
They want our elected officials to work together and find common ground.
And I think as political independents gain more voice in our election system, we will see representatives have to represent that viewpoint more and better in our institutions.
All right.
Well, let's go to calls.
Frank in San Francisco, an independent.
Frank, good morning.
Welcome to the conversation.
Namaste, everybody.
I'm here in San Francisco.
I don't believe in political parties.
Political parties have way too much power.
The Democratic Party doesn't represent.
We're not being pandered to.
Democrats aren't being pandered to.
I mean, 8% of Democrats think we should stop arming Israel for their genocidal wars, and yet all the party leadership-Hakeem Jeffries, APAC Shakur, Shucks Schumer, Shucks Chumer, they're all for it.
So, how is this going to help?
It's not going to help.
We have a jungle primary in California, and we've got like a dozen Democrats running.
It's the top two vote-getters who are going to be in the final.
So, it's very likely we're going to have two Republicans running against each other.
Campaign finance-that's the problem.
Okay, let's take up campaign finance.
Well, what we see playing out in primaries right now is millions of dollars being spent by special interest groups ranging from crypto now to AI to other narrow partisan interests.
Many of these PACs funded by ideological billionaires pouring dollars into our elections.
That challenge is exacerbated in a party primary system where there's very low turnout and those dollars can have maximum influence.
It's a high ROI strategy for those groups.
Our research has found that when we open primaries to all voters and expand the electorate, it dilutes the impact of those special interests and of money in politics.
So, I think these issues are inextricably linked.
Richard's next in Augusta, Georgia, Democratic caller.
Good morning.
I'm a former poll worker who checks ID cards to know what to look for on the IDs of the individuals that come in and vote.
And how is it that a man that wants to try to rig the absentee ballots and he votes absentee ballot, and that it makes no sense of what he's trying to do that rigging the voter registration and everything that everybody knows you have to show your birth certificate in order to be a to prove that you're American citizen,
and that Colorado has one of the best absentee ballot programs in the country.
It makes no sense in that the dictator in the White House, the fascist, is that lost his mind and that voting in America is the best in the world, and that he wants to go to a paper ballot.
Okay, people need to vote.
So, Richard realized okay, I'll leave it there.
As the president has been advocating, Nick Toriana, as you know, for the Save America Act.
I just want to read the provisions of this.
Requires individuals to present an eligible photo ID before voting, requires states to obtain proof of citizenship in person when registering an individual to vote, requires states to remove non-citizens from existing voter roles.
It's already illegal for undocumented immigrants to cast a ballot in federal elections.
The Save America passed the House 218 to 213 with one Democratic vote in February, but stalled in the Senate amid arguments from Democrats that it would violate voting rights, and it's still stalled in the Senate.
Nick Toriana, your thoughts on the Save America Act.
Well, I think we ought to be skeptical when either party seeks to rewrite election rules unilaterally, especially at the federal level.
You know, Democrats tried that a few years ago with HR1.
Republicans are trying it today with the Save America Act.
What problem are they trying to solve?
Is a good question to ask.
There's very, very few incidents of non-citizen voting right now.
Most states do have a voter ID, which is popular.
Save America Act goes beyond that on proof of citizenship, which would place a pretty high burden on a lot of voters in terms of having to access their birth certificates or passports to prove citizenship.
I think we ought to be focused on where we can find bipartisan agreements to improve our elections.
There is a bill in Congress called the Let America Vote Act right now, for example, that would ensure every taxpayer-funded election is accessible by every eligible voter and opening our primaries, for example.
It also recodifies federal law to ban non-citizen voting.
That Let America Vote Act has Democrats and Republican co-sponsors on it, including the co-chairs of the Problem Solvers Caucus.
So I think we ought to be looking at ways to improve our elections in a way that can increase trust rather than undermine it by pursuing a unilateral partisan strategy.
A second headline to share on election reform, the Washington Post, Trump orders attempts to change rules for mail-in voting.
The president signed a sweeping executive order Tuesday that purports to change rules for mail ballots, even though the president has limited authority over elections.
The order directs the U.S. Postal Service to send ballots only to voters who appear on a list of citizens to be compiled by the Department of Homeland Security with the assistance of the Social Security Administration.
The order also specifies what types of secure envelopes are to be used for mail ballots.
Now, Democrats sued the president over this executive order yesterday, saying the Constitution gives the power over elections to states and Congress.
Nick Toriano, pick up on the Democrats' argument.
Well, I think the main point here is that the president has very limited authority over federal elections.
What the Constitution says is that the time, place, and manner of our elections is decided at the state level.
Enfranchising Independent Voters00:15:12
unidentified
It also reserves Congress the ability to make changes for federal elections.
It gives no ability to the president to unilaterally make changes to our elections, and that's for good reason.
Why would we want an individual president of either political party getting to rewrite the rules, for example, of how they might be re-elected?
So we have a challenge right now of our president and the Congress actually reading and following our Constitution.
Article 1 gives Congress a lot of power, including not just on elections, but on war powers, on taxation, on trade, on emergency powers.
And what we've seen over time is that that power be usurped by the president, in part because the separation of powers has been replaced by the separation of parties.
When we have party primaries that reinforce party discipline, Congress gives away its power to the president, and that's undermining our constitutional system of self-government in pretty dangerous ways right now.
Before we go back to calls, how is Unite America trying to address the primary problem, as you call it?
Well, we're working with partners at the state level across the country to advance nonpartisan reforms that can give voters more voice and choice in their elections.
Right now, we're active in 10 states trying to prevent state legislatures from closing party primaries, which would be deeply unpopular among voters across the political spectrum.
We're also engaged in states that are trying to open their closed party primaries.
A good example of that is in Pennsylvania right now, where there's a bipartisan bill that would enfranchise over a million independent voters who are currently locked out of the system.
And so we're building the support structure to help partner organizations around the country to make these elections changes as part of a great tradition we have in our country over the last 250 years of fixing our democracy where it has gone wrong.
You know, 100 years ago, for example, there was no direct election of senators.
Women didn't have the right to vote.
There was no such thing as ballot initiatives.
There weren't even primaries to begin with.
These elections were decided in smoke-filled rooms by party bosses.
All of the ways that our democracy is improved is as a result of efforts to fix it.
And so we're continuing that tradition as we come up on the 250th anniversary of our country.
And I think that is what has made our democracy the brightest in the world.
Let's go to the map from Ballotpedia.
You promoted earlier rank voting.
Look at the map on the United States.
The state in orange is where rank choice voting is prohibited.
The gray states have no state laws addressing ranked choice voting.
The states in light blue or teal have use of rank choice voting in limited cases.
And then in green, we can see here, that's what?
Two states, right, Nick?
Yes.
Two states that have ranked choice voting.
And how does it work?
Well, instead of only being able to choose one candidate under ranked choice voting, you have the option of ranking candidates according to preference.
And the benefit of that is that if no candidate earns majority support, the election already knows the backup preferences so that there can be an instant runoff.
Now, compare that to how the system works today in Texas, for example, in the Senate race on the Republican side, no candidate cleared the 50% threshold.
So voters have to go back to the ballot in a few weeks to weigh in again on that runoff.
And tens of millions of more dollars will have been raised and spent by the candidates.
Wouldn't have it been great that instead in the primary, if voters got to rank the candidates and if no one got 50% plus one, the candidate with the least support would be dropped and their supporters' second choice votes would be counted.
We would have had a result already.
So ranked choice voting is just a better, faster, and cheaper way of making sure that the outcome of elections represents a true majority.
And when you combine that with an open all-candidate primary, as Alaska does, you get a system in which voters have more power and more choice in elections and where candidates have to truly represent and build a broad-based coalition, which impacts the way that they govern.
And in Alaska, for example, there are now bipartisan governing coalitions in both the state house and state senate that have worked with each other on passing timely budgets, on increasing education funding, which is quite popular in the state.
So these election rules changes isn't just about a technocratic movement of a better way to hold an election.
It's about a better way to govern and a better way to address the issues that most voters care about.
We'll go to Michael, who's in Connecticut, Independent.
Michael, welcome to the conversation.
Good morning.
My question is: college electric vote.
I think we should abandon that.
The populate vote.
My second question is: if a person like the president is a convicted felon, how he could run for president?
And then, but as a convicted felon, a lot of people lose their right to vote.
He finds jobs.
He lives in public housing.
And my third question is: how that a president could call Georgia, people forget, they asked the commissioner of the election to ask them for 10,000 votes.
People forgot about that.
How you could do that?
Okay.
Nick Triano.
Well, there are many ideas of how to make our democracy more representative of voters, including the idea the gentleman mentioned around reforming our electoral college.
The challenge is that some of those ideas run through Congress needing to pass federal legislation, or in the case of the Electoral College, an actual constitutional amendment that would need to be done.
And those are higher thresholds of viability.
The advantage of focusing, as United America does, on primary reform is that it doesn't require an act of Congress or a constitutional amendment.
These are laws that can be changed at the state level.
And by the way, when we succeed in opening primaries to all voters in all states, we will have a more representative Congress that can take on other issues and other important reforms that also need to be done.
So I think the question is just where is the most impactful and viable reforms to focus on now and opening party primaries or abolishing party primaries altogether is what sits at that nexus and is why that is the focus of our organization.
Patrick is watching in Connecticut on our line for Republicans.
Morning.
Hey, Patrick, you got to mute your television, all right?
Oh, yeah.
Okay, I'm sorry.
All right.
Go ahead with your question or comment.
Yes, on the elections and stuff like that, I think that the president should not have anything to do with that.
That should be Congress, basically.
Congress sets all the rules and stuff.
So I think basic that the Congress should take and do it themselves.
And that's my comment.
And because I vote and I just go to the polls all the time, but the president should not have the power of that.
I mean, he has enough power as it is.
Okay, Patrick.
Let me go to Lewis, who's in Salisbury, North Carolina, Democratic caller.
Lewis, it's your turn.
Hey, top of the morning to you.
Hey, look, I remember that birthright citizen thing.
I just want to comment on that.
That's a carrot with a stick.
They're not talking about, they're trying to tell you that it's about people from foreign countries coming in and have babies and leave.
Who would want to have a baby here at this time who's the president now?
It's very embarrassing.
But it's real all about African slaves at that particular time.
They're just trying to get there on a sneaky tip.
But in North Carolina, you're talking about absentee ballots are the best.
Now, you just can't get an application or a ballot and think you're going to send it in just like that.
No way, baby.
You got to have two witnesses' signatures with it on your ballot.
Plus, you got to send in a copy ID with your ballot.
You just, it's ridiculous what they're trying to say how absentee ballots.
If you remember in the next election, when we gathered together, I'm talking about African Americans to vote.
Guess what a white supremacist would do?
They will call a bomb threat to mess that precinct up.
I'm telling all my African-American brothers and sisters, go ahead and do your absentee ballot and let them do the bomb threats to the white precincts and see what happens there.
But no, this is all crazy.
All right, we'll leave it there.
Barbara in California, Democratic caller.
I just have a question that nobody's addressing about voting.
Trump's the convicted selling.
How did he even get to vote in the Florida race?
People, wake the hell up.
We are losing our country.
Come on now.
All right, a couple calls on that.
On that.
Nick Traiano.
Yeah, I can't answer the prior caller's question, but what I can say is that our right to vote is precious in this country.
And there are 17 million Americans right now that literally cannot cast a ballot in taxpayer-funded primaries because they're not affiliated with either political party.
And when you look at who those voters are, they're disproportionately young people.
They're disproportionately veterans.
And so our current system is basically telling voters who are the future of the country and those that have fought for our country that they don't have a say in our elections.
And I think that's deeply wrong and is one of the problems that we are working to fix.
Guillermo's next.
He's in Philadelphia, Republican caller.
Good morning, C. Stan.
Good morning.
Mute your television, all right?
Go ahead with your question or comment.
Yeah, I'd like to address Nick.
Nick, you say there's only a few non-citizen voters.
So why not remove them?
It's simple as that.
Remove those people from the voting ballot.
The first point of the Save America Act is you got to have an ID.
You do have an ID, as you have heard, to send when you are voting from mail-in ballot.
So why not present the ID?
When you were confronted with this question, you went into all this theory about why parties do this and why parties do that.
This is not a party thing.
This is an American system of voting.
Okay.
The parties didn't start that.
The founding fathers started that.
The elections.
Okay.
Well, sir, with all due respect, I have a better voice than you do when it comes to the common folk.
The people like me, Joe down from the street, who is an air conditioning man.
You represent other people that really don't know what you are talking about.
You want to present your side, and that's good, but it's not, it's mute.
Your side is mute.
You do need an ID to go anywhere in the world.
You say that you have a few voting ballots that come in with non-citizens, just remove them.
I think having voter identification is an important part of having a secure election system.
It's also an issue to the caller's point that a vast majority of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents support.
But I think we need to be really careful about some provisions of what we see in the Save America Act, particularly with new burdens on proving citizenship at the point of registration.
I was listening to the floor debate in the Senate, for example, where Senator Murkowski was describing what that would mean in practical terms for voters in rural Alaska having to incur upwards of $1,000 of costs to physically show up to their local elections division if they can find the paperwork they need to prove it.
And these are people who've been in our country and citizens and voting for decades.
So I think we need to distinguish between what is common sense election law that is already the case in most states that other states should follow suit in adopting versus what is essentially a partisan messaging bill that gets to the core dysfunction of our politics today,
which is when our leaders are focused on trying to deliver sort of red meat issues to the base of their party rather than working in a common sense way on issues that I think most Americans want them focused on.
And again, I would underscore the challenge of passing any election law in a totally partisan way, because I think rightly the other half of the country will view that with some skepticism as to what's the motivation behind it.
Is it really about securing our elections or is it about trying to establish some partisan advantage in the next election?
So that's my view.
Don't dispute it on the merits of having secure elections and voter identification.
I'm skeptical around some of the motivations behind the bill and what the impact would be of new burdens on voters that deserve easy access to cast their ballot.
Nick, you said that United America is working with states that are trying to stop open primaries.
What are those states and what is the effort like?
Well, one example is in Louisiana.
It's one of the few states that did not have traditional party primaries for half a century until the new governor came in and decided that he wanted to implement closed party primaries, which would actually cost the state upwards of $100 million over the next several election cycles to implement because it would require putting a primary where there used to be none.
It's an extra cost of election administration, for example, and voters don't like it.
We just did a poll in Louisiana that showed 80% of voters prefer the open primary system.
The motivation behind it was one of party purity, including retribution against one of the state's senators that has shown independence in the way that he's voted.
Fixing Party Takeover of Elections00:05:52
unidentified
And so I think there will be a backlash.
I think that bill will eventually be repealed as it once was a decade ago when they tried doing a similar thing.
It's a problem when parties try to take over our elections that truly should belong to the people.
And I think voters will hold politicians accountable who try to usurp that power for themselves.
Jeff is next in Kansas City, Missouri.
Democratic caller.
Yes, we are one of the smartest countries in the world.
Why are we still using third war voting systems?
The only fraud that I see is coming from the Republican Party, and they should be ashamed.
And millions of Republicans will also be affected by these laws that they're trying to come up with.
Unless we come up with, unless the Republicans come up with a different way, a different standard for like these counties and all this stuff to allow them to vote.
It is fraud.
And Republicans should be ashamed of trying to destroy this country.
That's all I got.
All right.
Mr. Tarano, what do you say?
Well, I'll seize on the first comment that the caller made about America being the smartest country in the world.
I was reminded of that yesterday, you know, with the launch of Artemis II.
It's amazing to be reminded of what our country is capable of when we work together.
We're propelling humans further into space than has ever been done before in history as we work to get back to the moon and eventually to Mars.
And then contrast that with what we see back here on planet Earth with a Congress that has politicians who are seemingly incapable of even working together to fund our Department of Homeland Security, which has impacted millions of travelers stuck on long lines, over 50,000 government workers who've gone six weeks without paychecks.
This is happening because the incentive structure of our system is broken.
You know, the good news is that it doesn't take rocket science to fix it.
You know, these are changes that could be made at the state level in terms of opening our primaries to all voters, ensuring that candidates who win a majority of votes get elected.
We can rise to be a great country as we've seen ourselves advance in every other way.
We can do so in the way that we govern ourselves and hold our elections as well.
Round Lake, Illinois.
Ron, good morning to you on our line for Republicans.
Yeah, how you doing?
I guess you're talking about political primaries.
I mean, reform, hasn't the Democratic Party basically set a precedent on political primaries meaning nothing when you ran eight candidates for the biggest office in the world, the president of the United States, that received no, not one vote in the primary?
I guess what's the answer to that?
They've already set a precedent.
They've already reformed themselves.
They don't care what the American people voted for.
They did whatever they wanted.
Nick Torano.
I think the caller is right to point that out.
In 2024, the Democratic Party sought to close their primary election process, canceling elections, including in the state of Florida, for example, where there were multiple candidates running in an attempt to sort of coronate former President Biden.
And I don't think that worked out so well for them.
Similarly, you know, in 2016, the Republicans ran a primary for president in which President Trump was nominated with fewer than half the votes of primary voters in that election.
And so when we don't give a majority of voters the freedom to vote for whomever they want in these primaries, the parties wind up nominating candidates who are outside of the mainstream views of most Americans.
And so we've seen how the system is broken.
I'm hopeful that over the next few years, we can realize the potential of what it means to fix it in terms of leaders who are more representative of more Americans and have greater incentive to work together on the issues that matter.
Nick Torano, let's wrap with which states are trying to open up their primaries.
Talk about Unite America's work there and where can people learn more.
Well, United America is based in Denver, Colorado.
It's actually a state where just yesterday, a federal court struck down a portion of a semi-open primary law that was adopted by voters in 2016, which has the potential to return us to a place where independent voters no longer have the right to participate in both parties' primaries.
And so we are working in Colorado, including with a wonderful partner organization called Courageous Colorado, to lay the groundwork for a future potential initiative that would give every voter the right to vote for whomever they want in every election.
And so Colorado is just one of the states where I think in the next few years we will see a push to fully open our primaries to all voters.
And the potential is that even short of winning this type of reform in all 50 states, if just 10 states were to abolish traditional party primaries, it would mean that we'd have 20 U.S. senators from those states, close to 100 members of Congress total, that would no longer be beholden to the fringes of the far left or far right, but would actually be able to represent the broad majority of voters across the political spectrum.
And so as every state adopts these reforms, it's not just the states that will be improved.
It's our Congress and country as a whole.
The website is unitamerica.org.
Nick Triano is the executive director of the Unite America.
He's also the author of the book, The Primary Solution, Rescuing Our Democracy from the Fringes.
Washington Journal Signs Off00:01:47
unidentified
Thank you for the conversation this morning.
Thank you.
And that does it for today's Washington Journal.
We'll be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern Time for more calls and conversation with all of you.
This afternoon,
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will make an announcement regarding microplastics.
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