CSPAN - Washington Journal 04/13/2026
Aired: 2026-04-13
Duration: 03:00:59


=== Iran Blockade Imminent (09:49) ===

[00:00:00]  Reporter Aris Foley previews the week ahead in Congress.
[00:00:03]  And then Julia Manchester, White House reporter for The Hill, on the latest in U.S.-Iran peace talks and the week ahead at the White House.
[00:00:11]  And later, trucker and columnist Gord McGill will talk about his book, End of the Road: Inside the War on Truckers.
[00:00:18]  C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next.
[00:00:20]  Join the conversation.
[00:00:34]  Good morning.
[00:00:34]  It's Monday, April 13th, 2026.
[00:00:37]  The Senate's back at 3 p.m. Eastern.
[00:00:39]  The House will hold a brief pro forma session at 2:30 p.m.
[00:00:42]  And we're with you for the next three hours on the Washington Journal.
[00:00:45]  We began today back on the Iran conflict after peace talks collapsed over the weekend.
[00:00:50]  President Trump yesterday announced a naval blockade of Iranian ports and said that other countries are expected to be involved in the effort.
[00:00:56]  That blockade is set to go into effect less than three hours from now.
[00:01:00]  This morning, we're getting your reaction to all of it on phone line split as usual by political party.
[00:01:06]  Republicans 202-748-8001.
[00:01:09]  Democrats 202-748-8000.
[00:01:12]  Independents 202-748-8002.
[00:01:16]  You can also send us a text, that number 202-748-8003.
[00:01:21]  If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
[00:01:23]  Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on X, it's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook.
[00:01:28]  It's facebook.com slash C-SPAN.
[00:01:31]  And a very good Monday morning to you.
[00:01:33]  Go ahead and start calling in now the president just before 1 a.m. Eastern this morning on his true social page, announcing the timing of that blockade, saying that the United States is going to blockade ships entering or exiting Iranian ports at 10 a.m. Eastern time.
[00:01:52]  A few more details on what that blockade means via U.S. Central Command, the military command in the Middle East.
[00:01:59]  They note that the blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.
[00:02:11]  CENTCOM forces will not impede freedom of navigation.
[00:02:14]  They write for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports.
[00:02:20]  Again, that information coming from U.S. Central Command, and it's all going to start in less than three hours.
[00:02:26]  Here's how it's playing in some of the newspapers today.
[00:02:29]  This is the front page of the New York Times.
[00:02:32]  After talks flounder, Trump threatens to blockade the Strait.
[00:02:36]  They note that options dwindle as a deal fails to materialize.
[00:02:41]  To the front page of the Wall Street Journal, they write about the blockade high-stakes war of attrition.
[00:02:47]  We'll test whether Iran has a higher pain threshold.
[00:02:51]  This morning, we're getting your reaction again to all of it on phone lines split by political party.
[00:02:56]  Republicans 202-748-8001.
[00:02:59]  Democrats 202-748-8000.
[00:03:02]  Independents 202-748-8002.
[00:03:06]  As you're calling in yesterday on Fox News Sunday Morning Futures, President Trump called in to talk about the plan to blockade the Straits of Hormuz.
[00:03:16]  Tell us what you're trying to accomplish with this blockade, sir.
[00:03:20]  Yep.
[00:03:20]  It's called All In and All Out.
[00:03:22]  There'll be a time when we'll have them all come in and all come out.
[00:03:25]  But it won't be a percentage.
[00:03:26]  It won't be a friend of yours, like a country that's your ally or a country that's your friend is all or nothing.
[00:03:32]  And that'll be, that won't be in too long a distance.
[00:03:36]  No, we're just bringing the ships up.
[00:03:37]  We got a lot of ships, so we're bringing them up.
[00:03:40]  We think that numerous countries are going to be helping us with this also.
[00:03:44]  But we're putting on a complete blockade.
[00:03:46]  We're not going to let Iran make money on selling oil to people that they like and not people that they don't like or whatever it is.
[00:03:54]  It's going to be all or none, and that's the way it is.
[00:03:56]  And it'll be, you saw what we did with Venezuela.
[00:04:00]  It'll be something very similar to that, but at a higher level.
[00:04:04]  And Mr. President, you say that there may be a mine out there somewhere that nobody knows about but them, and this is world extortion.
[00:04:12]  How will the United States ensure that the mines are removed in the Strait of Hormuz?
[00:04:17]  So we have minesweepers there now.
[00:04:19]  We have highly sophisticated underwater minesweepers, which are the latest and the greatest, but we're also bringing in more traditional minesweepers.
[00:04:28]  And so I understand is the U.K. and a couple of other countries are sending minesweepers.
[00:04:33]  A lot of countries don't have minesweepers.
[00:04:35]  Think of it.
[00:04:36]  They had 28 mine droppers.
[00:04:38]  What country has 28 mine droppers?
[00:04:41]  28 boats to drop mines?
[00:04:43]  What country?
[00:04:43]  They've been completely obliterated.
[00:04:47]  I was President Trump yesterday on Fox.
[00:04:50]  We're asking you this morning about it.
[00:04:52]  We're talking about the blockade that is being instituted after the weekend talks that yielded no final deal on the conflict in Iran and this blockade now coming less than a week after the ceasefire was announced in the conflict.
[00:05:07]  202-748-8,000 for Democrats.
[00:05:10]  202-748-8001 for Republicans.
[00:05:12]  Independence 202-748-8002.
[00:05:17]  This is Roy up first out of Florida.
[00:05:19]  Democrat.
[00:05:20]  Roy, go ahead.
[00:05:23]  Yeah.
[00:05:24]  What I see going on with this whole thing, so I think it's completely wrong.
[00:05:29]  Number one, I don't even think we should have went into Iran in the first place.
[00:05:34]  But since we are there, the deal about it is, is this blockade probably isn't going to work.
[00:05:41]  It might, but it may not work like Trump thinks it's going to work.
[00:05:46]  He's the one that started this thing.
[00:05:48]  Before that, we had boats coming through.
[00:05:52]  That's the big thing.
[00:05:53]  You can't walk on water.
[00:05:55]  I mean, they think this administration is so perfect, they give their whole hand away.
[00:06:01]  And I look at him as somebody that thinks that he can walk on water, but you can't.
[00:06:05]  There's other players involved.
[00:06:07]  This is why no other president ever went in there because of the regional conflict that it would take.
[00:06:15]  You do not start a war unless there's a definite threat.
[00:06:20]  There was no definite threat given.
[00:06:22]  He never proved it to Congress.
[00:06:24]  But the deal is right here to stop this blockade, to stop everything.
[00:06:28]  They need to find peace, but they need to do it by other means.
[00:06:32]  We have people that don't have anything to do with Trump.
[00:06:35]  Roy, you talk about a definite threat.
[00:06:37]  One of the reasons that the peace talks fell apart over the weekend was a disagreement over Iran's nuclear program.
[00:06:44]  That being a hard line that JD Vance and President Trump were drawing.
[00:06:49]  Did you see that?
[00:06:50]  I don't have any problem, say, with that, but the way we went in there was wrong.
[00:06:55]  And if you're going to negotiate, get somebody like Bill Richardson or somebody that has nothing to do with the administration that can give talking points to the administration, then you might have a deal.
[00:07:06]  You can't go in there all tough and say, this is what I want.
[00:07:09]  It has to be a two-way street.
[00:07:11]  That's the only way it's ever going to work.
[00:07:13]  And we need our allies.
[00:07:15]  And I just don't know what Trump is doing, but we'll see.
[00:07:18]  And I'm just going to leave it at that for this morning.
[00:07:22]  That's Roy in Florida.
[00:07:24]  This is Naomi, Oxen Hill, Maryland, Independent.
[00:07:27]  Naomi, go ahead.
[00:07:29]  Good morning.
[00:07:31]  Hi, John.
[00:07:31]  How are you?
[00:07:32]  I'm doing well.
[00:07:33]  All right.
[00:07:34]  I just want to give my opinion about the war.
[00:07:37]  I'm originally from another country.
[00:07:39]  And, you know, people in the U.S. don't realize that things are a lot better here.
[00:07:45]  You also have to think about the people in Iran that have to live through this, all of this oppression that they're going through.
[00:07:52]  And also, President Trump probably knows more than a lot of people are aware of, so we should probably try to trust him and see where he's going with everything.
[00:08:02]  So just kind of keep your mind open.
[00:08:06]  That's Naomi in Oxen Hill, Maryland.
[00:08:09]  This is the New York Times today inside the negotiations over the weekend.
[00:08:14]  The headline, 21 Hours in Pakistan, how the U.S.-Iran negotiations fell short, talking about Vice President JD Vance's work there.
[00:08:23]  They write he left with nothing.
[00:08:24]  He blamed Iran for the failed talk, saying that the United States sought a commitment that Iran would not seek a nuclear weapon, and it refused.
[00:08:32]  That it was Mr. Vance who found himself in this position was extraordinary in itself.
[00:08:35]  They write, the man inside Mr. Trump's inner circle most opposed to the war was tasked with leading the high-level talks between the United States and Iran, the highest in nearly 50 years.
[00:08:45]  Mr. Trump, for his part, was thousands of miles away in Miami watching a UFC fight, they write.
[00:08:51]  For Mr. Vance, the trip represented the highest profile assignment of his tenure, which has been largely marked by domestic politics.
[00:08:59]  White House officials had hoped he would be spending the months leading up to the midterms traveling the country to lift up the Republican Party.
[00:09:05]  Instead, he spent the early part of the week in Hungary campaigning for Prime Minister Victor Orban and concluding it in Pakistan trying to negotiate the end of a messy, complicated war.
[00:09:17]  And of course, Victor Orban conceding defeat yesterday in those elections in the wake of JD Vance trying to rally support for him.
[00:09:26]  And we are here this Monday morning taking your phone calls about all of it.
[00:09:31]  202-748-8,000 for Democrats.
[00:09:33]  Republicans, 202-748-8001.
[00:09:36]  Independents, 202-748-8002.
[00:09:40]  Darryl, Michigan, Independent.
[00:09:42]  Go ahead.
[00:09:44]  Yes.
[00:09:44]  Good morning.
[00:09:45]  Thanks, Senator Carl.
[00:09:47]  I just want to let the Americans know.

=== Morning Calls on Elections (15:59) ===

[00:09:50]  I just Googled to find out how many oil camp ships are in international waters.
[00:09:58]  The answer was 8,700 to 9,300.
[00:10:03]  So we got 200 trapped in the Gulf in that port of Cornwallis.
[00:10:10]  So in other words, in essence, there'll be no recession.
[00:10:14]  Oil's going to flow all over the country, number one.
[00:10:18]  Number two, it's about time since 1945 plus the UN gets down to taking care of some business rather than blah, blah, blah.
[00:10:30]  Thank you very much.
[00:10:32]  That's Daryl.
[00:10:33]  This is Andy in Maine, Republican.
[00:10:35]  Go ahead.
[00:10:38]  Yes, so we're dealing with Shiite Muslims here in Iran.
[00:10:44]  And of all the different Muslims, they are the most militaristic.
[00:10:49]  Marco Rubio said it best when he said they have an apocalyptic view of humanity and the world.
[00:10:59]  Think of that word, apocalyptic.
[00:11:04]  One of the major tenets of the Shiites is the power of the male over the female.
[00:11:12]  Why do you think they have their women dressed the way they do?
[00:11:15]  Andy, bring me to this blockade and the latest on the conflict.
[00:11:19]  Okay.
[00:11:20]  The only way you're going to stop anything over there, they've got to get rid of the Revolutionary Guard because they are the most fanatical.
[00:11:38]  That's Andy in Maine.
[00:11:40]  More from the Sunday shows.
[00:11:42]  Yesterday, it was CNN's State of the Union.
[00:11:45]  Senator Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he reacted yesterday to President Trump's announcement of this blockade.
[00:11:54]  This is about a minute and a half from yesterday.
[00:11:57]  Pick it up where you just left off on the strait.
[00:11:59]  It is where we are, where the world is.
[00:12:02]  And so, given that, whether it's a blockade or some other military operation, would you support that to reopen the strait?
[00:12:13]  But I don't understand how blockading the strait is going to somehow push the Iranians into opening it.
[00:12:21]  I don't get the connection there.
[00:12:23]  I agree.
[00:12:23]  I think actually Ambassador Haley underestimated the threat, the economic threat.
[00:12:28]  We know we've got $4 a gallon gasoline.
[00:12:31]  We know that 25% of the world's natural gas goes through the strait.
[00:12:34]  We know a lot of aluminum does.
[00:12:36]  We know that this is so devastated.
[00:12:38]  Asian countries right now, they're shutting down their economies one day a week.
[00:12:42]  Fertilizer costs up.
[00:12:44]  And the thing I was hoping was we could come to some negotiated truce or end.
[00:12:50]  But even with that, you're going to see these energy prices continue at record levels, not for weeks, but months and years.
[00:12:58]  And how blockading the strait gets it open suddenly, I don't get that logic.
[00:13:03]  Yeah, I mean, it sounds like, and this is reading this lengthy post and not being able to ask the president at this moment, but it sounds like they're trying to extract economic pain on Iran the way Iran is trying to do on the world.
[00:13:18]  I do want to ask you about what the president has.
[00:13:20]  But Dana, just one quick thing there, though.
[00:13:24]  You know, here is the irony of this.
[00:13:28]  When the president decided to release the sanctions on the Iranian oil that was already at sea, we literally gave the Iranian regime $14 billion.
[00:13:42]  We are paying, helping the Iranians fund their effort to attack us, to attack Israel, and to attack our allies.
[00:13:50]  That is the most crazy, upside-down kind of policy I can possibly imagine.
[00:13:56]  So, you know, if you want to strangle Iran, why relieve the sanctions on their oil?
[00:14:00]  It's crazy.
[00:14:03]  Mark Warner, yesterday on CNN, we're taking your calls this morning here on the Washington Journal.
[00:14:08]  202-748-8001 for Republicans.
[00:14:11]  Democrats, 202-748-8000.
[00:14:14]  Independents, 202-748-8002.
[00:14:17]  You heard Mark Warner's criticism.
[00:14:20]  The editorial board of the New York Post with praise of President Trump for making this move, so much so that President Trump re-truthed this, posts this to his social media account, TrueSocial.
[00:14:33]  The headline Trump brilliantly calls Iran's bluff with his own Strait of Hormuz blockade.
[00:14:39]  They write, whoever's calling the shots in Iran wasted yet another chance for peace over the weekend, and now President Trump will again call Tehran's bluff.
[00:14:47]  Iran's negotiators refused to satisfy America's demand Saturday and talks in Pakistan as regime leaders bet that playing the Strait of Hormuz card would get Trump to blink.
[00:14:56]  Instead, he played it right back at them, announcing his own blockade so that Iran's oil exports, which had continued despite the war, will also be blocked.
[00:15:05]  The New York Post today.
[00:15:08]  Your phone calls this morning.
[00:15:09]  This is Sandra, New Hampshire Democrat.
[00:15:11]  Go ahead.
[00:15:13]  Yes.
[00:15:14]  First of all, I object to our being in Iran, our military being there in the first place without consulting Congress or any learned people in his cabinet.
[00:15:33]  I just think it was a bad decision.
[00:15:36]  And I think that the president's behavior during this time seems like borders on insanity.
[00:15:49]  And I really think that we should think about supporting him from now on.
[00:16:00]  And I think it was a mistake to send the people he did to negotiate.
[00:16:07]  I think there are people that are professional negotiators.
[00:16:12]  And I think those people should have been consulted.
[00:16:15]  And hopefully some of them went.
[00:16:18]  Sandra, who are those people?
[00:16:22]  Who are those people that you're referring to?
[00:16:24]  Sandra, who are those learned people in his cabinet that you were talking about?
[00:16:28]  Well, one person that came to mind is that Frank Luntz does groups.
[00:16:36]  He does focus groups.
[00:16:38]  And he used to be Republican, but he seems to be normal now.
[00:16:42]  And he speaks very evenly.
[00:16:46]  And I think you need people like that.
[00:16:51]  They're a police negotiator.
[00:16:53]  I don't know where all the negotiators are that other people may have more ideas than me.
[00:16:59]  But I think the people he's been using are ineffective.
[00:17:04]  That's Sandra in the Granite State.
[00:17:06]  This is Michael in Michigan Independent.
[00:17:08]  Michael, go ahead.
[00:17:10]  Yeah, good morning.
[00:17:11]  Thank you for taking my call.
[00:17:14]  Just a couple points.
[00:17:16]  We have short memories.
[00:17:17]  Gulf of Tonkin, Cuban blockade.
[00:17:19]  I'm a Vietnam veteran, 100% disabled.
[00:17:22]  And for all these people who are so quick to want to send everybody everywhere.
[00:17:30]  Yes.
[00:17:30]  Michael, I'm hearing you.
[00:17:32]  If we want to send everybody anywhere, go ahead.
[00:17:33]  Just finish your thoughts.
[00:17:34]  Oh, okay.
[00:17:35]  Now you have it.
[00:17:35]  Okay, yeah.
[00:17:36]  They haven't seen war close.
[00:17:38]  And I'll leave that right there because it's not pretty.
[00:17:41]  Number one.
[00:17:42]  Number two, we do not have, I appreciate what the previous caller said, the right negotiators there.
[00:17:47]  His family is over there negotiating business deals, not taking care of this country.
[00:17:51]  And again, I appreciate this show, and I've seen the dark side.
[00:17:55]  And for everybody who really thinks that this is a board game or a video game, let it happen in their neighborhood, and then you'll see it firsthand.
[00:18:02]  It's not pretty.
[00:18:04]  Have a good day.
[00:18:04]  Thank you.
[00:18:05]  That's Michael in Michigan.
[00:18:07]  202-748-8000 for Democrats.
[00:18:10]  202-748-8001 for Republicans.
[00:18:13]  Independence, 202-748-8002.
[00:18:16]  As you continue to call in more from the Sunday shows.
[00:18:19]  Yesterday, President Trump, when he announced this blockade, said that other countries would be joining the effort.
[00:18:25]  Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Congressman RoCanna, no supporter of President Trump, but was asked about the role that NATO could play in reopening the Straits of Hormuz.
[00:18:35]  This is what he had to say.
[00:18:37]  Well, it appears that this ceasefire is still underway for at least a few more days, but the focus is now shifting to the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:18:44]  The president is actually truth socialing about this right now.
[00:18:47]  From the experts that I've spoken to in the military, the Allies have the real capability here to sweep the mines from the Strait more than we do.
[00:18:57]  So is it time to start pressuring NATO and really moving NATO to help us secure the Strait?
[00:19:06]  Well, first of all, I hope obviously the ceasefire holds and the negotiations work.
[00:19:11]  But the Strait of Hormuz was open before the president began this war.
[00:19:16]  Gas was at $2.30.
[00:19:18]  It's gone up to $4.
[00:19:20]  So this war has led to a more hardline regime coming in Iran, the RGC having influence.
[00:19:25]  It's given Iran more control over the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:19:28]  It's given China more sway in the region.
[00:19:32]  And really, it has been a blunder.
[00:19:34]  That said, of course, we should work with our NATO allies now to get those mines out.
[00:19:39]  But when you have a president who's had blanket tariffs on NATO, who's insulting NATO by threatening to conquer Greenland, it makes it harder.
[00:19:49]  But we're past that now, Congressman.
[00:19:51]  And the question is, what do we do now about it?
[00:19:54]  How do we motivate NATO, who seems to benefit a lot from the reopening of this strait?
[00:20:01]  How do we get them to join us in securing the straight?
[00:20:05]  Well, two ways.
[00:20:06]  First, we need to be continuing to negotiate with Iran in getting an agreement so that Iran stops the control over the strait.
[00:20:16]  But second, we need to re-enter our alliances with NATO.
[00:20:21]  We should be sitting down with Canada's Mark Carney.
[00:20:24]  We should be sitting down with our European allies and saying, look, we're not going to be threatening to take Greenland.
[00:20:31]  We're not going to have these blanket tariffs.
[00:20:33]  We understand the importance of this alliance.
[00:20:35]  We're not going to continue to insult you on Truth Social.
[00:20:38]  And let's work together for opening the strait and for leading the free world.
[00:20:45]  It should be a time of a reset and an understanding that the gratuitous insults of our European allies in Canada have not served America's national interest.
[00:20:55]  California Democrat Roe Khanna on Fox News Sunday yesterday, this is the op-ed page of today's Wall Street Journal, the editorial board writing, Trump blockades the blockaders in Iran, saying we're a long way from Tuesday night's declaration of victory over Iran.
[00:21:13]  And the good news is President Trump seems to know it.
[00:21:16]  On Saturday, the U.S. team left floundering negotiations in Pakistan.
[00:21:21]  And on Sunday, Mr. Trump announced a naval blockade of the Straits of Hormuz for ships using Iranian ports.
[00:21:26]  Iran has denied passage to most oil and gas tankers.
[00:21:29]  And now the regime will get the same treatment.
[00:21:32]  They say Iran now has an incentive to restore traffic in the strait, as does China, whose tankers have been given priority.
[00:21:39]  Rather than smuggle new air defenses to Iran, as U.S. intelligence suspects it's doing, let Beijing pressure the regime to resume oil shipments.
[00:21:48]  That's the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal today.
[00:21:51]  I want to get your thoughts about another 10 minutes on this topic.
[00:21:55]  And then with Congress back this week and a lot going on, we'll open the phones at 7.30 to all topics that you're interested in chatting about.
[00:22:04]  Bob though in California, Democrat.
[00:22:07]  Bob, go ahead.
[00:22:11]  Bob, you with us?
[00:22:12]  There you go.
[00:22:13]  I know a lot of people out there listening will say that President Trump plays chess while others are playing checkers.
[00:22:23]  And I certainly hope he is.
[00:22:25]  But I have a concern that I don't know if it's necessarily been raised at this moment, but what are we going to do if at some point a country like China, who has nothing to do with this war, desperately needs the oil that Iran has been selling them?
[00:22:48]  What's to prevent them from taking one of their destroyers or whatever they might call them up to the Strait of Hormuz and saying, you know what, we're going to have a little bit of an incident here if you don't open it up for us.
[00:23:05]  And how likely do you think that is going to happen, Bob?
[00:23:07]  That sort of escalation, this becoming a wider worldwide conflict?
[00:23:14]  Well, I think it just depends.
[00:23:17]  I think it just depends.
[00:23:20]  How bad or how important is that oil that Iran has?
[00:23:24]  And if it isn't that important, then so be it.
[00:23:28]  But if it is, we're going to have an international incident.
[00:23:33]  It doesn't seem like that is necessarily playing chess while others are playing checkers.
[00:23:40]  Sounds like marvels to me.
[00:23:42]  By all estimations, this is one of the most important points for oil transfers.
[00:23:48]  Some 20% of the world's oil supplies flow through in and out of the Straits of Hormuz.
[00:23:55]  Do you think it's important enough here, Bob, for this conflict?
[00:23:59]  Do you think denying Iran a nuclear weapon is the most important thing?
[00:24:03]  What do you think the goal should be here?
[00:24:06]  Well, I think the goal should be to diffuse the situation as best we can and save as much face as possible.
[00:24:14]  I don't know if that is possible, but at least that could be the goal.
[00:24:19]  So when you say save face, you think we've already lost when it comes to how this conflict will be looked at?
[00:24:26]  When the international community has turned their back on us and said you can go up to SWAT alone, I think it's not only an embarrassment, it's a disgrace.
[00:24:36]  What'll be the sign that that happens, Bob?
[00:24:38]  Right now, President Trump has called on NATO allies to do more in this conflict.
[00:24:44]  He's promised that other countries are going to get involved in this blockade.
[00:24:48]  The blockade begins at 10 a.m. Eastern.
[00:24:50]  We'll see how it all pans out.
[00:24:52]  But what will be the sign that they have turned their backs?
[00:24:56]  Well, they have turned their back.
[00:24:58]  And the sign that we're going to have an international incident remains to be seen.
[00:25:03]  But the clock will be ticking if indeed we cut off the world's supply of oil.
[00:25:09]  That's Bob in California.
[00:25:11]  The clock ticking here this morning towards that blockade again, 10 a.m. Eastern.
[00:25:16]  The president said it on his TrueSocial account.
[00:25:20]  U.S. Central Command announced it on their social media accounts.
[00:25:26]  And we'll see what happens at 10 a.m. Eastern.
[00:25:29]  We're moving towards the bottom of the hour here this morning, and we will begin opening up the phones to open forum to any public policy, any political issue you want to talk about.
[00:25:40]  We can continue to talk about the blockade in Iran, or we can move to some of the domestic politics that have been happening.

=== Congress Expulsion Drama (03:24) ===

[00:25:49]  There's plenty of news with Congress coming back this week after a two-week recess.
[00:25:54]  Again, the Senate's in at 3 p.m. Eastern today.
[00:25:56]  You can watch on C-SPAN 2.
[00:25:57]  The House will have a brief pro forma session today and then is back in tomorrow.
[00:26:03]  But plenty of domestic policy issues, including the ongoing shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
[00:26:10]  We'll see if that gets addressed this week.
[00:26:13]  When it comes to politics in this country, this is one of the stories that broke over the weekend and has had quite a bit of movement.
[00:26:20]  Amid assault claims, Eric Swalwell suspends his campaign.
[00:26:24]  The California Democrats suspending his campaign for California governor two days after reports that a former staffer accused him of sexual assault and multiple other women alleged sexual misconduct as well.
[00:26:36]  Swalwell's abrupt exit from the California governor's race, they write, marks a remarkable downfall for the longtime Congressman who is considered a leading candidate.
[00:26:45]  The fallout from reports of sexual assault and misconduct continued on Sunday as pressure mounted for Swalwell to also vacate his congressional seat.
[00:26:53]  Several lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said Sunday that they could support a motion to expel Swalwell from Congress after Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna promised to force such a vote this week.
[00:27:05]  There's some questions about whether that vote could include pairing an expulsion member with an expulsion member for Congressman Tony Gonzalez, a Republican of Texas.
[00:27:18]  He's being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for having an affair with a staff member who later killed herself.
[00:27:25]  And the situation continues to evolve here on Capitol Hill about how that would play out, what it would mean, one of the rare expulsions of a member of Congress.
[00:27:37]  Congress gets to seat its own members.
[00:27:40]  And the House, though, rarely kicking a member out after they've been elected by constituents.
[00:27:46]  We'll see again what happens.
[00:27:47]  But it could be that a Democratic and Republican member of Congress could be kicked out in the same week.
[00:27:53]  A lot going on.
[00:27:54]  I want to give you a chance to talk about it.
[00:27:56]  202-748-8000 for Democrats.
[00:27:58]  Republicans, 202748-8001.
[00:28:01]  Independents, 202748-8002.
[00:28:05]  Officially open forum for you at this point.
[00:28:08]  Allentown, Pennsylvania.
[00:28:09]  Bill, you're up.
[00:28:11]  Go ahead.
[00:28:12]  Hi.
[00:28:14]  I was listening to the woman talking about negotiating, and I was thinking Frank Luntz is one of the worst people used to negotiate with.
[00:28:27]  I remember back in the 90s, he's the one that wrote up that word list.
[00:28:34]  All you got to do is, you know, Google word list.
[00:28:37]  Frank Luntz and word list.
[00:28:40]  And he gave a list of negative words for Republicans to call Democrats.
[00:28:49]  Bill, who do you think would be a good negotiator?
[00:28:54]  Bill Richardson.
[00:28:56]  And why Bill Richardson?
[00:29:02]  He's been one of the better negotiators through my lifetime.
[00:29:12]  That's Bill in Pennsylvania.

=== Religious Conflict in Middle East (02:34) ===

[00:29:13]  This is Vic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, Republican.
[00:29:17]  Vic, go ahead.
[00:29:20]  Yes, I was just calling in because I was thinking a lot of Americans don't understand the situation because they've never actually lived in the Middle East or been a Christian that lived in the Middle East.
[00:29:32]  My family immigrated in 1978 from the Lebanese War.
[00:29:37]  And I can tell you, based on my family's recollections of living in the Middle East, this is much bigger than just a political thing or something Trump's doing.
[00:29:50]  This is basically a fight over religions.
[00:29:53]  And at the end of the day, the religion that won't accept Christianity is no one's ever going to stick up to it.
[00:30:02]  And if they don't, you know, most of Europe's gone.
[00:30:06]  A lot of other nations are starting to collapse.
[00:30:09]  And they'll feel the effects to their bad political choices and allowing unfeathered immigration into European countries 20, 30 years from now when it's taken over.
[00:30:22]  I think Trump's the only person that's willing to stand up and put something in front of the only threat that was left in the Middle East against the entire region and the U.S. in the future.
[00:30:37]  So I think that's part of the reason most people don't understand that you just can't negotiate with Middle Eastern people.
[00:30:45]  They're not honest.
[00:30:48]  Once they're born, you can't change it.
[00:30:50]  You feel that way about everybody in the Middle East, Vic.
[00:30:52]  Sort of a blanket statement.
[00:30:54]  I don't feel that way about everybody, but I do feel that way about the majority, which is the problem.
[00:31:02]  If you brainwash 70% of the public or 60% of the public, the other 40% have to comply out of fear.
[00:31:11]  And that's what's happened in Iran.
[00:31:13]  I mean, when you kill 7,000 to 15,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 of your own people, someone at some point has to stand up.
[00:31:22]  And if no one ever stands up, I think there was a saying that, you know, when good men just sit aside and allow things to happen, I think that's an interesting thing.
[00:31:33]  If you're talking about people standing up, we saw tens, hundreds of thousands of Iranians in the streets in January.
[00:31:40]  You mentioned that tens of thousands of them were killed for doing that.
[00:31:46]  But was that not them standing up?

=== Accountability and Legislation (06:29) ===

[00:31:48]  And we've seen other of these uprisings in the past that have been violently suppressed by the regime.
[00:31:55]  Well, the reason that's happened is the world is not in the majority of saying we're not going to allow this anymore.
[00:32:03]  And you only have one guy that is bold enough to stand up.
[00:32:10]  And even him taking a huge risk against his own midterms and everything else, getting blamed for it.
[00:32:17]  But if they have a nuclear weapon and they're hard-headed and they're never going to negotiate, it's going to reach the shores of the U.S. eventually.
[00:32:26]  My family left Lebanon because the Muslims burnt down my father's store.
[00:32:31]  And thank God they did because it was a great opportunity.
[00:32:34]  We came to America.
[00:32:35]  But, you know, if it comes to the shores of America, it's too late.
[00:32:39]  That's Vic.
[00:32:40]  In Florida to Oak Ridge, Tennessee Forest, Independent.
[00:32:45]  Good morning.
[00:32:45]  Open forum.
[00:32:46]  What's on your mind?
[00:32:48]  Hey, good morning.
[00:32:48]  This is on my mind this morning.
[00:32:50]  I think it comes down to accountability.
[00:32:51]  Accountability has been the biggest problem with our country.
[00:32:54]  We cannot allow people to be held accountable.
[00:32:58]  And that comes down to not only local, state, that comes down to everything.
[00:33:01]  That comes down to how we treat our children.
[00:33:04]  I think the biggest tension that we have right now in America is accountability with not only our presidency, but with law enforcement, with state and local legislation.
[00:33:14]  You know, we have legislation that literally is rewriting America, rewriting the things that we do.
[00:33:20]  I'm 31 years old.
[00:33:21]  I've been an Oak Ridge, Tennessee resident for most of my life.
[00:33:24]  And I look around and I see people that do not have help, literally from our government.
[00:33:30]  And it's basically because of legislation.
[00:33:31]  They're gerrymandering seats in Tennessee, and they are not in the interest of Tennessee.
[00:33:35]  They're interested in themselves.
[00:33:37]  And what's sad is an independent, I feel like, we have to have this change.
[00:33:41]  If we don't have the change now, what's going to happen is we have this tension, this political tension, where people think, oh, you're racist.
[00:33:47]  Oh, you're this or that.
[00:33:48]  No, it comes down to accountability.
[00:33:50]  Hold people accountable.
[00:33:51]  And so it's not being held accountable.
[00:33:53]  People can say that he's trying to do this and this and this and this, but he's not.
[00:33:56]  What it comes down to is, and I can say this because I'm not from Michigan, but I really can commend Senator Slockin.
[00:34:02]  Senator Slockin is leading the way and being the pioneer that we need in our country because we have this tension where it doesn't come down to race.
[00:34:10]  It comes down to accountability.
[00:34:12]  And people are being held accountable.
[00:34:14]  Forrest, why particularly Alyssa Slockin come to mind for you?
[00:34:19]  She comes to mind for me because she stands up for the people of Michigan and she stands up.
[00:34:24]  She's a former CIA officer.
[00:34:26]  She is someone who is leading the way and holding people accountable.
[00:34:30]  She's looking at the facts, looking at the numbers, looking at the actual things that are making a difference.
[00:34:35]  And to me personally, even in Tennessee, governability is not.
[00:34:38]  Governability is an interest for himself, not the people of Tennessee and the people of this country.
[00:34:43]  The biggest thing that we're facing, I think, in Tennessee, for my state, for my personal state, is they have used the drug, big pharma and drugs, have abused this country.
[00:34:54]  And we have children that literally, you can look in Tennessee, there's a place called Fentanyl Hills.
[00:34:59]  Fentanyl Hills is because children younger than me, I'm 31 years old, children at 67 years old are getting access to fentanyl and drugs.
[00:35:07]  And the people who are in office, political office, literally, are the ones who are getting money from big pharma.
[00:35:13]  And I'm looking at the facts, I'm looking at the money, I see the money flowing.
[00:35:16]  And even Justin Jones, who is a representative in the state of Tennessee, in the Capitol, has been pushed and pushed and pushed to do the wrong, not to do the wrong things, but for the big farm bill.
[00:35:26]  You know, we want to save agriculture.
[00:35:28]  Agriculture is one of the number one things in Tennessee that used to be a source of wealth for our country.
[00:35:36]  And now there's these signs that say save the farmers.
[00:35:38]  Why?
[00:35:38]  Because of people like Bill Gates, people that are trying to corrupt our country and make it to where the farming industry can't survive because they have bioengineered food.
[00:35:50]  You know, it comes down to simple this: accountability.
[00:35:53]  Hold people accountable.
[00:35:54]  Trump has not been held accountable.
[00:35:56]  There's actual evidence of him being a pedophile and him hurting and raping children since the 1990s.
[00:36:01]  So accountability comes first.
[00:36:04]  Got your point.
[00:36:05]  That's Forrest.
[00:36:05]  This is Jody in Kentucky.
[00:36:08]  Line for Republicans.
[00:36:09]  Jody, go ahead.
[00:36:11]  Yeah, sure.
[00:36:14]  I'm talking about that Irish Walwell thing.
[00:36:17]  If the Democrats want to prove to the American people that no one's above the law, right here, it's their chance.
[00:36:25]  They got a chance to show us by sweating Congressman Archuywell from Congress.
[00:36:33]  Do you think they'll do it?
[00:36:35]  I hope they do.
[00:36:37]  I hope they do if they really think no one's above the law.
[00:36:41]  Because what I'll done, he should be in the jailhouse.
[00:36:48]  If I did something like that, I'd be under the jailhouse.
[00:36:52]  So the Democrats got a chance to prove to us American people that no one is above the law.
[00:37:00]  You know how they keep saying that no one's above the law?
[00:37:03]  Well, they have a chance to show us, but no one's above the law.
[00:37:06]  Well, they take it.
[00:37:08]  That's another question.
[00:37:09]  That's Jodi in Kentucky on Eric Swalwell, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, weighing in on his situation as well today.
[00:37:19]  They write the rapid implosion of Eric Swalwell's campaign for California governor is one for the record books, though few will mourn the event, they say.
[00:37:27]  The seven-term Democratic congressman is a leading practitioner of political lawfare and smear tactics, so he is being measured for his own guillotine now.
[00:37:37]  They write, some on the right and left in Congress are now saying they want to hold a vote to expel Mr. Swalwell from the House of Representatives.
[00:37:44]  This is also the wrong standard, they say.
[00:37:46]  He deserves a chance to explain himself while accusations alone shouldn't be enough to drive an elected representative out of office.
[00:37:52]  Republicans would be especially dumb to vote to expel him, given that this is likely to become an expulsion free-for-all that includes members of their own party.
[00:38:01]  They say instead, let Mr. Swalwell endure the punishment by accusation that he has built his career on.
[00:38:07]  Meanwhile, California voters can render their verdict on him on June the 2nd.
[00:38:13]  Back to your calls.
[00:38:14]  This is Darlene, Seattle, Washington, Democrat.

=== Trump vs Obama Policies (03:58) ===

[00:38:17]  Good morning.
[00:38:18]  Good morning, John.
[00:38:20]  I just wanted to say that I think we sent some ill chosen people for that meeting with, sorry about that, I accidentally turned that on.
[00:38:32]  For that meeting with Iranians, after all, they had all sorts of diplomats.
[00:38:36]  We sent a couple of real estate dealers and JD Vance over there.
[00:38:43]  I mean, that was just a setup.
[00:38:45]  You know, we don't have to.
[00:38:47]  A setup for what?
[00:38:48]  We heard about how John JD Vance talks about to Greenlanders and our allies and all these people, the disrespect that they show.
[00:38:58]  I think it was just a terrible setup.
[00:39:00]  Don't we have any real diplomats left anymore?
[00:39:03]  I mean, this previous caller talked about chess, checkers, and marbles.
[00:39:10]  And I believe that Trump has lost his.
[00:39:13]  Thank you.
[00:39:14]  Darlene, before you go, you mentioned JD Vance.
[00:39:16]  What are your thoughts about JD Vance being sent to Hungary to campaign with Victor Orban and then Victor Orban losing that election this weekend?
[00:39:28]  We lost Darlene, but it is the topic of many of the wrap-ups on that election.
[00:39:34]  This is the lead from today's New York Times.
[00:39:37]  Here's how they put it: Prime Minister Victor Orban of Hungary, a lodestar for MAGA culture warriors and right-wing populists in Europe, conceded defeat on Sunday in the general election, breaking the momentum of a global nationalist revival promoted by President Trump.
[00:39:53]  That is the lead graph of their story on the election.
[00:39:57]  As the Associated Press report notes, some 77% of Hungarians, according to the National Election Office, voted in that election, a record in any election in Hungary's post-communist history.
[00:40:12]  They say it marks a key moment for Mr. Orban, the European Union's longest-serving leader and one of its biggest antagonists, who has traveled a long road from his early days as a liberal anti-Soviet firebrand to the Russia-friendly nationalist, admired today by the global far right.
[00:40:30]  The Associated Press on their piece on Victor Orban.
[00:40:33]  Back to your phone calls.
[00:40:34]  It's open forum.
[00:40:35]  There's a lot going on.
[00:40:36]  So go ahead and get him in.
[00:40:38]  This is Steve, Florida Independent.
[00:40:40]  Go ahead.
[00:40:42]  Hi.
[00:40:42]  Yeah, I was raised Republican.
[00:40:45]  I'm 66 years old, and I voted Obama twice and kind of regret it.
[00:40:50]  When Trump first came in, I didn't vote for him or Hillary.
[00:40:54]  I put my own name.
[00:40:55]  I didn't care for Trump very much, but after a heart attack and having problems with the VA, and then when Trump got in, things straightened out with my bills and things like that.
[00:41:04]  What I want to say is 47 years we've had Republicans and Democrats trying to straighten this neutralist thing with Iran.
[00:41:13]  And, you know, nobody's helped out.
[00:41:16]  I believe Trump was, he was a Democrat.
[00:41:19]  Now he's a Republican.
[00:41:21]  I think really Trump's an independent like myself.
[00:41:23]  That's how I feel.
[00:41:24]  He's an independent, but he's had to win because he had to go Republican.
[00:41:28]  But he's putting everything on right now with this strait where he's stopping the fuel in Iran.
[00:41:35]  Iran has boats still.
[00:41:36]  They can't put the fuel in those boats if he stops the fuel.
[00:41:40]  And right now they don't have a whole lot of fuel.
[00:41:42]  Plus, probably they got to move probably missile launchers from on land with trucks and things like that.
[00:41:48]  And also what I'm saying is what Trump has done, it's kind of like a computer.
[00:41:53]  When the world goes out of whack between Obama and Biden, the world went out of whack.
[00:41:58]  He's replugging the world.
[00:42:00]  It's a reset.
[00:42:01]  What he's doing right now in the straits is a reset.
[00:42:03]  And I'm all for Trump.
[00:42:04]  99%, not 100.
[00:42:06]  Thank you.
[00:42:07]  Steve, you talk about Obama and Biden.
[00:42:10]  Donald Trump's first term was between when Barack Obama served and Joe Biden served.

=== Negotiations Under Fire (15:22) ===

[00:42:16]  What did you think about his first term versus this term?
[00:42:20]  His first term, he had COVID.
[00:42:23]  He couldn't do a thing, and he had the Democrats fighting and everything.
[00:42:26]  I mean, the Democrats, yeah, they stick together.
[00:42:29]  That's great.
[00:42:30]  But do they negotiate?
[00:42:31]  They don't negotiate.
[00:42:32]  They're just one way all the time.
[00:42:34]  You know, they're talking about negotiations, negotiations, you know.
[00:42:37]  And but yeah, Barack, I kind of liked him in the beginning, but what he did with Iran, you know, giving them $6 billion, you know, whatever he gave, and a lot of things with just changing.
[00:42:48]  And I thought he was going to make peace between the races.
[00:42:50]  The races got worse.
[00:42:52]  You know, I mean, I got a little bit of everything around Puerto Rican Italy.
[00:42:56]  I got black Greek.
[00:42:57]  I got a little bit of everything.
[00:42:59]  But with the races, he made it a lot worse.
[00:43:01]  I don't care what anybody says.
[00:43:04]  Steve in Florida.
[00:43:05]  Thelma is in the Bronx.
[00:43:07]  Democrat.
[00:43:07]  Good morning.
[00:43:10]  Yes.
[00:43:10]  Good morning, Johnny.
[00:43:12]  I'm just calling to say that Mr. Swarwell, he should not have come out the race.
[00:43:19]  It is terrible that a woman could come and say the yes, good morning, Mr. John.
[00:43:28]  Thelma, you say it's terrible.
[00:43:30]  What do you think is terrible that could happen?
[00:43:32]  I'm hearing you through the phone, so you can just turn down your television.
[00:43:35]  Yes, I was saying that it's terrible that a woman could just come on TV and accuse a man of sexual harassment and they told me he has to left the race without no evidence.
[00:43:49]  Just a woman's.
[00:43:50]  And I watched the woman interview and see any John and I did not, as a woman and as a Democrat, I did not believe her.
[00:44:01]  She said that she was so drunk that she did not remember anything.
[00:44:07]  Thelma, what do you like about Eric Swalwell?
[00:44:12]  It is not about life.
[00:44:13]  You have to have evidence before you could accuse someone of sexual harassment.
[00:44:19]  Look at Donald Trump.
[00:44:21]  They accuse him of sexual harassment.
[00:44:24]  The judge affirmed his case about rape and sexual harassment.
[00:44:30]  And he's in the White House.
[00:44:32]  No one told him he has to leave.
[00:44:35]  It is wrong for a woman, two or three women, just to come out on TV, make an accusation that some man rape or accused them or whatever the woman said that Eric Sorwell did.
[00:44:50]  Like I said.
[00:44:52]  You want to see a full investigation before.
[00:44:54]  Yes, before you told somebody they have to leave the race.
[00:44:58]  It is wrong.
[00:45:01]  He said she said, I said, she said.
[00:45:04]  It is totally wrong.
[00:45:06]  I'm a Democrat, and that's the reason why John I did not vote in the election, because they keep buying out the race.
[00:45:13]  They don't wait for evidence.
[00:45:15]  They keep buying out the race.
[00:45:17]  They put in Camilla.
[00:45:18]  The Democrat is so crazy.
[00:45:20]  I don't know what's going on with them.
[00:45:22]  They don't know how to fight.
[00:45:23]  They just throw their hand and they turn.
[00:45:26]  The gentleman said that they stick together.
[00:45:28]  Democrats do not stick together.
[00:45:30]  They do not know what they're doing.
[00:45:33]  They go against their own.
[00:45:34]  They throw their own under the boss.
[00:45:37]  John, look at Donald Trump.
[00:45:38]  Look at all that crime that he commits.
[00:45:42]  Look at all that rape and affection.
[00:45:45]  Got your point, Thelma.
[00:45:46]  That's Thelma and the Bronx.
[00:45:47]  This is James in Boca Raton, Florida, Republican.
[00:45:51]  Good morning.
[00:45:53]  Good morning, sir.
[00:45:55]  Yeah, just a couple of comments on the quote-unquote Iran war.
[00:46:01]  I would say a couple of things, comment on the previous call about where are they, or do we not have real diplomats anymore?
[00:46:09]  The real diplomats are the folks who've got us into the JPOA and also for 47 years that allowed the Iranians to eat our lunch diplomatically by lying.
[00:46:22]  These people are pathetic liars and they are theocratic extremists who kill their own people.
[00:46:32]  They killed 30,000 to 40,000 of their own people just recently when they came out on the streets.
[00:46:40]  I mean, and then they have the leftist media, mainstream media, not C-SPAN.
[00:46:46]  I love C-SPAN, so I'm not telling you guys, but the old guard, the NBC, CBS, ABCs, MS Now, of course, and I go on, attacking the president, attacking, really, in a subtle way, attacking our military because they don't like the fact that Mr. Trump took action.
[00:47:10]  That's what he does.
[00:47:11]  He's not a politician.
[00:47:12]  He takes action.
[00:47:14]  He saw the cards on the table.
[00:47:16]  These people were lying to us about their nuclear capability and their intentions, and he took action.
[00:47:23]  It isn't pretty.
[00:47:24]  War is never pretty.
[00:47:25]  But look what we've done.
[00:47:26]  Look what our incredible military has done in this short time.
[00:47:31]  And the alligator tears about the money spent and the casualties is just appalling.
[00:47:39]  James, what did you think about the negotiations over the weekend falling apart, some 21 hours of negotiations, and the vice president being sent to lead those negotiations?
[00:47:50]  Yeah, okay.
[00:47:53]  It proved what I just said to you, sir, which was the Iranians are liars.
[00:47:59]  You cannot negotiate with these people.
[00:48:01]  At least I'm 72 years old.
[00:48:03]  I will be on Thursday.
[00:48:05]  And I lived through the Cold War.
[00:48:08]  And Reagan negotiated with Gorbachev about nuclear arms and various presidents throughout my lifetime.
[00:48:19]  Trust but verify, right?
[00:48:22]  You've got to understand who you're dealing with if you've ever done negotiation.
[00:48:26]  I'm returning from the corporate world, you know.
[00:48:30]  So James, we'll take your point.
[00:48:33]  And Boca Rattan, Florida.
[00:48:35]  I want to show viewers the part of the brief statement that the vice president made after those negotiations ended without an agreement on ending the war.
[00:48:48]  This is JD Vance.
[00:48:50]  The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement.
[00:48:53]  And I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America.
[00:48:57]  So we go back to the United States, having not come to an agreement.
[00:49:01]  We've made very clear what our red lines are, what things we're willing to accommodate them on, and what things we're not willing to accommodate them on.
[00:49:08]  And we've made that as clear as we possibly could.
[00:49:11]  And they have chosen not to accept our terms.
[00:49:15]  Questions?
[00:49:16]  Sir, Nick Robinson from the CNN, precisely what have they rejected here?
[00:49:23]  Can you help us understand it a little bit?
[00:49:25]  Well, I won't go into all the details because I don't want to negotiate in public after we've negotiated for 21 hours in private.
[00:49:32]  But the simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon.
[00:49:43]  That is the core goal of the president of the United States, and that's what we've tried to achieve through these negotiations.
[00:49:49]  Again, their nuclear program, such as it is, the enrichment facilities that they had before, they've been destroyed.
[00:49:57]  But the simple question is, do we see a fundamental commitment of will for the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon, not just now, not just two years from now, but for the long term?
[00:50:08]  We haven't seen that yet.
[00:50:09]  We hope that we will.
[00:50:11]  Vice President JD Vance, that was from Saturday.
[00:50:15]  This is this morning on the Washington Journal.
[00:50:18]  It is open forum.
[00:50:20]  Any public policy, any political issue you want to talk about, there's a lot going on.
[00:50:23]  So we're doing it early this morning, about 10 more minutes here.
[00:50:27]  And then we'll specifically focus on the week ahead in Congress.
[00:50:31]  And we're going to be joined by Eris Foley for that segment.
[00:50:35]  A lot of legislation and the ongoing effort to reopen the Department of Homeland Security.
[00:50:41]  We'll get the latest from Eris Foley of CQ Roll Call, one of the congressional reporters there.
[00:50:46]  And then later in our 9 o'clock hour today, we're going to be joined by Gord McGill, the author of the new book, End of the Road Inside the War on Truckers, a focus on the trucking industry.
[00:50:58]  In that segment at 9 o'clock or about 9:15, we'll have a special line for truckers to call in to talk about issues that have impacted your work and that part of the United States economy, that very important part of the United States economy.
[00:51:14]  Back to your phone calls, though, in open forum.
[00:51:16]  This is Melissa in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Independent.
[00:51:20]  Good morning.
[00:51:22]  Good morning, Mr. McCartle.
[00:51:23]  Just a couple of points here.
[00:51:25]  First, I enjoyed what Naomi from Maryland had to say at the top of the segment.
[00:51:31]  She's right.
[00:51:32]  We have to keep an open mind.
[00:51:33]  I've always told my family, keep an open mind.
[00:51:36]  Just not so open that your brains fall out.
[00:51:40]  This thing that other callers have called about, about Bill Richardson being the negotiator, I think someone should inform them that he's been dead for about three or four years.
[00:51:54]  And also, he was wrapped up in up to his eyeballs with Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:51:59]  So it's interesting that people can remain so uninformed when this Epstein thing's been out there for so long.
[00:52:07]  Who do you think would be a good negotiator?
[00:52:10]  Well, you know, I think we have so many great negotiators.
[00:52:14]  I really like the gentleman that you have on frequently from the Foundation for Defensive Democracy.
[00:52:21]  In fact, you had him on last week, Benham.
[00:52:24]  Benham Bentaleblou.
[00:52:26]  Yes, I think I feel sure he's briefed our administration before.
[00:52:32]  I think I've heard y'all talk about that.
[00:52:35]  But I never miss when he's on.
[00:52:36]  And I really enjoy anyone that you have on from his organization.
[00:52:40]  But he is just so, he's an expert on Iran.
[00:52:44]  And I really appreciate his insight.
[00:52:46]  I learned on Thursday and predicted at the time that these negotiations weren't going to end this conflict.
[00:52:56]  And if viewers, by the way, you want to watch it in its entirety, it's c-span.org is where you can go to see that appearance.
[00:53:03]  But what did you like about what he had to say?
[00:53:06]  Well, like you said, he did predict that these negotiations probably would not work out, and he's so familiar with the people, the culture, the customs of that area.
[00:53:17]  So he's just, you know, he's a highly educated gentleman.
[00:53:21]  He's an expert in his field.
[00:53:23]  So that's why I enjoy watching him so much.
[00:53:25]  I always know that what he says is, you know, it's legitimate.
[00:53:30]  And the other people that Brad Bowman, I think, was on last week or the week before as well.
[00:53:35]  And he also gets it right so often.
[00:53:39]  So I hope you'll have those guys on even more frequently.
[00:53:44]  So I think the US who I thought would be a good negotiator.
[00:53:48]  Well, I hope they're being briefed by gentlemen like those, like those that understand the full picture.
[00:53:57]  And because I think we're viewing this so much through an American lens when that is not their culture at all.
[00:54:05]  So they have a different apocalyptic type of way of seeing the world.
[00:54:12]  Whereas we come from an optimistic viewpoint.
[00:54:15]  So, and I will say I'm going to give credit to Jared Kushner and Adam Bowler and all the people, Morgan Ortegas who worked on the Abraham Accords.
[00:54:27]  That was working out very well.
[00:54:29]  And it seems like it can go even further and be expanded.
[00:54:32]  So apparently they're quite good negotiators as well.
[00:54:35]  But, you know, I think it's important to stay up on being briefed by these experts.
[00:54:46]  Melissa, thanks for the call from Louisiana.
[00:54:48]  I've got just four minutes left and a lot of people to get to.
[00:54:50]  Let me get to Sonia in Florida.
[00:54:52]  Democrat, go ahead.
[00:54:54]  Hi, thank you.
[00:54:56]  I wanted to say the first thing, I don't think that the administration really went in with their eyes fully open.
[00:55:03]  You can't unring a bell.
[00:55:04]  The president said some harsh, mean words.
[00:55:08]  Actions were horrible.
[00:55:10]  And you think that you're going to go into the table and Iran was just going to, okay, we're going to give in and we're going to ceasefire.
[00:55:18]  There's damages that's been done and you cannot unring that bell.
[00:55:21]  And I don't think that they're going to, given these people will stand their ground and fight.
[00:55:27]  You, it was not, they don't have any reason to give in to him or trust him.
[00:55:32]  And the other thing I wanted to say is about the, so well, Eric, the one thing is that with the issues with the Epstein coming out, more people now are going to be more sympathetic and jump on just allegations.
[00:55:45]  But allegations need to be done in the proper manner.
[00:55:49]  And me being a survivor, right, victim survivor, I'm saying this: I still believe in the judicial system.
[00:55:55]  I still believe in trust but verify.
[00:55:59]  And it's just the timing.
[00:56:01]  How could an investigation even be successful when it's so many years that have passed?
[00:56:05]  And I just really think that just the timing and thinking about how this all came out is to make someone say, let me think about this, but this man has now abandoned the campaign.
[00:56:15]  Everything that they wanted to be done has been done.
[00:56:18]  And I think that's sad when we have an administration whose closet is very full of cobwebs.
[00:56:26]  Thank you and have a nice day.
[00:56:27]  That's Sonia.
[00:56:28]  This is Brian Gaithersburg, Maryland Republican.
[00:56:31]  Go ahead.
[00:56:33]  Hi, yes.
[00:56:34]  Good morning.
[00:56:35]  Thank you for taking my call.
[00:56:37]  I just have a couple points to make.
[00:56:40]  I know we're running out of time.
[00:56:42]  The first, I think that, you know, just listening to a lot of callers call in, you know, we really have a problem in this country with information silos.
[00:56:53]  I mean, a lot of people are just really not informed on things.
[00:56:59]  And then let's just take one.
[00:57:01]  The fact that, you know, we're talking about the negotiations and why they fell apart.
[00:57:07]  And do people know that part of why what we're requesting of the Iranians is that they cease to teach the knowledge of nuclear cycle.
[00:57:24]  I mean, it's just incredible.
[00:57:28]  You know, the fact that we would tell the country to not stop, not just stop the production of nuclear, but stop teaching it.
[00:57:37]  Right.

=== Nuclear Production Concerns (02:05) ===

[00:57:38]  In terms of that, my understanding was that they would give up nuclear enrichment, that they continue to say that they need it for non-military needs, i.e., a nuclear reactor, nuclear power.
[00:57:51]  And the argument here is that they can't be trusted with that technology, that it would inevitably lead at some point down the road to them trying to enrich uranium enough to create a bomb.
[00:58:04]  That's my understanding of where this thing fell apart.
[00:58:08]  Yeah, and that's fair.
[00:58:10]  But no one's talking about Pakistan.
[00:58:12]  And Pakistan has nuclear weapons.
[00:58:17]  They're right there too.
[00:58:20]  So making this big deal about the fact that Iran has, or at least is going down the path of nuclear production for civil use.
[00:58:35]  To me, I think that there are other problems that we need to be focused on instead of this new thing now where we're going to blockade the Strait of Fervuso.
[00:58:46]  So now we're going to stop everyone from going in or going out of that place.
[00:58:53]  And another thing, one last thing.
[00:58:55]  So I keep hearing, you know, this is international waters.
[00:59:01]  But people forget, too, that there's 12 miles of coastal shore that belongs to, it's part of the territory of the Iranians and the people of Oman.
[00:59:13]  So at the end of the day, this is their backyard.
[00:59:16]  So, you know, so if they find themselves in an aggressive situation where people are coming in and trying to take territory and things like that, don't they have the right to figure out how to shore up their shores?
[00:59:31]  You know, so all of this is just, to me, you know, Americans, we're just focused.
[00:59:37]  We love to focus on what's going on in other places, and no one wants to talk about what's going on here.

=== DHS Funding Scrutiny (14:50) ===

[00:59:43]  And that's all I have to say.
[00:59:44]  Thank you, Pedro.
[00:59:45]  You're one of the best on here.
[00:59:47]  Thank you.
[00:59:48]  I'll tell Pedro you said hello.
[00:59:49]  That's Brian in Maryland.
[00:59:51]  This is Irene in Montgomery, Alabama, Independent.
[00:59:55]  Go ahead.
[00:59:56]  Good morning.
[00:59:57]  Why do Americans, why do we keep saying we gave, even this morning, under the Obama administration, we gave them money.
[01:00:10]  No, they meant the terms of the negotiated settlement on what to do with nuclear material.
[01:00:21]  And Irene.
[01:00:24]  We're losing your line, Irene.
[01:00:26]  Let me try to get Ingrid in Florida in our last call here.
[01:00:30]  Go ahead.
[01:00:32]  Good morning.
[01:00:32]  Good morning, John.
[01:00:34]  I keep hearing Republicans talk about how much money Biden gave to Iran, but I could be mistaken, but I understood recently that President Trump gave something like $14 billion.
[01:00:53]  Maybe you can look that up if you know that, darling.
[01:00:58]  And they always, Republicans always want to get...
[01:01:02]  In what way, Ingrid, and what way was that money given to them from what you understand?
[01:01:08]  Well, if you look it up, it would be nice to know one way or the other because Republicans always downing Biden for giving him their money.
[01:01:21]  But I should have looked it up while I was waiting for you, Hun.
[01:01:26]  But it was something like $14 billion that Trump gave Iran recently to negotiate to stop the nuclear.
[01:01:36]  Maybe you take the time to look that up so that the Republicans know too.
[01:01:40]  Appreciate it, Ingrid.
[01:01:42]  We're out of time in this segment.
[01:01:44]  Ingrid, our last caller, but there's plenty more that we'll be discussing today.
[01:01:48]  Stick around.
[01:01:49]  Later on today, Gordon McGill will join us to discuss his book, End of the Road Inside the War on Truckers.
[01:01:55]  That's in our 9 o'clock hour.
[01:01:57]  Up next, it's CQ roll call reporter Eris Foley.
[01:02:02]  We'll preview the week ahead in Congress.
[01:02:04]  Stick around.
[01:02:05]  We'll be right back.
[01:02:13]  Democracy.
[01:02:14]  It isn't just an idea.
[01:02:16]  It's a process.
[01:02:17]  A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles.
[01:02:25]  It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted.
[01:02:30]  Democracy in real time.
[01:02:33]  This is your government at work.
[01:02:35]  This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered.
[01:02:45]  Best ideas and best practices can be found anywhere.
[01:02:48]  We have to listen so we can govern better.
[01:02:50]  Democracy depends on heavy doses of civility.
[01:02:53]  You can fight and still be friendly.
[01:02:56]  Bridging the divide in American politics.
[01:02:58]  You know, you may not agree with Le Democrat on everything, but you can find areas where you do agree.
[01:03:01]  He's a pretty likable guy as well.
[01:03:03]  Chris Koons and I are actually friends.
[01:03:04]  He votes wrong all the time, but we're actually friends.
[01:03:07]  A horrible secret that Scott and I have is that we actually respect each other.
[01:03:11]  We all don't hate each other.
[01:03:12]  You two actually kind of like each other.
[01:03:14]  These are the kinds of secrets we'd like to expose.
[01:03:16]  It's nice to be with a member who knows what they're talking about.
[01:03:19]  You guys did agree to the civility, all right?
[01:03:21]  He owes my son $10 from a bed for a year.
[01:03:24]  He's never paid fork it over.
[01:03:27]  That's fighting words right now.
[01:03:28]  I'm glad I'm not in charge of that.
[01:03:30]  I'm thrilled to be on the show with him.
[01:03:31]  There are not shows like this, right?
[01:03:33]  Incentivizing that relationship.
[01:03:36]  Ceasefire Friday nights on C-SPAN.
[01:03:44]  Washington Journal continues.
[01:03:47]  Congress is back after a two-week recess, and there's a lot on the to-do list to help track it all for us.
[01:03:53]  We're joined by CQ Roll Calls Eris Foley.
[01:03:55]  Let's start on the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
[01:03:59]  It will hit the two-month mark this week.
[01:04:02]  Is there any indication at this point that Republicans and Democrats are moving towards a resolution here?
[01:04:08]  Republicans and Democrats, right?
[01:04:10]  That's very generous phrasing.
[01:04:13]  I think that what we saw on the Senate side, Republicans and Democrats did agree to a bill on the Senate side to fund DHS mostly with ICE, without ICE and some CBP funding.
[01:04:27]  But yeah, it's sent to the House side, and now the House has rejected it initially, but it's still kind of being waiting in limbo right now.
[01:04:39]  You have House Republicans who feel very concerned about the idea of not, of leaving out ICE funding, of leaving out immigration enforcement funds, and who want to ensure that a deal to fund DHS will eventually still lead to ICE and CBP getting what otherwise would have been the appropriations they would have for FY27.
[01:05:00]  So the idea of moving this through a budget reconciliation process, how would that work?
[01:05:06]  And is that on the table?
[01:05:07]  Yes.
[01:05:08]  So because the Senate deal does not include ICE and CBP funding, the idea is that they would use reconciliation because Republicans and Democrats have not been able to come to a deal on reforms for ICE and CBP.
[01:05:20]  So as a result, the Senate bill doesn't include those funds.
[01:05:24]  Republicans are trying to use reconciliation as a go-it-alone tactic to approve immigration enforcement funding as part of more of a partisan bill.
[01:05:33]  But that's a really heavy lift in this Congress.
[01:05:36]  How long does that take?
[01:05:38]  And is the White House on board with that approach?
[01:05:41]  Yes, the White House is also on board with that approach.
[01:05:45]  The problem is, I think, that Republicans are still trying to get on board with the strategy and just how do you fund DHS while ensuring that there is going to be funding for ICE and CBP.
[01:05:56]  So there have been conversations about whether they do one reconciliation package or do two reconciliation packages.
[01:06:02]  If you do two, you might be better able to narrow the scope of an ICE and CBP funding reconciliation package.
[01:06:11]  But there is still appetite among House Republicans in particular, and also Republicans also on the Senate side, to have what's known as pay fors and potentially also using reconciliation to fund defense as well.
[01:06:25]  Amid an active shooting war in Iran, how much is the White House involved here?
[01:06:31]  I know Russ Vogt, the budget director, is expected to come up to Capitol Hill later this week to begin the process of the fiscal 2027 budget hearings.
[01:06:43]  What is he, what kind of questions do you expect him to get on DHS?
[01:06:48]  Oh, I think definitely there is still, there are still questions about just how they're going to use reconciliation to fund DHS, the ICE in particular, and CBP.
[01:06:58]  There is, of course, a desire among some conservatives, right, to include all of the funding for DHS.
[01:07:04]  Again, they don't like the idea of separating or, as some would say, leaving behind ICE and CBP.
[01:07:10]  There are also questions, too, with regards to DHS and using reconciliation resources to fund defense for fiscal 2027.
[01:07:18]  What that process looks like, what that means for appropriations for this year, this coming year, how that impacts the budget.
[01:07:25]  A fiscal 2027 budget request for the Pentagon to the tune of $1.5 trillion, more than a 40% increase, I believe is the number.
[01:07:37]  And again, steep cuts at other agencies, including the EPA, one of those to see double-digit cuts.
[01:07:44]  What kind of questions are you expecting vote to get on that overall budget proposal?
[01:07:50]  I think there's just, yeah, what you're saying too, it's kind of a similar tactic as what we saw last year, the idea of using reconciliation resources to plus sub-defense while also still cutting funding on the non-defense side.
[01:08:03]  So there are probably questions about just that kind of the idea of parity potentially.
[01:08:08]  Some Democrats have already discussed the need for parity when it comes to FY27.
[01:08:14]  There might be questions as to what a potential supplemental funding request could also look like from the administration.
[01:08:20]  Timeline for reconciliation.
[01:08:22]  We know that Trump has set a June 1 deadline, but if you're talking about multiple reconciliation packages and you're talking about a potential immigration enforcement package, it's so unclear what all would fit, right?
[01:08:31]  And both of these are maybe one of these reconciliation packages.
[01:08:35]  On supplemental funding requests, where are we on that warfighting funding request?
[01:08:43]  It was originally $200 billion is what we are hearing was being floated, and now we're closer to $100 billion.
[01:08:50]  Why?
[01:08:51]  And what's the status of when that could be passed?
[01:08:55]  So there's been, to your point too, a lot of different reports and even lawmakers have kind of just been floating around different numbers from $200 billion to $100 billion.
[01:09:03]  There was a recent report last week, notice had on how the figure looks like it might be closing in the administration on a $98, roughly $98 billion in funding, which is a lot less than what some other members were expecting.
[01:09:17]  But it's not been made an official request just yet.
[01:09:20]  There's also going to be funding, potentially some lawmakers are expecting on the disaster relief side potentially, and that could be a pot sweetener, right?
[01:09:29]  Like there is a lot of skepticism in Congress about the idea of a bipartisan defense supplemental.
[01:09:35]  So it could be something that maybe helps secure more support on the other side, but still a lot of skepticism.
[01:09:40]  Less of a funding question, but more on what it could mean.
[01:09:45]  We're hearing now that Congress is back an effort this week in the Senate and perhaps in the House as well to limit President Trump's Iran war fighting powers.
[01:09:56]  How do they do that?
[01:09:57]  What does that look like?
[01:09:59]  And what's the status of that as we begin to get members of the House and Senate back up here on Capitol Hill?
[01:10:05]  Yes, House Democrats attempted that during the pro forma.
[01:10:08]  They've also attempted that earlier this year.
[01:10:10]  There could be what some are saying, maybe a shift in the winds from what we saw earlier this year.
[01:10:15]  You have some Democrats who previously weren't in support of that measure that might be supportive if it were to come to the floor again.
[01:10:22]  And you also have Senate Democrats also wanting to keep the pressure on Republicans right now.
[01:10:26]  This is a war that some Democrats would say, again, the polling does not show to be necessarily in Trump's favor right now with the public.
[01:10:34]  There are some concerns and uneasiness among some Republicans even at this point or just an idea that there is a point where Congress will need to step in potentially depending on how long this persists.
[01:10:46]  So definitely probably in the weeks ahead, we'll probably see maybe more efforts like what we're seeing this week, what the Senate Democrats are planning to do, and also just without the House Democrats are also kind of proposing right now and pushing for.
[01:10:59]  Eric Foley, our guest of CQ Roll Call, taking your phone calls on everything that's happening this week with Congress returning after that two-week recess.
[01:11:09]  Here's how you can call in.
[01:11:10]  Republicans 202-748-8001.
[01:11:12]  Democrats 202-748-8000.
[01:11:15]  Independents 202-748-8002 as folks are calling in.
[01:11:21]  Take us to Eric Swalwell, the reports that came out over the weekend, now the end of the gubernatorial campaign, and potential expulsion from Congress.
[01:11:30]  What's your read on whether that could happen?
[01:11:34]  I think it could still be expulsion, it's just something that could be a heavy lift just because of the voting threshold.
[01:11:41]  You have bipartisan support, however, from members and growing support behind the idea of expelling not just Swalwell, but also Gonzalez.
[01:11:52]  And you have Tony Gonzalez, Republican of Texas.
[01:11:55]  Right, in light of these very serious allegations.
[01:11:59]  And there's also growing pressure for investigations into these allegations.
[01:12:04]  So there's a lot of scrutiny right now happening on both sides of the aisle.
[01:12:07]  Whether that translates to an expulsion vote, a successful expulsion vote, it's a little unclear.
[01:12:14]  An investigation, how long would that take?
[01:12:16]  Who conducts that investigation?
[01:12:17]  How does that work when Congress is trying to police itself?
[01:12:21]  I think that those are still questions that we're trying to look into.
[01:12:26]  I just think that there's so much pressure right now that for both parties involved, lawmakers want to see answers.
[01:12:35]  There's a lot more scrutiny just on Capitol Hill in general.
[01:12:38]  The idea that lawmakers are kind of tying this also to just the need to ensure that powerful people are held accountable for abuses against staff, against, as some lawmakers have said, just young women.
[01:12:52]  There's a culture, I think, right now that lawmakers are trying to just are facing pressure at least to tap into and rooting out.
[01:13:01]  But all of that comes amid a backdrop of a very narrowly divided House between Republicans and Democrats.
[01:13:09]  Perhaps all the more reason why this could be one Democrat and one Republican if this does happen, that it would likely happen together?
[01:13:17]  There are reportings that are, there's reports that are suggesting that there is an appetite if you're going to move on one lawmaker to also from one party, especially I think what you're saying, giving the margins, that you could do both theoretically at the same time when it would balance the scales, so to speak.
[01:13:36]  But I think there's so many questions as to what that process will even look like.
[01:13:41]  And you have Swalwell who's also denying the allegations.
[01:13:45]  So many questions, so many phone calls.
[01:13:47]  Let's get to some of them.
[01:13:49]  Eris Foley with us of CQ Roll Call.
[01:13:51]  This is James in Newark, New Jersey, Independent.
[01:13:55]  Good morning.
[01:13:57]  Yes.
[01:13:57]  How y'all doing?
[01:13:59]  Good, James.
[01:13:59]  What's on your mind?
[01:14:00]  What's your question?
[01:14:03]  How much of this money going to go to homeless vets?
[01:14:07]  My brother died.
[01:14:09]  He was homeless.
[01:14:10]  He's dead.
[01:14:12]  I'm very angry that none of this money go to homeless banks.
[01:14:17]  Homeless vets.
[01:14:18]  What do we know about funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs and homelessness issues as well?
[01:14:24]  Is that something you track?
[01:14:25]  Right.
[01:14:25]  I am, I have to double-check the numbers on homelessness for veterans, but I do think that Veterans Affairs is one of the departments and could be wrong.

=== Budget Reconciliation Issues (10:46) ===

[01:14:34]  I have to double check, but in the fiscal 2027 budget request, I did see an increase for FY27.
[01:14:42]  What else were your takeaways from?
[01:14:43]  We are a little more than a week past the FY 2027 budget release.
[01:14:49]  We talked about the top line numbers for the Pentagon, EPA receiving steep cuts.
[01:14:56]  What else were your takeaways when you're paging through those many pages of budget projections or at least budget asks?
[01:15:04]  I think it's interesting that some agencies, like the Department of Education, for instance, didn't see, I think, as speak of cuts as people anticipated, but there are still steep cuts still across the board for some other agencies.
[01:15:17]  It's interesting to see kind of this return again to this idea of trying to reduce non-defense spending while plusing up defense spending, but doing so outside of reconciliation when you have also a number of Republican appropriators who are also concerned about the idea of using so much in reconciliation resources to plus up the fence.
[01:15:37]  But there is this kind of push and pull in the party when you have also conservatives who...
[01:15:41]  For non-Hill folks who are not following this day-to-day, what does that mean?
[01:15:47]  Reconciliation resources using...
[01:15:50]  Yeah, why is that something that's interesting to you of using the resources in one place and not the other?
[01:15:55]  Well, so by funding defense programs outside of the annual appropriations process, and using reconciliation, the idea is that you don't have to trade increases potentially.
[01:16:07]  As some members would say that defend this idea on the Republican side, you don't have to trade increases dollar-for-dollar parity for defense programs the way you would in negotiations with Democrats as part of potentially FY27, our regular government funding talks for non-defense increases.
[01:16:25]  Do budgets matter anymore?
[01:16:27]  It used to be a big thing when the president would release his fiscal whatever year budget.
[01:16:35]  There would be cameras as the budgets were being printed at the government printing office and there was a big to-do.
[01:16:41]  And now it sort of seems like it's a Friday event that doesn't get a whole lot of attention.
[01:16:47]  We'll have hearings coming up.
[01:16:48]  Those will get attention, but it's more an opportunity for members of Congress to finally buttonhole individual cabinet secretaries about their particular issues.
[01:16:56]  And then Congress ends up doing whatever it wants anyway with budget numbers as the process plays out.
[01:17:03]  So does the president releasing a budget matter anymore?
[01:17:09]  I think so.
[01:17:10]  I could be biased as a budget reporter, but I think so.
[01:17:12]  I think, I mean, it provides, it's largely symbolic.
[01:17:16]  There's not going to be all of the increases and cuts that the administration pursues seeing.
[01:17:20]  You're not going to see that enacted in regular appropriation bills.
[01:17:23]  But it does provide a guide for Republicans, for the majority party, to fight for certain priorities of the president as part of the appropriation talks.
[01:17:32]  And last year, at least when it came to reconciliation resources, for an example, it did provide kind of a roadmap that was followed when they were plussing up defense, Republicans, defense and homeland security funding as part of the big beautiful bill from last year.
[01:17:47]  So they were kind of successful in that effort in plussing up the funding that they wanted to see plus up.
[01:17:55]  The numbers didn't shake out entirely how I think some conservatives would have wanted in the top line, but they were able to still boost defense and homeland security funding outside of the annual appropriations process.
[01:18:07]  What are your thoughts on Russ's vote as OMB director as compared to how other OMB directors have treated that role or how often they come up and speak with members of Congress?
[01:18:21]  How has he shaped the position of Office of Management and Budget Director?
[01:18:25]  Good question.
[01:18:27]  I mean, if you're a Republican, you would say that there are Republicans who feel that they have an ear to OMB.
[01:18:35]  They feel that they can Have their questions answered with regards to just how grants are handled in their states or funding for certain agencies.
[01:18:47]  Democrats would say the opposite.
[01:18:49]  Multiple Democrats I've spoken to, some appropriations members who would say that it's not as easy to get that type of information from OMB.
[01:18:58]  But you can see that also just with the minority party and the president in those types of president, but the White House in those kind of situations.
[01:19:08]  I don't know to the extent that we're seeing maybe in this administration.
[01:19:12]  It depends on who you ask.
[01:19:16]  You can ask your questions of Aris Foley of CQ roll call by calling in on phone lines for Democrats 202-748-8000.
[01:19:23]  Republicans 202-748-8001.
[01:19:26]  Independents 202-748-8002.
[01:19:29]  A couple more minutes here.
[01:19:29]  This is Douglas in Tampa, Florida, Republican.
[01:19:32]  Douglas, go ahead.
[01:19:35]  Good morning.
[01:19:35]  Thank you again for C-SPAN, and thank you for your thoughtful, plain responses.
[01:19:40]  My question would really be: what does Congress look like?
[01:19:44]  What does Washington look like in the wake of the Iran war and a lot of the irredent and blasphemous text coming from the White House, which a lot of religious leaders from left-right centers are demanding apologies from the president, which is not always the strong suit?
[01:19:59]  I'd like to know what that looks like for the road ahead for the evangelical Republicans as well as some of the moderates that were trying to turn the other cheek and let this ride.
[01:20:09]  And before I go, thank you again for C-SPAN.
[01:20:11]  And I just must say, Miss, as an attorney getting ready to get his day going, you're exceptionally beautiful.
[01:20:15]  I'll take my answer.
[01:20:16]  All right, that's Douglas in Florida.
[01:20:18]  Thanks, Douglas.
[01:20:19]  Appreciate that.
[01:20:20]  I mean, I think that what's interesting, I think, is happening with Republicans.
[01:20:24]  While Republicans are, of course, like there are Republicans who are supportive of, have been supportive of administration and its initial response in this conflict with Iran.
[01:20:35]  We're starting to see at least some appetite amongst Republicans.
[01:20:39]  I'm not sure how strong it will get for Congress to have some input the longer this persists, if this goes past a certain point.
[01:20:51]  Regards the religious aspect, I wish, I haven't, it hasn't come up as much in my conversations, but definitely something I would like to delve more.
[01:21:01]  So, with members coming back this week, who's the member you're going to go try to interview first?
[01:21:08]  What are you going to be asking about?
[01:21:09]  Is it Iran war-related?
[01:21:11]  Is it budget-related?
[01:21:12]  What are you going to go do this week?
[01:21:13]  I think the big question right now is reconciliation.
[01:21:16]  Iran, as well, there's so many different topics happening, but for me, I think what's top of mind for this week is going to be reconciliation, one package or two, how conversations went within the conference this past week.
[01:21:29]  Does it seem like more are coalescing around the idea of a singular budget package or a multi-pronged approach as we've seen favored by the Senate, not just this year, but also past year and the previous year?
[01:21:44]  Upcoming meetings with the president.
[01:21:45]  We know that the president met with Senator Barrasso, Senator Graham on Friday.
[01:21:51]  Afterwards, you know, there's still this push kind of on the Senate side for the case of multiple reconciliation bills.
[01:21:59]  So, I think it's really interesting to see how Republicans, if they are beginning to, in both chambers, unify behind the multi-pronged kind of approach on reconciliation.
[01:22:10]  And what would that tell us if they do do that about what happens in the rest of this Congress and the path they're trying to take amid a looming midterm election?
[01:22:24]  Right.
[01:22:24]  Well, so speaking to Jody Arrington, chair of the House Budget Committee, I think he's said that, and the same thing that other Republicans have said, the closer you get to midterm elections, the idea of just doing any type of reconciliation bill is difficult.
[01:22:37]  You don't have the same pressure of the debt limit from last year.
[01:22:39]  You don't have the same pressure of retiring, I mean, of expiring tax cuts from last year as well.
[01:22:46]  So, to do one reconciliation bill was a few weeks ago, if you talk to some Republicans in both chambers, it was seen as kind of idealistic, right?
[01:22:54]  It wasn't seen as for some at least like a serious idea, which is why there's concern about taking ICE and CBP out of an appropriations bill in the first place, because people didn't know entirely if there would be a Reconciliation 2.0.
[01:23:06]  The absence, if they do move on the Senate bill, of ICE and CBP funding will definitely make the case stronger for a reconciliation bill.
[01:23:15]  But to do two and to advance the president's priorities is a much bigger task.
[01:23:23]  One is already extremely difficult.
[01:23:25]  Two, by before midterm elections, is not impossible.
[01:23:33]  We'll see what happens together.
[01:23:34]  This is Nan in Lorton, Virginia Independent.
[01:23:36]  Nan, go ahead.
[01:23:38]  Yes, good morning.
[01:23:40]  I'm calling because I'm not hearing the clarity about this money that was given to Iran during the Obama administration.
[01:23:48]  That money, that $400 million payment, that was based upon the agreement that was with the Shah back in the 70s.
[01:24:01]  So you're talking about monies that were technically in a fund that was set up by the Iranian government.
[01:24:09]  So we didn't give them any of our taxpayer money.
[01:24:15]  Eris Foley, any thoughts on Iran and money?
[01:24:20]  And I wrote down, I'm interested.
[01:24:23]  I was not here during the Obama administration, but I have a note now to look further into that.
[01:24:28]  What else are you working on this week as you get set to go chase after members of Congress as Capitol Hill reporters do throughout the day?
[01:24:38]  Right.
[01:24:38]  Well, as again, I was saying before, reconciliation and appropriation is definitely top of mind.
[01:24:43]  Excited also for the budget hearings to come up and see what fireworks come out of those conversations.
[01:24:50]  I don't feel entirely, I think, confident in the idea of us getting any appropriation bills passed probably before midterm elections.
[01:24:58]  And even getting the appropriation bills passed before the end of the fiscal year is always a pretty difficult task in the first place.
[01:25:04]  But one of those potential omnibus situations or that we just continue continuing resolution that continue on the current funding path for months or longer at a time?
[01:25:16]  It's a really big question, Mark.
[01:25:18]  I mean, you have Republicans who have the House right now.

=== Unfiltered Capitol Hill (03:18) ===

[01:25:21]  And again, there's just been this desire to continuously try and break the omnibus curse, as some would term it.
[01:25:28]  So the idea of them doing an omnibus, even if Democrats, let's say they did take back the House, I mean, I don't know.
[01:25:38]  Both sides can go back and forth when they're in power.
[01:25:40]  So it depends.
[01:25:41]  We have to see.
[01:25:42]  If you want to read about both sides going back and forth when they're in power, roll call, a good place to go for that roll call.com.
[01:25:49]  Eris Foley, congressional reporter at CQ Roll Call.
[01:25:52]  Always appreciate your time.
[01:25:54]  Thank you.
[01:25:55]  Coming up in about 35 minutes this morning, it's a conversation about the trucking industry in this country.
[01:26:04]  Gordon McGill is the author of End of the Road Inside the War on Truckers.
[01:26:08]  Well, there's a special line for truckers to call in during that segment.
[01:26:12]  But until then, it's open forum.
[01:26:15]  Any public policy, any political issue you want to talk about, phone lines are yours.
[01:26:18]  Numbers are on your screen.
[01:26:19]  Go ahead and start calling in and we'll get to your calls right after the break.
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[01:28:13]  Washington Journal continues.
[01:28:16]  Open forum now on the Washington Journal.
[01:28:18]  Any public policy, any political issue you want to talk about.
[01:28:21]  Here's how you can call in: 202-748-8001 for Republicans.
[01:28:25]  Democrats 202-748-8000.
[01:28:27]  Independents 202-748-8002.
[01:28:31]  Here's where we are on Capitol Hill today after that two-week recess.
[01:28:35]  The Senate is back in session at 3 p.m. Eastern.
[01:28:38]  You can watch that on C-SPAN too.

=== Post-Recess Session Updates (10:42) ===

[01:28:40]  The House will have a brief pro forma session today.
[01:28:43]  They're back in full session later this week.
[01:28:45]  The pro forma at 2.30.
[01:28:47]  We'll, of course, show you that when it happens on C-SPAN.
[01:28:50]  Plenty to talk about this morning.
[01:28:52]  The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian ports is expected to begin, at least according to the president and his true social post, at about 1 a.m. Eastern this morning.
[01:29:04]  It's set to begin today at 10 a.m. Eastern, so about an hour and a half from now.
[01:29:10]  President has promised that other countries would be involved in that effort.
[01:29:13]  We'll see how that plays out.
[01:29:16]  Also today, we're monitoring the results and what has come from the election in Hungary.
[01:29:26]  What has come from the results of that election is that Trump ally Victor Orban conceded defeat yesterday in an election in which some 77% of Hungarians turned out to vote.
[01:29:38]  You'll recall that it was Vice President JD Vance who was in Hungary campaigning and boosting Viktor Orban.
[01:29:47]  He went down in defeat over the weekend and we're monitoring what has come from that.
[01:29:51]  JD Vance also over the weekend in Pakistan and negotiations failing to come up with an agreement to end the conflict in Iran and that's why we're at a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz today on Capitol Hill.
[01:30:05]  There's also plenty going on.
[01:30:07]  Appropriations hearings beginning this week, potential expulsion hearings.
[01:30:12]  There's talk of Eric Swalwell possibly being a member in a rare expulsion vote, possibly linking that vote with a vote for Republican Tony Gonzalez of Texas.
[01:30:25]  So with so much going on, we'll let you lead the discussion.
[01:30:29]  Tell us what you want to talk about.
[01:30:30]  Dave is in Auburn, New York, a Republican.
[01:30:34]  Dave, go ahead.
[01:30:35]  Yeah, good morning.
[01:30:37]  I just want to remind everybody that this thing in Iran is the biggest problem, that they are the exporters of terrorism all over the world and Muslim fundamentalists, this Islamic religion.
[01:30:55]  And they're pushing it everywhere they go.
[01:30:58]  So everything goes from there.
[01:31:00]  And they're willing to sacrifice their own population.
[01:31:05]  And a lot of other countries are the same.
[01:31:07]  They're willing to sacrifice all their citizens for their ideology, whether it's China, whether it's Russia, whether it's Iran, or you could name the other places.
[01:31:19]  And we don't want that type of mentality to come here in our country.
[01:31:25]  And the problem may be showing up here because our leadership is now willing to sacrifice its own citizens economically to the special interests of the unionized public employees in all the states, especially the blue states.
[01:31:43]  So it is a problem, but it has a lot of tentacles.
[01:31:47]  But Iran is the heart and soul of all of this.
[01:31:50]  How they ever got to that point, I don't know.
[01:31:53]  But it is a religious fundamentalist thing, and they are willing to die in order to keep it.
[01:32:00]  So to negotiate with people like that, it takes a master stroke.
[01:32:04]  I don't really have an answer for what you would do, but day by day, play it, and let's see where it ends up.
[01:32:14]  I'm all in for this.
[01:32:16]  Let's realize what the real problem is and do what we can to suppress those people, those corrupt leaders.
[01:32:23]  And I thank you.
[01:32:24]  Dave, in New York, Sandy is in Sand Point, Idaho.
[01:32:28]  Democrat, go ahead.
[01:32:31]  Yes, I wanted to mention that the Trump administration reallocated funds that Congress had appropriated in $1.5 billion to Trump's Board of Peace.
[01:32:50]  And I just wonder how he can do that without authorization from Congress.
[01:32:57]  I think that they need to subpoena the Treasury Secretary to find out.
[01:33:02]  Thank you.
[01:33:04]  That's Sandy in Idaho.
[01:33:06]  The secretaries of the various agencies will be coming up to Capitol Hill in the days and weeks to come in the wake of the release of President Trump's fiscal 2027 budget request.
[01:33:18]  Russ Vogt, the OMB director, will be on Capitol Hill towards the end of this week.
[01:33:22]  But then those cabinet secretaries also come up and testify, give their budget asks to Congress.
[01:33:29]  So you'll see plenty of them in the weeks to come.
[01:33:32]  As we go to Ben here in Washington, D.C., Independent, go ahead.
[01:33:37]  Yes, this is Ben Carrie.
[01:33:40]  Yes, my issue is the issue of peace deal with Iran.
[01:33:48]  I'm not sure.
[01:33:48]  I think America should, I mean, just kind of sometimes reduce this idea of power, like you have too much guns, too much bumps, and all of that.
[01:34:01]  So it's sort of, America is not good in terms of diplomacy, to be honest with you.
[01:34:06]  Because just look at the issue of funding ICE and all of these other issues that is causing, I call it, budgetary issues here.
[01:34:17]  They have not been able to achieve a deal or get a deal in almost two months now, if not more.
[01:34:24]  So there'll be two months this week.
[01:34:27]  Okay, two months this week.
[01:34:29]  Nobody died during that, you know, kind of call it budget conflict or so.
[01:34:35]  But in Iran, America and Israel just went there unprovoked and killed almost tons of their leaders, spiritual, political, and otherwise, and destroyed things as much as they can because they have power.
[01:34:52]  And then you expect them to make a deal under 24 hours.
[01:34:57]  It doesn't happen like that.
[01:34:59]  It was 21 hours of negotiations over the weekend.
[01:35:02]  It was led by Vice President JD Vance.
[01:35:05]  No deal was reached.
[01:35:06]  JD Vance came out and spoke about his efforts in those negotiations.
[01:35:11]  It was about three minutes that he spoke.
[01:35:14]  Here's his full statement afterwards.
[01:35:17]  Notes of appreciation, first of all, to the Prime Minister of Pakistan and to Field Marshal Munir, who were both incredible hosts.
[01:35:26]  And whatever shortcomings of the negotiation, it wasn't because of the Pakistanis who did an amazing job and really tried to help us and the Iranians bridge the gap and get to a deal.
[01:35:37]  We have been at it now for 21 hours, and we've had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians.
[01:35:45]  That's the good news.
[01:35:46]  The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement.
[01:35:49]  And I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America.
[01:35:53]  So we go back to the United States, having not come to an agreement.
[01:35:57]  We've made very clear what our red lines are, what things we're willing to accommodate them on, and what things we're not willing to accommodate them on.
[01:36:04]  And we've made that as clear as we possibly could.
[01:36:07]  And they have chosen not to accept our terms.
[01:36:11]  Questions?
[01:36:12]  Sir, Nick Robinson from the CNN, precisely what have they rejected here?
[01:36:18]  Can you help us understand it a little bit?
[01:36:22]  Well, I won't go into all the details because I don't want to negotiate in public after we've negotiated for 21 hours in private.
[01:36:28]  But the simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon.
[01:36:39]  That is the core goal of the president of the United States, and that's what we've tried to achieve through these negotiations.
[01:36:45]  Again, their nuclear program, such as it is, the enrichment facilities that they had before, they've been destroyed.
[01:36:53]  But the simple question is, do we see a fundamental commitment of will for the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon, not just now, not just two years from now, but for the long term?
[01:37:04]  We haven't seen that yet.
[01:37:05]  We hope that we will.
[01:37:06]  Jen?
[01:37:07]  Was there a framework on anything?
[01:37:08]  And also, did the Iranian frozen assets come up?
[01:37:11]  And did you reach any conclusions on those frozen assets?
[01:37:14]  We talked about all those issues, Jen, and we talked about a number of issues beyond that.
[01:37:19]  And so certainly those things came up.
[01:37:20]  But again, we just could not get to a situation where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms.
[01:37:28]  I think that we were quite flexible.
[01:37:29]  We were quite accommodating.
[01:37:30]  The president told us you need to come here in good faith and make your best effort to get a deal.
[01:37:36]  We did that.
[01:37:37]  And unfortunately, we weren't able to make any headway.
[01:37:41]  Preston.
[01:37:42]  Mr. Vice President, how often did you communicate with President Trump throughout the negotiations?
[01:37:46]  There were reports that there were multiple rounds where there were breaks in between negotiations.
[01:37:51]  How often did you communicate with the president throughout those rounds?
[01:37:54]  And what was he saying as you were going through these negotiations that you said fell short?
[01:37:58]  Yeah, obviously we were talking to the president consistently.
[01:38:01]  I don't know how many times we talked to him, a half dozen times, a dozen times over the past 21 hours.
[01:38:06]  We obviously also talked to Admiral Cooper, to Pete, to Marco, to the entire national security team.
[01:38:11]  We talked to Scott Basson a number of times.
[01:38:13]  So look, we were constantly in communication with the team because we were negotiating in good faith.
[01:38:19]  And we leave here, and we leave here with a very simple proposal, a method of understanding that is our final and best offer.
[01:38:29]  We'll see if the Iranian is accepted.
[01:38:30]  Thank you.
[01:38:32]  That was Vice President JD Vance on Saturday after ending those negotiations this morning.
[01:38:38]  We are less than 90 minutes away from a blockade of Iranian ports.
[01:38:43]  This is the information provided yesterday by the U.S. Central Command, which is leading the military effort in this conflict.
[01:38:51]  They wrote: U.S. Central Command forces will begin implementing a blockade of all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports on April 13th at 10 a.m. Eastern.
[01:39:00]  In accordance with the President's proclamation, the blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian ports on the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Omam.
[01:39:14]  CENTCOM forces will not impede freedom of navigation for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports.

=== Election Citizenship Debate (12:30) ===

[01:39:22]  The information being provided.
[01:39:24]  And again, it begins at 10 a.m. Eastern.
[01:39:28]  Back to your phone calls.
[01:39:29]  This is Debbie Columbia, Missouri Republican.
[01:39:32]  Good morning.
[01:39:33]  Hi.
[01:39:34]  Hi.
[01:39:35]  I'd like to talk about elections.
[01:39:38]  We can't have democracy unless every voter proves their citizenship.
[01:39:44]  And we can't have a private ballot voting from home because there's too many variables.
[01:39:50]  There would be persuasion, or people could sell their ballots, or letting someone else fill out the ballot.
[01:40:00]  How do you feel about absentee ballots?
[01:40:03]  Well, in rare conditions, you know, like the military or people with disability or extremely elderly or like that, yes, or on vacation, you know, but that would be a small percentage of the ballot.
[01:40:23]  Ballots put dropped in mail or in the collection boxes break the chain of custody.
[01:40:29]  Those ballots are legal documents and they need to remain in the precinct or the county clerk's office with election officials.
[01:40:41]  Debbie, have you trusted voting in this country throughout your life?
[01:40:46]  Throughout my life, yes, but we always voted in person for the most part, you know.
[01:40:52]  And then, you know, mailed in voting wasn't a thing until, I don't know, it's been a while, but it's rare and it should be rare.
[01:41:04]  Debbie, what do you think about those states who, for many years, certain states have all mail-in voting?
[01:41:12]  I think it's not good.
[01:41:14]  Not a good thing.
[01:41:15]  It's not democracy.
[01:41:18]  That's Debbie in Missouri.
[01:41:19]  This is Liz in New Jersey.
[01:41:21]  Democrat.
[01:41:22]  Good morning.
[01:41:25]  Good morning.
[01:41:26]  I think regarding the problems in the Middle East, thinking that one day, one long day of meetings with the Vice President was going to end everything in a positive way and we would get everything that we wanted wasn't realistic.
[01:41:48]  All right.
[01:41:49]  And I give the Vice President points for tensing it.
[01:41:55]  But, you know, Trump showed us where his priority was.
[01:42:00]  That evening, when the Vice President's trying to avert major calamity in the economy, he's at some silly fight exposition in D.C.
[01:42:15]  He doesn't care enough about settling anything for the American people.
[01:42:21]  He never will.
[01:42:23]  And I think the last lady and all reporters, we need to start calling his behavior what it is, not saying forever that it's unprecedented and he's the only tough guy that ran in and did thus and so.
[01:42:41]  What he is doing is largely unconstitutional.
[01:42:45]  It's anti-American.
[01:42:48]  It violates our Constitution.
[01:42:50]  It's not just unprecedented.
[01:42:52]  The other presidents knew that they didn't have that power.
[01:42:56]  They didn't have that right to ignore the Constitution of the United States of America.
[01:43:02]  And we need to get back to a president of whichever party who adheres to his role as spelled out in the U.S. Constitution because that's how our system works.
[01:43:15]  Liz, what would be the impeachable offense that you would like him removed for?
[01:43:20]  What specific violation of the Constitution?
[01:43:24]  Well, we could start with where he left off after his first term.
[01:43:28]  We've got a guy who's the caller before me got her confused that we have some sort of a massive problem with voting.
[01:43:37]  And we're letting the guy who caused the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
[01:43:45]  We're letting him be the decider of what is and is not a proper election.
[01:43:50]  First, the United States federal government does not run elections.
[01:43:56]  And secondly, it seems odd to me that we're allowing the insurrectionists to fill people's heads with the idea that our system at the state level isn't well run.
[01:44:13]  I have no problem with mail-in voting.
[01:44:17]  I've used it.
[01:44:19]  But he's very convincing and he's constantly trying to insurrect and get away from the U.S. Constitution.
[01:44:30]  Got your point.
[01:44:30]  That's Liz in New Jersey.
[01:44:32]  George is in Western Virginia.
[01:44:34]  Up next, Independent.
[01:44:37]  Go ahead.
[01:44:39]  Good morning, John, and thank you for taking my call.
[01:44:42]  Top of mind for me is the upcoming midterm elections and how there is the effort to sow distrust in the outcome and then the gerrymandering activities.
[01:44:59]  That's troubling, but it's happening.
[01:45:04]  And then I'm looking or seeking candidates that can speak to affordability and can speak to solutions to affordability.
[01:45:17]  And who are those candidates you're finding right now, George?
[01:45:22]  I'm still searching for them, hoping to hear as we get closer to the election and they ramp up the candidates around on the trail and messaging.
[01:45:37]  So I don't have anyone at this time.
[01:45:41]  George, there's a vote coming up in Virginia on a redistricting effort, an effort that could add four Democratic seats to the House.
[01:45:51]  How are you going to vote on that redistricting referendum in Virginia?
[01:45:57]  Well, I have voted already because I am going to be an elections officer on that.
[01:46:06]  So I voted unfortunately yes to doing that.
[01:46:11]  I'd rather we not be in this position, but given the landscape of where we're at today, I did vote yes.
[01:46:21]  Why is the landscape of where we're at today worth it for you when you say it's an unfortunate vote you had to make?
[01:46:31]  Well, the initiation of this in Texas and then other states and how I would say we're trying to now rig the elections by doing this kind of maneuvering.
[01:46:46]  So it's almost like a defensive position to vote yes on this.
[01:46:52]  That's George in Breston, Virginia.
[01:46:54]  This is Eric in the Garden State, Republican.
[01:46:57]  Good morning.
[01:46:58]  Hi, thanks for taking my call, John.
[01:47:00]  Good to hear your voice again.
[01:47:02]  I would just like to give on to all the dumb people that have fought in the Middle East.
[01:47:10]  The military, you do make a difference, even if people don't say you do.
[01:47:17]  I just realized that you do, and we know where you're doing it.
[01:47:21]  And also, we've had to play emotional chess with people in the Middle East for 47 years.
[01:47:31]  So I don't see any change, unfortunately.
[01:47:36]  That's Eric in New Jersey to San Diego.
[01:47:39]  This is Francisco, Line for Democrats.
[01:47:41]  Go ahead.
[01:47:43]  Hi, Hi.
[01:47:44]  Good morning.
[01:47:46]  Yeah, the only thing I want to know, you know, why Congress don't take action.
[01:47:50]  You know, this president, you know, the time he can go to the office, you know, United States is no safe.
[01:47:58]  You know, he's doing everything he wants.
[01:48:01]  Like he knows about no rules, you know, for nobody, only he yourself.
[01:48:07]  And another thing, you know, like I said, I'm a senior.
[01:48:10]  I almost lost my job because I can't work more than 24 hours now.
[01:48:17]  I guess I have to depend on the Social Security right now.
[01:48:22]  And that's just not good for us.
[01:48:25]  I'm almost 70 years old.
[01:48:28]  You know, that's not good.
[01:48:32]  Francisco, as a Democrat out in California, what were your thoughts on Eric Swalwell ending his campaign for governor this weekend?
[01:48:43]  Well, I hope he fixed everything, you know, because I guess better play the 25th Amendment, everyone, to Republicans to the Democrats.
[01:48:52]  This is better for us.
[01:48:55]  And another president.
[01:48:58]  That's Francisco.
[01:48:59]  We'll stay in California.
[01:49:01]  This is Richard in Rockland, California, Republican.
[01:49:04]  Go ahead.
[01:49:08]  Yeah, on just a brief one on Eric Swalwell.
[01:49:14]  Apparently, there were issues on whether he was actually a resident in California, which is interesting.
[01:49:25]  But I guess what I wanted to bring up was that Trump, in making this decision to take on Iran a second time and make sure that they don't have a nuclear program, he knew he was laying everything on the line, probably whether the Republicans win the House and the Senate or not in the midterms.
[01:49:54]  But he's a leader.
[01:49:56]  He made a tough choice for the country and the people, and he followed through.
[01:50:04]  And the Democrats, they look for any issue, anything he says.
[01:50:09]  So they look at this as a great talking point to downplay everything.
[01:50:20]  I just think the Democrats are more interested in getting reelected and having continuous power like they do in California.
[01:50:30]  We haven't had any Republican leadership in 15 or 20 years.
[01:50:36]  And what's laughable is our governor, Newsom, he wants to run and become president.
[01:50:44]  They say so goes whatever California does, so goes the nation.
[01:50:53]  The Democrats in California have had a war on fossil fuels.
[01:50:58]  They've run out multiple refineries.
[01:51:03]  That's one of the reasons why our gas prices are so high.
[01:51:07]  We're at $6.50 a gallon.
[01:51:09]  And I get a kick out of the rest of the country where they're up to $4 a gallon.
[01:51:16]  We'd love to be at $4 a gallon.
[01:51:21]  So the big issue I think that we have to look at is the sanctuary cities and open borders.
[01:51:33]  The Democrats want one-party rule like they've had with California.
[01:51:37]  They want one-party rule for the entire nation.
[01:51:41]  And our capitalist system can't survive or support the welfare state that where we're headed.

=== Pope Leo Political Attacks (10:59) ===

[01:51:52]  It's Richard in California.
[01:51:54]  One more Jerry in Missouri City, Texas, Independent Open Forum.
[01:51:58]  Go ahead.
[01:52:00]  Hi, John.
[01:52:01]  This is Jerry.
[01:52:02]  Hey, a couple of things here.
[01:52:06]  One, I think JD Vance has been set up.
[01:52:10]  You know, I used to negotiate agreements for major companies here in the U.S.
[01:52:18]  And it would take me two weeks to negotiate a multi-million dollar agreement.
[01:52:23]  This guy spent 21 hours over there.
[01:52:25]  They make a time.
[01:52:26]  That's a long time.
[01:52:27]  That is nothing trying to negotiate an agreement at this scale.
[01:52:34]  JD Vance spent more time in Hungary actually campaigning for the loser of the election over there, which I think is another sort of dire sign for our current president.
[01:52:48]  Further, I think that this blockade will fail.
[01:52:53]  I think the Iranians have just much more patience.
[01:52:57]  Mr. Trump will see that the stock market will take a hit this day, tomorrow, the next day.
[01:53:07]  He's now taken a problem that was Iran's and made it the U.S. problem.
[01:53:14]  While he may think NATO will come in, they may or may not.
[01:53:17]  But I just think he's just stepped into this one.
[01:53:21]  He's digging a hole and digging it deeper.
[01:53:23]  So those are my comments.
[01:53:25]  And thank you for C-SPAN.
[01:53:26]  This is a great program.
[01:53:27]  I watch you guys every morning.
[01:53:29]  Jerry, thanks for the call from Missouri City, Texas.
[01:53:32]  More of your phone calls in just a couple minutes.
[01:53:35]  But we now want to head down to the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
[01:53:40]  That's where Julia Manchester of the Hill newspaper joins us.
[01:53:44]  White House reporter checking in on the week ahead at the White House.
[01:53:47]  And Julia Manchester, the caller just then referred to the news yesterday on Victor Orban's loss in his election in Hungary.
[01:53:56]  And what has the reaction been at the White House since that news yesterday?
[01:54:00]  The caller there calling it a dire sign for President Trump.
[01:54:04]  Have you seen any response since yesterday?
[01:54:07]  Yes, well, we've reached out to the White House on this and we haven't gotten a response yet.
[01:54:11]  And we were closely monitoring President Trump's Truth Social last night.
[01:54:15]  He was instead posting about the Pope and he's been talking about a number of other issues.
[01:54:21]  But there's no doubt this is a tough sign, I think a tough loss for the White House in many ways.
[01:54:28]  I mean, they invested political capital in this, sending Vice President JD Vance to Hungary to campaign for Orban.
[01:54:35]  Now, it's been interesting listening to Democrats spin this victory in their favor, saying this is a sign of a global movement or maybe a movement seen in the Western Hemisphere, that we are seeing a pushback to some of these more strong men, maybe authoritarian-like figures.
[01:54:53]  That's how Democrats obviously like to paint President Trump.
[01:54:56]  But we've also seen some Republicans speaking out favorably about the new Hungarian leader and Orban's defeat.
[01:55:05]  I thought it was interesting to see Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker, who is an ally of the White House.
[01:55:11]  He is a major Republican on Capitol Hill, saying this is a great sign for NATO member countries and U.S. relations and Hungarian relations going forward.
[01:55:22]  But certainly it's going to be difficult for the Trump administration, I think, to spin this because they invested so much political capital in this.
[01:55:30]  And instead, we saw over 70% turnout in Hungary for this election, something that hasn't been seen since the end of communism in that country.
[01:55:41]  And then we also saw, you know, I just, you know, obviously the vice president going out to campaign and that didn't really seem to do much there.
[01:55:50]  So it's going to be difficult for the White House, I think, going forward on this.
[01:55:53]  But it'll be interesting to see how President Trump works with this new Hungarian leader, particularly on the issue of Ukraine.
[01:56:01]  Orban was notably a major ally, arguably Vladimir Putin's closest ally in Europe.
[01:56:07]  So on Ukraine, we could see President Trump dealing with a leader with very different viewpoints on how to go forward.
[01:56:15]  In terms of investing political capital, so JD Vance is in Hungary and he's trying to boost the chances of Victor Orban, who goes on to lose.
[01:56:24]  JD Vance then goes to Pakistan, negotiates for 21 hours and comes out and says that we couldn't reach a deal.
[01:56:31]  What is political capital?
[01:56:33]  What does that look like for JD Vance in the wake of those two events over the past three days?
[01:56:38]  Yeah, a tough week for JD Vance and two tough losses.
[01:56:42]  Look, on Iran, I think JD Vance was facing insurmountable odds.
[01:56:47]  He was asked to help lead a team to negotiate a deal, which the last deal the United States made with the Iran during the Iran nuclear deal in the Obama era took two years to negotiate.
[01:56:59]  JD Vance was asked to lead this in the period of one to two days.
[01:57:04]  So he was already facing a tough uphill road there.
[01:57:09]  But like you said, it came on the back of this visit to Hungary, where the VP was very much trying to boost Victor Orban and the administration was trying to boost Victor Orban, and that seemingly failed.
[01:57:21]  So, you know, I think oftentimes at administrations, you see the vice presidents tasked with these very tough asks in terms of how to handle, you know, in terms of coming to deals, working with foreign leaders, working with foreign allies as they were trying to with Orban.
[01:57:39]  And it doesn't always work out.
[01:57:41]  We know that JD Vance has been seen as one of the heir parents, potential heir parents, to the Trump administration going into the 2028 presidential election.
[01:57:50]  JD Vance says he's focusing on the midterms, but it's hard to read into all of this without thinking about his political future going into 2028.
[01:58:01]  The week ahead at the White House, so this blockade is set to begin in just over an hour from now.
[01:58:08]  Where is the president going to be today?
[01:58:11]  Where is he going this week as we tick down towards this two-week deadline on the ceasefire?
[01:58:17]  So the president will be here today.
[01:58:19]  He has executive time this hour, 8 a.m., like he normally does on weekdays, some weekends.
[01:58:24]  And then he has some signing time, policy meetings.
[01:58:27]  But the big event happening at the White House today actually takes place this evening.
[01:58:30]  when the king and queen of the Netherlands, Wilhelm Alexander and Queen Maxima, come and visit President Trump for a dinner and will meet with him and the First Lady.
[01:58:40]  This is so interesting because obviously the King and Queen are seen as figureheads in the Netherlands.
[01:58:45]  They don't hold that hard political power.
[01:58:47]  However, they're also seen as diplomatic tools.
[01:58:50]  And the Netherlands is also a part of NATO.
[01:58:52]  So I would be surprised if NATO and the President's criticism of NATO and in terms of how it's sort of refused or member nations have been reluctant to help the United States out in terms of the Strait of Hormuz.
[01:59:05]  I would be surprised if that does not come up.
[01:59:08]  So we'll be watching that meeting to see if anything comes out of that meeting or the dinner.
[01:59:13]  And then later this week, the president is heading to Arizona and Nevada, where he will talk about no taxes on tips and no taxes on overtimes.
[01:59:21]  Two policies that the administration has been trying to push back here at home on this issue of affordability.
[01:59:27]  Now this comes as affordability really has been, that issue has been flipped on its head and how the Republicans are trying to message on it with the blockade, with the war.
[01:59:36]  We've seen oil and gas prices soar and that's obviously having a negative impact on affordability.
[01:59:42]  So I think from the Trump administration's standpoint, President Trump messaging on these other two initiatives as a part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, that gives President Trump a chance to really try to present a message to that Republicans running up and down the ballot in November that they can take and run with as they're facing a lot of pressure on this in the wake of the war.
[02:00:08]  And then back here on this end of Pennsylvania Avenue, this week we're going to see OMB Director Russ Vogt come up to Capitol Hill to testify at the beginning of those fiscal 2027 budget hearings, members of the president's cabinet coming up in the days and weeks to come to have their own individual hearings.
[02:00:24]  Who do you think is going to have the toughest time when they come on up to Capitol Hill?
[02:00:29]  I think they're all going to have a tough time.
[02:00:31]  I don't have, to be honest, a list of those meetings or those hearings in front of me, but take Russ Vogt, for example.
[02:00:38]  He's going to face a lot of questions over the budget.
[02:00:41]  This budget really is looking to pump more money into defense spending and take away from domestic spending.
[02:00:49]  I think he's going to face a lot of tough questions from obviously Democrats and maybe some Republicans on this administration figures and cabinet officials are also, I think, going to be pressed on the Iran war.
[02:01:00]  And a lot of this will depend how this blockade, which is set to begin in a few hours' time, how that impacts things going forward.
[02:01:09]  I think there's going to be a lot of tough questions as to how the administration is handling this and really what the end game is.
[02:01:16]  And then Julia Manchester, before you go, you brought this up at the beginning, but President Trump's true social post about Pope Leo, the lengthy post that begins with, Pope Leo is weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy, and it goes on and on from there.
[02:01:32]  Can you just give us some background on how this came up?
[02:01:35]  So we don't know for sure how exactly this came up, but it was interesting.
[02:01:40]  There was a 60-minute segment that aired on CBS after the Masters concluded.
[02:01:45]  We know that the President is a big golf fan, so he was presumably watching the Masters.
[02:01:50]  And then you had the 60-minute segment come on right after, in which host Nora O'Donnell was talking with a number of members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who have pushed back and have been critical of President Trump and have touted Pope Leo.
[02:02:05]  I think we're right now seeing a big debate within the Roman Catholic Church about how to move forward on a number of political policies across the world, particularly immigration and, of course, this war in Iran.
[02:02:16]  Now, President Trump has been asked about some of Pope Leo's criticisms in recent weeks, and he hasn't really directly gone after him.
[02:02:24]  But this is his most, I think, direct attack on Pope Leo that we've seen, and a direct attack on a Pope that we've ever seen by a sitting president of the United States.
[02:02:36]  And now it's sort of turned into this tit for tat where Pope Leo on his trip to Algeria and Africa is being asked about this as well.
[02:02:45]  So it's, you know, not to use a cliche, but it is a bit unprecedented to see how the president has been hitting Pope Leo.

=== Media Unity and Facts (03:00) ===

[02:02:52]  And on top of that, he's also released or posted an AI image of him seemingly depicted as Jesus Christ.
[02:03:00]  You know, I took a look on Axe, and obviously Axe isn't real world, but had a lot of pushback from conservative Catholic figures and media figures on that platform, which I thought was notable.
[02:03:11]  It'll be interesting to see what that reaction is later today.
[02:03:15]  Julia Manchester covers it all.
[02:03:17]  You can see the reaction at thehill.com.
[02:03:20]  That's where she and her colleagues post their stories.
[02:03:23]  And we always appreciate you and The Hill working with us.
[02:03:26]  Thank you.
[02:03:28]  That's going to do it for this segment of the Washington Journal.
[02:03:32]  Just about an hour left this morning.
[02:03:33]  In that time, we're going to be joined by Gord McGill.
[02:03:37]  We're going to talk about his new book, End of the Road Inside the War on Truckers.
[02:03:42]  We'll have a special line for truckers.
[02:03:44]  If you're out on the road, we'd be happy to hear from you.
[02:03:47]  If you're home watching your television, go ahead and start calling in.
[02:03:50]  And we will talk to Gord McGill right after the break.
[02:03:59]  In a divided media world, one place brings Americans together.
[02:04:03]  According to a new MAGA research report, nearly 90 million Americans turn to C-SPAN, and they're almost perfectly balanced: 28% conservative, 27% liberal or progressive, 41% moderate.
[02:04:17]  Republicans watching Democrats, Democrats watching Republicans, moderates watching all sides.
[02:04:23]  Because C-SPAN viewers want the facts straight from the source.
[02:04:27]  No commentary, no agenda, just democracy.
[02:04:30]  Unfiltered every day on the C-SPAN networks.
[02:04:37]  C-SPAN is as unbiased as you can get.
[02:04:40]  You are so fair.
[02:04:42]  I don't know how anybody can say otherwise.
[02:04:44]  You guys do the most important work for everyone in this country.
[02:04:48]  I love C-SPAN because I get to hear all the voices.
[02:04:52]  You bring these divergent viewpoints and you present both sides of an issue and you allow people to make up their own minds.
[02:04:58]  I absolutely love C-SPAN.
[02:05:01]  I love to hear both sides.
[02:05:02]  I've watched C-SPAN every morning and it is unbiased.
[02:05:06]  And you bring in factual information for the callers to understand where they are in their comments.
[02:05:13]  This is probably the only place that we can hear honest opinion of Americans across the country.
[02:05:17]  You guys at C-SPAN are doing such a wonderful job of allowing free exchange of ideas without a lot of interruptions.
[02:05:25]  Thank you, C-SPAN, for being a light in the dark.
[02:05:31]  Washington Journal continues.
[02:05:35]  Joining us now on C-SPAN is Gordon McGill.
[02:05:37]  He's the author of this new book, End of the Road Inside the War on Truckers.
[02:05:42]  Gordon McGill, if it's a war on truckers, who or what is waging that war?
[02:05:49]  Oh, good morning, Mr. McCardle.
[02:05:50]  Thanks for having me.

=== War on Truckers Explained (16:12) ===

[02:05:52]  My book is sort of a broad overview of the last four or five decades and asks the question, you know, what has become of the American truck driver and why is the industry in such a hot mess that it is?
[02:06:08]  And I think one of the key sort of fronts in that war is this idea that, you know, truck driving can be de-skilled.
[02:06:17]  Actors within the industry and the government and others have pushed this lie that there's a shortage of truck drivers that's been going on since the 1980s.
[02:06:26]  It never seems to be resolved.
[02:06:27]  It's always ongoing.
[02:06:29]  The taxpayer ends up on the hook for it.
[02:06:31]  They throw tons of money at it and that prevents the job from getting better, which then prevents the industry from getting better and then leads to issues we see today with so many very high-profile collisions and a general drop in safety on our highways.
[02:06:49]  Give us an overview of the trucking industry in the United States.
[02:06:52]  How many truckers are there right now?
[02:06:54]  It's the average age of a trucker.
[02:06:55]  How much do they make a year?
[02:06:57]  So generally speaking, there's somewhere, it's hard to nail down exact statistics on this, but between two and 3.5 million jobs require a CDL, right?
[02:07:11]  And a commercial driver's license.
[02:07:13]  A number of those jobs are not like long-distance trucking.
[02:07:17]  But as far as long-distance trucking, as people understand truckers, there's generally speaking somewhere between 1.8 and 2.5 million of those jobs, obviously spread all over the country.
[02:07:28]  And the industry is extremely diverse, okay?
[02:07:33]  So the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I believe, pegs the median driver's salary around $57,000 a year.
[02:07:42]  There are some outliers.
[02:07:43]  There are some very good truck driving jobs in niche parts of the industry that will pay near or above six figures, but they're extremely rare.
[02:07:52]  And unfortunately, many of them pay less.
[02:07:55]  There have been studies which have shown that the average truck driver's salary is frozen in time, 50% of what it was in 1980 when the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 was signed into law by Jimmy Carter and fundamentally rearranged the economics of the industry.
[02:08:11]  You mentioned a CDL.
[02:08:13]  What is a commercial driver's license?
[02:08:15]  What do you need to do to get one?
[02:08:17]  And how is the requirements for it changed over time?
[02:08:21]  Well, this is part of the problem.
[02:08:23]  The requirements to get one almost don't exist.
[02:08:26]  It used to be much more difficult to get a CDL.
[02:08:29]  It used to be that truck driving was considered something of a skilled trade.
[02:08:32]  And part of this war on truckers has been a decades-long effort to chip away at that, to reduce the skills and competencies required to get a CDL.
[02:08:43]  Why would they want to do that?
[02:08:45]  To expand the pool of drivers and artificially suppress our wages.
[02:08:49]  You know, the introduction of automatic transmissions about 20 years ago, various legislators have tried to reduce the number of years of experience required to become a trainer to train other truck drivers because this churn problem, they've marketed as a driver shortage.
[02:09:08]  What they have is a churn and retention problem.
[02:09:11]  Many people come into the industry every year.
[02:09:13]  Typically, well, at least before COVID, the trucking industry would produce about 450,000 new CDLs every year because so many of them were quitting.
[02:09:23]  Some trucking companies have 90 to 100% driver turnover every year, and that is being subsidized by the taxpayer.
[02:09:30]  And in order to pull that off, they had to reduce the requirements to get a CDL because they can't keep drivers around because they don't want to pay them or do anything about the material conditions of the job.
[02:09:42]  You mentioned automatic transmissions.
[02:09:44]  What about automation and the future of potential robot truck drivers and what that means for folks like yourself?
[02:09:52]  Yeah, that's a very good question, sir.
[02:09:53]  I've been looking into that myself.
[02:09:57]  There's a lot of skullduggery going on with the automated truck systems manufacturers, especially with their marketing.
[02:10:04]  If you look at who they're talking to, the message changes.
[02:10:09]  The autonomous systems companies have one message for politicians, one message for truckers and the public, and another one for their investors.
[02:10:17]  And all of that stuff is very messy.
[02:10:20]  You know, they're going to be a few years out yet, and it's not always just about the technology, but about convincing the public of the safety benefits of robotic trucks sharing the road with us.
[02:10:32]  And I think they're misinforming the public about those benefits.
[02:10:37]  They're using what's called virtual testing miles, which is to say, you know, the testing that they're doing on the roads is limited.
[02:10:45]  And I think people need to be skeptical about that.
[02:10:48]  And they're also saying that they don't want to replace truck drivers and give us other jobs.
[02:10:52]  But when you look at their investment reports and the jobs they purport to offer us in replacement, that's actually a pretty massive load of manure.
[02:11:01]  Robot truck driver is very much an issue that Gordon McGill talks about in his book, End of the Road Inside the War on Truckers.
[02:11:08]  And he's joining us to talk about it.
[02:11:10]  And we especially want to hear from truckers.
[02:11:13]  202748-8003 is the special line that we've set aside for truckers.
[02:11:18]  We'll go to that line as often as you call in.
[02:11:22]  Otherwise, phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, as usual, will put all the numbers on the screen, and we will hear from Darrell in North Dakota, Independent, retired trucker.
[02:11:34]  Darryl, go ahead.
[02:11:36]  Yeah, hi, Gordon.
[02:11:37]  Thanks.
[02:11:38]  You know, I'm a retired truck driver and everything after 28 years, but I left early.
[02:11:45]  There was many things that happened on truck driving.
[02:11:49]  And all this stuff we're seeing on the road right now, that's all ancient, really ancient.
[02:11:56]  And the thing about it was, okay, you're right on everything you said so far.
[02:12:02]  You know, like J.B. Hunt, you know, in the early days, they used to hire other people's drivers away from them, give them some big wages and everything, you know, 45 cents a mile and everything.
[02:12:16]  And then they cut their miles back in order to take and hire more and more.
[02:12:22]  You know, they get the volume of drivers killing the smaller companies and everything.
[02:12:30]  Then there was also the smaller companies killing the independent drivers, making things more difficult for the independents.
[02:12:42]  You know, everything that's going on today, yes, we have a shortage of truck drivers.
[02:12:48]  Those automatic, I never would go into the automatics back in the 1980s and everything, or not the 1980s, 90s, and when they would come out, I always wanted that manual truck driver, you know, this manual shift and everything, because the hills, the safety on it, everything.
[02:13:08]  The truck drivers become more unsafe on the road with all these new people on the road because everybody thinks Superman and they got to be there.
[02:13:20]  Daryl, let me take up that issue of safety and new drivers with Gordon McGill, because again, very much a part of his book, End of the Road.
[02:13:29]  Yeah, so thank you for the call, sir.
[02:13:31]  And he brings up some great points.
[02:13:32]  I'm glad you mentioned J.B. Hunt.
[02:13:34]  As I highlight in my book in the 1990s, J.B. Hunt was looking at the new drivers and the sort of inherent lack of safety due to lack of experience.
[02:13:45]  And the system, as such, keeps putting people with no experience on the road because we have this churn problem.
[02:13:51]  So J.B. Hunt experimented with not hiring new drivers straight out of school, paying more for the drivers they had.
[02:13:59]  And what do you know?
[02:14:00]  They dropped their collisions by 50%.
[02:14:03]  Their insurance costs went down.
[02:14:06]  Everything was better, except for the owners of J.B. Hunt who had to pay more.
[02:14:11]  So what did they do?
[02:14:12]  They stopped that program and resumed using the driver churn model.
[02:14:18]  The caller mentioned automatic transmissions.
[02:14:20]  There's a whole host of technology that's being imposed on trucks and truckers to make up for the fact they don't believe in developing skilled and competent human operators, and they think they can cover it up with technology.
[02:14:35]  And the problem is the technology is not up to the task for replacing a skilled, competent, and well-trained driver.
[02:14:43]  And that's part of the reason why we're seeing such a massive increase in collisions on our highways today.
[02:14:48]  Speaking of J.B. Hunt or a big trucking company, how many truckers, what percentage of truckers work for one of these big companies?
[02:14:56]  What percentage are sort of the independent owner operators, the folks who own their own rig, who get to pick the loads that they decide to haul and do it all themselves?
[02:15:06]  That's a very good question.
[02:15:09]  Those ratios have been in flux quite a bit, especially since COVID.
[02:15:13]  A lot of things happened during COVID that rearranged the business quite a bit.
[02:15:19]  The owner operators, small company market is actually pretty big.
[02:15:23]  Like they are a very significant percentage of the market.
[02:15:27]  But the problem is the small minority percentage of the market that are mega carriers have an awful lot of trucks.
[02:15:35]  So when you actually look at it as capacity on the road versus ownership of the trucks, a small number of trucking companies own a large percentage of the trucks, and then a very large number of trucking companies own, again, the balance of the trucks on the road.
[02:15:52]  Benton, Arkansas is next.
[02:15:54]  Shannon works in the trucking industry.
[02:15:57]  You're on with Gordon McGill.
[02:15:59]  Hey, good morning.
[02:16:00]  Thank you for having Gordon.
[02:16:01]  Big fan of his book.
[02:16:03]  I just wanted to touch on the subject of, you know, who is really loading these trucks and these unsafe truck drivers.
[02:16:12]  You know, as an advocate for crash families and crash victims, we've observed a troubling trend where almost all of the cases involving non-domicile truck drivers include a link to freight brokers.
[02:16:26]  There's currently a case before the Supreme Court, Montgomery versus Creebay, where the Supreme Court will be deciding whether freight brokers can hide behind immunity for crashes when they source or tender loads to these unsafe motor carriers and unsafe truck drivers.
[02:16:43]  I would like to hear Gord's position on the immunity case.
[02:16:48]  Gordon McGill, let you jump in.
[02:16:50]  As you do that, can you explain some of the terms that were used there, including particularly non-domicile drivers, what we mean by that?
[02:16:56]  Right.
[02:16:57]  No, and thanks for the question, Shannon.
[02:17:00]  A non-domiciled CDL is this new and quirky workaround, okay, so to speak.
[02:17:07]  Originally, the idea of a non-domiciled CDL was let's say that you're a budding truck driver and you live in Arkansas, but instead of getting your CDL through a trucking school or company in Arkansas, you get it in Wisconsin.
[02:17:22]  So you go up to Wisconsin, you take your truck driving school in Wisconsin.
[02:17:25]  The state of Wisconsin would issue you a non-domiciled CDL, which is to say, you got your license in Wisconsin, but you're not from Wisconsin.
[02:17:34]  The idea is you go back to Arkansas, turn in the non-domiciled CDL, and get one from your home state.
[02:17:41]  What's happened is that our roads now are full of these non-domiciled CDLs, but the definition has been stretched to allow for people who are not even from the United States.
[02:17:53]  Many people will understand the problems with open borders and mass migration, tons of people coming into the United States with no vetting.
[02:18:02]  And unfortunately, the previous administration and various people in the sort of NGO and non-profit world have taken the previous lie about a shortage of truck drivers and decided to cycle all kinds of people into the trucking industry with no vetting, little in the way of training, haven't even learned how to speak English yet, don't know anything about our driving culture.
[02:18:24]  And then they get these non-domiciled CDLs.
[02:18:27]  Those people usually end up going to work for small trucking companies that are owned by the same people from the same countries, often directed from overseas.
[02:18:37]  A lot of these companies are owned by people from Serbia, India, all over the world.
[02:18:42]  They're not even in the United States.
[02:18:44]  And then this other problem Shannon identified is the intermediaries, freight brokers, third-party logistics providers.
[02:18:51]  That market has exploded in the last decade.
[02:18:54]  And so we have all of these freight brokers who are trying to act as middlemen because it's a whole lot easier to be a middleman than own a truck, pay insurance, pay for drivers, pay for their retirement, pay for their health insurance, pay for all of these things.
[02:19:08]  Like trucking is a very capital-intensive business.
[02:19:11]  It's a very high-cost business.
[02:19:13]  So why would you do that when you can just be a broker?
[02:19:15]  Many of these brokers are located overseas.
[02:19:18]  And then some of the ones here in the United States are now multi-billion dollar a year businesses, such as CH Robinson or TQL.
[02:19:26]  And those companies, these brokerages have decided to wash their hands of any liability or accountability when choosing trucking companies to haul freight for their customers.
[02:19:37]  And so what happens is, is when one of these folks gets into a collision, the brokers just say, that's not our problem.
[02:19:43]  That's the FMCSA's problem, but they're the ones directing all the traffic.
[02:19:47]  And that's the question being decided before the Supreme Court in this case, Shannon identified Montgomery versus Karibay right now.
[02:19:54]  And I think we're supposed to get a ruling on that in June.
[02:19:56]  You talk about driving culture.
[02:19:59]  For you, trucking is a family tradition.
[02:20:02]  Can you talk about how you got into trucking, how long you've done it, where you've hauled loads?
[02:20:07]  Right.
[02:20:08]  So I'm originally from Canada.
[02:20:09]  I live in the United States now.
[02:20:10]  I've been here for a decade.
[02:20:12]  I'm working on becoming a naturalized citizen.
[02:20:14]  You know, I quite like America.
[02:20:17]  But yes, I was born in Canada.
[02:20:19]  My dad was a trucker.
[02:20:20]  Both his brothers, my uncles, were truckers.
[02:20:22]  My grandfather was a trucker.
[02:20:24]  He very famously landed at Juneau Beach in Normandy, driving a Sherman tank in a Canadian uniform.
[02:20:31]  And those skills transferred to trucking when he came back home.
[02:20:35]  So yeah, it's very important to me.
[02:20:37]  Trucking's been very good to me.
[02:20:39]  And as a young man, I decided to take it as far as I could go.
[02:20:43]  I worked on the ice roads in the far north of Canada.
[02:20:46]  I got one year temporary work visas for New Zealand and Australia and drove truck there.
[02:20:51]  I came home, driven all over North America.
[02:20:54]  And it's, I guess you could say it's part of my part of my DNA.
[02:20:58]  And it upsets me greatly that the trucking industry doesn't produce more people like me.
[02:21:05]  And in fact, is trying to debase what it means to be a trucker in an effort to just make things cheaper for the Amazons of the world.
[02:21:14]  What's a day like for a trucker on the road?
[02:21:16]  How does it start?
[02:21:16]  When does it end?
[02:21:18]  It depends on what sort of niche you're in.
[02:21:19]  Again, trucking is very diverse.
[02:21:21]  There's local drivers, there's regional drivers, there's over-the-road guys.
[02:21:25]  But typically, all of those people work anywhere from 10 to 14, sometimes longer hours a day.
[02:21:31]  If you're OTR, you might not go home for weeks or months on end.
[02:21:36]  And they're very long days.
[02:21:38]  We're out there on the highways dealing with all of the other people in cars that don't know how to drive.
[02:21:43]  And it can be very challenging.
[02:21:46]  There's a lot of waiting.
[02:21:47]  A major problem in the trucking industry that's been studied by a school within MIT about detention showed that 40% of the American trucking industry's capacity or numbers of trucks and trailers are sitting every day waiting to get loaded and unloaded.

=== Inside a Trucker's Day (14:54) ===

[02:22:05]  And most truck drivers are not paid for that time.
[02:22:08]  Your listeners might be interested to know: truck drivers are exempted from being paid overtime by the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, and it's been like that ever since.
[02:22:18]  So we sit and wait to get loaded and unloaded for many, many hours a week.
[02:22:21]  That's a fixture of the industry.
[02:22:24]  And the economics of the industry have sort of been built around that.
[02:22:27]  There's a bill before Congress that's been sitting there since 2022 called the Guaranteeing Overtime for Truckers Act, brought by former Congressman from Michigan and 11.
[02:22:37]  And it's a very simple bill.
[02:22:39]  It's one line.
[02:22:40]  Remove the exemption from transportation workers for being paid overtime.
[02:22:44]  And then that, in turn, would probably force all these companies that waste our time and waste the trucking capacity sitting to get moving because now their rates are going to be higher to compensate for that overtime.
[02:22:55]  And it might actually make our supply chains more efficient.
[02:22:58]  But can Congress get their butts together and actually pass that very simple bill?
[02:23:03]  It's been there for four years.
[02:23:06]  Do you own your own truck?
[02:23:08]  No, sir.
[02:23:09]  How many drivers typically own their own trucks?
[02:23:12]  How many decorate their trucks, name their trucks?
[02:23:16]  You sometimes see them on the road with these artistic designs on them.
[02:23:20]  Yeah, those guys are the minority and they're becoming even more of a minority.
[02:23:27]  There have been various methods to get into trucking as an owner operator.
[02:23:32]  Unfortunately, one of those methods has been so thoroughly corrupted, it's had a number of court cases looking into why it's so dysfunctional.
[02:23:40]  And that's the lease operator model, which was a sort of form of indentured servitude where a trucking company will find some new person that's gone through their CDL mill school and they've kind of figured it out.
[02:23:52]  They're somewhat competent.
[02:23:53]  And then they offer them, hey, we're going to make you your own boss.
[02:23:58]  We're going to sell you a truck and help you become an owner operator.
[02:24:01]  But what ends up happening is that the company owns the node on the truck.
[02:24:05]  They lease it to you.
[02:24:06]  You have to lease it back to them in an exclusivity arrangement.
[02:24:09]  And it's very much all of the power is in the hands of the carrier.
[02:24:13]  And the washout rate of that program is very high.
[02:24:16]  Only a very small number of people survive it.
[02:24:19]  And there's been a lot of legal discussion and cases about the misclassification of that program, which is meant to, you know, lots of guys would love to own a truck.
[02:24:30]  I would love to own a truck.
[02:24:31]  I don't.
[02:24:32]  But the problem is the industry is so screwed up right now.
[02:24:35]  And problems like the lease operator model, this idea of like we're dealing with somewhere around 600 to 850,000 migrants of various flavors have been brought into the industry over the years and displaced American trucking companies.
[02:24:51]  Blanchard, Oklahoma, this is Cole on that line for truckers.
[02:24:55]  Go ahead.
[02:24:59]  Cole, you're with us.
[02:25:01]  Yep.
[02:25:01]  Can you hear me?
[02:25:02]  Yes, sir.
[02:25:02]  Go ahead.
[02:25:04]  Hey, good morning, Gord.
[02:25:05]  Thanks for stepping up, bringing these issues to light.
[02:25:08]  Gord, how much do you think a safe American truck drivers' earnings have been eaten into throughout the past five years?
[02:25:15]  And how much do you think that these drivers and American trucking companies have lost throughout this illegal immigration and chameleon carrier issue?
[02:25:24]  Oh, I wish somebody would do a study on it because I think the number is incredibly high.
[02:25:29]  You know, I just mentioned the 600 to 850,000.
[02:25:33]  You know, various organizations have tried to look into the issue of CDLs.
[02:25:38]  And, you know, there's this interesting thing where the Motor Carrier Management Information System operated by the FM CSA, they started playing with their numbers and removing drivers and the numbers of those drivers from their publicly available data website after this issue became a problem, which is very interesting.
[02:25:59]  But as far as like the money that's been lost, I mean, you know, there's industry website, Freight Waves, run by a guy named Craig Fuller down in Tennessee.
[02:26:09]  One part of their website is called bankruptcies and layoffs.
[02:26:14]  And ever since the COVID demand spike started to recede in 2022, for four years straight, that website, that part of his website has been cooking with trucking companies going bankrupt, trucking companies going out of business, and American truck drivers being put out of work.
[02:26:32]  Maybe somebody could feed that into Chat GPT or some other software to get a total number on this because it's in the hundreds of thousands and the wage suppression going on by the insourcing of this labor.
[02:26:44]  And this is not to say that like, you know, the trucking industry should not honor hardworking immigrants.
[02:26:49]  The problem is all of the holes opened up in the system have allowed these gangsters like Super Ego, who were profiled in 60 Minutes last night, to simply abuse the aspirations of migrant truckers.
[02:27:01]  There's all kinds of indentured servitude programs going on, guys paying human smugglers to get them here.
[02:27:07]  There's this thing in Central America called the donkey route that brings young men from India.
[02:27:12]  They illegally claim asylum at the southern border and then they go to work for trucking companies here.
[02:27:17]  They've never learned English.
[02:27:18]  They've never been trained properly.
[02:27:21]  The CDL training system was corrupted in 2022 by bringing in this thing called the entry-level driver training program.
[02:27:31]  But the problem was it was self-certified.
[02:27:33]  And the FMCSA has not been able to keep tabs on this.
[02:27:37]  So we've had this proliferation of CDL schools that barely teach anybody anything.
[02:27:43]  And then these guys get in all kinds of collisions.
[02:27:45]  I went on GoFundMe a little while ago and found 250 different campaigns to repatriate the bodies of young men back to India after they had been killed driving trucks in North America because the entire system is corrupted.
[02:28:02]  They're being exploited and abused.
[02:28:04]  And then they go on our roads and get in collisions and kill innocent North American motorists.
[02:28:09]  And I don't see anybody trying to button this down.
[02:28:13]  All these issues raised in End of the Road Inside the War on Truckers, Gordon McGill's new book.
[02:28:18]  He's joining us on C-SPAN to talk about it this morning.
[02:28:21]  You bring up COVID.
[02:28:23]  You began your book with an incident when you were driving during COVID.
[02:28:28]  What was it like for you as a trucker during COVID in this country?
[02:28:33]  So during COVID, I was hauling propane.
[02:28:36]  And because of the emergency or the supposed emergency, the trucking industry was issued waivers for hours of service.
[02:28:44]  So truck drivers were tasked to work even harder than they were already working, right?
[02:28:49]  So I'm hauling propane and doing propane deliveries and working 70, 80 hours a week.
[02:28:53]  Many other truckers were doing the same.
[02:28:56]  And the problem during the COVID regime was that there was no services for America or Canada's truckers, right?
[02:29:05]  Truck stops went to reduced hours.
[02:29:08]  Roadside service plazas and rest areas were closed.
[02:29:11]  You would go to a customer's place.
[02:29:13]  They wouldn't want to talk to you.
[02:29:14]  They wouldn't let you use their facilities.
[02:29:16]  And so we were asked to work twice as hard as everybody else with almost no services available.
[02:29:22]  And so truck drivers were, you know, considered these heroes, these essential workers.
[02:29:27]  But our jobs were made even more difficult than they already were.
[02:29:31]  And the government literally said, Here you go.
[02:29:33]  You can work as many hours as you want.
[02:29:36]  Hours of service don't matter.
[02:29:37]  Safety doesn't matter.
[02:29:39]  Keep going.
[02:29:40]  And then after all of that goes away, we're now being forced to compete with just massive influx of migrant truck drivers from all over the world.
[02:29:51]  And those guys are being exploited.
[02:29:53]  The electronic logging device systems, which are supposed to track our hours of service, are being backdoored and corrupted.
[02:30:01]  And a lot of these guys working for overseas-based companies are now working way past the hours that they're allowed to under the law and under regulations.
[02:30:10]  And nobody can catch it because it's all being orchestrated by the backdooring of a piece of surveillance technology that was meant to put a clampdown on unsafe operation, but has in fact allowed the expansion of unsafe operation after all of us were doing our damnedest to keep the economy going during COVID.
[02:30:29]  You talk about hauling propane.
[02:30:31]  As a trucker, do you have a favorite and least favorite type of load to haul?
[02:30:37]  I much preferred working in the bush.
[02:30:39]  I had a great time working in the far north of Canada.
[02:30:42]  I always had a good time hauling logs.
[02:30:45]  The most dangerous place you can be as a truck driver is on the interstate today because the barriers to entry to get into the business are too low.
[02:30:53]  There's far too many unvetted, untrained, and unskilled drivers in trucks and cars.
[02:30:59]  And that's, I mean, look at everybody's insurance rates.
[02:31:02]  Look at the news headlines every day.
[02:31:03]  We just had a crash in Ohio that's making it, that's all over social media.
[02:31:08]  Like the interstate is the most dangerous place.
[02:31:11]  So yeah, my least favorite trucking is on the interstate.
[02:31:15]  As a trucker, how do you feel about hitchhikers?
[02:31:18]  I used to pick them up all the time.
[02:31:19]  It's a lost art, but you know, I didn't mind.
[02:31:22]  Why didn't you mind?
[02:31:23]  And you say a lost art in your book, you mentioned that there isn't much hitchhiking anymore in this country.
[02:31:30]  Why?
[02:31:31]  Well, I mean, that's a story for we could go on about hours about that.
[02:31:36]  But a lot of trucking companies don't let you have passengers.
[02:31:39]  So truckers have been unwilling to pick up hitchhikers, and maybe that's been part of the reason why we're seeing less of them.
[02:31:46]  We've got a phone line for truckers: 202748, 8003.
[02:31:51]  Otherwise, phone lines as normal, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.
[02:31:55]  And we will go to Terry, a trucker out of Danville, Virginia.
[02:32:00]  Terry, go ahead.
[02:32:01]  Good morning.
[02:32:02]  Good morning.
[02:32:03]  Thank you, Mr. McGill, for coming on.
[02:32:05]  Yes, I've been in trucking since school in 93 and came out trucking and family had a trucking business, about 13, 14 trucks.
[02:32:18]  Stock market crashed in 2008 and lost that.
[02:32:24]  And I really have been trying to do so much in the trucking industry.
[02:32:30]  I found that it was very hard to make a living because of the unions.
[02:32:39]  And unfortunately, I wasn't able to get the union job because every time I applied, it was like, hey, I hire you for temporary, you know, or I hire you for part-time.
[02:32:53]  And I needed the full-time job.
[02:32:55]  I had a family and everything.
[02:32:57]  Fast forward, I mean, even till today, I had started teaching because I wanted to know what the drivers were thinking of new wave drivers.
[02:33:09]  And so I went to college and I taught the CDL course.
[02:33:13]  And I found out that, hey, we're this company and we want you to teach this way.
[02:33:20]  So I wasn't able to give them any kind of teaching, what they really needed.
[02:33:28]  They only wanted the basics.
[02:33:31]  And unfortunately, that won't help them out in the trucking world.
[02:33:37]  And so I just, you know, I say, hey, I'd rather for me to just leave here than to be a part of this.
[02:33:46]  And they go out and someone kills someone on the road.
[02:33:51]  It was, you know, very frustrating for me.
[02:33:53]  So I left there and here today, I'm just wondering how can truckers make a good living when you have these young drivers coming out and they're on an automatic truck and they have no experience.
[02:34:09]  Just this past winter, a guy was coming out of this supermarket.
[02:34:15]  He was turning.
[02:34:16]  We had a little snow on the ground and he was stuck.
[02:34:19]  And I'm like, so I got out of my car.
[02:34:20]  I went up and I tried to assist him.
[02:34:23]  And I said, sir, did you flip on your differential switch?
[02:34:28]  What is that?
[02:34:29]  You know, I mean, just as simple as that.
[02:34:33]  It was so eye-opening to me.
[02:34:36]  I mean, and like I said, I saw it firsthand at the school where I was teaching and I knew it was going to be an issue.
[02:34:43]  And I'm just so glad that you're addressing some of these issues today.
[02:34:48]  And hopefully the trucking can get better.
[02:34:50]  For one last thing, I do not believe that what they call it, auto trucks, I don't think that would ever be implemented here in the U.S. because of the fact that I would never trust an automat truck on the road, especially in a business town-city atmosphere.
[02:35:10]  You could get a glitch and what, five people die?
[02:35:15]  No.
[02:35:15]  Gordon McGill, let you jump in.
[02:35:18]  All right.
[02:35:18]  Hey, thanks for calling, Terry.
[02:35:19]  And you bring up some great points.
[02:35:21]  Yeah, there's a significant deficit in the training of drivers.
[02:35:26]  And all of this is tied together, you know, as I mentioned before, the driver shortage narrative.
[02:35:30]  You know, it was clear that the trucking industry, or at least the certain major pathways into it, you know, the truckload carriers as represented by the American Trucking Associations, this sort of despicable corporate lobbying group that spun up the narrative.
[02:35:50]  They've been looking for money to subsidize their training schools and they set the standards.
[02:35:55]  And those standards are very low because they're not interested in paying skilled and competent operators like you or I that know enough to put on our diff lock switch on slippery roads, know enough to get up and down mountains without crashing into people, know enough to slow down.
[02:36:10]  You know, we had this incident in Texas covered by WFAA, really great reporter out there named Tanya Iserer, who looked into this crash in Fort Worth in 2021.
[02:36:20]  You know, this guy immigrated to the United States from Haiti, goes to one of these scummy little truck driving schools, took a three-week course, and now he's driving cross-country.
[02:36:29]  He can go anywhere.
[02:36:30]  Okay, that course was in Florida.
[02:36:32]  Did they teach him how to chain up to get over the mountains in the west side of the country or maybe up north?
[02:36:37]  Did he learn anything at all about driving in inclement weather except maybe the rain that they get in Florida?
[02:36:43]  So this gentleman gets into this major pileup in Fort Worth, totally loses control of his truck and crashes into an already piling up situation and kills two more people.
[02:36:54]  No offense to that gentleman.
[02:36:56]  He just should have been trained more.
[02:36:57]  He had no business behind the wheel.

=== Rising Oil Prices Impact (02:43) ===

[02:37:00]  And I'm so sorry to hear about your experience at a trucking company or truck driving school that's telling you to teach to only the basic standards to get these people a license, right?
[02:37:11]  And that speaks to the fact that the state minimums to acquire a CDL are far too low.
[02:37:18]  They've been too low for too long.
[02:37:21]  And then that problem runs into the migration problems and COVID and the situation in the industry today.
[02:37:28]  And look what we have around us.
[02:37:29]  Again, the training standards must be increased.
[02:37:32]  The barriers to entry into the job must be increased because we're letting too many people into the business too fast, setting them up for failure.
[02:37:40]  And then they wash out.
[02:37:42]  And people like the ATA keep screaming, oh, there's a shortage of truck drivers.
[02:37:46]  They're starting to change their tune now, though.
[02:37:48]  I think they understand that we know they're full of it.
[02:37:51]  But at the same time, we have to increase the training standards for truck drivers.
[02:37:55]  They're far too low.
[02:37:57]  What's your biggest advice to the rest of us drivers when we're driving on the interstate and there's an 18-wheeler on the road?
[02:38:08]  Or maybe another way of asking it is, what's your biggest annoyance with the rest of us drivers?
[02:38:14]  Right.
[02:38:14]  So, yeah, you know, truck drivers are not all to blame.
[02:38:17]  In fact, you know, it used to be that the standard ratio was that in any incident involving a tractor trailer and a car, usually about 80% of the time it was judged to be the car driver's fault.
[02:38:29]  That's changing.
[02:38:30]  All of these things are in flux right now.
[02:38:31]  We are in a very, very rocky period in the industry.
[02:38:35]  But if you're a car driver, when you go to pass a truck, just get it done.
[02:38:40]  Just get around us and keep going.
[02:38:42]  Don't pull in front of us and slow down.
[02:38:44]  Please plan your lane changes and exits.
[02:38:47]  There is nothing more frustrating than driving a truck and someone cuts right in front of you because they weren't paying attention and want to make sure they get to their exit.
[02:38:56]  Truck drivers getting caught off causes a significant number of jackknife incidents.
[02:39:01]  And a lot of the times people will see a truck in the ditch and it's not always the truck driver's fault.
[02:39:06]  Car drivers need to pay way more attention around trucks and not hang out in front of them, not hang out in our blind spots.
[02:39:12]  Also, use your cruise control.
[02:39:14]  It's better on fuel and it's safer for everybody if we're all moving at a steady, constant speed.
[02:39:19]  A headline this morning from CNBC: the Dow falls more than 300 points as oil prices jump with the U.S. set to block the Strait of Hormuz.
[02:39:29]  What's been your view of the conflict in Iran?
[02:39:33]  What it means for the trucking industry as we watch day to day the movement of these oil prices?

=== FMCSA Enforcement Challenges (10:32) ===

[02:39:43]  Oh, man, how spicy can I be about this?
[02:39:47]  I'm not any kind of expert on geopolitics or the war in Iran.
[02:39:51]  Generally speaking, I'm an anti-war guy, but like this is beyond my can.
[02:39:55]  So no comment.
[02:39:57]  But as far as the oil prices go, you know, being from Canada, I'm really disappointed in the government back home and their collusion and cooperation with various entities and not further furthering the energy development in my country such that we could be less dependent on the streets of Hormuz.
[02:40:23]  You know, fuel costs are a major, major, major factor for trucking.
[02:40:27]  You know, generally speaking, the business operates on a 33, 33, 33 cost structure.
[02:40:33]  You know, 33% of your business is overhead, paying for the truck and everything else.
[02:40:38]  33% is paying the driver and 33% is paying for fuel.
[02:40:42]  And now that's much higher because diesel prices are where they are.
[02:40:47]  You know, I think a number of diesel refineries and upgrader facilities have been closed over the last few years in the United States, which has further reduced the availability of diesel on the market.
[02:41:02]  And again, you know, the trucking industry is in a big, huge mess, and the Straits of Hormuz stuff is only making it worse.
[02:41:09]  About 20 minutes left with Gordon McGill, the book, End of the Road Inside the War on Truckers, and We're Taking Your Phone Calls, and we have a separate line for truckers.
[02:41:19]  Justin is a trucker from Tuckerton, New Jersey.
[02:41:23]  Justin, go ahead.
[02:41:26]  Good morning, Gordon.
[02:41:28]  GM, good morning, sir.
[02:41:30]  GM, GM.
[02:41:32]  I just wanted to ask you, do you think the FMCSA has enough people on hand to handle many of the new rules and regulations that they want to start enforcing going forward?
[02:41:43]  You know, Gordon McGill, can you explain what the FMCSA is again for us who are native in the lingo?
[02:41:49]  Right.
[02:41:50]  So the FMCSA stands for Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
[02:41:55]  They are the subdivision of the United States DOT, which is in charge of, you know, overseeing the safety of America's motor carriers and enforcing various regulations within the industry.
[02:42:09]  The FMCSA last I checked out about 1,100 employees.
[02:42:13]  Their annual budget in 2024, I believe, was $950 million a year, so almost a billion.
[02:42:20]  So they're a fairly big agency, but they're being tasked to oversee the backside of the industry, right?
[02:42:30]  So before I mentioned the 1980 Motor Carrier Act, what that Motor Carrier Act did was rearranged the sort of authority to drive truck, right, or operate a trucking company.
[02:42:43]  So previous to 1980, we had the regulated system under the Motor Carrier Act of 1935, which sort of cartelized the business and made it very difficult for new companies to start.
[02:42:54]  And that created a sort of sclerotic and overly expensive industry, although it did pay drivers very well.
[02:43:01]  And, you know, things were a bit different back then.
[02:43:04]  It did need the trucking industry did require those reforms, but what's happened is it swung so far in the opposite direction that now anybody with a pulse and $300 can register what's called a motor carrier number and open up a trucking company.
[02:43:18]  The FMCSA is supposed to engage in what are called new carrier audits, where when you register a trucking company within a certain timeframe, the FMCSA comes back to make sure that you're following all the rules.
[02:43:31]  And as highlighted in this 60 Minutes piece last night and by many of my colleagues in trucking advocacy, we have this problem with chameleon carriers.
[02:43:41]  They buy up old MC numbers.
[02:43:44]  They have trucking companies listed and owned by the hundreds in apartment complexes and various places that it's illegal to do so.
[02:43:52]  In order to have a trucking company, the business address must be the place of business where you carry all the records for, you know, the safety records of your drivers, the records for your equipment maintenance, all of the things that are part of running a trucking company safely are supposed to be available to an FMCSA auditor to make sure that you guys are actually a legitimate company actually operating under the rules in the United States.
[02:44:18]  And the FMCSA has not been able to keep up with that.
[02:44:21]  And I guess there's an interesting question here.
[02:44:24]  You know, Derek Barr was interviewed in this piece last night, and he's the new administrator of the FMCSA.
[02:44:30]  And he referred to it as an open front door problem where it's so easy to register a trucking company that just the flow of them opening up constantly, the FMCSA can't keep up with it all.
[02:44:44]  They're under-resourced and don't have enough inspectors.
[02:44:47]  And that creates one of these loopholes where these chameleon carriers will open up a trucking company, get in all kinds of collisions, get inspected at way stations.
[02:44:56]  Their equipment is found to be junk.
[02:44:58]  Their drivers are not following hours of service regulations, sometimes don't have CDLs at all, fail English language proficiency inspections.
[02:45:06]  And when those points pile up, they just shut down, reopen under another entity, and keep going.
[02:45:13]  And the FMCSA has been unable to keep up with all of this.
[02:45:19]  It's also my belief that the FMCSA has a number of staff working there who are part of the sort of revolving door in DC.
[02:45:28]  Many of his staff used to work for the American Trucking Associations.
[02:45:32]  Again, this corporate lobby group who do not represent any truck drivers in America whatsoever.
[02:45:38]  They represent huge carriers with thousands of trucks, and only occasionally and randomly are our priorities Congress.
[02:45:49]  Usually it's about them making more money.
[02:45:51]  And a number of ATA former ATA lobbyists work for the FMCSA.
[02:45:57]  And if I were Derek Barrs, I would have all of them fired immediately and hire truck drivers that actually have been in the industry, know what to look for, know what's going on out on the road, and will actually steer the place, steer the FMCSA in the right direction.
[02:46:12]  Haynesville, Ohio is next.
[02:46:13]  Gary, Republican line.
[02:46:15]  Gary, thanks for waiting.
[02:46:18]  Hello.
[02:46:19]  Go ahead, Gary.
[02:46:19]  You're on with Gordon McGill.
[02:46:22]  Okay.
[02:46:23]  Hello?
[02:46:24]  What's your question?
[02:46:27]  What's my question?
[02:46:29]  Why do they have these foreign people?
[02:46:31]  I had a car delivered to me, a Corvette, and the driver didn't understand English.
[02:46:39]  He had to talk into his phone to give me, talk to me, to communicate with me.
[02:46:46]  And he delivered a car with a flat tire.
[02:46:48]  He didn't understand English, and he was from Russia.
[02:46:53]  I couldn't understand that at all.
[02:46:54]  I mean, how is he supposed to understand a sign or any kind of a different thing on the road if he can't even understand English to have a conversation with me?
[02:47:05]  Gordon McGill.
[02:47:07]  Yeah, no, that's a great question, Gary.
[02:47:09]  We're seeing actually car delivery is one of these sort of subdivisions of trucking that's been, you know, it's sort of been taken over by a lot of these guys because some of your smaller, what they call hot shot trailers or wedge trailers for hauling three or four cars at a time, they sneak in under the minimum weight limit of 26,000 pounds where you have to have a CDL.
[02:47:32]  And so it's easier for those guys to get into the business.
[02:47:36]  And then if you don't need a CDL, you're not subject to the English language requirements.
[02:47:41]  Again, we're seeing a very, very high number of migrants and people from overseas getting into the trucking industry because the requirements to get a CDL have been deteriorated over many, many years.
[02:47:55]  In 2016, the FMCSA put out a memorandum saying they would no longer enforce the English language proficiency.
[02:48:02]  And we get situations like yours.
[02:48:06]  There was an infamous, very fiery wreck that took place in Colorado a few years back where this truck driver from Cuba goes down the hill on, I think it was Interstate 70 or 76 and loses control of his rig because I don't think he was trained very properly.
[02:48:23]  And because he couldn't read the signs about runaway truck ramps, he didn't bother going into one of the runaway truck ramps and then crashes into a number of people.
[02:48:31]  A huge inferno takes place, many fatalities.
[02:48:35]  I think very famously, this gentleman was convicted to 110 years in jail.
[02:48:40]  The Colorado governor commuted it.
[02:48:42]  But, you know, that situation shows us why it's so important for you to be able to read and understand English.
[02:48:49]  All of the signage on our roads is in English.
[02:48:52]  I get it.
[02:48:53]  You might not need to be able to speak English to functionally operate a vehicle.
[02:48:56]  The problem is, is that our system is set up and all of our safety-specific signage and safety-specific at-the-minute communications you need to know.
[02:49:07]  Like if there's an accident and the DOT brings out one of these lit up trailers to say, lane closed, you have to move over.
[02:49:14]  That's in English.
[02:49:15]  Detour sign.
[02:49:17]  There was another incident where after all of the hurricanes which flooded North Carolina and Tennessee last year, a truck driver from Central Asia came along Interstate 40, missed all of the detour signs saying no trucks, get off here, take this other route, and then got himself wedged into the concrete barriers along the reconstruction of Interstate 40.
[02:49:39]  And when the construction workers and the police showed up, the guy spoke no English and just kept pointing at his GPS saying GPS, GPS, GPS, because the GPS wasn't updated to show this guy that he wasn't supposed to be anywhere near this place and he couldn't read the signs, right?
[02:49:56]  So a number of these incidents, a number of these fatal wrecks, a number of these safety-related problems are all due to the fact that we have exploited labor being brought to America to send our wages back home in remittances.
[02:50:11]  And all the while the people engaging in it have no idea what they're doing.

=== Migrant Labor Exploitation (09:56) ===

[02:50:16]  How do you feel about cameras inside the cab facing the driver?
[02:50:20]  This is a band-aid being used to cover up for all of these other problems.
[02:50:24]  The invasive placement of surveillance technology, you're going to get all kinds of nerds calling you and sending you emails telling me that I'm wrong and that truck drivers are useless and we have to have this to prevent incidents.
[02:50:38]  I would turn that on its head and say, this industry has spent decades trying to get rid of people like me by underpaying us and forcing this garbage technology, which, you know, it's an insult to my professionalism.
[02:50:52]  I have been on the road.
[02:50:53]  I have had a CDL since I was 18 years old.
[02:50:55]  I'm 47.
[02:50:56]  That's 29 years.
[02:50:58]  I have never been involved in a collision or hurt anybody or wrecked a truck.
[02:51:03]  Why do I have to have a camera staring at me in the face?
[02:51:06]  Why do I have to have an electronic logging device telling me when I can pull over and go to the bathroom when some guy just gets here from the Ukraine or Russia or India and that same ELD is being backdoored so that his bosses that brought him here can pay him one-third of my wage while he goes and drives 20 hours a day and then gets in incidents and kills innocent American motorists.
[02:51:28]  The technology is meant to be a band-aid to cover up horses already left out of the barn.
[02:51:35]  How about we close that gate, get all the horses off of our roads and structure the industry so that it doesn't underpay and throw people like me out of it.
[02:51:44]  Aubrey, Texas, John, line for truckers.
[02:51:47]  Go ahead.
[02:51:49]  Yeah, I got a question.
[02:51:50]  And I'm sorry if this question's already been or this, this topic has already come up.
[02:51:55]  But what's your thought about the brokers, about the brokers giving these guys loads, paying the low wages, and we still hear shippers and receivers saying that, nope, their rates haven't changed.
[02:52:07]  And how do you think that's going to affect us now?
[02:52:12]  Now that all these foreigners are coming off, how do you think those rates are going to go up?
[02:52:19]  Right.
[02:52:19]  So that's a great question.
[02:52:22]  We're in a bit of an interesting time right now.
[02:52:24]  We're starting to see rates creep up in various subdivisions of the trucking market.
[02:52:31]  Things are starting to change.
[02:52:33]  As far as brokers go, you know, my uncle Chris started a freight brokerage in Canada back in the 1980s when that thing sort of became legal.
[02:52:41]  But he was a former trucker and he'd been in the industry his entire life and he understood how it works.
[02:52:46]  There's an academic from Wayne State University named Michael Belzer, who wrote a great book called Sweatshops on Wheels, which looked into the effects of the deregulation of the industry, which also made possible load brokering.
[02:53:01]  And he has this other website called saferates.com.
[02:53:04]  And the whole reason it's called safe rates is because truck drivers and trucking companies have to be paid a certain amount of money to be able to cover all of their capital costs, all of their maintenance, and to be able to pay a half-decent driver that knows what he's doing to be out on the road for weeks at a time.
[02:53:21]  And the problem with brokers is there's so many of them now, and some of them have got so greedy about this stuff that they are removing a significant amount of value out of the industry, which should be going towards trucking companies and operators themselves, such as to be able to pay for all these capital and maintenance costs and pay for decent drivers.
[02:53:41]  I'm not saying we need to get rid of brokers.
[02:53:43]  Brokers fill a spot in the market and they do provide a legitimate service.
[02:53:48]  But what's happened is the opening up of the industry, especially after COVID, like there's just way too many of them and nobody's enforcing several laws on the books about brokers, about transparency about certain parts of the deals, right?
[02:54:02]  Like brokers will make between carriers and shippers.
[02:54:05]  And a lot of carriers have no idea about certain accessorial charges and various parts of the contract.
[02:54:12]  Another problem is that brokers, just like truck drivers, are supposed to show some level of competency.
[02:54:21]  In order to register as a broker, on paper, you're supposed to show that you have a minimum of two years of experience in the industry somehow.
[02:54:30]  And again, this is one of these things that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is not or hasn't been able to enforce.
[02:54:37]  And there's a whole ecosystem of brokers out there, often run overseas by companies.
[02:54:43]  Again, if you're over, have you ever driven a truck if your brokerage is set up in Serbia, if all of your employees are Serbian and you've never driven a truck in the United States?
[02:54:52]  Under the law, they shouldn't even be operating here, yet it's happening, and they're extracting a whole lot of value out of the economy and a whole lot of money out of the pockets of trucking companies who are supposed to be using that to run safe operations.
[02:55:06]  When was the best time in the past 60, 70 years to be a trucker in the United States?
[02:55:12]  Oh, wow, good question.
[02:55:16]  I might pass on that one because I'm still pretty new.
[02:55:19]  I've only had 29 years of experience.
[02:55:21]  I don't know.
[02:55:24]  There'll be a lot of guys who will talk about, you know, when were the good years, when were the bad years.
[02:55:28]  It all depends on your perspective.
[02:55:31]  You know, after NAFTA opened up in the mid-1990s, things were really cooking.
[02:55:36]  And, you know, I'm not 100% sure that I can answer that, sir.
[02:55:41]  I'll get in trouble.
[02:55:44]  In your book, you talk about a scene of the 1986 movie Top Gun in which the character Goose facing possibly getting kicked out of the Navy and being a fighter pilot talks about maybe I'll fall back on trucking.
[02:56:04]  Why did you bring up that incident?
[02:56:06]  What did that tell you?
[02:56:08]  Well, I think it was an important cultural marker in the sort of public perception and understanding of the trucking business, right?
[02:56:15]  So, again, prior to 1980 and the Motor Carrier Act, trucking was regulated much differently.
[02:56:22]  The Teamsters had a lot more influence on how the trucking industry operated.
[02:56:27]  And then, you know, the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 passes, intense competition starts taking place.
[02:56:34]  And, you know, back in the 70s, there was a lot of cultural output about truckers, you know, movies like Convoy and Smokey and the Bandit and, you know, the TV series Duke's a Hazard.
[02:56:43]  Everybody had a CV radio.
[02:56:45]  You know, truckers were kind of worshipped for a long time, but this scene in Top Gun marks this turning point, right?
[02:56:53]  Because the movie comes out six years after the Motor Carrier Act, and you know, this is a year before the American Trucking Associations start their psyop of a driver shortage.
[02:57:04]  So it's right in the beginning of the late 1980s when the perception of trucking as a career starts to turn.
[02:57:11]  And I think that movie just I think the scene from that movie came out right at that time when things started to go south.
[02:57:18]  Time for just maybe one or two more phone calls.
[02:57:21]  Trucker Eric in Apple Valley, California.
[02:57:25]  Good morning.
[02:57:26]  You're on with Gordon McGill.
[02:57:28]  Hey, good morning, America.
[02:57:29]  How are you guys doing?
[02:57:31]  Doing well.
[02:57:31]  What's your question or comment?
[02:57:33]  My comment is simply this: you know, I started driving back in 96, and it was a good way to make a living, you know, get out there, support your family, and whatnot.
[02:57:46]  It is crazy to think of the fact that when I was driving, you know, that you had to spend two years over the road before you can even get a local job.
[02:57:58]  And like the gentleman was talking about these, you know, CDL classes that pop up all over the place.
[02:58:07]  Now they just flood the market, like you were saying.
[02:58:11]  You know, whether you're a migrant or whatever, the simple fact is they have gotten so relaxed that it's really unsafe, you know what I mean?
[02:58:22]  In a lot of different aspects that people don't understand, you know, because I drive for certain companies, they'd say, you know, well, if it had five letters, you need to go in.
[02:58:33]  If it has four, you can keep on trucking.
[02:58:35]  You know what I mean?
[02:58:37]  These things America needs to address, you know, and it's not just to pick on anybody, it's just the fact.
[02:58:46]  I mean, you look at not only trucking, but you look at the construction business, everything of that nature.
[02:58:53]  To you know, they have made it where it's so politicalized, and whether you're a migrant or whether you're American or whatever the case may be, that we no longer, well, not longer, but as far as companies don't want to hire you because they suck the money, they suck the life out of the industry, and we get left open with whatever's left crumbs on the table, so to speak.
[02:59:23]  And, you know, which in return, it makes us default back into where people don't know the craft anymore.
[02:59:32]  Oh, that's a great point, sir.
[02:59:34]  Go ahead and take the final moment.
[02:59:35]  No, he brings up a great point.
[02:59:38]  He mentioned something at the beginning where you had to be two years on the road before you could apply for a local job.
[02:59:43]  One of the things I talk about in the book is the truck training industry in the United States, which is meant to produce truck drivers for our trucking industry, is completely back asswards, as it were.
[02:59:57]  Instead of training guys locally so that there's no pressure of being away from your family, you're close to where your employer's home terminal is at, so that if there's a problem or a mistake, they can come help you and you can learn and you have somebody with you in the truck.

=== Broken Driver Training (00:46) ===

[03:00:13]  We take truck drivers today, and instead of putting through them through the quasi-apprenticeship program I went through, when I first got my license, I worked local for two years, then I worked regional for a year.
[03:00:24]  I did not get thrown off the deep end doing over-the-road trucking.
[03:00:27]  That's how the vast majority of truck drivers in America come into the business now.
[03:00:32]  They go through a very short course that teaches them nothing.
[03:00:35]  They're handed a CDL and then they're sent out over the road in the most difficult part of the job.
[03:00:40]  The whole system is backwards, and that needs to change.
[03:00:44]  The name of the book is End of the Road Inside the War on Truckers.
[03:00:48]  The author is Gordon McGill.
[03:00:50]  And Gordon McGill, we appreciate you joining us on C-SPAN.
[03:00:53]  Yeah, thank you for having me, sir.
[03:00:55]  Much obliged.
[03:00:57]  And that's going to do it for our program today.