Representative Maggie Goodlander and retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery dissect the indefinite Iran ceasefire extension, warning that unilateral strikes risk an open-ended war without congressional authorization under the War Powers Act. They critique President Trump's rhetoric on bombing infrastructure as counterproductive to de-escalation while highlighting internal Iranian fractures between political leaders and the IRGC. The discussion also covers domestic ethics scandals involving Sheila Cherfilus-McCarthy, Tony Gonzalez, and Corey Mills, alongside Virginia's controversial redistricting referendum and FBI Director Kash Patel's defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic. Ultimately, the episode underscores a deepening crisis of accountability across the executive and legislative branches regarding both foreign policy aggression and internal governance failures. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Virginia Map Vote Margin00:15:17
Conciliation to avoid needing Democratic votes after most have refused to fund ICE and customs and border protection after the death of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.
And on C-SPAN 3 at 10 a.m., Treasury Secretary Scott Besson testifies on his agency's 2027 budget request to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
And at 2, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies on his department's budget request, calling for a reduction of more than $15 billion.
You can also watch these events live on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-span.org.
Coming up this morning on Washington Journal, along with your calls and comments live, Indiana Republican Congressman Marlon Stutzman will talk about the latest on the Iran war and congressional news of the day.
And then notice politics reporter Reese Gorman on the results of the Virginia redistricting referendum and other political news of the day.
And retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies will talk about the latest on the U.S.-Israel war with Iran and the ceasefire, which is set to expire today.
And then we'll continue our conversation on the Iran war and other congressional news of the week with New Hampshire Democratic Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander.
Washington Journal starts now.
Join the conversation.
Today is Wednesday, April 22nd.
Welcome to the Washington Journal.
President Trump extended the fragile ceasefire with Iran indefinitely last night after signaling an unwillingness to do so just hours before.
The truce will now only end, the president says, when talks have completed, though there is no set date for another round of negotiations.
In Virginia, voters approved Democratic efforts to redraw the state's congressional map in a 10-to-1 Democratic favor, the latest inflection point in the redistricting battle between Democrats and Republicans ahead of the midterm elections.
Those are just some of the stories we're covering this morning, but we want to hear from you.
What are your thoughts on the president extending the ceasefire?
Here's how you join in on the conversation.
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Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
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We start this morning on the ceasefire that President Trump announced he would be extending last night.
On True Social, the president posted that based on the fact that the government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so, and upon the request of Field Marshal Asman Marin and Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our attack on the country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.
I have therefore directed our military to continue the blockade and in all other respects remain ready and able and will therefore extend the ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted and their discussions are concluded one way or the other, signed President Donald J. Trump.
So he said there that the blockade would continue.
Now overnight we know, according to the AP, that Iran has attacked multiple ships in the Strait of Hormuz just after that announcement of the ceasefire extension.
Now, the Wall Street Journal reporting on the behind the scenes of how the president came to decide that he would extend the ceasefire, they write in a story posted last night, the headline here is, Iran, U.S.-Iran delayed the talks in high-stakes game of chicken.
If I just scroll down here, bear with me, guys.
It says that as negotiations with Iran broke down Tuesday before they had even begun, President Trump asked aides whether the U.S. should resume attacks on the country, according to U.S. officials.
Just hours earlier, White House officials had been optimistic that Vice President JD Vance, set to depart for Islamabad Tuesday, would be able to strike a deal with Iran and get something in writing, unlike his trip to Pakistan two weeks prior, a U.S. official said.
Air Force Two sat idle most of the day at Joint Base Andrews in suburban Washington awaiting Vance.
Pakistani mediators said Iran's top leaders had told them earlier that their negotiating team would also travel to Islamabad on Tuesday.
Then with the clock ticking toward Trump's ceasefire deadline, Iran reversed course.
The Wall Street Journal goes on to say that in a series of frenzied meetings throughout the day at the White House, Trump weighed his options with Vance, top security officials, as well as his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, who were also supposed to depart Tuesday for Islamabad negotiations.
By early afternoon, Vance's trip was paused.
By evening, it was delayed immediately.
One last line here I'll read.
It says, during the meetings, aides told Trump that Iran's government wasn't a unified entity with hardline factions in Tehran unwilling to bend to the president's demands.
Questions were raised at the White House about whether Iran was really even in a position to negotiate and stick to any of commitments.
Now, earlier in the day, we heard from lawmakers on the Hill talking about the president's operation in Iran.
Take a listen to Senate Majority Leader John Thune discussing it.
That's, of course, before that ceasefire extension was announced.
I think that, you know, most of our colleagues believe that the president is correct in making sure that Iran can't threaten the world with a nuclear weapon and frankly that their ballistic conventional weapons have become disproportionately favorable to Iran relative to other countries in the region.
And so taking out that capability, taking out their Navy are all things that I think are going to have served the long-term strategic national security interests of the United States, as well as ensuring that our allies in the region aren't threatened by Iran's military capabilities and terrorist threats and everything else that comes with it.
So we're supportive of what the president is doing.
We have colleagues, as you point out, who are interested in more information about this, and I've always encouraged them to reach out to the administration officials.
They've been very forthcoming.
When I've asked questions from whether it's the Secretary of Defense or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs or Secretary Rubio, they've been very forthcoming with information about this and the president himself.
That was Senate Majority Leader John Thune yesterday talking about how Republicans are resoundingly in support of the president's actions in Iran.
But of course, for Democrats, that is not the case.
Take a listen now to Chuck Schumer, Democratic Majority Leader in the Senate, criticizing the president's actions in Iran.
Last week in Nevada, Donald Trump said, quote, the war in Iran is going along swimmingly.
It's perfect.
Trump, again, the war in Iran is going along swimmingly.
The truth is that the Trump administration is barely treading water, caught in the riptide of its own incompetence.
Donald Trump has become so frustrated by his inability to end his own war of choice that he warned yesterday that, quote, lots of bombs will start going off if his ceasefire expires tomorrow.
He also repeated his threat to, quote, knock out every single power plant and every single bridge in Iran, unquote.
That would constitute a war crime.
Trump has backed himself in a corner, and he knows it.
13 American service members have been killed, hundreds of others wounded.
Gas is over $4 a gallon.
And we won't be coming down and won't be coming down anytime soon.
Only one in four Americans, only one in four Americans think Trump's war has been worthwhile.
And Trump's approval rating has sunk to its lowest point on record.
And Trump says everything is, quote, perfect, unquote.
What planet is he on?
It's absurd.
It's an insult to the American people.
And Senate Republicans have backed Trump up the entire way.
Four times now, Senate Republicans have voted against our war powers resolution, and they have surrendered one of Congress's most important responsibilities under the Constitution to Donald Trump.
That was Democratic leader Chuck Schumer criticizing the president's war in Iran yesterday before the ceasefire was announced.
We're here talking about Iran this morning.
You see your numbers on the screen there.
Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
We want to know what you think about the president extending the ceasefire.
Frank from Vienna, Virginia, an independent.
You're first.
Good morning, Frank.
Hi, I'm calling because I live in Virginia and I wanted to talk about the Virginia redistricting.
I'm an independent.
I cannot stand Trump and I cannot stand the gerrymandering efforts of the Republicans, but I also cannot believe that the Democrats are stooping to the same level and doing it in a way that is so incredibly aggressive, moving from a 6-5 to a 10-to-1 seat advantage for the Democrats.
They are the ones complaining about Trump's threat on democracy.
And this is the biggest threat on democracy that I see.
If this is just a tit for a tat, where does this end?
Where does this end?
Because gerrymandering has been going on forever.
And there will always be a reason to steal votes from your own state, the people that you live with in your community.
Where does this end?
And how is this justified?
I just do not understand it at all.
Frank, can I ask if you went and voted last night?
I did, and I voted no.
Principle.
Go ahead.
Because even if I believed that at almost any cost it's worth defeating Trump, it is not worth trying to steal the votes of other members of my own state based on actions from someone else in some other state.
It's simply disingenuous.
And if anyone on the Democratic side now wants to complain about harming democracy, then I don't want to hear it unless they voted no on this egregious effort.
For folks who obviously aren't in Virginia but are listening to you right now, Frank, can you describe what it was like at the ballots whenever you went and voted?
Did people feel, because I mean, I'm looking at the results right now on our C-SPAN website, looking at these AP results, and it said that the choice yes, won by 51.5%.
No was about 48.6%.
Leaders in the state had earlier in the day said that they thought it would be about a three to five margin.
So, what was it like when you went to go vote?
My answer is going to disappoint you.
I voted at 7 a.m.
I think there were two people there at the time that I was there.
And there was, you know, there was no one outside of the polling center who was supporting the no position.
There was a woman who said, if you're a Democrat, vote yes.
I mean, that is a bad answer.
And I will say that the framing of the question on the ballot itself said something about restoring, you know, fairness to elections.
I mean, for that to be true, I don't know how they got that on the ballot.
I mean, for that to be true, then you have to take into account other gerrymandering efforts in other states.
And it said nothing at all about this.
This is patently unfair, patently unfair to members throughout the state.
I mean, the lines, you just look at the map.
It is so clearly gerrymandered to eliminate any chance for Republicans to take any seat but one in the entire state.
This is a purple state.
It has voted for a Republican governor recently.
It has voted for a Democrat recently.
But it is a purple state.
And again, the idea, I've been buying into Democrats' argument that Trump has taken action here and the Republicans have taken action that's anti-Democratic.
But if you want to...
You're talking about efforts to redistrict both Texas were successful and then Indiana, which weren't successful.
Sure.
And many other things that are anti-Democratic that the Republicans have, and Trump specifically have been trying to do.
But if you want to take that moral high ground, then you do not stoop to this level.
It is so egregious that it just, like, again, if we're just going to do tit-for-tat, then this will never end because this type of action has been done forever.
And yes, the most recent efforts have been Republican.
But you look at states across this country, and when Democrats are in power, they've been doing it too.
This was not invented by Republicans.
And I just, I don't know where it ends because this is a temporary measure, and I understand that.
But I think it's about three years, is what they say.
I think it's two years until 20, or I can't remember if it's 2030 or if it's just until after the 2028 election.
I can't remember.
It is supposed to be a temporary measure.
But if you can just change the state constitution with a simple majority vote, I mean, on the thinnest of margins, to disenfranchise the voters of the other party, then why will this not be done again as soon as they can do it?
I mean, on either side, do Democrats want the Republicans to do this when they have the chance?
That's the thing about our country right now that I don't understand is both sides push the envelope to the red.
They go as far as they can, and they think that, you know, we have a two-party system in this country.
You're going to lose power at some point, and every excess that you take is the bare minimum of what the other side is going to try to do.
I just think we're on a horrible path.
And we elected Spanberger in Virginia as a moderate, not as a far-left candidate, as a moderate.
I am a moderate.
I am an independent.
We elected her because we thought that she was running as a moderate.
And the first thing she does is disenfranchise all of the people who did not vote for her side.
Redistricting Push Across States00:15:26
This is a horrible precedent.
And I am very, very disappointed.
All right, Frank, from Virginia, an independent.
Let me give some of our viewers a little bit more context and what you are talking about.
But thank you so much for calling in this morning.
So he was talking about the vote that passed in Virginia last night.
I turn now to a NPR article.
The headline here is: With Virginia vote, Democrats gain edge over Trump's national GOP redistricting push.
And if I scroll down here a little bit, it says: As time runs out before midterm elections, Virginia took a step on Tuesday to counter and possibly surpass Trump's national effort to redraw congressional maps in favor of the GOP.
They have a graphic here that shows in terms of potential redistricting gains, approved 10 seats from California, Utah, Virginia.
Republicans approved nine seats.
Texas, Missouri, excuse me, Texas, Missouri, Ohio being considered as three seats.
If you look here, it kind of shows you a chart as what those look like.
And just a little bit more in Virginia here.
It says, voters narrowly approved a Democratic-backed constitutional amendment to sideland the state's redistricting commission and let lawmakers directly implement a new map.
The Virginia delegation to the U.S. House is currently six Democrats and four Republicans and could go to 10 to 1 under the new map.
The move still faces court challenges but could put Democrats ahead in tilting House seats their way for now.
So that is an NPR article that gives a little bit more context into what a caller, Frank, was talking about, who did not approve of efforts that were successful last night to allow lawmakers in Virginia to redraft their map in a 10-to-1 favor for Democrats.
Kevin from California and Independent.
Yes, I don't really agree with the histrionics of the previous callers regarding that redrawing of the maps in Virginia because I think that the response in Texas kind of set the whole ball rolling as far as what's happening.
So I mean the Republicans are pretty much using computer programs to set these maps and they've got it pretty, they've got it going on in Texas.
So you just look at the population densities and the racial makeup of Texas and you can kind of see how their responses have, I mean, far exceeded what any kind of disenfranchise movement could be.
So yeah, I think everybody just needs to turn the volume down and see that Trump's request for those additional congressmen really brought the proper response on the Democratic side.
So that's all I got to say about that.
I wonder what you make, though, of the previous caller's question about where it ends if Republicans and Democrats continue to trade off of gerrymandering here, the responses to gerrymander there.
I wonder what you make of that response.
It's always been gerrymandering.
We remember that back from the 1860s, the 1890s, and the 1910s.
So it's an ongoing battle.
But things, when you're using computer programs to set these districts down to the neighborhood and the person and the car vehicle registration, then I think the response has to be things.
I have a little bit of hope that these guys are going to, based on the economic conditions and the illegal war that just got set, that things will push them in a direction that they've got to work together because $4 a gallon gas isn't getting anybody anywhere.
So that's all my opinion is going to be on that.
All right, Kevin from California.
Shea from Fort Pierce, Florida, a Democrat.
Good morning, Shea.
Good morning.
Yes.
I heard the guy that first started off this morning.
And I know I'm a Democrat, but more of an independent than Democrat, but I'm a Democrat.
I feel him, but the Democrats didn't start this.
The guy just said after me just now about the Texas, what the president did with Abbott down there to do this.
It's terrible.
It really is.
But the problem is, should the Democrats have sit back?
Because if that's let this go and they're not just doing it in Texas, the Republicans are doing it all over.
So they can not lose the midterms.
That's what the president needs to be smart.
But we, the people, they shouldn't have never done that in Texas to do that, but they did.
And that's all the Democrats are trying to do is level even in California.
Well, the people they're doing, well, actually, the Democrats are doing it differently because they'll let the people decide whether they want to do it or not, other than them not doing anything.
Because Jasmine is one other thing that's coming down the road that's after this midterms, what they've done with the subsidies and stuff, you really haven't heard how bad that's going to be with that beautiful bill.
Oh, it is going, ain't hardly nobody going to have any health insurance.
They push it off.
So they try to, if they can win the midterm, that's when all this stuff is really going to kick in.
But the Democrats are not doing it the same way they're doing it.
If in Virginia, if it would have been the other way around, then they wouldn't have done it.
But the Democrats don't want to be decided that they didn't try to do anything to fix this.
That's the only way they can.
Hopefully they won't.
This is not going to last like this.
But it's terrible.
It's really terrible what the Republicans are doing.
Not all of them.
I can't blame all Republicans because even with them doing this, it still doesn't have to be.
People vote.
Not jurymen and vote.
If you get Democrats and public independent, vote for whatever candidate is, what he's standing for, doing for the people, can't no juryman or nothing.
If they got morals, they won't vote like this way anyway.
They'll vote a good Republican in there.
You know what I mean?
It's not right.
I understand that.
But they don't want to be like they didn't do anything.
Thank you for letting me speak this morning.
Will from Baltimore, Democrat.
Good morning, Will.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
The redistancing vote that took place in Virginia was necessary to take back the House in the upcoming midterms.
Trump started this trend of redistancing, gerrymandering, and he's putting self-preservation above the country.
He took us to war to remove the Epstein files off the front pages of the newspapers.
I feel no sympathy for these fake independent voters who support Trump.
We've got to remove this corrupt president from the White House who supports the rogue government of Israel taking us to war.
I think the American people have seen enough.
And it's not enough for them to now have voter remorse for all these Trump supporters.
I'm like, where were you?
Didn't you see it coming?
Thank you for taking my call.
That was Wool from Baltimore.
And just so folks know, we are now entering open forum where we can talk about things like the Virginia Battling District or any public policy or political issue on your mind.
Here are your lines again, Republicans, to join the conversation.
Your line is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
Independents, your line to join the conversation is 202-748-8002.
And now I turn to a New York Times article also on where the national fight over the gerrymandered map states stand.
Excuse me.
Here is perhaps a clearer graphic of where you can see the gains from both Democrats and Republicans across the country after successful efforts to gerrymander their state in California.
You can see that it's plus five.
In Texas, you can see it's also plus five.
Florida, who is action taken to change the maps, that's what that illustrates.
Could anywhere have anywhere between one to five seats as they enter into their gerrymandering efforts?
And so this is the map of where it stands.
A New York Times article, just a graphic for folks to see as we're talking about the Virginia vote yesterday, which Democrats were successful in bypassing their commission so that lawmakers could make up an own map into 10 to 1 Democratic favor.
Mark from Maryland, a Republican.
Good morning, Mark.
Good morning.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well.
How are you?
Very good.
So I was really disappointed to find out about Virginia.
And, you know, the previous callers mentioned that it was Republicans that started with the gerrymandering in Texas.
And while that is true, what's not mentioned is that the Republicans were actually correcting for the previous administration allowing 20 million illegals into our country, which, in my opinion, was a traitorous act.
This was not spontaneous on the part of the Biden administration, letting these 20 million illegals in.
It was a 60-year-old plan called the Cloud Piven Strategy.
You can look it up for yourself.
And it was a strategy that was come up with by two Marxist college professors in 1966.
And the plan was that if we get enough illegals in and get them hooked up to welfare, it would tank our economy.
And therefore, they could make an argument to usher in socialism.
That's been a plan of the Democrats for 60 years.
In other news, I noticed.
Well, Mark, can I ask you a question quickly before you get to the other news?
I asked this to a previous caller, to a Democrat who was in favor of the effort.
But are you concerned at all about this idea, which the first caller mentioned, of this tit-for-tat?
You know, if one state gerrymanders in favor of Republicans, another state gerrymanders in favor of Democrats, and it kind of just keeps going on and on and on.
Are you concerned about that kind of snowballing effort?
Of course I am.
That's a bad thing.
But the problem is that the narrative is that it's always the Republicans who are initiating this.
You know, when 90% of the mainstream media is left-leaning, and we know objectively they are, the narrative is always going to be, oh, Republicans are doing this, so the poor little Democrats are having to fight back.
No, let's be honest about it.
The fact is, look at Illinois.
How many Republican districts are there in Illinois?
I mean, Democrats have turned gerrymandering into an art.
And I'm not saying they're the only ones that do it.
Of course, both sides do it.
But the narrative is always by the media and even on C-SPAN that, oh, the Democrats are just pushing back against something unreasonable that the Republicans are doing.
I mean, you guys, I have to say, I've been listening to C-SPAN for a long time.
If anybody remembers the book 1984, the story starts out with them having a two-minute hate every morning where somebody has been identified as an enemy of the state, and all the citizens have to get up in rage about that particular person.
And I have to say that C-SPAN has basically turned into a two-minute hate for Trump over the last 10 years.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which I wish you guys would cover, but I know you won't spend any time on it.
You might read it.
Well, you can bring it up now and I'll read an article about it, which is what has happened now with Virginia to go.
Well, I just wanted to say the Southern Poverty Law Center got caught sending money to the Ku Klux Klan, which really shouldn't surprise anybody considering that the Ku Klux Klan was started by the Democrats, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has been joined at the hips with the Democrat Party for over 50 years now.
I think the first director of the Southern Poverty Law Center had to step down because he was sexually harassing employees.
The place is a den of communists that have been trying to cement hate and turn Americans against Americans.
And the media has been helping them for years.
And I just love that this stuff is coming to light.
Okay, Mark.
Well, I'm going to go ahead and read this article so that we have it for folks who want a little bit more context.
The headline here from the Washington Post is DOJ charges Southern Poverty Law Center overpaid informants.
The civil rights group CEO vowed it would not be, quote, intimidated from doing its work monitoring hate groups.
If you bear with me while I scroll a little bit here, it says, the Justice Department on Tuesday accused the Southern Poverty Law Center, a storied civil rights organization, of defrauding donors and stoking, quote, racial hatred through payments it made to informants working for a variety of hate groups.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that a grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama returned an 11-count indictment against the nonprofit, charging it with bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.
The SPLC chief denounced the investigation as an effort to weaponize the Justice Department against groups unfriendly to President Donald Trump.
Quote, we are outraged by the false allegations levied against SPLC, an organization that for 55 years has stood as a beacon of hope fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice to create a multiracial democracy where we can all live and thrive.
Gas Prices and Iran Tensions00:10:16
The interim president Brian Farris said in a statement.
Just bear with me while I scroll a little bit here just to hear a bit more about Blanche.
It said speaking at a news conference in Washington, Blanche said the SPLC had paid more than $3 million between 2014 and 2023 to at least eight individuals working inside groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Movement.
In some instances, Blanch said the source of the money was disguised through accounts associated with fictitious businesses.
Quote, it was doing the exact opposite of what it told donors it was doing, not dismantling extremism, but funding it, Blanche said.
So that is what the lawsuit that the gentleman in the previous call mentioned.
And you can go read more about that on Washington Post later on this morning on the Washington Journal.
We'll continue our conversation about the latest in Iran with retired Admiral Mark Montgomery of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
But first, after the break, a conversation with Republican Congressman Marlon Stutzman of Indiana about where he thinks the Iran conflict is heading.
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Washington Journal continues.
Joining us now to talk more about the war in Iran is Congressman Marlon Stutzman, a member of the Budget and Financial Services Committees.
Thank you so much for being with us this morning.
Thank you.
Good morning.
We know it's early.
Okay, let's jump right in and talk about Iran.
You've supported the president's actions in Iran and you've opposed House efforts to impose war powers resolutions.
Now, it seems like Republicans on the Hill are pretty unified in that they support the president's actions in Iran and they feel though that the War Powers Act allows him to unilaterally take these strikes for the 60-day limit.
But I want to ask you what happens after that because we know that is on April 29th.
Your colleague, Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, has introduced a resolution forcing Trump to end the military options immediately at the 60-day mark.
I wonder what is your view?
Do you believe that that is the appropriate step after 60 days?
Well, I think what's happening in Iran is that, you know, the major strikes are done.
So I guess that's kind of going to be the question now is, you know.
Though the president still retains the option to continue striking if he needed to, yes.
I mean, we're really entering into a phase of diplomacy and negotiations.
And of course, the Iranians have been very difficult, as they have been for years.
They definitely are moving the goalposts from time, it seems like after every negotiation.
So I think that's a new phase.
And I think that that's where we all want it to be.
We want to see Iran move to a new group of leaders.
We don't want the IRGC in power.
They have a lot of money and they have a lot of ability to maintain power, but hopefully with the Straits of Hormuz being shut down, this really limits their cash flow.
And so it limits their ability to pay the military, to keep the operations going.
And so I think President Trump has some flexibility now that the major strikes are over.
And we'll see what happens here in the next couple of days.
But past that 60-day mark, let's say if a deal isn't reached via these negotiations, as we know that there is no date set, say, for some of the new negotiators to travel to Iran.
Do you believe that more congressional hearings are needed?
I mean, what should happen after April 29th?
Does it feel like we're entering kind of into an open conflict here?
Well, I do think that more hearings in Congress is always good.
I don't think that's ever a problem.
We should have as much transparency as possible.
But it does appear that Iran, even like last night, took a couple of ships.
So does that extend the conflict?
I mean, yes, Iran has been at war with us for 40 years.
Now that President Trump has decided to go in with strong force and force a change, I think is good.
President Trump's going to need flexibility going forward because the Iranians need to know that if they backtrack on their negotiations or promises, that President Trump has the ability to strike.
But as we can see, they're very limited in their capability of fighting back with military force just simply because we went in so hard and strong that it really limited them in what they're able to do.
So I think we're in a really good spot, and now it's more negotiations and diplomacy.
So you wouldn't be in support of Governor, I mean, excuse me, of Representative Brian Fitzpatrick's resolution that would force Trump to end the military options up, military operations immediately at that 60-day mark?
No, I don't think so.
I mean, I think that, you know, just because we're moving ships or troops into the region does not extend that.
And because I think that the bulk of the power, the operations are done.
I mean, we're not going in and striking every night.
We're not going in like we were at the beginning.
So this is definitely a different phase of the conflict.
You know, China's not, you know, have to keep a close eye on China, but I don't think China wants to escalate the conflict either.
Russia is, of course, staying at bay, and other countries in the region, that's what the big piece to all of this is the Gulf states and Syria and Lebanon and even Turkey.
They're all cheering us on because they want to see a more stable region because Iran is always the problem maker there.
Well, it seems like those Lebanon Israel truths right now is kind of on shaky ground.
But I want to ask you about the economic impact.
Specifically your district, you represent Indiana.
What economic impact is the Iran war having on your constituents?
It has created volatility.
Of course, gas prices at the pump is the easiest one to point to just because of the oil and gas volatility.
20% of oil and gas globally comes out of the Straits of Hormuz.
With that being blocked, that creates higher gas prices.
My son told me last night that gas prices were down 50 cents from what he saw earlier a couple of weeks ago.
So it seems like things may be heading in the right direction.
The more stability there is, the better we're all going to be.
But there's also the, of course, farmers are in the fields.
Most farmers, I come from a farm family, most farmers already had their fuel prices locked in, had their gas, their fertilizer prices locked in.
So, you know, some farmers will feel the effects for sure, but hopefully it's a short-lived period of time and that most of them are planning for a year's season and not just for a couple of months.
But it will have an effect.
But I think in the long run, most people that I talk to in my district, and especially older folks, say, you know what, we've been dealing with Iran a long time.
We need to finish the job.
It seems that gas prices are starting to tick up a little bit now that there is more of a question mark about what happens with Iran.
Do you think that the president and the administration largely is leveling with the American people on energy outlook?
For instance, President Trump on Monday directly contradicted Energy Secretary Chris Wright's comments just about a day earlier about how long gas prices could linger.
While Wright had told CNN that we might not see gas under $3 per gallon until 2027, Trump said that was totally wrong.
I think where we were at before the conflict and knowing that Venezuela is coming online more and more, there's going to be supply there that's going to be more dependable to the West.
Alaska is a there's opportunity in Alaska.
I think a lot of the pricing is based around speculation and of course the conflict in Iran, you know, every buyers and sellers speculated that prices are going to be harder to move product, which they're right.
But this is moving much quicker than what I think a lot of us anticipated.
It's far from over.
I mean we have to realize Iran is a very rich nation because of their oil and gas sales.
They've had the ability to build up in military inventory.
They have the ability to pay their military.
And that's why I think the Achilles heel of Iran is the Straits of Hormuz.
We and a coalition broadly around the world need to control the Straits of Hormuz.
We can't just let Iran control it.
Massachusetts vs Indiana Districts00:15:54
All right, I want to turn to some more domestic issues, including that Virginia race from last night.
For our callers, I want you to join in on the conversation so you can ask the congressman about Iran, about Virginia, about whatever you'd like.
Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line, 202-748-8000.
Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
Congressman, obviously, we saw those results last night from Virginia, which now allows lawmakers to implement a 10-to-1 Democratic favor map in the state.
This obviously follows multiple redistricting battles, including an unsuccessful one in Indiana.
I wonder: do you believe that starting this redistricting battle, obviously happening with Texas this year around?
Okay, we know Jeremy is not new per se, but starting the redistricting battle this term with Texas, was that the right call?
I think it was.
I mean, in the sense that we needed attention to the issue to begin with.
You know, Massachusetts is as Democrat as Indiana is Republican.
We both have nine districts.
Indiana is seven Republicans, two Democrats.
Massachusetts is nine Democrats, zero Republicans.
And so I think that that shows you right there that there's a problem and that we should really try to reflect the Democratic process.
And so when I find it interesting that, you know, in Texas, they passed it through the legislature, but in California, it went to the people and overwhelmingly passed to redistrict.
California, I believe, now is 48 Democrats to four Republicans, roughly.
And of course, now if the Virginia result sticks, it's going to be 10 Democrats to one Republican.
Illinois is the same way, very unbalanced.
And I just think that most Americans, looking at the situation objectively, are going to say, you know what, we should try to be more balanced.
Indiana did try to redistrict and it failed in the Senate.
I supported redistricting because it seems like both Republicans and Democrats are running to the corners trying to give ourselves the advantage for the upcoming elections.
But I think that it all started back when Massachusetts went 9-0.
That's what I think bothers me is that here a state like Massachusetts, it's 60% Democrat, 40% Republicans.
Republicans should have some representation in Massachusetts.
And that's kind of started the whole ball rolling.
Now, if everybody goes to their corners, Republicans should have an advantage.
So I think that Democrats need to be careful what they ask for.
But I mean, some of the calls that we've heard from just today have voiced concerns about the tit-for-tat nature.
If you just look at the potential redistricting gains as they stand now, Democrats, if those stick, have gained 10 seats through these redistricting wars.
Right now, Republicans have gained nine seats.
Perhaps three more could happen if Florida is successful in their efforts.
Who knows which other states are gearing up to do the same?
I mean, is there this idea that there is no end to the gerrymandering fight if you continue this tit-for-tat type of nature?
I think there's an end because at some point, you can only draw these maps to the point to benefit one side or the other in every state.
So Florida obviously could draw maps to favor Republicans more.
Ohio could as well.
But I don't think this is the way we want to operate.
And that's what I'm, my frustration is, is that, you know, look, you can blame Democrats.
You can call on both parties to stop now?
Absolutely.
I would.
I mean, you know, let's go back and represent our states accordingly.
I mean, look, if you're in the majority, you're going to favor yourself.
I understand that.
But to wipe out every opposition, to me, I think is unfair.
And it's not representation of what the state's picture, the political landscape looks like.
But again, I always point to Massachusetts.
They're 9-0 when they should have at least two or three Republican seats.
Indiana's the same way, but Indiana is trending more Republican simply because people from Illinois are moving into Indiana.
And so people are moving with their feet.
So that's why there's going to be changes with the districts, even mid-census.
But I think we should try to stick to the mid-census results as much as possible.
All right.
So you think that Florida, should Florida go ahead with the redistricting?
I do.
I mean, at this point, we're in the tit-for-tat, and it's unfortunate.
And hopefully the American people start to realize what's happening and demand some sort of balance within every state.
All right, let's turn to some phone calls.
Kevin from Fort Wayne, Indiana, a Democrat.
You're on the line.
Good morning, gentlemen.
And this congressman, such as it is, is my representative.
I would like to know what his opinion is regarding the Virginia situation in these terms.
In our own state, we had our state legislature tasked by Donald Trump to try to eliminate Democratic seats, minimal number as they are at the present time.
And fortunately, the wisdom of Republican legislators brought about the defeat of his efforts.
I'd like to know if he supports that type of approach or whether he thinks it's a matter of hypocrisy on the part of his fellow Republicans within the state of Indiana not to have supported Donald Trump.
Oh, well, Kevin, I can tell you're a Democrat because you left out President Obama being in Virginia campaigning for Democrats.
And that's what I think Jasmine's talking about in the tit for tat is that this is going both ways.
Both parties are guilty here.
And as I said, this started in Massachusetts going nine to zero.
When you leave completely every Republican unrepresented in the House of Representatives in Massachusetts, that's a problem.
And that's nine seats.
They could, they're a 60-40 state.
So, you know, I can tell, just like Kevin, he's a great example because he's a Democrat, saying, well, I'm going to blame the Republicans.
Well, it's already happening in Massachusetts.
We need to be objective here and say, you know what, it's happening on both sides.
Both sides should stop it.
Both sides should draw maps that at least are giving some people in their states representation in Washington and the House of Representatives according to parties.
It doesn't have to be completely following the statewide baselines per se, but it should at least give some balance.
Matt from Maryland and Independent.
Go ahead, Matt.
Good morning.
I'm wondering if the congressman supports the president releasing the rest of the Epstein files.
Donald Trump lied to all of us, I don't care what party you are, about releasing all of the Epstein files.
With the revelation that he's in there hundreds, thousands, maybe a million times, we still don't know what's there.
There are real bad things in there that have not been released.
He has all right, Matt.
I'm going to let the congressman answer your question.
It's not all President Trump's decision either, nor should it be.
I mean, there should be, we have a Department of Justice, we have an Attorney General, we have lawyers that look at these files.
Do I want justice to be served?
Absolutely.
But I also want to be sure that it's done properly and that victims aren't that don't want their information released.
It's not released either.
You know, that's the hard part is looking at those files and knowing what's in them.
I have not looked at them, but I know that.
You haven't seen the underproducted files.
I have not seen the unredacted files.
So we don't know exactly all of the details.
So we have to be very careful.
And I would want my family to be protected.
I would want your family to be protected.
There's a lot of victims that they just want to move on with life.
If they want to come forward, we should absolutely do everything we can to bring justice to them.
I mean, there is concern from folks who call into this show that there have been over corrections when it comes to protecting data, that there have been things that have been withheld that shouldn't have necessarily been withheld.
I mean, are redactions or the amount of redactions a concern of yours when it comes to Epstein files?
You know, again, I mean, I haven't seen them.
I have not seen the unredacted files.
But I would say this about President Trump to the caller, especially President Trump has been the most transparent president we have seen.
He released the JFK files.
He goes in front of the press every day.
He is a very transparent president, almost to his own detriment, to be honest, because now we all know more, and it's like what we're learning, it's not enough.
And so I think that people in America really need to be aware.
President Trump is a very transparent president.
Just because the Epstein files aren't fully released according to what people's desires are, doesn't mean that he and the administration aren't releasing as much as possible.
This is a, you know, compared to the JFK files, how long did it take?
There were other presidents that never released those files.
President Trump did, and he's talking more about what's going on with UFOs and with other mysteries that we're all concerned about as citizens.
And so I give President Trump a lot of credit for being transparent.
I want to ask you about another ethics issue before we turn back to some phone calls.
Indicted Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Sheriff Lyllis-McCormick resigned yesterday before the expected release of a health ethics committee report investigating her actions into misappropriation of funds.
We know that two congressmen last week resigned before an ethics investigation could get underway.
Most ethics investigations end when a member resigns.
Is that the proper way to proceed if the charges or allegations warrant more investigation?
As far as Congress goes, you know, we have jurisdiction over House members.
We don't have jurisdiction over senators.
So we only have jurisdiction over the House.
When a House member resigns, we lose that jurisdiction.
But if there's criminal allegations, then that should turn into a criminal investigation by prosecutors, whether it's the DOJ, whether it's state prosecutors or local prosecutors.
So that doesn't mean they're off the hook at all.
You know, in the case of Tony Gonzalez, for example, he was having an affair and the young lady committed suicide.
It's a tragic incident.
And so Tony did the right thing by resigning.
After months, though.
It was.
And I pressured him.
I was one of the first ones to call on him to not run for reelection.
And so, of course, then Eric Swalwell, he resigns after allegations came out.
And there would have been House ethics.
There was a House ethics investigation with Tony already.
And there's others going on.
If people want to go look at the House Ethics website, you can see who's being investigated and for what.
But we still have to have due process.
Members of Congress, we live in glass houses, which is good because we need to be held accountable to the American people.
But at the same time, not every allegation is true.
I mean, politics is a tough business.
And so we have people accusing us of wrongdoing from time to time.
That's just not the case.
But so we have to have due process as well.
But if there is a criminal allegation, it should be investigated.
If there's something there, then charges should be pressed.
Quickly, I want to ask you about Congressman Corey Mills.
Obviously, he is under an ethics investigation for sexual misconduct and or dating violence.
Some of your colleagues have introduced a resolution to expel him.
Do you believe he should be expelled?
Not yet.
I mean, again, this is the case where there should be, let the process follow its course.
They should have the investigation done.
If there's a criminal investigation, which the police were supposedly out at their residence, if there should be a criminal investigation, that should happen.
If they're not, and there should be, then there should be questions asked, why not?
But again, House Ethics is investigating.
If there was something inappropriately, if there was any sort of physical abuse, there should be a criminal investigation.
And so far, that doesn't seem to appear to have happened.
So I don't think he should be expelled yet, but I think we should follow the evidence where it leads and make a decision based off of the evidence.
All right, we have a couple more minutes here.
I want to get in a few more questions.
Ryan from Florida, an independent.
Ryan, we're coming up on time if you want to keep your comment or question pretty short.
Yep, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
So my question was just regarding the redistricting efforts.
So Congressman, I heard you talking about Massachusetts as an example of Democratic geramandering.
And my issue with that one there is, for one, it was signed by a Republican governor, the map.
And then two, it's just we are not in a proportional country.
Like the maps still have to be mapped to land.
If Republicans in that state are dispersed and not like in a solid, coherent area of the map, how can they make a map that will represent them accurately in a proportional way?
Thank you for taking the time to take the call.
Sure.
Yeah, no, thanks for the question.
But again, Massachusetts is a smaller state than Indiana geographically.
So we're able to draw maps in Indiana.
At one point, Indiana was five to four Democrat.
And that was drawn by a Democrat House of Representatives, signed by a Democrat governor, agreed upon by a Republican Senate.
So I would say that there should be better bipartisanship when it comes to maps.
It is completely political right now.
And I would say that in Massachusetts, you definitely could draw maps that give at least one Republican or two Republican seats a chance of winning.
You know, the other part of this is you have to have good candidates to win as well.
None of these seats are guaranteed, but they definitely lean one party or the other.
And I think in Massachusetts, they could at least make a couple of competitive seats.
And there's not even a competitive seat in Massachusetts.
We actually have a Massachusetts caller as our last call here for the Congressman Mark from Massachusetts, an independent.
You are on the line.
Good morning, Mark.
Good morning.
Thank you, Congressman.
I want to clarify, because you keep talking about Massachusetts, talking about your own state, Indiana.
Well, 60% are unregistered, 8% are Republican, and roughly 25% are registered Democrats.
So I think you need to get your facts trade.
And since you keep saying Massachusetts, and you say we're such a small state, we provide $822 billion in GDP.
I'm not arguing.
I'm not arguing about that at all.
Listen, you've had time to talk.
Versus $199 billion in Indiana.
And what are you, seven, 10 times the size of us?
And are you a net gain?
Do you give more?
Does your state give more to the federal tax roll or take more?
I'm not here to argue about that.
I mean, you know, we're here about the results.
The matter of fact is that there are nine Democrat seats in Massachusetts.
We're about the same size of states.
Massachusetts has nine districts.
Indiana has nine districts.
We have seven Republicans in Indiana.
Federal Reserve Nominee Move Forward00:03:17
We have two Democrats in Indiana.
And those are competitive seats.
There's no competitive seats in Massachusetts.
So I just simply disagree that, you know, we see races in Massachusetts, and it's not 92% Democrat, 8% Republican.
It's a 60-40 state.
My last question for you before we let you go is you serve on the Financial Services Committee, which has oversight over the Federal Reserve.
Obviously, the new pick, or President Trump's pick for Federal Reserve Chair to replace Jerome Powell, is happening in the Senate right now.
Those testimonies, I wonder, though, because Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina says that he will hold up that nomination for Warsh until the DOJ probe into whether or not Jerome Powell misappropriated funds for the new renovations over the Fed's headquarters is dropped.
Do you believe that the DOJ probe into Powell is valid as you sit on the Financial Services Committee?
I think it's appropriate.
Just like the Corey Mills situation, if there's allegations, they should be looked into.
But I don't want to see it drag into something.
If it's not there, it's not there.
But if something's there, then it should be investigated.
But I think at the end of the day, we want to move on past, you know, Mr. Powell.
He served our country.
He served at the Fed.
We have a new nominee.
Let's move forward with the new nominee.
But I do think that if, again, if there is evidence of misappropriation of funds, if there's something inappropriate, then we have to follow.
Is there anything to make you believe that Powell may have committed wrongdoing in this case?
Well, again, because of the spending on the new facility there at the Fed, I think that's what everybody's eyebrows are up because we're in this situation with trillions of dollars of debt.
They're obviously independent agency.
And the amount of money that's spent on the building there, was there misuse?
Was it overspending?
And it just makes us all raise our eyebrows like, wow, that's a lot of money on a federal building here in Washington, D.C.
I mean, you think at other buildings, you could have spent a lot less.
So I think that's what everybody's wanting to know is where did all the money go and why was it so expensive when other buildings are being built at a lower cost than what the Federal Reserve Building is.
Do you think Tillis is going to drop his vow that he won't let Wars go through until that DOJ?
I mean, we'll see.
I mean, I know that Senator Tillis, I mean, he's taken this seriously.
He wants to move forward.
I think, you know, he is trying to protect Mr. Powell.
And to some extent, you know, we're all ready just to move forward.
But again, if there was something, if there was wrongdoing, we need to be held accountable.
And I think that's what's important.
If there's evidence from whomever is doing the investigation, they should release that.
And then we can decide whether the investigation should move forward or not.
Congressman Marlon Stutzman of Indiana on the Budget and Financial Services Committee, thank you so much for being with us this morning.
Thank you.
Now, at the bottom of the hour, we'll be joined by retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on the high-stakes moment in Iran conflict.
Unfiltered Democracy on C-SPAN00:03:22
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On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
Sir Anthony Bieber, an historian based in London, has authored 13 books which have sold at least 8.5 million copies and been translated into 35 different languages.
In his latest book, he focuses on Ras Putin and the downfall of the Romanos.
The country is Russia, and the timeframe is the early 1900s.
Sir Anthony Bieber on his official website sums up his findings this way.
Gregory Ras Putin, a barely literate peasant from Siberia, is one of the most enigmatic and influential figures in modern history.
Anthony Bieber points out, quote, in a bizarre reverse of the great man theory of history, he had no official position and no mass following, unquote.
His book details Ras Putin's relationship with the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia before their downfall.
A new interview with author Anthony Beaver about his book, Ras Putin and the Downfall of the Romanoffs.
BookNotes Plus with our host Brian Lamb is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
Ras Putin Book Interview Highlights00:15:09
Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back to the Washington Journal.
This is Open Forum where you can talk about any public policy or political issue on your mind this morning.
We're taking your phone calls.
I'll just remind you of your lines quickly.
Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line, 202-748-8000.
And Independents, your line, 202-748-8002.
Start calling in now.
With us to start off our open forum block is my esteemed colleague, politics reporter for notice, Rhys Gorman.
Good morning, Reese.
Good morning.
Thanks for having me on.
All right.
Big week here in Washington.
You've had some great reporting this week.
First, I want to start with the results in Virginia, that special election where Virginia has decided to allow lawmakers to redistrict those congressional districts in a 10-to-1 Democratic result.
What are you hearing about it?
Yeah, I mean, Republicans are obviously extremely upset.
They lost four seats.
It's now 10 to 1, and it's going to be a real battle for Republicans to keep the majority, especially because they were hoping redistricting would help them.
It's now at least a break-even if you're counting Texas, California, and now Virginia.
And a lot of Republicans are mad in Virginia at the national Republican apparatus and also just Republicans on the Hill as well.
They don't believe that institutions such as the RNC, such as Trump Super PAC MAGA Inc., invested enough money into this and really saw it as kind of, and this could be kind of kind of Monday morning quarterbacking, but at the same time, I mean, they are upset that the national public apparatus did not take this as seriously as they believe they should.
So what does it mean for the midterms?
Obviously, now they are about even.
I believe that due to these redistricting battles, Democrats have gained nine seats, Republicans have gained 10 seats.
I may have mixed up those numbers, but it seems at the moment there is a bit of parity.
Obviously, Florida is that kind of outstanding question.
What does it mean for November?
Yeah, I mean, it's just really going to be, it just, there's less competitive seats now because of November.
And also, I mean, you say that Democrats gained, I believe, those nine Republicans have gained 10, but a lot of those 10 seats that Republicans have quote unquote gained, same with Democrats, are still vulnerable seats.
They are not, they might go from a lean Democrat to a lean Republican, but you're looking like in Texas, there's a new district kind of in my hometown of Church, Texas, that it's not as Republican as the people, when they redistrict, they hope it would be.
I mean, it is still a seat that Democrats can be competitive is.
And so while they are adjusting some of this, it's still, I mean, if what Democrats are hoping for this kind of blue wave of the midterms, you could see that a lot of these seats that they redrawn to be quote-unquote safe Republican seats could go the other way.
And I want to mention something that you scooped just yesterday, of course, scoop machine we have with us, is that Congressman Sheila Scherfilis-McCormick resigned from Congress just before the ethics committee was set to announce her sanctions against her after they went through that investigation.
Talk to us about how that all went down.
Yeah, so obviously she was under intense scrutiny.
She's been indicted by the Department of Justice down in Florida for basically just using funds that she should not have gotten.
There was a mishap on kind of when they were paying her out for work she did for the state.
And she donated some of that money to her campaign.
She did a lot of really sketchy things with it.
Congress found her guilty on almost 28 different charges, this House Ethics Committee hearing, which kind of acts as though as a jury, where they hear these, as a jury as judge, where they hear a lot of these complaints and a lot of the evidence against her.
Congresswoman McCormick gets the chance to defend herself.
They found her guilty on about 28 of them and said that.
And yesterday they were going to announce what sanctions they believe should have take place.
It was widely believed that they were going to recommend expulsion.
They had not recommended it yet, and that would have led to her expulsion.
She would have definitely been expelled.
There's enough Republicans and Democrats to expel her.
So just hours before that hearing, that announcement was set to be made, she resigned from Congress.
I mean, but she is just the latest in the string of congressional resignations that we've seen just over the last two weeks.
Obviously, she resigned yesterday.
We know that Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzalez, two congressmen, one Democrat, one Republican, resigned last week over allegations of sexual misconduct.
Of course, perhaps Florida Congressman Corey Mills is next.
Let's take a listen here to Speaker Mike Johnson.
Actually, we are going to go to that, but I just wonder, what is somebody like Speaker Mike Johnson or somebody else in the Congress, what are they talking about when it comes to the idea of resignations or expulsions, particularly happening at this clip?
Yeah, it really depends on who you talk to.
Obviously, there is, a lot of people wanted Tony Gonzalez and Eric Swalwell and Congresswoman Sheila Shurfless-McCormick to resign.
They believed that their allegations in Sherfiles McCormick's case, stuff that the ethics committee had found her guilty of, in some sense, egregious enough that they should resign.
Tony Gonzalez, Eric Swala did not go through the ethics process.
That had not occurred yet.
The investigations were still ongoing, but they resigned prior.
They knew Swalwell in his case said that he wants to quote unquote fight the allegations.
Now I think it's about six women who have accused him of sexual harassment or sexual assault.
He has three criminal investigations, the DOJ, the Manhattan District Attorney, and the LA County District Attorney all investigating him right now.
And in Tony Gonzalez's case, he had an affair with a staff who later killed herself.
And text messages were being released where he was pressuring her for sexual images and sex.
And so what we were looking at there is Tony Gonzalez's, his colleagues were urging him to resign.
So following Swallow's resignation, that's when Tony Gonzalez resigned.
And members, they like to see this people being held accountable.
They want, now they'd rather members just not do this at all and not have to resign.
But when stuff like this is coming out, there are significant calls for resignations.
And they would rather them resign than have to expel them.
And now in the Senate side, Ruben Gallego has come under some fire, including by Republican House member Ana Polina, who has accused him of misconduct.
Senator Gallego has really denied these allegations.
Where does that go?
Yeah, so that was referred to according to Leader John Thune's office.
He said the office said that they were, Ana Paulina Luna reached out to them and they referred all these allegations to the Senate Ethics Committee.
Senator Gallego has said this is a, quote, right-wing hit job and that this is all made up.
And the Senate Ethics Committee is notoriously slow, notoriously does not get a lot of information out.
And their investigations usually prove fruitless.
So I would not be so surprised to see nothing really come of this investigation.
We don't know what Ana Paulina Luna gave Leader Thune or the Senate Ethics Committee.
She has not said publicly.
Leader Thune has not said publicly, nor has the Ethics Committee over in the Senate.
So I guess we'll just have to wait and see if anything does come of it.
But Ruben Gallego, To his point, is denying any allegations that Luna has made against him, saying it's just a right-wing hit job.
And another thing I want to turn to before I go back to the Virginia redistricting here is the budget.
What is going on with that $1.5 trillion defense budget?
What issues might Speaker Johnson run up against you now that the House has a thin majority?
Of course, the levels are a little bit different now that Sheila McCormick resigned.
But what's happening with that?
Yeah, me and my colleagues reported, I believe, last week, that there are significant concerns amongst fiscal hawks about the $1.5 trillion budget requests.
They believe that this request is a lot.
They're not saying that they're outright going to vote no, but they are saying they have concerns and they want to see some pay force and they want to see more specifics about how to get this done.
And they would like to see this offset in some way, which is going to be really hard to do.
But defense budgets usually do pass along bipartisan lines.
Both Republicans and Democrats usually support defense.
But the issue here is a lot of Democrats are really against the war in Iran right now and have not seemed kind of willing to give Trump any more power or leeway or any kind of thing that could help him advance this war without coming to Congress first and kind of getting approval for it.
And so I could honestly see that this could run up into real trouble because a lot of Democrats do not seem keen to support anything that could go towards this war in Iran.
Another story that you broke this week was Labor Secretary Laurie Travis de Rimmer had resigned.
A Labor Department spokesperson didn't immediately respond to.
I'm looking now at a notice article.
But can you walk us through how this happened?
Obviously, my byline is also on the left.
A scoop from the budget.
But talk us through how this happened.
Obviously, she is the third woman to, a third cabinet official, also a woman, to be fired basically from the administration since January.
So she's been under intense investigation from Anthony Diasposita, who is the Inspector General of the Labor Department.
And there were significant allegations against Lori Chavez-DeReamer, specifically pertaining to her and her family's actions.
There was rumors that there were allegations that she had had an affair with one of her staffers.
There are allegations that her husband had sexually harassed women in the office.
He's actually, according to reporting, banned from the Labor Department's main office here in D.C. There's also text that the New York Times reported that showed Lori Chavez-DeReamer is bad texting Labor Department employees stuff that made them feel uncomfortable and sexual in nature.
And a lot of this just kind of played out.
And she was set to be interviewed by the Inspector General.
She's about to talk to Congress next week, where she definitely would have had to answer for these questions.
And I think it all just kind of lined up where she did not want to be questioned about this and be on the record about it.
So she resigned.
She claimed that this was a deep state attack against her, that people are coming after her.
The text messages, I don't know how her dad was, I mean, of course, if the New York Times reported it to be believed, her dad was texting people very sexually explicit things and making women there fear uncomfortable.
But it was only a matter of time whether before she was fired or resigned, and it appeared she chose to resign as we reported.
Before we turn back to Virginia, is there anyone that you believe in the administration that could be next, obviously, as the president is facing some low approval rates and we had turned head towards the midterm election?
I mean, there's a lot of reporting and circulation and rumors that he is kind of unhappy with some members of the cabinet Tulsi Gabbard is someone that routinely comes up.
But, I mean, Trump has been known to surprise people before.
And so who knows who kind of is next?
I mean, Tulsi is kind of just a person that you routinely hear rumors about and whispers that, oh, Trump's unhappy with how she's handling things.
But, I mean, to your point, while three cabinet members have left, Trump has been kind of weary of this go-around to fire people in his administration.
So, really, who knows where there is who's next?
All right, turning back to Virginia, obviously, those election results last night where voters approved voters approved lawmakers who are intending to put a 10-to-1 map in Democratic favor.
I want to turn now to Everett from Brawley, North Carolina, an independent.
Good morning, Everett.
I'm calling to speak about the same old tone with the last Representative Stutsman saying the both sides thing.
But if anything, we know that Donald Trump started the whole thing with trying to do the redistricting or whatever early, so it gave him an advantage.
So, Virginia did exactly what they were supposed to do.
So, he tried it, and then, okay, they're making him pay for it and whatnot.
So, in the future, nobody tries that again.
And another thing is, thank God for Senator Elizabeth Warren because they don't get things, they don't get to play games with her.
She really knows the numbers and whatnot.
So, they don't get to play games with her.
It's like the corruption and the cost that goes with Donald Trump is just utterly ridiculous and whatnot.
So, and if you, if you're a soldier, you don't even know what's going on, like he just keeps going back and forth.
It's on, it's not on, but it seemed like it's always.
Everett, I wonder if I can jump in here.
Reese is here, our reporter from Notice, who can answer any questions you have about, he's from Texas, so he can answer questions about the Texas redistricting or the Virginia redistricting.
I wonder if you have a question about it.
Yes, I don't see why there's such a big uproar being that Donald Trump started the whole redistricting thing in the first place and whatnot.
I don't see why it's still such a big uproar.
And another thing that is a problem with Americans is he gets to be corrupt, he gets to make your cost of living high and whatnot, but he's making his sons billionaires.
And one more thing, one more thing.
We spoke before when I said something about Biden bringing the inflation rate from 9.1 to 3%.
Why would I believe Donald Trump anything if he fired the lady or the people that would give the real numbers?
So, how can we possibly expect Donald Trump to give us real nibbles?
He can't even give us a real answer about what's going on in Iran.
And pretty much we both know that he lost.
All right, Everett, let me have Reese.
There was a lot of bites of those apples.
You take it however.
I'm going to talk about redistricting.
Republicans point to Republicans' claim is that Democrats started this in New York back in 2022 when they attempted this.
Obviously, the New York State Supreme Court threw it out and ruled that this was not allowed.
And so, that's how they point to it and say, but I mean, at least this campaign cycle, this election cycle, for this midterms, Republicans did start this redistricting cycle this midterm.
And they started in Texas.
They tried in Indiana, it failed.
I believe they were successful in North Carolina.
Democrats then fought back and said this is what they were doing.
And I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong in this instance, but I'm just saying that Republicans, for at least this midterms, did start the mid-cycle redistricting.
And we're seeing, I mean, they can honestly also finish it.
Florida, to your point, does vote to redistrict.
They do redraw their maps.
I mean, Republicans could come out on top in some way, shape, or form.
I know minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has vowed to, at the very least, kind of go after a lot of these members if Florida does redistrict, members who they believe would be vulnerable in a potential redistricting.
Voting Fraud Concerns Rise00:04:15
And so you could see Republicans do come out, might come out more on top of this if Florida does, in fact, do this.
And depending on how aggressive Ron DeSantis decides to get.
But yeah, I mean, it just depends on who you talk to.
Republicans do claim that Democrats started this back in 2022 in New York, which is accurate.
I mean, New York did attempt to redraw the map.
It was eventually blocked.
But as far as this midterm election is concerned, I mean, Republicans were the first to do it down in Texas.
All right, Rhys Gorman, Notice, politics reporter, Scoop Machine, and my colleague.
Thanks so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me on.
I appreciate it.
All right, guys, it's open forum where you can talk about any public policy or political issue on your mind.
Here are your numbers.
Republicans, you're at 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line, 202-748-8000.
Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
Start calling in now.
We can talk.
It's open forum.
I'll start with Latrice from Texas, a Republican.
Good morning, Latrice.
Good morning, Jazz.
You are so educated and so beautiful and just so informed anyway.
You are.
I have three antiquated issues, topics, really quick.
I won't be long.
Go ahead.
First of all, with the voting, okay?
The voting.
Anytime they talk about the voter fraud, they give either a disclaimer or a caveat.
And they usually will start out by saying it's not, it's against the law to do it.
It's against the law to do a lot of things that people do not adhere to.
So that alone falls on its face.
But what I want to say about that is I'm a retired beautician, and these are things that I know for certain without any type of immigration.
I had a 99-year-old client that got four Democrat ballots in the mail, four.
One was for her dead husband, one was for her, one was for her daughter, and her dog named Pim.
I can't make it up.
I would not lie.
So she had an opportunity there to vote, and she was Democrat, to vote there four different times.
The ballots came in the mail.
Also, I have relatives in the Chicago land area, and they live in the senior building.
They are so intimate with their mail carrier, which is normal.
But each of them could get seven, eight, nine ballots if they wanted to.
Democrats, they literally had a show on TV during that time during the COVID shutdown, and they were showing, they was trying to do like millionaires, you know, sponsoring people, what have you.
But they literally had showed the ladies stuff in all of these ballots.
And we know how, you know, culturally.
And then also concerning the voting, I know for a fact we had a friend that worked for the UPS.
And I know for a fact that in red districts, they would take ballots, buckets of ballots, and just dump them over on the side of the road.
So when they talk about fraud, they like to do a lot in terms of the, you know, the immigrants.
But it's so many more things.
And everybody knows that what you call the chain of custody and all of those things that nobody wants to answer.
So they either give a disclaimer or a caveat when they speak about voter fraud.
It is extreme.
And then the next thing real quickly, if you're young enough or old enough, Epstein Island was nothing more than Hugh Hefner.
It was the Playboy Ranch.
You had a lot of, and nobody goes back and asks, where were the parents who of these kids that somebody somehow was getting so whatever it was?
And have you seen these edifices?
Do you think that they were, I'm not saying that it didn't happen, but every single time you Google somebody, their name will mention again.
They talk about people who never even seen the island and want to call them in for questioning.
It's nothing but a diversion.
These are older women, and Melania skillfully said, if you want to talk about it, you come before Congress and you name the name.
And I'm not trying to be nasty or nothing, but every time they bring somebody in, they will ask them about questioning.
And I'm thinking to myself, them ladies don't know who they have sex with.
Why are you dragging them in?
Gerrymandering Process Reforms Needed00:07:56
Ken from West Virginia, Republican.
Yes.
Hi, Ken.
You're on the line.
It's open forum.
It's open forum.
Yes, I have a question for both you and the guests you have, although the television is not right in front of me right now.
Have either one of you ever read the Constitution, the Federal Constitution of the United States of America, yes or no?
Ken, I've had two separate guests on the show today, so I'm not quite sure who you're referring to.
From my understanding, senators are elected by popular vote.
They're not basically nominated and appointed or elected by their respective state congresses.
This is a violation of original intent, if I remember correctly, according to Article 1, Section 8 of the Federal Constitution.
And as a result, we have a populist government that's in violation of original intent, and therefore we have an unconstitutional government.
Our government is a government by the people.
This is the definition of a republic, which is structured by the authority of the people to fulfill the first principles of our government.
The word justice literally comes from the Sanskrit yos, I mean the Latin jus, which means right, and the Sanskrit yos, which means welfare.
Therefore, justice literally means right welfare.
Having said these things with regard to gerrymandering, I'm going to go back to the 1992 elections when Ross Perot threw his hat into the ring, so to speak.
And as a result, from what I remember, both the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee colluded to exclude third-party candidates from participating in the primaries unless they garnered 15% of the vote as a precondition for you in participating in the primaries, and therefore excluded the First Amendment rights under free association to participate according to their rights to exercise political speech.
This is evident with regard to the primary debates going on with regard to the gubernatorial races out in California that CNN basically is sponsoring in one way or another with regard to the two-party state, which the founders warned us against, as well as the corrosive effects of money upon the body politic.
One last point.
As a matter of solutions, solution-oriented media is preferred to anything that politicians have to resolve for us as a people, living in a polity based on rule by the people and therefore our conscience, which is defined as the moral faculty of the intellect.
Having said these things, there is no place basically for independents or other candidates otherwise who have a different party affiliation or political philosophy.
All right, Ken, I think we take your points there.
Nancy from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a Democrat.
You're next.
Good morning, Nancy.
Hi, good morning, Jasmine.
I, first of all, want to give glory to God for blessing me with another birthday today.
Happy birthday, Nancy.
Thank you.
But I want to first make clear to Trump followers that Democrats don't hate Trump.
We hate that he is profoundly unqualified for the presidency.
I also want to point out, Trump did not solve the immigration issue.
All he did was change the demographics.
If you think about it, we are still paying for the immigrants' housing, food, medical expenses.
The only difference is now they can't contribute to the economy because they're locked up in a Nazi-like concentration camp.
Does this make sense to anyone?
I also want to leave the listeners with a few Trump facts.
Although there are many more, it's a fact.
Trump's first term economy was great, which was President Obama's economy, not his.
Trump economy was the mishandling of COVID.
It's a fact.
Trump lost the 2020 election.
President Biden won 81 million votes, more than any presidential candidate in the U.S. history.
It's a fact.
Trump is a 34 convicted felony.
Felon.
It's a fact.
Trump has been mentioned over 5,000 times in the Epstein files.
It's a fact.
Trump administration are all DEI hires.
It's a fact.
All right, Nancy, I think we take your point there.
Ken from North Carolina and Independent.
Good morning, Ken.
Good morning.
Good morning, C-SPAN, and good morning, America.
First, to all veterans, past and present, thank you for your bravery and your service.
You know, when I was a kid, I was bused to school from my black neighborhood to a Jewish community.
At first, I had lots of fights because I thought I was tough, but I soon found out it's true.
Them Jew boys can play hard, too.
Shirley from Fort Myers, Florida, and Independent.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
Good morning.
I just wanted to say this whole thing with Virginia redistricting, it's not fair.
But if one side is going to do it, then the other side should too.
We should have our congressional districts drawn and not changed.
They shouldn't be picking their voters.
Voters need to pick who they vote for.
And it just seems unfair.
There's a better way to do this, and we've got to figure that out.
So no side gets an advantage, and the people actually have a voice in who they're voting for.
So let me ask you, Shirley, would you be in support or against of the state of Florida's efforts that are happening currently to add at maximum perhaps three more seats in their redistricting fight?
There's nothing that the state of Florida does that I agree with.
They are such a red state down here.
It's unfair because they have gerrymandered Florida, so you can't even recognize it anymore.
And it's insane that they're allowed to do this.
You know, our politicians work for us.
We don't work for them.
They need to remember that.
And maybe things would change if we changed the process.
I don't know.
Just my two cents.
All right, Shirley from Florida.
Greg from Bethesda, Maryland, a Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you for the opportunity to talk.
I just heard the previous caller talk about that maybe we need to rethink or sort of change the processes that we're working with here to get out of sort of the gerrymandering issue that's occurring across the country.
And I am curious about the opportunities that might exist for some more core sort of democratic reform, efforts that might come to sort of deploy either a more proportional representation system or perhaps even like a multi-member district sort of system here in the United States.
I realize that's sort of, that's a big list.
That's not an easy thing to do.
But I think no matter how we cut it, sort of the as long as we have the single member first past the post system, these issues are going to be remaining with us in regards to gerrymandering and sort of systems that are not terribly representational.
So that's all.
Thank you for your thank you for your time.
All right, Greg from Maryland.
Jackie.
All right.
Well, I want to turn to one last story before we end open forum here.
DHS Partial Shutdown Looming00:03:33
And that is that DHS will run out of money for salaries in early May, according to Mullen, who is the new DHS secretary.
If you allow me to scroll just a little bit here, it says, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen warned on Tuesday that his department will be unable to pay out employee salary starting in early May amid the ongoing partial government shutdown.
The lapse in funding, which impacts DHS's 22 agencies, has now stretched for a record 66 days.
So yes, this partial shutdown is still ongoing.
If I just scroll a little bit here, bear with me.
It says, Fortunately, what President Trump did through executive order allowed us to grab emergency funding that came out of the One Big Beautiful bill, but that money is dried up.
If I continue down this path the first week of May, Mullen said in an interview with Fox News, the president signed a memorandum earlier this month authorizing the release of $10 billion in emergency funds from the GOP's One Big Beautiful Act.
Last year, this pot of money was depleted less than $1.4 billion at the end of last week, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
Mullen explained that the department pays over $1.6 billion in wages every two weeks.
So that is the latest when it comes to the partial shutdown that is still ongoing as Republicans and Democrats on Congress figure out a way forward.
At the top of the hour this morning on the Washington Journal, we'll be joined by Democratic Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, will get her take on where the Iran conflict is heading and whether Congress needs to take a more active role in the war.
But first, after the break, retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies joins us on this high-stakes moment.
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Washington Journal continues.
Iran Negotiation Challenges Persist00:15:27
Joining us now to talk about the latest on Iran is retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, who is currently at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a senior fellow there.
Admiral, thank you so much for being with us this morning.
Thank you very much for having me, John.
All right, let's start with the latest news.
Obviously, yesterday the president announced that he was extending this ceasefire indefinitely.
What was your reaction, and what does this mean for the state of negotiations?
Well, look, I appreciated him doing that.
I think that gives the negotiations a chance.
I think it's still a big uphill slog on the negotiations.
But I appreciate if he had lifted this, you know, the kind of a really unilateral ceasefire at this point where, and the United States had begun combat operations again, I think it would have been very hard to get to a second round of negotiations.
You know, he said he did it at the request of the Pakistani leadership who are serving as intermediaries.
I suspect he did it because he would prefer a negotiated settlement to continued combat operations, which, while they're executed reasonably, you know, they're being executed properly by the U.S. military, they're not achieving the strategic end state that he wants, which is an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Council that's willing to give up its future nuclear weapon aspirations.
I wonder what it tells you, though, about the length of potential length because of these negotiations being extended, the ceasefire, excuse me, being extended.
What does it tell you about the potential length of this war?
Does it feel like it's entering into a phase of kind of an open-ended conflict?
I think, you know, right now we're at a, although there are some kinetic, very small kinetic things happening, I think we're basically at a stasis in terms of military operations.
We're not really conducting, you know, advanced combat operations.
I'm sure we're doing lots of targeting, lots of planning.
And I think to your question, it means this could be a while.
You know, the negotiations for the last time we had a nuclear kind of agreement with him were, you know, months into years at the table.
Obviously, that's not something that's acceptable to the president.
He wants days into weeks, you know, to resolve this.
So my suspicion is he's trying to push very hard for a solution in the short term to both the nuclear issue and the Straits of Hormuz issue.
Now, Iran has said that it wouldn't attend talks unless the U.S. abandons, quote, the threats.
There's reporting that the reason why JD Vance and other negotiators on the U.S. side didn't end up going to Pakistan was because they didn't get a final answer from Iran on whether or not their senior officials would actually attend.
Could you talk to us about whether or not the Iranian regime trusts the president and the Trump administration in these negotiations?
Oh, I'd say point blank, neither side trusts each other.
And, you know, the Iranian side for 47 years has earned a lack of trust from us.
I mean, this version of their government was spawned in the illegal seizure of a U.S. embassy.
That's the start of the regime, right?
So to be clear, they should not be trusted.
We have not trusted them.
Now, I would tell you, of late, this president has used rhetoric that's not helpful towards building trust.
The end of civilization, Red Art, rhetoric, the bombing every bridge and power plant.
Just if you pull that back a tiny bit, I mean, the truth is the United States as a country can't be negotiated with by the Iranians.
It's reasonable to trust us, but our rhetoric of late hasn't been helpful.
And we should not trust the Iranian regime.
There's a definite, as Ronald Reagan would say, trust but verify nature to any discussions with them.
Another issue that Iran has said that is a problem when it comes to negotiations is the ongoing U.S. naval blockade.
Iran has said it calls into question basically the seriousness of any negotiations.
Is it possible at this point for one side, the other side, or both sides to de-escalate?
It is.
Now, in fairness to the Trump administration, the blockade was imposed after it became clear that the Iranian definition of a free, you know, from the first ceasefire discussions, the Iranian definition of an open Straits of Hormuz was: vessels from countries we like can transit out on a transit scheme we dictate that comes very close to our military forces.
And the United States is like, no, that's not an open, that's not the internet, the definite, there's a definite, there's an actual internet maritime law definition of transit passes through international waterways, which Iran was immediately stayed in violation of.
That's when the president imposed the blockade.
That's the actual factual flow of events.
Now, look, the blockade's painful for them.
For the same reason, their blocking of the Straits of Hormuz is painful to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and more broadly, the Western economies, the world economy, because of fertilizers, oil, and LNG.
They were blocking that for 45 days, and they were continuing to block it after they selectively block it unless you paid a tariff or were from a country they liked.
So I get there was a tit for tat, and they both need to come off, but you could only both come off if you sit together at some place, probably Pakistan, and have a negotiated discussion.
It says at midnight on this date, we'll step back and you step back, and then we'll assess it.
And 24 hours later, if we've both backed off as agreed, we'll stand down.
That will allow merchant shipping and insurance companies to begin to make decisions about whether they want to take the risk of transiting through the Straits of Hormuz.
I mean, that risk is an important part here because just as we're talking, I'm reading a CNBC headline that says, Iran says it has seized two ships in the Strait of Hermuz after the U.S. extends the ceasefire.
Now, that comes after just a few hours ago they attacked two or three vessels within the Strait of Hermuz.
I mean, let's talk about this crucial waterway.
How crucial is it to unlocking the next step of negotiations?
And if there continues to be, say, Iran firing on vessels in the Strait or the U.S. boarding Iranian-flagged vessels in the Strait, how can those two sides come together with these type of inflection points?
Well, I mean, there's two big issues to be negotiated.
One is their maintenance of what's the status of enriched uranium in Iran, and the second is, and their pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
And the second is the Strait of Hormuz.
And they are crucial.
I'm sure you've had guests on that explain: 20% of world oil, a slightly higher percentage of LNG, liquefied natural gas, a chunk of the world's fertilizer, all flow through there.
So it has impacts on energy, on food production, on industrial capacity throughout the world.
So very important.
But The attacks by the Iranians, I don't worry about the timing of, you know, when the president says I'm going to send a ceasefire and something happens an hour later, their command and control on the Iranian side isn't such that things are tied that way.
There's a lack of knowledge at the lower level.
So I don't worry about that.
But the attacks earlier in the day, I mean, that was intentional.
That was we're going to punish ships that try to go through here.
They are imposing, as I said, a blockade of their own that slightly predates, I mean, it predates our blockade by 45 days, but then even in the context of the agreement coming out of the last meetings of Pakistan, predates the American naval blockade by a day.
So that has to stop.
And it stops through a negotiated agreement that, as I said, at midnight on this day, we both back off.
And then you'll have, then you could have flow.
Now, if I owned a merchant ship, if I insured a merchant ship, I'm not sure I'd volunteer to be first through the strait after that agreement, but I would eventually go through that straight.
Yeah, the insurance part is really key to this.
I want to talk about what's next for diplomatic efforts, but I want to invite our viewers to join in on the conversation.
We're talking about all things Iran, where the Admiral can answer your questions.
Republicans, your line's 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
We're here talking about Iran.
Now, on diplomacy, Admiral, obviously, when the peace talks pick back up, before it was expected that Vice President JD Vance, Special Envoy Steve Wipkopf, Jared Kushner, a volunteer, slash the president's son-in-law, would be leading the U.S. delegation.
But can you talk to us about who would be a part of these talks on the Iranian side?
Who is calling the shots?
And is there any merit to a narrative that the president actually put in a true social that Iran is fractured and thus questions about how they're actually able to make decisions with their current leadership?
So, yes, they are fractured in the sense that the IRGC Council led by the Major General, they use the son of the former Supreme Leader as a front man, but the reality is the Council runs the security of the country.
Now, there's a political ligature, you know, like a president, a foreign minister, you know, that run the, in theory, run the political and not the security end of the government.
You know, we don't have this kind of separation, but the reality is the security and the IRGC are the dominant force.
But the political end is the end at the discussions with us.
So, I think the president is alluding to the fact that he's not even sure that if he makes an agreement with the foreign minister, if it's of value and it gets back, and we saw that in slightly competing statements made by the political leadership of Iran versus the security, the IRGC leadership of Iran in the aftermath of the last discussions in Pakistan with Vice President Vance.
So, you can see that.
That'd be like if the White House put out one version of what happened in a meeting and the State Department put out a very different version, right?
I mean, I'm sure that's happened on occasion, but not at something as serious as this.
And so, that is a problem for us.
You know, we're negotiating with a group that we're not sure can implement what we agreed to when they get back to Tehran.
So, that's going to be a problem in these negotiations.
In other words, we agree that at midnight we'll do X, Y, and Z. You don't really know what's going to happen until you get to midnight and you see if X, Y, and Z really happen.
Right.
And there have been reports that after the initial strikes by the U.S. and Israel to take out kind of the first couple of rungs of leadership in Iran, the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, has amassed more power in the state than they had before.
How does that implicate conversations if what was once the branch that focused on security has more influence on the politics side?
You know, I think they've always had control over it.
They just haven't had to exercise that control over the political.
The security branch, the IRGC, they are the strongest.
You know, this is not a democracy.
It's an authoritarian regime.
And there's a third group in there that are mullahs that are more a religious leadership, but they, I think, have been deferential to the IRGC for years.
And with the death of the Supreme Leader, there's less of a check on the IRGC.
But they've always had the ability to assert control.
They have the tools of power domestically to enforce their will on the political leadership.
In other words, they can arrest the political leadership.
The political leadership cannot arrest them.
So, I mean, they've always had this power.
I think the war has forced it into the open and made it more clear.
And again, we're negotiating with the wrong team, effectively.
All right, let's hear some phone calls.
Joe from Pennsylvania, Democrat.
Good morning, Joe.
Good morning.
I kind of have two points that I want to make.
The first one is that two of the negotiators on the United States side have extensive connections to the Middle East and financial ties to the outcome of whatever comes out of this.
So that's one thing I'd like you to address.
The second thing is the entire world knows that Donald Trump can't be trusted.
He puts on tariffs.
He takes tariffs off.
He negotiates with you and then he attacks you.
Okay?
So who's the unreasonable person here?
I contend it's Donald Trump, more so than the Iranians.
Thank you.
So I'll take those one at a time.
The first one, I agree.
It is unusual and inappropriate that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kuchner have not, you know, separated themselves from their financial assets or their siblings or families' financial assets.
And it creates a massive conflict of interest every time they negotiate on behalf of us.
Where regardless if this is President Trump's, quote, style to use friends, his friends then have to make the sacrifice of becoming completely disconnected.
And Steve Witkoff's son, you know, and Jared Kushner himself and his brothers-in-law are aggressively conducting business in the Middle East with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and others.
That's inappropriate.
There's just no two ways about it.
I won't even get into the fact of whether they're actual professional negotiators on the issues of nuclear weapons or maritime law, which they're not in either case.
So I agree with that completely.
Trustworthiness Gap Between Nations00:11:23
And I think I would say the same if President Trump were a Democrat or Republican.
You just don't have that happen.
The second part of it, the president, first of all, there's still a big difference between the trustworthiness of the United States and Iran.
Iran took the opportunity to kill almost 1,000 American soldiers over the last 30 years in different conflicts by supplying weapons to our adversaries.
They relishing it.
They have tried to undermine the United States significantly over the last 47 years.
So in terms of trustworthiness, they're not trustworthy.
If you think Donald Trump's not trustworthy, by the way, he's act, then he's not, in your mind, he's not trustworthy.
But in the end, the two of these, the two parties, are going to have to come to an agreement on the way forward.
Tariffs are different than military power.
So whether or not you impose a tariff or not to protect your economy and whether that's wise or not, I'm not going to get into that discussion.
But I'll just say that's different.
How someone acts with terrorists is different than how they act with the imposition of force.
Having said that, I can understand why the Iranians would be nervous about making an agreement with President Trump.
I mean, from that standpoint, though, the President continues to retain the optionality to engage in more strikes if a deal is not reached.
He has said that the U.S. has already taken out Iran's Navy, the Air Force, multiple leaders, of course.
If the U.S. were to resume strikes, something that, to be frank, the President seems a bit reticent to do after he exceeded that ceasefire.
But if this were to happen, what else could the U.S. target?
Well, certainly there were remaining, there are two types of targets: deliberate targets and dynamic targets, ones you find on the fly.
My suspicion is they were still deliberate when he called ceasefire, the president did, there were still deliberate targets that they had, probably production facilities, stowage facilities that we still had not hit or needed to re-hit.
In addition, over the last two weeks, I imagine we've spent this time listening, observing, and figuring out where we were wrong.
Hey, there's more stowage here.
There's something you didn't know about there.
People like get on the phone and say, well, they didn't find us during that 45 days, and now we know where they are.
So there are legitimate military targets associated with the ballistic missile program, the drone programs, the nuclear program, even some of the maritime programs that are still strikable.
Plus, once we restart, they'll begin to move things, and you have dynamic targets that you can hit on the fly.
So they're legitimately targets.
There are still some legitimate military bridges used by the military.
There are still legitimate power stations because we have not hit them that are military-oriented.
The president's sweeping rhetoric that'll hit all of them is incorrect and wrong, and the military won't do that.
They'll target the U.S. military will target Iranian military-relevant bridges and power plants.
And there's a few of those.
So those are the kind of things you can add to it.
I personally wouldn't attack the power plants.
I'd hit the bridges.
We take down bridges all the time, and they really make things hard on our adversary militaries when we do it.
So that's what we have left.
It's probably not another 42 days' worth of strikes, but it's a week or two are probably clearly evident.
On the inverse, Iran has said that they have, quote, new cards ready if the U.S. begins bombing again.
What capabilities do they have after the U.S.'s successful military strikes?
I mean, their new cards probably aren't new weapons.
They're probably new targets that they would go after.
They still have some ballistic missiles left.
They still have, I think, a reasonable number of drones, you know, in the thousands of Shahed drones left.
They have mines still, some left.
You know, when we say we've knocked out 90% of mines, that still would leave, you know, a thousand mines.
You know, if we've knocked out 80 to 90 percent of their drones, that's left several thousand drones still available.
I think their new cards would be new target sets, like trying to hit more public health and safety-critical infrastructure in the Arab states.
They've already, you know, they don't target the way we do.
They do intentionally target civilian-only infrastructure, hotels, water desalinization plants, things like that.
So that's where I think they would head again.
That kind of, you know, to try to impact America's Arab partners, particularly, they have particularly venom for the United Arab Emirates.
They've hit them 60% of their weapons that were lobbed at the Arab countries went at the United Arab Emirates, who Iran has long-standing grievances with.
All right.
Ed from Connecticut, a Republican.
Good morning, Ed.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
Given today's technology, could the United States, if we chose, implement a close blockade on their Iran's facilities, their ports, et cetera, without risking our ships?
Yeah, that's a great question.
That is what we're doing right now.
Basically, I mean, I wouldn't describe it as close, but it is an enforceable blockade.
Do I think there'll be a case of an Iranian ship or two moving between Iranian ports or from an Iranian port to a Pakistani port potentially that's very close to adjoining the Torah country?
Potentially.
But the reality is Iranian fossil fuel, which is oil, which comes out, which feeds their economy to the tune of about $14 or $15 billion a month.
We're going to block that.
We are blocking that.
And it's mostly on illegal shadow fleet transport ships, merchant ships, and we're stopping them and turning them back.
And they're not going to India and to China, who are illegally buying this sanctioned oil at usually at depressed prices, at good deals for India and China.
We're blocking that.
So we are enforcing that.
And in fact, I think we'll find that the ship that we put the five-inch round in, or several of them, the Tuska, is going to be carrying weapons-grade supplies, supplies for future military weapons from third parties, probably mostly China, into Iran.
So we are going to be able to block the goes into and the goes out of.
And Iran will feel this.
Now, at the same time, they're impacting the world economy.
The difference is the world economy still has 80% of its oil and natural gas and other solutions.
Iran at this point has almost no other financial input into its economy other than fossil fuel sales because the rest of the economy we've disrupted through our airstrikes.
So if this game plays out over months, the Iranians are going to be in a terrific financial burden, no matter whether you're the IRGC, who, by the way, has profited significantly from their economy.
A lot of IRGC members have bank accounts outside of Iran in the Middle East and in the Caribbean and elsewhere.
They've gotten wealthy.
We're blocking that.
And it's bad for the Iranian economy.
It's even bad for the IRGC.
Kirk from Oklahoma, a Democrat.
You're next, Kirk.
Good morning, Arant.
Two questions I want to ask About the nuclear deals that Obama did do.
Trump get out of it.
He didn't replace one before he get out of one.
And now here we are.
But the question I really, really need to ask: I need this military person to tell the American people that it's a farce that they think that Iran is a threat to the United States when America have nuclear weapons in Turkey.
Look on a map and see where Turkey and Iran lies.
And for America, who have 5,000 nuclear bombs, think that Iran, who doesn't have one, is a big threat, is a farce.
And I can't believe a military person who knows Iran is no threat to nobody is really propagating all this nonsense.
And Iran is still getting supplies from the Caspian Sea.
So when you guys think that you're blocking them in the Strait of Hamus, try that in the Caspian Sea.
Okay, let's have the Admiral answer that question, Kirk.
So those are good points.
I will say, if you look at the Caspian Sea, there's a number of sunken ships from the Israelis that occurred over the last 45 days.
So I don't know that there's a lot of resupply going into the Caspian.
And if we saw it start to happen, I think the United States might allow Israel to resolve that issue.
As to whether Iran's a threat to the United States or not, I would say there's about a thousand American Gold Star families who are going to disagree greatly with the last caller, right?
So the Iranians killed 1,000 Americans through proxies or directly with their own weapon systems when we were not in a conflict with Iran from 1983 to 2019 or 20.
So they have worked hard against U.S. interests.
Whether you consider that a threat to the United States, I would say it's fair to say they're not an existential threat to the United States, the way, say, Russia or China is with their nuclear weapons.
But they are a threat to the United States.
Now, whether they were a threat that required this air campaign, you can debate that.
You might have a good argument.
But while they're not an existential threat, they are a persistent and real threat.
And every president, President Biden, President Trump, President Obama, President Bush, all the way back through Clinton, have all made this argument.
So this is the bipartisan belief that Iran is a threat to the United States.
That doesn't mean they're an existential threat, which I think possibly is what your call is referring to, but they are a threat to the United States, and they've gone out of their way to kill Americans.
That's why we attacked General Suleimani at the airport in Iraq in 2020, was that he was personally responsible for many of those deaths.
All right, retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Thank you so much for being with us this morning.
War Powers Resolution Debate00:14:44
Thank you for having me.
Up next, we'll continue our conversation on this high-stakes moment in the Iranian conflict with Democratic Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander, a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Stay with us.
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Washington Journal continues.
Joining us now to continue our conversation on Iran is New Hampshire Representative Maggie Goodlander.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Great to be with you.
Thanks so much for having me.
All right, you serve on the Armed Services Committee.
What was your reaction to the President's announcement last night that he would extend the ceasefire with Iran indefinitely?
Jasmine, it's been a very challenging and frankly tragic 50-plus days of this president's war of choice.
You know, yesterday alone, we heard the president go from threatening to bomb Iran to calling for an indefinite extension of this ceasefire.
My concern is that this has been the least transparent war in American history.
The president has not made his case to Congress.
His Secretary of Defense has not come before our committee, the House Armed Services Committee.
And the American people deserve answers to the most basic questions that any commander-in-chief has got to be able to answer.
What are our objectives here?
And how does this end well for the American people?
Because so far, the costs of this war have been sky-high for hardworking people who are feeling it at the gas pump, at the grocery store, at the pharmacy.
And we've seen 11, 14 American patriots give their lives in this war.
Hundreds wounded.
We need answers and we need accountability.
Are you concerned that this is entering an open-ended conflict version of the war now as we get closer to that 60-day threshold under the War Powers Act?
I'm very concerned because, again, you know, the president did not answer the most basic questions about what his objectives are and what the United States of America is prepared to do.
And that is a recipe for disaster and a recipe for tragedy.
So I'm extremely concerned, and I really believe deep in my bones that every member of Congress should be forced to vote on this war every single day that it continues.
We'll get into that a little bit in a second, but I just want to ask because before that ceasefire was announced, it was expected that Vice President JD Vance, along with Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, would have gone to Islamaban for that second round of negotiations.
Obviously, that didn't happen.
And since then, we've seen Iran say that they've seized two ships, they've attacked others.
Do you have confidence in this administration and the negotiating team led by JD Vance to find an off-ramp of this war and to de-escalate these escalations that we've seen just in the last 24 hours?
Look, the tragedy and challenge as I see it is we, as I sit here now, and I don't think the American public has any idea why we abandoned diplomacy in the first place.
You know, the president launched this war of choice.
He never explained why negotiations were underway, why he abandoned diplomacy on the front end.
And it's very hard for me to see a path right now.
We need serious people who are focused on bringing this war of choice to a resolution that's going to keep the American people safe and that's going to make sure that hardworking people don't continue to get crushed by sky-high costs that are a direct result of this war.
Now, Congresswoman, you have supported past House war resolutions on Iran.
Those, of course, have all failed.
And you posted on X last week something similar to what you just said that every member of Congress should be forced to vote every day on the President's war of choice in Iran as long as it continues.
Can you walk our viewers through what happens next, particularly for those who are critical of the war in Iran and want to see it end?
Look, under, I bring my Constitution with me everywhere I go.
In this job, it's extremely important on questions big and small.
But when you take a look at our responsibilities, the responsibilities of the United States Congress under the Constitution, the responsibility to declare war and our many responsibilities over our military are top, top, top in the responsibilities of Congress.
And so, look, the president came to the House of Representatives, to the House floor.
He gave the longest State of the Union in American history.
He dedicated very little time to Iran other than saying that we had completely obliterated their nuclear program.
And a matter of hours later, he launched this war.
Now, we've got a war powers resolution that makes clear the president is time limited in his ability to wage these wars, any war, and this war in particular.
And we're coming up on a 60-day deadline where many members on a bipartisan basis have said that this cannot continue without congressional authorization.
And I believe deeply in that position because we've seen this movie before.
We've seen in our recent history what it looks like when we don't have a clear objective in mind and when trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives are put on the line and are given up in wars of choice that end up being forever wars.
These are the most consequential decisions that any government can make.
And there are very good reasons why the framers of our Constitution gave Congress these powers.
It's time for us to use them.
But in terms of what lawmakers are prepared to do, obviously Republican Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick has a bill that would mandate an end to the war after 60 days and that would force President Trump to remove armed, remove some of the already military assets in the Middle East after that 60-day threshold.
We had Republican Marlon Stutzman on earlier who said that he wasn't in support of that bill.
Is there support for a bill like that on the Hill right now after that 60-day threshold, which is on Wednesday?
The last time we voted on this, a few days ago, this was we lost by one vote.
And so I think that there is a, and I hope that there continues to be a strong bipartisan consensus around the basic proposition that we shouldn't be sending boots on the ground into this conflict and that Congress has got to check the powers of the president.
And the president's going to be coming to the Congress with his budget for the Department of Defense, which is $1.5 trillion.
It's our job to be accountable. to the American people and to make sure that this president is held accountable for every dollar that is spent in this war and every American life that's put on the line.
Is a budget a place where Democrats are looking like they can take action to impact the president's military processes or policies, excuse me, in Iran and the region?
Obviously, you just mentioned that $1.5 trillion number.
Look, we are at nearly $40 trillion for a national debt clock, and I watch that closely.
I serve on the House Armed Services Committee.
It's my job to hold the Pentagon to account.
And where I come from, any institution, big or small, has got to be able to pass a basic test of credibility.
So to me, an audit is absolutely mission critical.
And what we've seen from the Department of Defense is a chronic failure to pass a clean audit.
And that's outrageous in a moment when the president is asking for $1.5 trillion for the Department of Defense.
So I will use every tool available to me, and I will rigorously scrutinize every line item in this budget because right now people are feeling so much pain.
And the president's saying he can't afford to spend on health care.
He said Medicare, Medicaid, child care, we can't afford this because we're fighting wars.
Well, look, budgets are a statement of values, and I'm going to bring the values and the priorities of the people who I represent.
And that means lowering the sky-high cost of living and not getting this country mired in another forever war that gets us nowhere but costs us in lives and in taxpayer dollars.
I want to ask you more about the war and some other newsy topics this morning, but first I want to invite more of our viewers to join in on the conversation.
Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000.
Independents, your line, 202-748-8002.
Start calling in.
You can ask the Congresswoman a lot of questions.
Back on the war, though, you served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve for 11 years, and you also joined a video earlier this year with five other lawmakers urging military members and intelligence community officials not to comply with unlawful orders.
The Trump DOJ tried and failed to indict you all that participated.
Can you walk us through what you learned about that experience and what kind of response did you get from people inside of the military and inside of Intel communities after that video?
We're living through a moment where our most basic principles as a country, our systems of government, are being tested in ways that we've never seen before.
This is the least transparent Pentagon in American history.
And one of the first things that the Secretary of Defense did when he was confirmed to that position was to get rid of the most senior and experienced military lawyers.
And so there's been deep concern, I think, across the board from veterans, from service members, about this basic approach that the Secretary of Defense has taken.
He has and been very public about his disdain for the law.
When he came before the House Armed Services Committee, I asked him a very simple question that has one answer and one answer only.
Asked him if he would abide by a decision of the United States Supreme Court if he were asked to do so.
And he refused to commit to doing so, which should shock the conscience of every freedom-loving American.
You know, we decided as a country after the Second World War that we wanted to be a country where our military is not blindly obedient, where our military is accountable and follows the law.
And Congress took action, and we passed in the Uniform Code of Military Justice a very clear, and I believe bedrock American principle that our service members follow lawful orders and lawful orders only.
This is a principle that's been repeated throughout our history.
It's something that former Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote in a Supreme Court brief.
It's something that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has repeated.
This is a basic principle.
So for the president to have reacted to a clear statement of the law in the way that he did, and he became completely unglued by it.
You know, he said that we should be investigated, we should be prosecuted, he said we should be hanged for simply repeating a bedrock principle of American law.
And that, to me, is heartbreaking.
But the fact is that the response of Coming After Us was designed to intimidate us, it was designed to silence us.
But it won't work because I believe in the First Amendment and I believe in my duty to uphold this Constitution.
And that is something I will continue to do every day that I'm honored to serve the people in New Hampshire.
Have you heard a response from the military and Intel community since that video went out, went viral, and then the administration's response?
You know, we have witnesses who come before our committee who all agree to this principle.
I think this has been a principle that has been so embedded in who we are as Americans and so embedded in our military, but it has been essential to repeat it in the last year because we have a president who threatened to eliminate an entire civilization, to use his own words, in public.
He's making the most outrageous threats, and he's testing the boundaries of our Constitution and of our laws, including our most basic and bedrock laws.
So I think any person who comes to this in good faith can understand why this is an important principle to repeat.
All right, let's hear some phone calls.
House Accountability Moment Arrives00:15:56
Leo from New Hampshire and Independent.
Good morning.
I am proud to have voted for you, ma'am.
I think the way to de rail this crazy train is through the Epstein files.
Have you at any time sat down and looked at the dedacted files at all?
And because of your background, I would hope that the Congress would cut you loose, that that's all you'd be doing is looking at these things.
Because this, I believe, is the key to most of what's happening in the world today.
It's one distraction after another, as far as I'm concerned.
There's more to meet the eye here.
No one's allowed to look at it.
And whatever happened to the law, the law was, it was supposed to be all redacted.
I mean, all of it was supposed to be released.
And I find the new Attorney General is doing his job for Donald Trump.
Have a good day, ma'am, and you keep up the good work.
Well, thank you so much, Leo.
And I'm glad you raised this because this is an issue that matters deeply to me personally and that matters to people all across our state and our country.
This goes to the basic transparency that the American people deserve.
And I was really proud to serve at the Department of Justice before I got to Congress.
And the effort that we undertook to get the Epstein Files Transparency Act across the finish line was, to me, a model for how we're going to have to work under this Speaker of the House, who was hell-bent on obstructing this common sense bipartisan legislation, which required the release and transparency around these documents.
And, you know, having talked to people who have experienced this firsthand, to survivors, to advocates, who have been in the fight for justice, this is something we were able to get done.
We got it done by good old-fashioned collection of signatures on the floor of the House through a discharge petition.
But as you point out, Leo, the President and his administration and his deputies at the Department of Justice, which has very sadly become his own political arm.
They serve at his pleasure, and I've seen that firsthand.
They have made it very difficult for us to, first of all, they haven't complied with the law and released all the files.
And they've made it extremely burdensome for members of Congress and for the public to get the transparency that this law absolutely demands.
So we're going to continue to be relentless in pursuing this.
This was a bipartisan effort, and we're going to continue to keep it that way.
And I won't give up because this goes to, I think, why so many Americans do not have trust in their government.
When there is not accountability, when there are different rules of the road for the rich and powerful, when this is the opposite of what is promised to you in our Constitution.
No one is above the law, and the Justice Department should be pursuing the facts and the law without fear or favor.
That's not happening now, but I can tell you in Congress, I will be relentless in pursuing the truth and in pursuing justice.
I wonder Toy's question, though, have you been able to see any of the unreductive files?
So the process that the Justice Department has set up, and I'm in a very unusual situation vis-a-vis the Justice Department, since, as you pointed out earlier, they tried to secure an indictment before a grand jury in response to me repeating a basic principle of law.
They've made it extremely cumbersome.
And my focus right now is making sure that we get the files released in their entirety.
It's a reason that I really believe we need to get the majority back in the House of Representatives so that we've got the gavels and the ability to bring the transparency of these files that the American people deserve.
Unfortunately, the Justice Department has made it extremely difficult and cumbersome for us to do basic oversight, and they haven't complied with the law, and we've got to make sure that that happens.
Hard switch here on topics, but since you mentioned the majority, obviously there was the vote special election in Virginia last night in which voters Approved lawmakers there in changing the congressional map to perhaps a 10-to-1 Democratic favor, eliminating about four seats.
Virginia is a purple state.
I wonder what you say to critics, including some that we've heard on the program this morning, that that new map would take away a voice for Republicans in the state.
You know, the president has been clear about his intentions with respect to this election, not just on the maps, but on disenfranchising eligible voters and not being clear that he supports a free and fair election this November, which his track record with respect to elections couldn't be worse and couldn't be more bone-chilling from my perspective.
What happened in Virginia last night, this was taken to the voters.
This was a decision by the people of Virginia.
And to me, it reflects, I think, a real concern about what we're seeing in this country and what the president's intentions are with respect to the election.
It also reflects a really deep dissatisfaction and a real feeling that the president campaigned on a set of promises that he has systematically broken, from his promise to lower costs, which he has absolutely abandoned, to his promise not to wage forever wars, which he's also abandoning each and every day that we see this war of choice in Iran continue.
So, this was the will of the voters of Virginia.
And I think this is a reflection of a real desire in this country to have a check on a president who really believes that he is above the law.
And in his own words, he believes he's checked only by his own morality, which is just not how any person of good faith could read the Constitution.
I guess the question, though, is where does this end?
Virginia voted last night.
Theoretically, Florida could move to add three more Republican seats with their efforts to redistrict perhaps another Democratic state response.
But this kind of tit for tat before the midterm elections, where do you see it ending?
And should both parties stop now because we're at a sort of parody?
You know, my focus is on ensuring that we've got a free and fair election on November 3rd of this year.
And this is going to be the most harrowing stretch in the lead up to any election in our lifetimes.
And it's an extremely important election.
And between now and then, states will make their decisions about how their maps will be drawn.
My focus is on ensuring that every eligible American voter can cast their ballots and have those ballots counted, and that they're not obstructed at the polls, and that we don't see the kind of threats and violence in response to a free and fair election like what we saw on January 6th, 2021.
All right, let's turn to some more phone calls.
John from Princeton, New Jersey, a Republican.
You're next.
Good morning, John.
Good morning.
I've listened to the program with a lot of interest, and it's very informative.
I do have a question for Representative Goodlander.
She made a couple of statements that I find very disconcerting about President Trump's decision to take military action against Iran.
The previous guest, the Admiral, was very, very knowledgeable, and he said Iran has killed over a thousand American servicemen in the past 15 to 20 years.
I have had two sons who served in Iraq.
Both of them, one of them knew a personal friend who was killed by an IUD.
My other son said they were constantly coming up against insurgents with Iranian military equipment.
They've been our enemy, mortal enemy, for years.
And also, the comment by the representative seems so naive.
She says, about there's no threat, war of choice.
Is she aware that the Biden administration and the Obama administration signed agreements with Iran not to construct nuclear weapons?
And when the Trump administration sent their representatives over, the Iranian officials boasted about their nuclear material and that, according to experts, within two to three months, they would have the capacity to produce some of this stuff.
The threat to the United States is...
Okay, John, that's a lot there.
Do you have a direct question or do you want her to respond to what you've said so far?
How can she say that there was no threat when all the evidence is so obvious?
All right.
Well, John, thank you for your question and thank you and your family for your service to our country.
And no one knows more deeply than the parents of our service members, the loved ones of our service members, that freedom isn't free.
And from the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you for what your family has done for our country.
You know, I come to this work having served in the Navy and having early in my career, where I saw firsthand the threats that the Iranian regime posed to our country.
Iran, let me be crystal clear, the Iranian regime is a brutal and determined enemy of the United States of America.
They have the blood of American service members on their hands.
And I believe deeply that the Iranian regime can never, ever be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon.
That's why throughout my entire career, I have been focused on using every tool available to us to prevent that from happening, from being a part of writing the very first comprehensive bipartisan sanctions bill to hold the Iranian regime accountable to the work I'm doing now to tighten every avenue to prevent this from happening.
The tragedy to me of the president's decision to launch this war unilaterally and without the support of Congress was that if the president had made his case to the Congress, which he had an opportunity to do just a matter of hours before he launched this war, he came and delivered the longest State of the Union in American history.
I've been saying for weeks, you know, the president should make his case to Congress, and he's got bipartisan, bicameral support for the basic proposition that the Iranian regime should never get a nuclear weapon.
Unfortunately, that's not the avenue that he went down.
And my real concern is that we've given up massive ground in our effort to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon.
We've seen an Iranian regime become more emboldened and for the first time in our history, using a massive asymmetric strategic advantage, which is control of the Strait of Hormuz, to punish the American people and to undermine our basic safety, economic security, and national security.
So I have no illusions about how brutal, how determined this regime is.
And this is, to me, the real tragedy and the real frustration that I have with the way that the president has conducted this war in Iran because he did not get the support of the Congress and he has not been clear about his objectives.
And I'm very concerned that he's going to negotiate away our most basic red lines around Iran not getting a nuclear weapon.
I want to ask you about some domestic issues now on Capitol Hill.
Just yesterday, we saw the indicted Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Scherfalis-Marcormick resigned after, or excuse me, before an expected release of a House Ethics Committee report investigating her actions into the misappropriations of funds.
I'm going to ask you what I asked the Congressman earlier this morning, which is that most ethics committee investigations end when a member resigns.
Is that the proper way to proceed when trying to find accountability if the allegations warrant that?
You know, I think here we have a case where the ethics committee conducted a thorough investigation.
We saw a parallel criminal investigation underway.
To me, accountability cannot stop with the ethics committee, and it won't in this case.
And my view is when you take a look at what's happening in the House of Representatives right now, we've got to clean house.
We have got to make sure that the people who are serving there are accountable and held accountable for any misconduct.
And what we've seen in the cases, in four separate cases in recent weeks, are gaps and failures in how allegations of abuse get reported and how accountability is delivered within the House of Representatives.
So I really believe that this is a moment of reckoning for the House.
And I'm laser focused on making sure that we've got the rules and the systems in place to ensure that members of this body are held accountable.
I want to ask you more about specific ethics committee processes in a second.
But just for the specific people we're talking about, obviously former Republican Congressman Tony Gonzalez resigned last week after allegations of sexual misconduct.
The same with Democratic member Eric Swalwell.
That was before either of those ethics committees had really even gotten underway.
But we still have Congressman Corey Mills, who is under an ethics committee investigation at the moment for sexual misconduct and dating or and or dating violence.
One of your Republican law colleagues, Nancy Mace, has introduced a resolution to expel Congressman Mills.
Would you support that?
I'm very disturbed by the allegations against Corey Mills.
You know, when you take a look at what's happened here and the record as I see it, I don't serve on the ethics committee and I'm not privy to any information that's not public.
But I believe Corey Mills should resign based on the allegations that have already been made public, based on judicial decisions from judges in the state of Florida and what appears to be a really disturbing pattern of misconduct, both sexual misconduct and also conduct as it relates to campaign finance and how he runs his operation.
Ethics Committee Gaps Exposed00:02:37
This public trust depends on a real belief in accountability and that public funds aren't going to be misused.
Just a quick question, though, since we are out of time.
I just want to ask you that, you know, when we're talking about the ethics committee processes regarding allegations against members, does that process need to be changed, expedited?
And if women are watching, obviously someone like Eric Swaller, Tony Gonzalez, or even perhaps Corey Mills, is there a feeling that sexual harassment or misconduct allegations or the complaints to be able to even make those allegations, are they being taken seriously on the Hill?
I think there are real gaps.
There are obvious gaps.
Anyone who's watched this can see that genuine allegations that should have been immediately and easily reported and investigated went unaccounted for for years.
And so I really believe we've got a lot of work to do to clean up the systems and to clean house in the people's house.
You know, I think that's actually true across government.
You know, I've served in all three branches of government.
And when I take a look at the judiciary, it's a similar pattern and a similar set of gaps.
You know, right now, the United States Supreme Court doesn't have a binding code of conduct or ethics.
That's outrageous for any American who wants to make sure that people in the most powerful positions of public trust can be held accountable.
That doesn't exist right now.
It's a massive gap, and Congress can do something about it.
And that's what I'm really focused on doing all across our government because this, at the end of the day, is what public trust depends on.
All right, Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander of the House Armed Services Committee from New Hampshire.
Thank you so much for being with us this morning.
Thanks so much for having me.
And more of your phone calls after the break in open forum.
So start calling in now.
Here are your lines.
Republicans.
Your line is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line, 202-748-8000.
And Independents, your line is 202-748-8002.
Start calling in now.
You look back on what you've achieved in your life.
What makes you the happiest of what you've achieved so far?
This interview is the absolute apex.
Leaders seem to like to wear wigs.
How come he didn't have a wig?
Senate Hearing Live Stream Watch00:02:10
President Trump said, I made a mistake the first time.
I should have given it to you the first time.
That isn't what he said.
Your first book was called A Time to Kill.
How many publishers turned that down?
Well, all of them.
It's very rare to see Donald Trump laugh.
He doesn't like to smile.
He has what they call the stare.
How would the stare?
When you go to the Oscars that everybody's saying, oh, there's the author.
All the beautiful people go this way.
And then they have another little path in the Oscars where the people like I go.
So you wrote a book about somebody who lived with wolves.
I interviewed a guy who lived with wolves.
Yep.
And is that safe to do that?
Absolutely not.
So I know you were not complaining.
You were opinionated about the situation.
Which is why we love you, David.
We bring you into the chamber, onto the Senate floor, inside the hearing room, up to the mic, and to the desk in the Oval Office.
C-SPAN takes you where decisions are made.
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C-SPAN is your unfiltered connection to American democracy.
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Donate today at c-span.org forward slash donate.
Together, we keep democracy in view.
Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We are now in open forum where you can talk about any public policy or political issue on your mind.
To start, I have some programming notes for you guys.
At 10 a.m., Treasury Secretary Scott Besant is on Capitol Hill to testify on his agency's 2027 budget request and the Trump administration's economic policies.
Watch the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing live at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3.
And also on C-SPAN 3, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies on U.S. health policy and his department's budget request for next year.
Watch the Senate Health Committee hearing live at 2 p.m. Eastern.
And you can also watch these events on our app, C-SPANNOW, and online at c-span.org.
That is today.
And now we are in open forum.
Colorado Springs Caller Questions00:02:38
Mike from Indianapolis and Independent.
Good morning, Mike.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
I wanted to speak to the Congresswoman and thank her for her service, but two points that I wanted to make.
Number one, I agree with the caller, John.
If someone has a gun to your head and says, I've got 900 pounds of renovation uranium that's indebted for a nuclear bomb, do you wait till the bomb goes off or do you try to neutralize the person first?
I mean, she's a combat veteran or been in war.
I think most people say you try to neutralize the threat.
The second question is: she mentioned the word bipartisan multiple times during her speech or during her talk.
I wanted to ask a specific question, and maybe you can have someone answer.
How many times has the congresswoman voted for legislation that was sponsored by a Republican first instead of trying to sponsor them with Democrats and then trying to get Republicans to vote with them?
I appreciate your comments and look forward to other comments from other callers.
Thank you.
All right, Mike from Indianapolis.
Phil from Colorado Springs and Independent.
Good morning, Phil.
Well, good morning.
Yeah, I had a comment.
Sure, Iran's an enemy of ours, and they've been an enemy for a long time, but people seem to forget that during 9/11, most of those hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, and then the Saudi Arabian government ordered the butcher of Khashoggi.
But now, Saudi Arabia is our best friend.
And so, who's going to benefit from us taking care of Iran when Saudi Arabia and Iran seem to be wanting that conflict?
Because Iran's going to be a powerhouse in the Middle East, and Saudi doesn't like that.
That's my comment.
All right, Phil from Colorado Springs.
Roxanne from Stockton, California, and Independent.
Good morning, Roxanne.
Good morning.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
How are you?
Fine.
My question was just to the representative you had on earlier: I always hear about Trump not getting the Congress approval for the war,
but I never hear them talk about when Obama didn't have approval, and that seems to be okay for approval for what specifically?
Libya War Powers Authorization00:02:34
When he went into Libya, okay, keep going with your comments.
Sorry.
Yeah, it's okay.
It's just that nothing, you know, they always bring up Trump, but let's play fair here and say it's been done a few times.
This isn't anything new.
I'm 74.
Trust me, I've seen a lot go on with different presidents.
And I just would like people to play a little fairer.
That's all.
You know, I was raised a Democrat.
I'm now an independent.
Just don't like the way things are moving.
That's all.
Let me read an article from 2011, Roxanne.
The headline, it's a BBC article published in June 2011.
And it says, White House, U.S. quote, can act in Libya without Congress.
Bear with me while I just scroll a little bit.
It says, President Barack Obama does not need congressional approval for the U.S. to continue its role in the NATO-led Libya mission, the White House has said.
In a 32-page document, the White House said the president already had legal authority to order forces into Libya.
A Vietnam War-era law states Congress must authorize participation in hostilities longer than 60 days.
Members of Congress have accused Mr. Obama of violating that law since 20 May when the 60-day deadline ended, limited in nature.
In the report delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the White House argues that the U.S. forces involved in the NATO campaign are merely playing a supporting role.
That role, the White House says, does not match the definition of, quote, hostilities as described under a 1973 law that constrains the U.S. President's ability to wage military conflict.
Quote, the President is of the view that the current U.S. military operations in Libya are consistent with the war powers resolution and do not, under that law, require further congressional authorization.
U.S. military operations are distinct from the kind of hostilities contemplated by the resolution 60-day threshold.
So that is an article that explains the 2011 Libya that the former colleague, former caller was speaking about.
Social Security Call In Segment00:08:26
Edward from Opaloka, Florida, a Democrat.
Okay, tell me if I said that one right.
Good morning.
Good morning, Opa Loka, right?
Yes, ma'am.
Opa Laca, Miami Gardens.
Okay, now it's Opa Locka.
Okay.
Every time I say it wrong.
All right.
Good morning, Edward.
Go ahead.
It's open forum.
Yes, ma'am.
Good morning.
Thank you for having me.
And I think everybody mentioned, they always be mentioning the 47 years, but they don't go back in the 50s when Iran was a democracy.
And Iran got, there was a coup.
The CIA, U.S., and the British.
They overthrew, and what they overthrew Iran for was about the ore.
They were trying to get the ore.
And the United States, best country in the world, but they do some tacky things.
There's no accountability on any side.
Democrats are Republicans.
Independence, the free fall.
But it's a free fall for all.
All about power and money.
And from the Supreme Court on down, there is no accountability in America anymore.
Thank you for having me.
All right, that's Edward.
Margie from Pennsylvania, a Republican.
Good.
Good morning.
Good morning, Margie.
Good morning.
Well, I thought I'd kind of flip it a little bit and talk about something else.
You got it.
It's open forum.
Thank you.
In this kind of fast food society, it's hard for anyone to wait five minutes, let alone a while, for tariffs to take effect.
And unfortunately, the media seldom covers good news, especially any good news from this administration.
But now we're up to four new and three with billions invested of car manufacturers coming back to the United States.
So that's certainly a newsworthy item that we would have heard about.
And there's so much other good news in the United States.
There was a Coast Guard boat that got 22,000 pounds of cocaine.
And I didn't, I saw one little thing in a tiny spot in the Wall Street Journal.
And there's rare earth mines expanding so that we don't have to depend on other countries.
So, you know, prices go up.
Prices have always gone up.
I was born very, very poor.
And often a can of spam was our meat for the night, sliced into six slices.
And so it was 25 cents.
Well, I bought some the other day.
I'm still crazy about it.
And it was $4.19.
So prices go up.
Gas goes up.
A dollar a gallon seems a small price to pay to get rid of a very, very dangerous adversary in the world.
So I just wanted to bring that up.
There is good news out there.
Might be a nice thing for a C-SPAN to do.
What's good news in your area?
Oh, and another person, you know, there's a Matthew Burns that was on 60 Minutes talking about in 1994, we went in and removed some nuclear things from Iran.
He was very interesting.
That might be a good guess.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for calling in, Margie.
Warren from Tallahassee, Florida, an independent.
Good morning, Warren.
Thank you for taking my call.
First of all, I want to commend you for the job you're doing.
This is a very difficult job being an African-American trying to appease the media.
I see the stress that nobody talks about that you're under trying to play it fair.
You're doing as good a job as a person probably can do.
With that being said, I just would like to say that it's striking that with all the information coming in on the media, even C-SPAN, as Americans, we're being limited.
Now that Trump has cut a billion dollars from C-SPAN, what we're seeing, it's almost like C-SPAN is starting to capitulate because of the pressure of the Trump administration not to give you a business.
C-SPAN is not funded by public funds, just to be clear.
I realize that.
Somebody just donated $80 million to you guys because Trump cut a billion dollars of taxpayers' dollars from you guys, which is our right to know the news.
And I'm afraid that the news we're seeing today, because of the controlling unseen entities such as governments, you know, specifically.
Yeah, just to be clear, though, C-SPAN is a nonprofit organization.
We are not funded by taxpayer dollars.
So that wouldn't, I think you're talking about NPR and PBS.
Not C-SPAN.
Yeah, maybe you're right.
And NPR got a multi-million dollar donation recently.
I apologize.
Thank you for correcting me.
That's why I say you do such a good job.
But I grew up, I'm like 50-something years old, and I grew up watching C-SPAN as far as I can remember.
And it's different now.
We're not getting stuff that in real time.
I noticed that they're starting to show hearings and retakes of hearings instead of hearings live as they used to all the time.
And I'm afraid of that because the information coming out of Iran from the Middle East differs quite strikingly differently from America.
And America has shown us from the Epstein files that with the Justice Department handling subpoenas and not even making their employees respond to the subpoenas, but they want the public to this double-standard stuff is evidence that we may not even be getting the truth about Iran.
I was told from some people that there were 200 deaths of soldiers, but we only heard 13 or so.
We're not even hearing about any deaths.
I'm afraid for the news cycle in the state that we're in.
I don't know any suggestions, but it's just, I just thought I call what's these concerns.
Nobody's talking about these stuff.
All right.
Well, we actually have two live hearings that I promoted earlier, including Scott Besson, Treasury Secretary, at 10 a.m., so right after this program, and 2 p.m. for HHS Secretary RFK Jr.
Those are two that you can watch just on the program today.
But I do take your point there, Warren.
Dan from New York, a Republican.
Yes, hi.
Good morning, Dan.
I'm calling on the Social Security.
No tax on Social Security.
I paid $14,900.
I had to pay tax on $12,719 in a map.
And that just doesn't seem right.
So there is tax on Social Security.
Okay.
Dan from New York.
Jay from Sacramento.
Independent.
Good morning, Jay.
Hi.
Happy early rise.
Thank you for taking my call.
And I just wanted to say that, you know, I just think it's what he said that we go at each other and we go into all the details about politics, which I call politics.
And I just think it's all a facade.
The whole political construct is corrupt.
They break all, they make all these laws and they break the laws that they create.
Kash Patel FBI Investigation Talk00:08:41
They want everybody else to follow and not break.
So it's just hypocrisy at its best.
Politics is politics.
It's hypocrisy.
And I just wanted to say that.
And hope everyone has a great day and a great sunrise.
Take care.
All right, Jay from Sacramento, California.
This is open forum where you can talk about any public policy or political issue on your mind.
I want folks to start calling in.
Remind you of your lines here.
Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001.
Democrats, your line, 202-748-8000.
Independents, your line, 202-748-8002.
You can also reach us by text message at 202-748-8003.
Another story that we're following this morning is about FBI Director Kash Patel.
I'm looking at a Hill article right now, and the headline is: excuse me, Patel gets in shouting match with reporter as he defends job performance.
Mind me while I scroll right now.
It says, FBI Director Kash Patel got in a shouting match with the reporter amid questions over his job performance following an explosive article from The Atlantic alleging excessive alcohol use by the director.
The outlet reported that while in charge of the Bureau, Patel has consumed alcohol, quote, to the point of obvious intoxication in front of White House officials and other Trump administration staff on multiple occasions within the past year.
The article said members of the security detail have also, quote, had difficulty waking Patel because he was seemingly intoxicated.
That was them quoting the Atlantic article.
Here is a clip of that video of Kash Patel taking questions yesterday alongside acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Listen, I do want to give you an opportunity to respond directly to the allegations in the Atlantic article that your unexplained absences created a national security risk.
And beyond that, can you say definitively that you have not been intoxicated or absent during your tenure as FBI director?
I can say unequivocally that I never listen to the fake news mafia.
And as when they get louder, it just means I'm doing my job.
This FBI director has been on the job twice as many days as every director before me.
What that means is I've taken half as many days off as those before me.
What that means is I've taken a third less vacation than those before me.
What that means is that this FBI, with this Department of Justice, has dropped the murder rate 20 points.
What that means is this FBI, with this Department of Justice, has captured eight of the top 10 most wanted fugitives in the world, twice as many as the Biden administration did in its entire four years.
What that means is this FBI has seized enough fentanyl off the streets to kill 178 million Americans, a 31% increase.
What that means is this FBI and this DOJ has arrested 43% more spies in 14 months than the entirety of the Biden administration.
What that means is this FBI has seen a reduction in opiate overdose deaths up to 20% alone.
What that means is that we have found 6,300 child victims.
6,300 families have their kids back.
That is a 22% increase from the Biden administration.
I'm on the job.
I'm the first one in.
I'm the last one out.
I'm like an everyday American who loves his country, loves the sport of hockey, and champions my friends when they raise a gold medal and invite me in to celebrate.
I've never been intoxicated on the job, and that is why we filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit.
And any one of you that wants to participate, bring it on.
I'll see you in court.
So that was FBI Director Kash Patel responding to reporter questions over an explosive Atlantic article.
Right after this program, though, we will take you up to Capitol Hill.
There, Commerce Secretary Howard Luttnick will testify before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on President Trump's 2027 budget request.
Watch that at 10 a.m. here on C-SPAN.
And you can also see it on our app, C-SPANNOW and online at c-span.org.
Let's turn back to some of your phone calls for the end of Open Forum.
Billy from Missouri, a Democrat.
Good morning, Billy.
Hey, good morning, Jasmine.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
Thank you very much.
I just wanted to let you know, you are so beautiful.
I think I might have a little bit of a crush on you, by the way.
Oh, boy.
But I wanted to say, I was laughing a little bit at all the statistics that Kash Patel is talking about and that he memorizes and jots down and talks to everybody about.
I don't believe anything that he says.
And by the way, the $250 million lawsuit that he filed has been dismissed already in court.
And then also, I wanted to talk about...
Well, actually, I don't believe that that one was dismissed.
It was a prior, it was a prior lawsuit that he made against a specific individual that was dismissed, not the $250 million one that he brought about against the Atlantic.
It was just the timing of it.
Oh, I see.
Yeah, it was over a claim that he frequented nightclubs made by a different person from the Atlantic.
God.
Okay.
And then also, I want to talk about like the looting of America from this administration.
You know, you talk about that $250 million lawsuit from Kash Patel.
You look at the $10 billion peace board that Trump is wanting to take in.
He's wanting to sue the IRS for $10 billion.
He's suing I Forgot for $250 million for investigating him on January 6th and his documents that he took to Mar-a-Lago.
I mean, does anybody else see what's going on here?
He's taking away all the benefits from the entitlements from people that need it, and he's cashing in on American tax dollars all the way to the bank.
That's all I got to say.
That was Billy from Missouri, Ivy from Washington, D.C., a Republican.
Good morning, Ivy.
Good morning.
I want to say thank you so much for your service, Jasmine.
I have a different pivot this morning.
I am an observer at the World Bank IMF meetings, and I observe global politics and geopolitics.
One of my concerns is that I've been in this industry.
Primarily, my background began in refugee resettlement and migration across populations.
My concern is the ostracizing of American World Bank affairs, World Bank meetings, and the narrative that America is so poorly run and so poorly operated.
But we're the number one funder of America's Large NGOs in the UN and the World Bank.
So, in terms of the key points, agriculture, poverty, access to jobs are things that are the highlights of the meeting.
But I will say that in working with the World Bank and leaders, they don't give any sort of reciprocal advocacy to our farmers.
And the immigration issue of ICE and other agencies have, in my opinion, been well needed based on the entry into this country and the illegality of a lot of the resettled refugees and immigration amnesty applications.
So, those are some things I wanted to add insight and add to the Americans' position and the Americans' list of things to consider when they consider the fundamental impact of the United States globally and as it pertains to geopolitics.
All right, Ivy from Washington, D.C., thanks for calling in.
Kathleen from North Carolina, Independent, you're next.
Good morning.
This is just a general comment that I want to make.
C-SPAN Commercial Appreciation Moment00:02:47
I appreciate all the callers that call in.
I've been listening to C-SPAN for many, many, many years.
This is only my second time that I'm calling in.
But what I wanted to say is that I really like your commercials about when people are recorded saying how wonderful C-SPAN is and giving information about what C-SPAN shares.
But the one problem is that you're singing to the choir.
These commercials are only on C-SPAN.
And I try to tell everybody how wonderful C-SPAN is, and people just give me like a nod and a smile.
But if those commercials could get out there onto some other general public forum, I think that more Americans could be educated the way I have been educated.
So that's my comment.
Thank you.
All right, I'll make sure the bosses hear that one.
Thanks for calling in, Kathleen.
Holly from Washington, D.C.
It's open for him.
Good morning, Holly.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
And thank you for reminding us that Barack Obama was also an imperial warlord.
His action in Libya, his unnecessary action, resulted in taking Libyan weapons and creating a route line that went from Libya to Syria, where he was supplying the quote-unquote moderate rebels in an effort to topple that government, which eventually succeeded.
And his Vice President Biden was responsible for fomenting this coup in Maidan in Ukraine, which led to the war we have now.
Iran being our enemy, it's interesting that we went in and invaded Iraq under false pretenses.
Colin Powell holding up his little vial of weapons of mass destruction that never existed.
We go and invade another country and they try to defend themselves and then they're considered terrorists for trying to help Iraq get rid of the American invaders.
I'm sorry that enlisted people had to suffer through that, but it's just really too bad that this young congresswoman from New Hampshire has all right Holly, I take your point there, but we are at the end of our program.
That is Washington Journal for today.
Another edition comes at you at 7 a.m. Eastern tomorrow morning.
We hope you tune in.
Capitol Hill Lutnick Hearing Preview00:01:00
And now we turn to that promised, Secretary Howard Lutnick hearing on Capitol Hill.
We're getting a live look inside the hearing room here on Capitol Hill this Wednesday morning.
Commerce Secretary Howard Luttnig there, set to testify on his department's budget request proposing $9.2 billion in funding for fiscal year 2027.
The Secretary could also face questions from senators about his connections with convicted sex offender