Washington Journal on April 25, 2026, covers Iran diplomacy with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Virginia redistricting shifting the delegation to ten Democrats, and the Southern Poverty Law Center indictment. Guests David Becker and Jason Stacey analyze election integrity, congressional district sizes reaching 760,000 people per representative, and the AP U.S. History Exam's focus on interpreting 1776 engravings rather than fact recall, emphasizing thematic connections over memorization for nearly half a million students. [Automatically generated summary]
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Redistricting Battles and Legal Challenges00:14:08
Research founder David Becker will talk about the latest in national redistricting battles, legal challenges, and their potential impact on this year's midterm elections.
And then Jason Stacey and Matthew Ellington, co-authors of Fabric of a Nation, a brief history with skills and sources, will talk about the high school advanced placement U.S. history exam.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next.
Join the conversation.
Good morning.
It's Saturday, April 25th, 2026.
A three-hour Washington Journal is ahead.
We'll talk about election integrity and also spend some time helping high school students cram for the upcoming AP U.S. history exam.
But we begin today with a look back on the week that was.
Over the past week, international headlines were dominated by the conflict in Iran and its economic impact domestically.
The state of Virginia held a redistricting referendum that could have a major impact on the balance of power in Congress in the midterm elections.
So we want to know what you think was the top news story of the week.
Give us a call on phone lines split as usual by political party.
Republicans, it's 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
You can also send us a text, that number, 202-748-8003.
If you do, please include your name and where you're from.
Otherwise, catch up with us on social media.
On X, it's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook.
It's facebook.com slash C-SPAN.
And a very good Saturday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in now on your top news story of the week.
As we said, international headlines dominated by Iran.
Here's the headline this morning from the Washington Post.
Iran now saying there's no direct talks planned this weekend as the U.S. envoys are set to leave for Pakistan.
The story noting that Iran's foreign minister arrived in Islamabad for talks with Pakistani officials.
The White House said Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would leave for Islamabad today.
This was White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt speaking with reporters yesterday about their plans as they travel overseas for discussions about the conflict.
As you know, and I spoke about it earlier this week, the president was flexible in granting an extension of the ceasefire throughout this time.
The president has decided to dispatch Special Envoy Witkoff and Jared Kushner back to Islamabad.
The Iranians want to talk.
They want to talk in person.
And so the president is, as I've said many, many times to all of you, always willing to give diplomacy a chance.
So Steve and Jared will be heading to Pakistan tomorrow to hear the Iranians out.
We hope progress will be made and we hope that positive developments will come from this meeting.
And we will see.
And the president, the vice president, the Secretary of State will be waiting here in the United States for updates.
And the vice president, I understand, is on standby and will be willing to dispatch to Pakistan if we feel it's a necessary use of his time.
Caroline Levitt, yesterday from the White House, if there are any updates that come out over the course of our program, we'll, of course, keep you updated today.
Domestically, as we said this week, redistricting very much in the news.
This is the story from the Wall Street Journal this morning, how Democrats pivoted on redistricting.
The story focusing on how former President Obama backed the effort to help the party counter gerrymandering pushes by Republicans.
The story focusing on Virginia, that new map seeking to change the state's congressional delegation from six House Democrats and five Republicans to 10 Democrats and one Republican.
That now caught up in a state Supreme Court fight.
Meanwhile, the redistricting battle heads to Florida next week.
And it was on Wednesday after that referendum in Virginia that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries addressed reporters.
He spoke about what Florida may or may not do.
This is what he had to say.
Our message to Florida Republicans is F around and find out.
If they go down the road of a DeSantis dummy mander, the Florida Republicans are going to find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans, who are on the run right now.
And under no circumstances are Texas Republicans picking up five seats.
They'll be fortunate if they get two or three.
While in California, we are going to get all five.
The Republicans are dummy mandering their way into the minority before a single vote is cast because they started this war and we're going to finish it.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries back on the redistricting battle.
Of course, plenty more on Capitol Hill this week with plenty of hearings on budgets for upcoming agencies as well as the firing of the Navy Secretary.
It was a busy news week and we're asking you what your top news story of the week was.
Again, phone lines for you to call in.
202-748-8001 for Republicans.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
We will begin out in Montana.
Mike in Savage, Montana, Independent.
Good morning.
Thanks for getting up early.
Oh, thank you very much, John.
Good morning, and good morning to what's left of America.
John, I'm really saddened, heartbroken for that 15-year-old girl walking in New York, walking across the crosswalk with her school books and her friend.
And that giant of a man, a kid, a man, he was old enough to be a man, asked her for her phone number, and she declined very gracefully.
And he proceeded to hunt her down, body slam her to the concrete of New York streets, and then stomped on her head.
This has got to be the most important topic in America this year because it is out of control, the violence in America.
It's like our president has forgotten our homeland.
It's so sad.
It makes you cry when you see the drug addicts on the streets, Skid Row, every city.
It seems like the states now are their own little independent countries, not independent.
They're beholden to the Communist Party, in my opinion.
Our states are going communist.
We're in deep trouble, John.
I'm so deathly afraid of our country right now because our government is basically ignoring the people that grew up here.
What are you seeing in Savage, Montana?
You say this story is indicative of a wave of violence in America.
You say President Trump not paying attention to that story.
What are you seeing in your state, your town?
We have trouble in Missoula where the Californians are taking over.
And we have illegals there now causing rape.
And it's not being put out there very much, but our governor, Gianforte, is useless.
Senator Sheehan has dropped the ball.
I voted for him.
I'm never going to vote again until they clean up the voting system.
But in Montana, Savage is a beautiful town on the Yellowstone River.
Montana is so beautiful.
The cities are still cultured with the Old West.
Cowboys alive, truckers alive, no crime whatsoever from billings over.
Billings, we're starting to see crime.
But eastern Montana is virtually untouched by big city crime.
It is so beautiful up here.
My family lives in Alaska, too.
I bounce back and forth, but Montana is thriving.
I have never seen John so many new pickup trucks in my life.
In western Dakota, North Dakota, and eastern Montana, like Colbertson and Freud, Medicine Lake, Sydney.
Sydney is the center of the oil boom in eastern Montana, and it is just on fire now.
And Glendive is the Glendive and Miles City are the rodeo town.
Sydney's a rodeo town, also an oil and farm town.
Some of the biggest farm equipment in the world rolls down the streets here.
The railroads putting Amtrak's putting in a passenger train.
No, eastern Montana is free of crime.
Mike.
Thanks.
Thanks for the view from a big sky country.
That's Mike in Savage, Montana.
This is the story that Mike pointed out at the beginning of his call, the one that he says is indicative of a crime wave in this country.
New York City girl, brutally stomped by Team Boy after refusing his advances, was lucky to survive, according to the distraught mother, while calling for justice in that incident, that from the New York Post.
That's Mike in Montana.
We're asking for your top news story of the week.
This is Lewis in Colorado, Republican.
Lewis, go ahead.
Good morning, John.
Washington is the problem.
It is a cesspool of corruption, and it just permeates from there.
I mean, everything in Washington is corrupt.
The news is corrupt.
The politicians are corrupt.
Look at the resignations from Congress.
Look what's happening in Virginia.
Virginia, Trump won 48% of the state, and now the state is 10 Democrats to one Republican representative.
Thank God it's going to court, but it's going to have to go all the way up to the Supreme Court.
It's going to the state Supreme Court.
This is a state issue.
It's going to the Virginia Supreme Court.
On Monday, they're going to hear oral arguments about that case and the new congressional map.
And we're actually going to air it on C-SPAN 2 on Monday when it happens at 9 a.m. Eastern.
But didn't mean to interrupt you, Lewis.
Just wanted to let you know.
Great.
That's fantastic.
I'm looking forward to watching it.
I know they're probably going to vote in favor of the legislation in the state courts.
They're going to appeal it.
Well, regardless of how they come down on the state Supreme Court, they're going to appeal it.
But on its face, on its face, John, this is not the wording.
I heard about the wording of the bill, and it was just so disingenuous.
It was crazy.
It's crazy.
But God bless Montana.
Hope they retain some civility up there.
Colorado's a lost cause.
We used to joke about Boulder, Colorado being the People's Republic of Boulder, but now the whole state has gone.
You know, they legalized the dope 20 years ago, and we just got inundated with that lifestyle.
And it's just, it's tragic.
But anyway, Washington, D.C. is the source.
It's the problem.
Lewis, let me ask you, you say that D.C. is the source and the problem.
Tonight, there's a big event in D.C., this annual event, the White House Correspondence Dinner.
President Trump going for the first time as commander-in-chief after not attending that event during previous opportunities.
Do you think this kind of program, the White House correspondence dinner, the celebration of journalism, do you think this is part of the problem?
Well, if I could focus just on the journalism part of the events, I think he's going to rightly call them out.
If you remember President Biden and his coverage, the news coverage of Joe Biden and how they presented Joe Biden.
I watch all the news channels, and whenever Trump is doing a news conference or a press conference, anything, you know, where the press is available or observing him, it's only shown on C-SPAN or Fox, or they cut it up and they show it on the liberal channels.
And it's never shown live, or it's very rarely shown live, or it's fragmented, or they talk over the conference.
Well, Lewis, I promise you we don't and won't do that here, including tonight when the president gets up to speak to reporters.
He's scheduled to speak right around 10 p.m. Eastern time.
C-SPAN's coverage of the White House correspondence dinner.
It begins at 7 o'clock.
We're going to be interviewing folks on the red carpet as they arrive.
And then the formal dinner presentation begins at 8 p.m.
And the president, again, expected to speak at 10 p.m. Eastern.
There's also the tradition of the entertainment going along with the presidential speech.
This year, it's Oz Perlman, the mentalist, as he's referred to, will be entertaining the gathered guests and journalists and the president as well.
Again, all beginning on C-SPAN around 7 p.m.
You can also watch it on c-span.org and listen to it on the free C-SPAN now video app.
That's Lewis in Colorado.
Presidential Dinner Traditions Begin00:15:03
Let me go down to Florida, Sebring, Florida.
James, we were just talking about the redistricting fight, possibly heading to Florida.
What do you think about that redistricting flight?
What do you think about what Florida's going to do?
It better follow the Constitution of the state of Florida because the people have the decision of deciding a factor on that, not the governor, but or the legislation.
And I'm certain about that.
And I'm not happy with that because the Republican Party is trying to fix the election for the midterm and then the 28th year.
And this is outrageous.
And it started in Texas, the Republican Party there.
Virginia had their thing.
And now the Republican is crying like a baby.
And fuck it up.
You started it.
We're going to finish it.
We showed Hakeem Jeffries earlier using the term F around and find out when it comes to Florida and redistricting.
It was your governor, Ron DeSantis, on Friday responding to Hakeem Jeffries' warning.
This was Ron DeSantis yesterday.
We got this guy, Hakeem Jeffries.
Have you guys heard of him?
I don't know that he'd do very well in Chipley if he ran for office, but he's threatening Florida.
Oh, you can't do you do the redistrict.
We're going to come down.
We're going to get you guys all the stuff.
Go ahead.
Make my day.
Bring it on.
I would like nothing better than to have him campaigning all across Florida.
I don't know that he would do well here.
I don't know he would do well almost anywhere in Florida.
And I don't think that's something that Floridians would want to see.
But we are not going to be cowed by threats from some machine politician from Brooklyn.
It doesn't work that way down here.
That's not how we roll.
Ron DeSantis, that was yesterday from Florida.
This morning on the Washington Journal.
We're asking what your top news story of the week was, and here's some of your comments via social media.
Vicki writing in from Facebook, President Trump and his Department of Justice changing marijuana from a Schedule I to Schedule III, saying, I've been waiting for that for most of my life.
Catherine saying the top story was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth arguing that his so-called Department of War should win the Nobel Peace Prize every year.
We are truly living in the twilight zone.
Here's the Washington Free Beacon headline about those statements.
U.S. military deserves the Nobel Peace Prize every single year for guaranteeing global safety and security, according to the Secretary of Defense.
Your phone calls asking for your thoughts on the news story of the week.
Would love a view from across the pond.
This is Paul in England.
Paul, thanks for calling on a Saturday morning.
Hello, John.
Great to speak to you again.
We're going to Iran's peace talks.
Do you reckon the peace talks go well, or do you think it'll be peace in Iran or whatever the situation or not?
When it gets worse or not, or if we don't get through the peace talks, whatever.
What do you think, Paul?
And also, what do you think about the criticism that the Trump administration has, and Pete Hegseth as well, has given to Britain for not doing enough, they're saying, to step up to help here when it comes to Iran's actions to shut down the straits of horror moves.
What's your view of how this has played out?
Well, all I can say, if you're going to threaten somebody with something about this attacking sort of Falklands, whatever, it's not going to help the situation in different countries.
It's that our situation.
And I think he's too much, I think, Donald Trump, Mr. Donald Trump's presenters.
He shouldn't do that to countries, I think.
And I agree, countries should get together by NATO stance and also by the Congress as well to get this war sort of legitimate.
And that's why people are not going to get to the war because of that situation, I think.
And that's they get people aboard that way, I suppose.
Paul's view.
Can I ask you about the Falklands issue?
You mentioned it.
And for viewers who don't know, here's a story on it from today's New York Times.
A pair of allies dismissed talk about penalties from the United States.
Britain saying Friday, in response to a report, that the Trump administration is considering whether to punish nations over their failure to offer full-throated support for the war against Iran.
An internal Pentagon email reported by Reuters News suggested that options under review include withdrawing American support for Britain's sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, which is also claimed by Argentina.
Can you just explain the importance of that issue as somebody who lives in England?
Well, of course, yeah, because the Fortune Warback in 1992, it's Britain's top war that happened, and they won the war, apparently, and it's important issue.
And I think if you're going to attack a country like our country like that way, it's not a very good international in future times.
I don't think it's not a very good situation to be in.
To sort stuff out eventually, but it's not good for good for future times.
We'll be interviewing the Falklands business, especially before war back in the 80s or whatever.
Paul, thanks.
Always appreciate you calling in from England and watching on a Saturday morning.
Thanks for the call.
That's Paul.
This is Ted.
We'll head out to the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii Democrat.
Good morning.
Thanks for getting up early.
Good morning, John.
Yeah, well, I'm not up early.
I'm up late in Hawaii.
Yeah, and I talk to you fairly often, John, but I heard a news report.
You may need to help me here.
About an hour or two ago, I was watching the news, and it seemed like a sort of a, you know, Hawaii does not have a death penalty.
We're a pretty metal place, as you know.
And I heard this report where Trump wanted to reinstate hanging and shooting as a death penalty.
And it just seems like it's vicious.
And it's kind of indicative of Trump, to us out here, seems like a sort of a vicious person.
And this shows what his intent is.
And I wanted to know: is that something that you have any information on?
Yeah, Ted.
So here's the story.
Here's some of the context behind it.
This is the New York Times today.
The Trump administration said yesterday that it would allow firing squads and readopt lethal injection as part of a broader push to revive the death penalty.
In an accompanying report, Todd Blanch, the acting attorney general, said the decision by Joe Biden to pull back on capital punishment, quote, inflicted untold damage on victims of crime and ultimately to the rule of law.
The Justice Department, he said, had reauthorized the use of lethal injection and would also permit additional methods of execution like firing squads.
The 48-page report added that the Bureau of Prisons should follow the example of states that had expanded their execution protocols amid fights over the legality and especially the availability of lethal injection drugs.
Though the story goes on to note that federal executions would only take place in states that allow executions under their laws.
There's a whole lot of legal back and forth over this, but that's some of the context behind it, Ted.
Okay, well, thank you for that.
And yeah, it just think it's kind of indicative.
It just, and lethal injection is one thing.
It is not as vicious as some of the other methods.
And anyway, I just saw it.
I was kind of shocked by it.
I had taken a drive all the way around the island of Hawaii, which takes about eight hours.
I had a very long drive today, and then I heard that.
And it just seems indicative.
President Trump seems to be on a vicious roll, you know, where he's fired all of our inspector generals and he let a lot of people go.
And it just kind of shows his psychology of being a he's mad about losing the 2000 election, and he just seems like he's out for blood in any direction he can go.
And you look at his picture, and he has this kind of a growl like a snarling wolf.
And it just seems that it shows his true intent.
And that's all I meant to say and show about that.
On letting go people this week, one of the high-profile ones came with the announcement that President Trump had fired the Navy Secretary, John Phelan, a neighbor of his, lives down the street from Mar-a-Lago in Florida, a longtime supporter of the president.
The report from the Wall Street Journal was that John Phelan had gotten the news via social media, went to the White House to find out if it was true, and heard from the president himself.
That reporting caused a whole lot of questions about how this went down in the Oval Office on Thursday.
Want to take you there and show you the president's exchange with reporters over the firing of the Navy Secretary, John Phelan, the now former Navy Secretary.
Can you talk a little bit about why your Navy Secretary was fired yesterday, sir?
He's a wonderful guy.
I just put out a statement about him.
He's a very good man.
I really liked him, but he had some conflict with not necessarily with some other.
He's a hard charger, and he had some conflicts with some other people, mostly as to building and buying new ships.
I'm very aggressive in the new shipbuilding.
And somehow he just didn't get along with him.
He's an excellent guy.
I think he would have gotten along great with me.
I didn't really deal with him too much, but he's a, you know, I consider him to have done a very good job.
I put out a nice statement about him.
You got to get along, especially in the military, you got to get along, you know.
And some people liked him, some people didn't.
And that's usually the truth about everything.
But I found him to be a very good man, and I liked him a lot.
I was President Trump on Thursday from the White House.
We're asking you this Saturday morning about your top news story of the week.
It's something we do on Saturday mornings, give you a chance to look back and chat about those stories that you paid attention to.
We try to do a good job here of wrapping up all the major stories of the week, but we need your help on it.
So let us know what you think was the top news story of the week.
Phone lines for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, as usual.
About a half an hour left here to do that.
This is Kevin in Windsor, Connecticut, Independent.
Kevin, good morning to the Constitution State.
All right, good morning, John.
Thanks a lot for taking my call.
I think with Iran, you got Kircher and Ritkoff.
They're just looking at all of their interests, their investments, along with Trump.
Okay, these are the wrong guys.
We need professional diplomats to handle this deal.
And when it comes to Pete Hessette, like Europe ain't helping us, hey, who likes bullies, man?
We go around bullying countries.
People don't like that, man.
Plain is simple.
And if this country could get along a lot better, I mean, I'm 70 years old.
Never, all these presidents that we had through the decades, we lost our allies.
We're hated in Canada.
We're hated over in Europe.
We're hated everywhere.
Wherever through American history that we've been hated, and we lost our allies because of Trump.
Okay?
This bully piece of bullying ain't cutting it no more.
And I mean, there ain't no calling for Colin.
You know, this ain't making America great.
This isn't America no more.
I mean, you know, I mean, we never had this trauma with a president before, like this, okay?
And Trump is suing the IRS.
He's getting $10 billion.
There's no checking balances on Trump and the Republican Party is in charge, and they're letting this all go by.
You know, but that's all I have to say.
Got your point.
That's Kevin in Connecticut.
This is Bill next door in the Bay State Republican bill.
Good morning.
Yeah, this guy that just talked about how bad Trump is, right?
Can I ask you a personal question?
How wish that you get six states and the zero Republican delegates in New England?
Can you answer me that question?
Bill, explain to me what you mean.
You're talking about just the lack of Republicans getting elected in New England.
The zero delegates, Republican delegates in six states.
So what are your thoughts on this Virginia redistricting, Bill?
Huh?
What are your thoughts on this Virginia redistricting?
It's right now six Democrats, five Republicans.
If this thing is allowed to happen, this referendum that was passed in Virginia.
The Democrats are communists.
Why isn't there any delegates in New England?
It's 40% of the people there are Republicans.
I'd like to ask that to be the question that's said to people that call up on the Democratic Party.
With that, I'll say thanks a lot.
Have a good day.
Bye.
That's Bill in Massachusetts out to the West Coast.
Judy, Oregon, Democrat, good morning.
Good morning.
My top story is, well, it's not really my top story, but it is a story that Galene Maxwell will possibly get a pardon.
And it's just really wrong.
I mean, there's over a thousand victims.
And, you know, if she says the right thing, she'll walk free.
And there's so many people that are sitting in prison for lesser crimes, but they don't have the influence or the money to get a pardon.
That's Judy in Oregon.
This is Lita, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'll start with the very good news.
There was a guy that called yesterday, I believe, and he said family.
That's absolutely perfect.
Faith, family, football, maybe.
Anyhow, the lady.
What's your top news story of the week, Lita?
Caller Discusses Foreign Affairs Power00:06:48
Rouge.
Did you hear about Baton Rouge yesterday, the killing in Baton Rouge?
That's the bad news.
And what is that indicative of?
What's the thing that we should be violence?
People going, those are kids, again, like the New York thing with the girl.
Kids coming over and doing mayhem.
Redistricting.
They redistricted New Mexico when the Dems had their governor, and they still do.
They redistricted New Mexico.
They took anti-abortion out of our Constitution.
That's my red line.
That's Lita in New Mexico.
The story out of Louisiana and Baton Rouge.
One dead, five injured, several in custody in that mall of Louisiana shooting.
The NBC news story filing it under guns in America.
Police looking for additional people who may have been involved in that shooting at the Baton Rouge Mall.
That story from earlier this week.
Taking your phone calls on the top news story of the week.
Again, about 30 minutes left to do this.
Phone lines.
Republicans, 202-748-8001.
Democrats, 202-748-8000.
Independents, 202-748-8002.
Send us a text message as well.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this that way.
And if you do, please include your name and where you're from.
Elijah is from Somerville, South Carolina.
Democrat, thanks for calling.
Hey.
First, I'd like to preface this with an apology to C-SPAN, just in reference to the guy a couple of calls back.
Apparently, I'm a communist, but that's neither here nor there.
What makes you a communist, Elijah?
I'm not sure.
I'm not really sure.
I think I'm actually pretty market forward, you know, but that's hey, that's neither here nor there.
But my top news story is it's a little bit old, but I read foreign affairs quite a bit.
Sorry, I'm a little bit nervous.
But I read foreign affairs quite a bit and I find foreign policy to be kind of like what I find the most interesting about like, you know, politics and stuff.
And I wanted to talk about this article by Stephen M. Walt called Predatory Hegemon.
And it's talking about how like the Trump administration, like this is also kind of in reference to that British guy that was on a little bit earlier and that kind of conversation that was kind of going on and how like the Trump administration kind of they tried to extract like tributes and stuff from other nations.
So I just kind of wanted to kind of bring that up and how like give me an example from this Iran.
The March April edition of Foreign Affairs, the predatory hegemon, how Trump Wields American Power.
Stephen Waltz, the author of that story, it was published back in February, but in their March, April edition.
What was the example that most struck you from that?
I would probably say I would say like the example of that would probably be, I don't think it was mentioned in the article, but one kind of example I noticed, you know, kind of looking through the news cycle was kind of looking at that kind of meeting that Trump had with the current Japan prime minister.
And you kind of just had like this like really weird moment where Trump kind of brings up the Pearl Harbor thing.
And you could see the prime minister just like get actively like kind of like pretty uncomfortable.
And you can see that like in that meeting, how like the prime minister kind of had like in like a normal meeting, something like stuff like that wouldn't happen.
So you can kind of see like Trump kind of like wielding a little bit of that power.
Elijah, what would you say to those folks who the thing they like about Donald Trump is that he can be transactional, that the argument that they make is that he's a businessman and he's looking out for the business of America.
And so him doing this with other countries is him being transactional, trying to get something and not have America be taken advantage of.
That would be the argument, the counter argument to what you're saying.
Yeah, and I do understand that argument, but I would also say, you know, it gets to a point where like, I feel like that would like make a lot of sense if we're talking about like, you know, like the Bill Clinton years, you know, we're talking about like the Soviet Union just fell and the United States is kind of like a unipolar power.
You know, it's like the only power in the world that like can like act as like, you know, you know, can like kind of act like that.
But I feel like the whole like strategy of that ultimately doesn't work in today's world where, you know, it like, you know, it does work, you know, in theory with like, you know, like smaller nations, I don't know, like France, you know, different European Union nations and stuff.
But it just straight up doesn't work for nations like China, Russia, stuff like that.
And I feel like it also leads to these nations end up losing trust in the United States.
And you have and I wanted to mention this earlier, the Iran conflict, as was talked about earlier, nations like the UK, you know, other European nations, they don't want it, they don't want to deal with us when it comes to all that type of stuff, you know?
So I feel like the predatory hegemon by Stephen M. Walt really kind of goes into depth about all that type of stuff.
Elijah, thanks for bringing up from Foreign Affairs.
Again, it's the March, April edition of Foreign Affairs.
Let me go to Michael, Del Rey Beach, Florida, Republican line.
Michael, thanks for waiting.
Yeah, hi.
I would just like to touch base on the five states that have the firing squad executions going on.
I think personally that it is a good idea, and I think all Republican states should take to this and put this in action because, hey, if the blue states want to let all their criminals run around killing people and trying to let them get off the hook with their law systems, so be it.
Firing Squad Execution Debate Rages00:07:30
Let them have what they want and let the Republican states have what they want.
And for all the people that move to the Republican states because they don't want to be involved in all of that stuff that's going on in their states, do me a favor.
Bring yourselves over, but don't bring the mentality that you once had when you lived in the blue state.
Vote Republican, because that's why you came over to the Republican side, to the red states.
That's why you left your blue state, because you didn't want it anymore.
And that's really all I have to say, and I think it's a good idea.
Thank you.
That's Michael, Del Rey Beach, Florida.
About 25 minutes left in this first hour of the Washington Journal.
Here's the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal today.
It's their weekend interview.
It's the Treasury Secretary Scott Bassent.
He's interviewed by Mark Halperin and the headline, Donald Trump's Economic Engineer.
It's an extensive interview with the Treasury Secretary.
The Treasury Secretary was also on Capitol Hill this week in one of those hearings talking about the fiscal 2026 budget.
He responded to a question from Senator Jack Reed, the Democrat of Rhode Island, about oil and gas prices right now.
This is what he had to say.
The idea that consumer spending is up doesn't recognize, I think, that the top 10% of the richest families account for 50% of consumer spending.
So how does all this help families solve a key price of affordability in the United States today?
Senator, I agree.
After the Biden years and the 21.5% CPI level increase, the Americans were reeling.
I can tell you that it is my belief that when we talk about gasoline, that the crude market is currently in what is known in the energy business as very steep backwardation, which means that the future prices are much lower than we are at present.
I think the conflict will end.
I think gasoline prices will come back to where they were or perhaps lower as they did.
President Trump has shown that he is good at getting energy prices down and that our energy dominance agenda has lowered prices.
How fast will the prices of gasoline come down?
Again, that is path-dependent on when the war and the conflict end.
Well, from a perspective of the Armed Service Committee, it's not likely to end soon.
Energy Secretary Scott Bassant there.
If you want to watch that full hearing, you can do so on our website at C-SPAN.org.
You can give us a call this morning as we talk about your top news story of the week on phone lines for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents as usual.
On the Independent line, it's Michael Hartford, Connecticut.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
You know, this week I went to my local school district.
They are, they just are 400 teachers, professional, because we don't have money to educate our students.
Today's student is tomorrow leaders.
And the big, ugly bill that the Republican pass is going to hit us next year.
There's going to be more cuts of social programs.
And we got more money going to defense.
The rule of law is a joke in this country.
There's no more rule of law.
This guy destroyed the fabric of America's democratic system.
Our allies, our close allies, can't stand us.
Brilliant countries are all over the world.
We got a lot of problems here.
Let's try to fix this problem here.
The Congress, it don't work for the public.
They're so worried about the staying in power.
The lobbyists just took it over.
We got a lot of deadwood in Congress.
We need to get some fresh young ideas.
America is falling apart.
We just came out of war three years.
People forgot.
We was in war three years ago.
Now we're right back to the same thing again.
That's Michael in Connecticut.
This is Gail, North Carolina.
Good morning.
Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
Well, I just, there's a lot of things going on, but one of the things that bothered me this week, first of all, the Iran war is, it's really an Epstein deflection war because this is what Trump does.
He deflects from what's going on.
So everything was getting going with the Epstein files and all the victims.
And next thing you know, he starts the war because Israel asked him to bomb.
So this is all a distraction for the Epstein file.
And then he gets up there on Easter morning and makes an ugly, ugly, mean, evil post for, you know, wanting to commit war crimes.
But then the next week, he's up here reading the Bible, acting like he's all Christian, you know, catering to his base, pretending to be Jesus, you know, talking bad about the Pope because Trump is everything that Jesus taught us not to be.
And Trump is evil, and his base is completely brainwashed, thinking that he's such a good man.
But what happened on the first day of the war, they bombed the school in Iran and killed over 150 little girls, over 150 little innocent girls.
And then the Pope had a picture.
He carries around a picture of a little boy from, I think it was Lebanon.
And because he was killed during this war, this poor little boy that had gone to see the Pope.
You know, I don't like people that hurt children.
I don't like people that are hateful, that are that, you know, mock the disabled, sexually molest women, lie, cheat.
Trump is pure evil.
Got your point.
That's Gail.
This is Vince in Newport Richie, Florida.
Republican, good morning.
Yeah, good morning, John.
Thanks for taking my call.
My biggest story of the week is the indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
These people are the ones that have caused division in this country.
Supposedly, they are against all of these right-wing organizations when we find out they were funneling money into the same organizations that they were saying they were against, such as the Ku Klux Klan.
You see, they say that we do things, but they end up being the ones that are doing things.
I hope they get indicted, convicted, and all put in jail.
Thank you.
Have a great day.
Global Collateral Damage Concerns Rise00:06:38
The Associated Press story for viewers who may have missed it.
The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted on Tuesday on federal fraud charges, alleging it improperly raised millions of dollars to secretly pay leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups for inside information.
That's according to Todd Blanch, the acting Attorney General.
The Justice Department alleges the civil rights group defrauded donors by using their money to fund the very extremism it claimed to be fighting with more than $3 million paid to informants through a now defunct program to infiltrate white supremacists and other extremist groups.
Prosecutors alleging some of the money was used by extremists to carry out other crimes, but court papers not including specific examples.
Again, that's the story from the Associated Press, one of the many stories this week, and we're asking you what your top news story of the week was.
About 15 minutes left to do that.
This is Jeff in Bayville, New York, Independent.
What do you think?
Thank you, John.
My top news story, I think maybe of the last several years, is the Sahel-Sudan humanitarian crisis that has gone unnoticed in Africa.
Now, relating this back to the straits of Hormuz, just from solely due to the strait of Hormuz being closed, the mortality statistics in Sudan due to that closure in March, by the end of March, was 10,540 people preventable deaths.
Where are you getting your numbers from on this?
OCHA, the World Food Program.
These are all the NGOs, Doctors Without Borders.
All these people have audited the stocks available and how fast they're being depleted without being replenished.
And I have the stock information here.
I did a research, and I sent basically a legislation proposal for consideration on Thursday morning at 8 o'clock.
There was a subcommittee mock-up for financial aid.
And Jeff, how did you come to this issue?
Why is this issue something that you're passionate about?
Okay.
So amongst, okay, let me just give you a quick survey.
I know it's real quick here.
So by April, there's 21,000 deaths.
By May, this couple of weeks from now, there'll be 31,620 deaths.
These projections are also made scientifically by the humanitarian organizations that provision for financial outlays for humanitarian support.
I got that your involvement.
How did you come to this issue, Jeff?
Why is this something that you say nobody else is paying attention to this?
Why do you pay attention to this?
I pay attention to this because amongst the people who are dying because of this straight of hormones being closed right now, and before that, 60% of these people are under five.
Children under five are the primary casualties.
I think everybody universally, that is the number one thing perhaps in everybody's lives, children.
I don't think it is anything more important than children.
I don't know.
I should think most people, the great, great, great majority, know that.
We all have children mostly.
Or if we don't have children, we know children.
This is the number one priority for me.
And I think it's the number one priority for parents.
But you have to recall that, you know, we think about our own kids.
But if you are one of those parents living in that kind of subsistence condition and gratuitously deprived of the aid, it's essentially a collateral damage to the war.
Not just, there isn't just collateral damage in the conflict zone.
There's collateral damage from this globally, especially in the most indigent populations in the world.
In this case, literally the most indigent population in the world in need of humanitarian assistance is the Sudan.
The United Nations already stated that.
That's Jeff in New York.
This is James in Montana.
You're up next.
Line for Democrats.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I just wanted to state my headline for the week was about the war in Iran.
And it seems like there's no peace talks at this time.
There seems to be no end strategy.
It just seems to go on and on.
And I can't help but notice that our current administration is so poised to, you know, run us against each other, Democrat against Republican, you know, Republican, you know, back and forth, whereas it's just kind of ludicrous.
I mean, I have Republican friends as well as Democratic friends.
I mean, they're no, you know, worse or better than anybody else.
You know, we're all Americans, and it just seems so frivolous that they're constantly trying to play us.
And you see that with the current administration.
It's a constant ploy or play to kind of have us at odds with each other.
And, you know, I just think back to like all the soldiers that lost their lives, because I am a disabled veteran.
And you look at all the soldiers who lost their lives in World War II and other wars, Vietnam, which is really close to my heart because I just barely missed a drop in Vietnam.
But anyway, did they lose their lives to have this kind of bickering and childless banner between the different parties?
And that war is just so costly in lives and the money spent on it.
You think about it, everybody in this country could have full-blown health care on just a fraction of what they're spending on this war.
And I just want to reach out and say something to my Republican friends in the world.
Is this what you really voted for?
You really voted for this kind of fighting amongst ourselves.
And as the saying goes, you know, a house divided cannot stand.
Well, I just look, I serve my country, and I feel like I don't think a party determines your moral character, who you are in this world.
You're human, you're Christian, or you're not Christian.
We have to stand together as a country and not just let our current government break us down to lesser than what we really are.
That's James in Montana on the war in Iran.
National Division and Unity Calls00:11:09
This is the front page of today's New York Times.
Here's how they describe it in the second and third graphs of that front page story.
Mr. Trump's war in Iran, interrupted by a ceasefire that he extended indefinitely this week, has morphed from an all-out bombardment to a volatile, costly standoff at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.
Neither side appears eager to return to the violence that enstared much of the Middle East before the April 7th ceasefire, though both insist they are ready for it.
And neither side is showing signs of capitulating to the other's demands.
The war in Iran has morphed from bombs to a test of wills, is the headline of that story.
We're asking for your top news story of the week, another 10 minutes or so to do that, though I guess I should note that the week is not yet over, and there may still be more news this week, perhaps from tonight's White House correspondents dinner.
President Trump set to speak at that dinner, address journalists in the room for the first time as commander-in-chief.
And our coverage of that event begins at 7 p.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN, also on C-SPAN.org and the free C-SPAN Now video app.
The entertainment tonight is being provided by Oz Perlmutt.
He's described as a mentalist and he will be entertaining those in the room and C-SPAN's Pedro Etcheferia caught up with him earlier this week, asked him about his plans for tonight.
This is about two minutes of their conversation.
What are you most excited about?
I'm excited to be in a room full of journalists who are skeptics at heart and millions at home watching and do something they've never seen before.
Something truly unprecedented.
They've never, ever in the 105-year history of this event had someone like me.
Because you're a mentalist, as you're describing.
How do you describe that to other people?
So mentalism is a form of magic.
I am not a psychic.
I'm not a medium.
I'm not like supernatural.
I know how to observe people in a very different way than most and seem to read their thoughts and read their minds, which I think, given the fact that President Trump will be in the room, is going to be an amazing evening.
Not to mention all of the VIPs, the dignitaries, the cabinet members, and the journalists who normally they ask the hard-hitting questions.
Well, I'm going to find the hard-hitting answers that night.
You get the call to do this.
What was your reaction when you got that call?
So I was shocked, which is hard to surprise somebody who shocks other people for a living.
I thought I was being pranked at first.
I go, because I always thought I was a comedian.
I thought it's just comedians that do this.
So at first, I thought, what's going on here?
But then, as I kind of navigated the waters and understood the point this year was to get President Trump to come.
And I think that is the reason they did something different.
Because this year they wanted to avoid the lane of kind of, I don't want to call it division, but the comedians tend to roast.
And that tends to be for some people funny, for other people, hurtful.
I love it.
I love a good comedy show.
But I think the reason they got the president this year was doing something different, something splashy and something very unique.
And that's what I'm going to bring to the table.
I suppose you have a method of preparation.
Anytime you go before an audience, do you have a different approach this time because of the crowd involved?
So there's two elements to this, if you think about this: is one, in the room.
We've got 2,600 people that are watching a live show.
But you've also got to think about the people at home who are going to be experiencing it through the TV screens and the next day on the small screens because that's where millions and hundreds of millions of people see it.
The clips online.
So I'm thinking of both at the same time: how do we produce a great TV show while also keeping it intimate and amazing for the people in the room?
So it's a little bit of a juggling act.
And then, of course, the moment that counts: if I get a chance with President Trump to get inside his head.
And I think that can be something that'll be amazing because he is very, very good at holding his cards close.
And I think he's also a showman, if ever there was one, who knows the power of a great headline.
And I think we're going to try to do a little bit of both of those things.
Do an amazing moment that will unite this country right now when there's been a lot of division.
You can watch Oz Perlman tonight at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
And of course, President Trump set to speak as well.
It all begins at 7 p.m. Eastern on the red carpet.
You can watch it here on C-SPAN on C-SPAN.org and the free C-SPAN Now video app.
Hope you join us.
And about five minutes left here in this first hour of the Washington Journal as we give you a chance to look back on the week that was.
We've been asking what your top news story of the week was.
Judy in Abington, Virginia, Republican.
What do you think?
Yes, thank you.
I was calling about the Southern Poverty Law Center, which someone already talked about, but he didn't talk about Charlottesville, where they had that, they always said the good about the good word President Trump said, good people on both sides, which he was talking about, the people tearing down the statues, which nobody ever shows the whole speech where he says that.
He even says about, I'm not talking about the white supremacists or the neo-Nazis and all and the different people that they said he upheld.
But the other guy was talking about it where they even celebrities and rich people contributed to it.
And they were putting money into, like he said, Ku Klux Klan and white supremacy.
And so it was not what they claim it was.
But I also want to talk about people calls in and talk about Trump being a pedophile and molesting women and but they never talk about like Kennedy.
He, you know, he did all that.
He flew around his wife while he was in the White House where Trump did it way before he got to be the president.
And also about him being a draft dodger.
They never talk about Clinton running to Canada to dodge the draft.
And then they don't.
And just like the January the 6th thing, where he said, walk down peacefully and patriotic it.
Patriotic.
They never play that either.
And C-SPAN don't either.
They left that out many a time.
They never played it as long as that January 6th was going on.
And people asked them to play it, and they said they didn't have time to look it up, which we've played the president's speech on that day plenty of times, and it's available to watch anytime at c-span.org.
So certainly there's not statements by presidents or members of Congress that we choose not to play.
We make it all available to you on your Southern Poverty Law Center story.
The headline again from the Associated Press, the Southern Poverty Law Center charged with defrauding donors with payments to extremist informants.
One of the news stories of the week.
And we've been asking you what your top news story of the week was.
Larry in Georgia, what do you think?
Go ahead, Larry.
Okay.
My top news story of the day is that Donald Trump, you know, what happened to a matter of fact, he's not a part of NATO.
In his first term, he didn't like NATO.
Now the second term, he's talking about he don't like NATO.
No, because for the simple reason that this is Donald Trump war, and he wants to bring everybody into it, you know, and stuff.
But, you know, these people don't want to get involved in that mess that he started.
And another thing is that about this demo tonight, it's nothing but a service.
He might as well go ahead on and do a Barnum S. Bayless show.
You know, I think that I would like to see that instead of...
Are you going to watch tonight?
Oh, no, no, no.
I don't want to be a part of that mess.
But anyway, thank you.
That's Larry in Georgia.
If you want to see previous presidential speeches from White House correspondents' dinners dating back to the 1980s, if you head over at 10 a.m. Eastern to C-SPAN 2's American History TV, it's a marathon of past speeches leading up to tonight's dinners from Ronald Reagan to Joe Biden.
You can see more than 20 different presidential speeches over the course of the day in the afternoon.
Again, it all begins tonight.
7 a.m. Eastern is the red carpet coverage, and then 8 p.m. is when the formal program starts.
And we're expecting President Trump to make his remarks sometime around 10 p.m. Eastern.
Watch it all here on C-SPAN.
This is Mike, Houston, Texas, Republican.
Good morning.
Thanks for waiting.
Good morning.
Yeah, my top news story of the week certainly is a Southern Poverty Law Center.
Just like Crossfire Hurricane, there are people on the left, and I mean way up there, who have to manufacture the frustration, the anger,
the social media leg of our society that needs to be fired up and to generate anger and emotion rather than focusing on how to solve problems and lift people up is just systematic in how they were going about doing that.
Fraud, all the charges against them deserve to be repeated.
It was a 501c3, by the way.
It didn't seem like much of a non-partisan organization to me, but it's just not what society is built on.
You're destroying the glue of society when you have things like that happen.
And I think the people who run it, the names of those people should be named.
And they should be accountable.
Obviously, they will be because there are charges.
And I remember Crossfire Hurricane, which was the issue with going into Mexico and dropping off guns so that people were killed.
And you rile up people to get more gun laws, something like that.
I don't remember everything about it.
I didn't look it up before I called.
But that was a fictitious event.
The war on women, every four years, every two years, the Occupy Wall Street, all these phrases and all these anger-driven events, that's how you get voters to the polls?
Is that what lifts people up?
Let's focus on ideas.
I don't hate people.
I don't hate Obama.
I don't hate Hillary Clinton.
I don't hate them.
What I don't like are bad ideas.
And it's just really unfortunate that in society, we have to have such anger at each other.
I've lost a lot of friends who just blocked me on Facebook.
I'm thinking, what did I do?
And I don't know why people live like that.
I don't do that to people.
I love people.
Term Limit Proposals Spark Debate00:03:16
That's Mike in Texas.
Time for maybe one or two more phone calls.
This is Dayton, Ohio.
M, Democrat.
Go ahead.
Yes, I was just wanting to inquire about the shipments of medication that are being stopped because of the closing of the strait.
And this is a news story from this week.
What medications are you talking about?
Why is this age or something?
I'm talking about cholesterol medicine, blood pressure medicine.
I heard it on the news yesterday.
And that's your top news story of the week.
Yeah, because I was just wanting to know if you guys knew anything about that.
I tell you what, you can Google it just as well as I can.
Em.
I've got some folks waiting who want to talk about their top news story of the week.
Let me go to Ed in Georgia, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning, sir.
Thank you for taking my call.
What's your top news story of the week?
Running short on time.
Okay, yeah, it's the hypocrisy of Chuck Schmer.
He has the audacity to blast a part of the federal government, ICE and DAS, calling for defunding them.
But if you look back 20 years ago, you know, he was clamoring about more border security and everything like this.
And the simple fact, I think we have a great solution here.
It's right in front of our nose.
But as Americans, we don't want to do this.
If a term limit is great for the president, why can't we have term limits for senators and congressmen?
Because the problems that Chuck Schumer has been in office for 20-some odd, 30-some odd years are still prevalent today.
He has not solved a single problem, but yet wants to blast everybody.
And I think Mark Wayne Mullens was correct when he said that he should be ashamed of himself.
He represents the United States of America as a senator, but yet he wants to call people that serve this country names and degrade them.
I don't understand that.
We're all Americans.
What's a fair term limit for a member of Congress?
You talk about Chuck Schumer.
He began serving in the House in the 1980s in the Senate, was first elected in the 90s to the Senate.
Exactly.
Two terms.
Two terms for a senator or a House member?
Two terms.
Both.
If it's good for the president, why ain't it good for everybody else?
Well, if it's two terms for a senator, it's 12 years.
If it's two terms for a House member, it's only four years.
Exactly.
I understand the links, but I don't understand why we don't have limits on their term.
You know, a president only has two terms, four years apiece, eight years to do what he wants to get done.
If a senator can't accomplish what they want to get done in 12 years, step to the side because their message is not reaching the people.
It's very simple.
If you have a message that's going to reach people, it will get passed.
That's Ed in Georgia, our last caller in this first segment of the Washington Journal.
Stick around, though.
Plenty more to talk about today, including in our nine o'clock hour.
Unfiltered State Visit Coverage Starts00:02:46
We'll be joined by educators Jason Stacey and Matthew Ellington to preview this year's high school advanced placement U.S. history exam.
If you're a high school student taking the exam, a lover of history, you'll want to tune in to that segment.
But first, after the break, it's a conversation with David Becker, the founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
We'll talk about the latest nationwide redistricting battles.
Stick around.
We'll be right back.
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Join C-SPAN today at 7 p.m. Eastern for Washington's premier black tie event, the White House Correspondents Dinner.
Watch live coverage from the Washington Hilton featuring red carpet arrivals of top journalists, political leaders, and celebrities.
This year's featured entertainer is renowned mentalist Oz Perlman.
And President Donald Trump is expected to make his first appearance as president.
The White House Correspondents Dinner, live today, 7 p.m. Eastern, on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org.
King Charles and Queen Camilla are heading to the U.S. for a four-day state visit beginning Monday.
During their trip, the King will address a joint session of Congress.
And President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will host the royal couple at a state dinner at the White House.
The visit also includes stops in New York and Virginia, where they'll take part in a block party celebrating America's 250th birthday.
Don't miss live coverage of the Royal State Visit beginning Monday on the C-SPAN networks.
Redistricting Vote Impacts Electoral Map00:10:33
Campaign 2026 is underway, and the stakes couldn't be higher.
Every seat in the United States House of Representatives is up for grabs, along with 33 U.S. Senate races.
And the outcome of both could reshape the balance of power in Washington.
Voters will also decide 36 gubernatorial contests.
From the campaign trail to election night, follow Campaign 2026 on the C-SPAN networks, C-SPAN, bringing you democracy unfiltered.
Washington Journal continues.
After a week that saw a major redistricting referendum pass in Virginia, it's a good day to be joined by David Becker.
He's the founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
Mr. Becker, on that Virginia redistricting vote that could net Democrats an additional four seats in that state if it's allowed to happen by the state Supreme Court, does this kind of redistricting, does this help in your efforts as a group whose job, your mission, is to help people have trust in elections, to believe in this system that we have?
Is this helpful?
I mean, overall, these redistricting wars are definitely not helpful.
I mean, we have to first and foremost remember that these districts that are being drawn are for representatives, members of the House of Representatives, the word itself.
They're supposed to represent the members of their district.
And what's happening is people are going to go to the polls now in the middle of a decade and find different people on the ballot than they expected, find themselves in a totally different district than they were in before.
This is incredibly unusual.
I can't stress this enough.
Prior to this year, in the last more than 50 years, there had only been three voluntary mid-decade redistrictings in that entire time since 1972, meaning non-court ordered.
In just this year, there have been six.
And there could be more.
And there could be more.
Florida is now considering it.
We're going to see what happens with the litigation that's going on in Virginia.
But it's really problematic from the perspective of the voters who are going to be moved and from the perspective of the election officials who serve them.
As you said, we work with these people all over the country, both parties all over the country.
And what people need to understand also is that when a redistricting happens, it's not over when the map is drawn.
That's just the beginning.
That gets you to the starting line.
At that point, then the election officials in each of these states in each of these counties has to make sure that each of their voters is properly coded to receive the right ballot in their new district.
That takes time and energy.
That is a lot of effort.
And you can plan for that if it's once every 10 years.
If it's once every two years, it becomes overwhelming.
Which brings up the question.
So the Virginia State Supreme Court takes this up on Monday.
We're actually going to be airing those arguments.
I believe it begins at 9 a.m. on Monday, and we're airing them on C-SPAN too.
However long it takes them to reach that decision, is there a point of no return in terms of being able to do all that coding, everything that would be necessary for a redistricting?
How far into the midterm elections can we go with these redistricting battles before it becomes a real problem?
I mean, that's going to be open to interpretation.
There's a legal theory on the books called the Purcell Principle in federal court, at least, that says basically there's a point at which it's too late to implement an election change before an election, even if it's a good election change.
However, what we've seen with the Purcell principle and what we've seen in many of these redistricting cases is that that's in the eye of the beholder.
And oftentimes we'll see different courts and different states reach different conclusions about that.
I don't think we're past the point of no return, but there's different states are in different positions right now.
Florida, for instance, is if the maps get approved, let me say in Virginia, at least the maps are done.
We know what the maps are.
That work can get started immediately.
If Florida calls a special session one of these days, then they have to go through the process of remapping.
And then they have to pass those maps.
There's going to be litigation over that.
It could be a while until we get to the starting line of doing all of that work.
They have a primary in August.
They have a general election in November.
It's going to be state by state.
We should also remember that this all started as a result of the president calling the state of Texas and pressuring them to redistrict before the 2026 election cycle.
The Texas legislature agreed to do that.
They drew some districts that they think will benefit the Republican Party.
California responded in kind, passed a referendum because they have a nonpartisan redistricting commission that draws maps ordinarily, but they had to pass a referendum to bypass that for the next election.
They did that.
That referendum passed overwhelmingly, 64 to 36 percent.
And then we've seen other states around the edges do the same thing, with Virginia just being the latest.
So stepping back from the larger issue of redistricting, whether it's good for democracy or not, this voluntary mid-century redistricting.
Did you have any concerns with the Virginia election itself, how it was run?
President Trump, as you probably saw on True Social, a lengthy post calling it a rigged election, once again concerned about a mail-in ballot drop at the end that he said changed the results.
And it was a very close election in Virginia.
But in terms of how that was run, from what you've seen and what you've learned, did you have any concerns?
Absolutely not.
It was an incredibly well-run election.
And actually, a 3% margin is not a very close election in terms of how election administrators work.
And if you talk to election litigators, which I used to be, a 3% margin is a landslide in that world.
There's no concern.
Why was it a well-run election?
What makes you affected by the elections?
Oh, the education of the voters was very well done.
Paper ballots throughout the state of Virginia.
Those paper ballots are audited to make sure that the counts were right.
If you think back, we knew the winner of that election, even though it was only a 3% margin, as you said.
We knew the winner of the election that night.
The election officials were doing a very good job of diligently reporting results.
Everything was completely transparent.
Everything was bipartisan run and bipartisan observed.
It was extraordinarily well rung.
We're not going to see any successful challenges to this election in any way.
And while the president continues to misunderstand how mail voting works, he apparently trusts it enough, again, to vote by mail himself, as he did in Florida just a few weeks ago.
Well, explain what his, I believe it was March 31st executive order on mail-in balloting would do, because this is a concern he's raised before.
Yeah, I mean, he's been spreading disinformation, frankly, about mail voting since at least 2020, even as he continues to cast mail ballots himself.
And just a few weeks after he cast his mail ballot in a Florida special election, he signed this executive order on March 31st, as you mentioned.
And it purports to do the following.
It purports to, one, direct the Department of Homeland Security to create for the first time in American history a national citizen registry that would serve as a national voter registration list.
Yeah.
Second, it directs the Postal Service to do something it has never done and is not equipped to do, which is to match that DHS magic citizen list to state lists of who they intend to send mail ballots to and then refuse to send mail ballots to those who are not on that DHS list.
And it further says that the Postal Service is going to redesign the mail ballot envelopes, which all of the states have evolved to and learned about managing and designing over many, many decades.
Redesign them and dictate to the states that they have to use them.
This is, I think it goes without saying the President of the United States does not have the power to do this.
The elections clause of the Constitution, which you and I have talked about before, Article 1, Section 4, directly grants the states the primary authority to regulate elections.
It gives Congress also some authority.
It gives no authority to the President.
The President tried to sign an executive order last year that he signed in March of 2025.
It was blocked almost entirely by three federal courts.
This executive order has been challenged in five different cases already within days of it being signed.
I expect it to be blocked in its entirety.
Have we gotten too loose, though, with mail-in voting?
Is there concerns about having ballots not in a voting area with election officials there?
Have we just become too loose with this process?
I don't think we have at all because if you think about it, mail voting has been adopted by states red and blue across the country.
And there are some states that are only all mail-in voters.
Primarily mail voting.
I know every state allows for some form of in-person voting, if you want, to some degree less than others, but that's generally true.
And remember, military and overseas voters generally vote by mail, and they have throughout our history going all the way back to before the Civil War.
But what we have with mail voting is we've actually evolved into a process that is highly secure right now.
When someone gets a mail ballot, when a mail ballot is sent to them, their identity and eligibility is checked.
When a mail ballot is voted and returned, that eligibility is checked again.
This administration clearly doesn't like mail voting, but they've been in power for 15 months now, and they can't find any evidence of any kind of significant fraud in mail voting or, in fact, voting at all.
And that's pretty consistent with what the states have found.
I mean, there's occasional incidents of voter fraud, very, very rare in the United States.
The states are exceptionally well equipped to find them.
Mail voting is a safe and secure option, but it's also not the only option.
It's not a preferred option.
I personally vote early in person.
I love voting early in person.
I recommend it to anyone who hasn't tried it.
47 states allow early in-person voting, and of course, every state allows Election Day in-person voting.
C-SPAN viewers know David Becker.
It's the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
Taking your questions after a week of a very high-profile referendum, more potential redistricting fights in the offing in the weeks to come.
11 primaries set to take place in May.
A lot to talk about on the elections front.
Here's how you can call in.
Republicans 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Independents 202-748-8002.
Before we get to those calls, for folks who haven't seen you before, when and why did you start the Center for Election Innovation and Research?
Election Data Theories Explained00:15:39
So this will be our 10th anniversary year.
We started in the summer of 2016, before the 2016 election.
I'd been working at the Pew Charitable Trusts, leading their elections team for some time.
And before that, I was a Department of Justice voting section attorney.
Worked for three different attorneys general, two Republicans and one Democrat.
And in the summer of 2016, Pew is moving into a different space.
I thought the work needed to be continued.
And of course, there was a hotly contested presidential race that we were going into.
And election officials were feeling some of the strain.
And so I wanted to continue to support them.
So we started the Institute.
But we have really evolved our work over time as abuse, threats, and harassment of election officials has increased over the last 10 years.
We started the Election Official Legal Defense Network in 2021 under the co-chairmanship of Bob Bauer, former Obama White House Counsel, and Ben Ginsburg, former counsel to Mitt Romney and President George W. Bush.
And what that network does is we've recruited over 10,000 lawyers all over the country to volunteer to serve pro bono at no cost to election officials who might need advice or assistance.
And unfortunately, we're seeing that more than ever.
And in fact, we're seeing more requests for assistance from election officials right now than we ever have in the five years of its existence.
David Becker, been on this program before, also been on C-SPAN's book TV to talk about his book, The Big Truth, Upholding Democracy in the Age of the Big Lie.
I wrote that book with Major Garrett a couple years ago at this point.
Is there another book in the works?
No, I think we're going to, I have been thinking about it, though.
And so many things are shifting right now, and we want to be able to talk relevantly about it.
One of the things I'm really thinking about right now is how there's a lot of feeling of despair and division out there in the United States.
And to some degree, that is bleeding into how we feel about our elections.
And I think we've forgotten about the fact that every election we have is a celebration of our democracy.
This year is our 250th anniversary.
And while people on both sides or all across the political spectrum are feeling pressure and division and are being primed to feel hatred towards their fellow Americans who might not agree with them, we forget that those elections are a time where every single eligible American voter gets to go out and express their view, regardless of how rich they are, regardless of where they live, regardless of what they look like.
I'd never forget that.
It's one of the reasons I like going to vote in person personally.
I like seeing my community and being out there.
And thanking those election workers as well.
Yeah, exactly.
There are people who volunteered.
My own teenage son has done that several times.
It's wonderful to just remember that our elections are something we shouldn't feel despair about, that it is as easy and convenient to get registered in the United States as it ever has been.
It's as easy and convenient to actually cast a ballot as it ever has been.
As I mentioned, 47 states offer early voting more than ever.
About two-thirds of all the states offer mail voting without an excuse if that's how you choose to vote.
It's really easy to participate.
There's not going to be any danger.
It's going to be safe.
It's going to be secure.
We should embrace that.
We should recruit others, our friends, to go and vote with us, even if they don't agree with us politically.
I know you've said before that the strength of our election system in this country is the diversity of the various election systems that we have.
Each state designs their own elections and what works for them.
But if you are somehow the election czar for a day, you can make one or two national rules about how elections are run.
Is there a recommendation that you would give?
First of all, I don't know that I'd accept that job if it was offered to me.
But if it was, I think we'd look at states like Georgia and Michigan, for instance.
I mean, Georgia is run by Republicans.
Michigan is run by Democrats currently.
Both states are very closely divided.
But what those states do is they have automatic voter registration, meaning whenever anyone goes into a motor vehicles agency, they basically get offered the opportunity to just automatically and easily get registered if they're eligible.
They use all of the tools available to keep their voter lists up to date, like the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, which I helped develop, which helps them identify when voters have moved to another state or voters have died.
They offer easy mail voting for those who want to do mail voting.
They offer widespread and easy early voting for those who choose to vote early.
They have paper ballots, as almost every place in the United States does, with the exception of Louisiana.
They do really robust audits of those paper ballots to make sure that the voting technology worked properly.
Those are all best practices.
We've seen them repeatedly.
They're being used in red states.
They're being used in blue states.
There might be ways to standardize that, just creating a floor.
But I also have to say there have been efforts by both Democrats and Republicans to pass pretty massive election overhaul bills in Congress in the last five years.
Neither passed.
The Democrats tried to pass some in 2021 and 22.
The Republicans have recently tried to pass things like the Save Act, the Save America Act.
Neither has passed.
And I think that's because they haven't been bipartisan.
Really, the opposition party has been unified in opposition to those bills.
And they haven't taken in the input from election officials, which is really, really important.
I think election policy is best made in the states.
We've seen this time and time again.
Do all of the states do it the same?
They do not.
But voters in Florida are different than voters in Washington State.
And the people who know those voters best are the elected officials in those two states and nationwide.
High praise once again from Michigan and Georgia from David Becker.
Taking your phone calls on states around the country.
This is Homer in Massachusetts, Republican from Florence.
You're up first in this segment.
Go ahead.
Hi, John.
I wanted to mention that gerrymandering came from Governor Eldridge Gehry in 1812 in Massachusetts.
That's when gerrymandering started.
So I guess we'll get that out of the way.
And I want to say, as for illegal aliens and voting ID, we need a real ID now because we can't just use our licenses because they started giving licenses to illegal aliens.
And there's so many of them that it skewed the census and gave better representation to Democrat states that offered sanctuary to these people.
So that's why they had to redo districting to try to make it right.
But if we want to go back to where it started, it started in 1812 with Governor Eldridge Gehry here in Massachusetts, who wanted to gerrymander or gerrymander back then.
So the Democrats started this.
Don't stop saying it started just a few months ago with President Trump in Texas.
That's ridiculous.
Homer, thanks for the call from Massachusetts on non-citizens and voting and his concerns on that front.
Yeah, so first of all, with regard to the census and apportionment of districts, it is federal law, it's the Constitution that requires non-citizens to be included.
That probably in the count.
And in the count, the one-person, one-vote calculations with regard to each district.
That probably benefits some blue states like California and some red states like Texas.
To be perfectly honest, it happens both ways.
There's no particular evidence that benefits one party or the other.
With regard to non-citizens registering and voting, we actually have a really good sense of how often that happens.
And the answer is it's really rare.
And that's not me saying that.
That is the Trump administration saying that.
The Trump administration reviewed about 50 million voter records from all over the United States and looking for non-citizens on the list.
And they found that 99.98% of them were documented citizens according to federal data.
It turns out the remaining 0.02% are also significantly, perhaps as much as a half or two-thirds, citizens, but the EHS didn't have the data as they've sent this data out to the states.
So we know that non-citizen registration and voting is very, very rare, which is good.
It shouldn't happen.
When it does happen, it's usually by accident.
What Texas found is some of those individuals were registered, not because they desired to be, but because the state accidentally registered them, meaning they were victims in this process.
We should do a better job of that.
Of course, non-citizens shouldn't be voting in federal elections.
That's been the law for decades and decades and decades.
And we can use tools that already are in existence in the states.
The caller mentioned Real ID, which is actually, it's true that you don't need to be a citizen to get real ID, but in order to get a real ID, you have to prove legal presence.
And what the DMVs have in their databases are documents from each individual who got real ID indicating this person showed a United States birth certificate or United States passport.
Or anyone who's been through that process knows the paperwork that you have to provide.
And again, going back to Georgia, for instance, Georgia actually used that data, which they integrate remarkably well with their election list, and found, I believe, only 20 people who might have been non-citizens out of about 8 million registered voters, meaning their process is working really, really well.
We can always do more to improve it, and we should.
But the Trump administration's own data confirms this is not a major problem in the United States.
To the Pine Tree State, this is Chris Democrat.
Good morning to Maine.
Yeah, good morning.
So my question is this.
I mean, if you listen to C-SPAN in the morning, the Republican callers that call in every day, you just get an inundated flood of people with massive amounts of disinformation that the 2016 election was completely rigged, that Venezuela had something to do with it, that Dominion voting systems were flipping votes in the middle of the night.
They don't understand that, yeah, votes change overnight because some of these southern states don't allow you to start counting votes until the day until Election Day.
And when you listen to Fox News, which I do all the time, this disinformation is just spread 24 hours a day.
I mean, it's like all day long.
There's nothing even remotely comparable on the other side.
And southern states are shutting down voting polling places.
They've shut down, I understand, upwards of 30% of voting places, moving them out of urban centers to make it harder for people to vote.
How do you counter the disinformation and the massive campaign by Republican states to make it much harder to vote?
David Becker.
Yeah, I mean, I think, so there's no question disinformation is a real problem in the United States.
And we've seen conspiracy theories embraced.
Probably it's true more so on the right lately than on the left, although it does exist on the left.
There have been conspiracy theories spread about Kamala Harris actually winning the 2024 election.
She did not.
And what we see is there is a whole economy of grift being targeted at people who supported losing candidates, trying to raise money off of them.
You know, behind the more extreme right-wing grift is the idea putting aside all of the claims of dead Venezuelan dictators and Italian satellites and German servers and Chinese bamboo ballots, all of which have been disproven.
I hadn't heard of the Chinese bamboo ballots, but we don't have to do that.
Behind all of that is this idea that the Democrats who were out of power in 2020, who did not control any aspect of the federal government, somehow managed a conspiracy of millions of people to steal the 2020 election from the sitting president of the United States who held all of the power of the federal government and that nobody is talking about it.
And then four years later, when those same Democrats held every lever of power in the federal government, they forgot to do it again.
These are not credible theories.
Our elections are more secure now than they've ever been, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans lose.
But that disinformation is toxic, and we see it constantly being spread.
And it's something we should all be pushing back on, and especially pushing back on people who politically agree with us, because we are being targeted for that.
So if you're someone who voted for President Trump, it would be really helpful to push back on that idea that he won the 2020 election.
He did not.
And if you voted for Vice President Harris in 2024, it's also really important to push back against that idea.
The disinformation has to end because we know who wins elections in the United States.
There are different times when we know the results of elections in different states.
And as the caller brought up, when ballots can be counting plays a big role in that.
Why is it that a state like Florida, we pretty much know the results of all their races on election night, but in California, we often wait days or weeks sometimes for election winters?
This adds to this trust issue, right?
We have short memories about this.
And actually, when ballots start being counted is not the primary factor in when we think we know who won the race.
We don't actually know who won a race until a vote is certified, which is usually weeks after an election.
On election night, we have this desire to know right away as soon as the poll is closed.
That is a normal human desire.
I have it as well.
But election officials and volunteer poll workers are working really hard to get that out.
And the single biggest variable that determines whether or not we get to get an idea from the media who they predict are going to win when all the votes are counted is the margin of victory.
So we talk about Florida and how we know who won right away.
Well, in 2018, they had two statewide races, governor and senate, that were decided by about a quarter of a percentage point.
We did not know who won those races on election night.
In California, every presidential election year, we might be waiting for those House races that are really close for a few weeks.
But we know the result of the presidential race at 8.01 p.m. Pacific time because the margin is so large.
So remember that when we're hearing who wins races, especially on election night and immediately in the days after, that's the media projecting based on the results that have come in and the ballots that are still left to count.
All states still have ballots left to count in the days after the election.
There's still military and overseas ballots coming in, et cetera.
So those are unofficial results.
It's really not that variable between the states.
I will tell you, when you talk to election officials in the states, those that are perceived to get their results in really fast, they recognize that oftentimes they're very fortunate because their statewide races are not that close.
And they have a lot of empathy for the election officials in states where they have to count every single ballot until they know the result.
The example I used in 2024 is imagine a fishbowl with about 1,000 red and blue jelly beans in it.
And if 800 of those thousand jelly beans are red and only 200 are blue, I don't need to count the whole jelly bean bowl until I know whether that bowl is mostly red or blue.
But if it's 501 to 499, I'm counting every last jelly bean in that bowl.
That's going to take me longer to do.
And so as we're listening to results on the night of November 3rd and into November 4th, just remember our neighbors, members of our community, are working hard overnight.
They are verifying every mail ballot.
They are processing every precinct ballot.
They are double-checking and reconciling and auditing the machines to make sure that the counts are right.
And if the margin's really narrow, that's going to take some time until we know exactly who won.
To James in Waterport, New York, Republican.
Thanks for waiting.
Mail Ballot Verification Processes Begin00:14:52
You're on with David Becker.
Okay, thank you.
Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal was published about 40 years ago when he was about 40 years old.
I have read about 100 pages so far for the first time.
Who Donald Trump is and what can be expected of him is clearly and accurately spelled out in the first 100 pages of the book.
There are no surprises or contradictions that I have found yet.
We, the voter, had every resource to know who Donald Trump is and was for 40 years.
I find what I have read so far is completely completely describes our president.
In his first term, he was surrounded by advisors that I questioned to myself frequently about some of their characters, abilities, and motives.
I concluded that Donald Trump did not have the full power to decide on these people because of his inexperienced machine.
So, James, bring me to today and your question or comment about voting systems for David Becker.
I am bringing you today.
You're stopping me.
I'll be done in a second.
But I was truly impressed with his first four.
I was not truly impressed with his four years.
Before the next four-year election, the Biden that Biden is deemed to have won openly proposed that if I openly propose that if Trump won his second term, the Republican control would be more of the same, of which I quite critically was not happy with.
I also predicted that it would be better that Trump lost the election for the first time, for this term, and that Biden then tried again.
So, James, bring me to the question.
We're running short on time.
The bottom paragraph, if you don't want Trump, your next chance to establish what you can do, want, what you can want is in about three years, and our laws make as our laws make or may not require.
I can predict, I can't predict how Congress, composed of lawyers and our court judges, will decide, but for now, it has been decided what the majority wanted from the last election, and it's high time we all believe that majority rules and the first priority is for the good of the country, and then the needs of the individual good citizen will follow.
Thanks.
It's James in New York.
Anything you want to follow up on?
No, I mean, it is absolutely true.
Donald Trump won the 2024 election.
I mean, we audited that and confirmed it and verified it.
Again, our elections have been under more scrutiny than ever.
And this cottage industry of grift around disinformation around our elections, which is really targeting Americans who are understandably sincerely disappointed in the outcomes, is unfortunate.
The last three presidential elections were, you know, in our history, relatively close, but also clear.
Donald Trump won the 2016 election by the rules that we had.
You might not like the Electoral College, but I guarantee you Secretary Clinton was not surprised by the Electoral College, and that was the rules.
Joe Biden did win the 2020 election.
Donald Trump won the 2024 election.
And when we have the 2026 elections, the American people are going to have an opportunity to express their opinion on how our government overall is functioning and vote for the Article I branch of government, the Congress, and express their opinion on whether the Congress is doing the job that they want.
And what we have seen in the past is midterm elections traditionally don't get very high turnout.
The highest turnout we've ever seen in modern American history in a midterm election is 50%.
That was in 2018 when President Trump was in office during his first term.
Which means that if we get to the point where we somehow exceed that, that we embrace our role as citizens and make sure our voice is heard.
If we could get to 52, 53, 54 percent, that could have an incredible effect on how Congress governs and who gets to sit in those seats.
One-third of the United States Senate up in November, 435 House seats.
It's been 435 House seats since 1919, when one House member, I looked this up, represented 210,000 people.
Today, one House member represents 760,000 people.
Do you think it's time to expand the House of Representatives?
I mean, that's a really good question.
First of all, we should note that the 435 number is not magic.
It's not in the Constitution.
That's set by statute by Congress.
It can be changed by Congress.
It depends.
It has been, as you mentioned, about 100 years ago.
You know, the congressional districts are extremely large.
Some the entire state.
Yeah.
And it is it creates that when congressional districts get that large and you have to divide them up 435 between 50 states and recognizing that those that are within about the size,
the states that are about the size of a single district only get one, the ability to gerrymander and create kind of partisan unbalance is increased.
So it's possible that increasing the number of members of Congress would be a good idea.
I haven't heard it really proposed as a serious offer in Congress.
One of the things I actually hope as we talk about the problems that these mid-decade redistricting wars are having, and one of the callers earlier said that Democrats have done this too.
That's absolutely true.
Democrats engage in partisan gerrymandering, as do Republicans.
This round of redistricting, this is different.
We are at a point where six mid-decade redistrictings to this point have been done, and that's never been done before.
That was started by the president pressuring Texas.
We are seeing efforts to create more partisan imbalance where California, which voted 40% for Donald Trump, now has far fewer than 40% districts that are likely to be held by Republicans.
Texas, which voted 43% for Vice President Harris, is now going to have far fewer than 43% Democratic districts in the House.
And maybe, you know, this, I'm not optimistic about this, but maybe this mutually assured destruction, which is occurring between the parties, might cause serious people from both parties to get together and say, is there any way we can stop this?
The Supreme Court has said they are not going to get in the middle of partisan gerrymandering.
But the parties in Congress could do something.
Again, I'm not optimistic about that.
I don't want to be a poly about it, but it'd be...
Hope springs the turn.
Yeah, I mean, what's clear now is both parties are not benefiting from this.
I mean, I guarantee you in a perfect world, Florida does not want to have a special session to consider redistricting right now.
So maybe there's an opportunity for a discussion.
Let me go to Florida.
Steve in Hallendale, Florida, Independent.
Steve, good morning.
Yes, I've just had a question for Mr. Becker.
How would you feel about making Election Day a national holiday so that everyone would have an opportunity to vote?
First of all, that's a really good question, Steve.
I'm of mixed feelings about this.
Yeah, I mean, it has been a popular thing to bring up.
I've heard members of both parties bring it up.
I think there's the idea that it would increase turnout.
I haven't seen any evidence that it would actually increase turnout.
There are some benefits.
For instance, if it was a national holiday, schools would likely be closed, which means schools could be used as polling places, and they are in many places.
But on the other hand, think of other things that happen on national holidays.
Well, first, schools are closed.
What does that mean to parents, perhaps single parents, who work and have to find child care then instead of having their kids at school when they might otherwise want to go vote?
Public transportation often runs on reduced schedules on holidays.
That might mean people who need public transportation have a harder time.
Often hourly workers get paid time and a half, so they have a financial incentive actually to work rather than to take time off and not work.
So I think this is a very, very mixed bag.
I think we've largely solved this problem.
Doesn't Louisiana do their elections on Saturdays?
Not their federal elections.
Not the federal election.
Yeah, but state elections.
Does it work?
I mean, it doesn't lead to higher turnout by any means.
Louisiana is still generally near the bottom of turnout or in the middle.
But I think we've already solved this problem.
And we've solved this problem by making sure that election day isn't the only time you have to vote.
There's this idea pushed by some that we should return to a day when everyone casts ballots on a single day during a 12-hour period of time on a Tuesday in November.
The problem with that is we've literally never done that.
We've never had a single day of voting in the United States, going back to 1789.
It just hasn't happened.
It's a myth.
We've always offered other opportunities for voting either through mail.
Early voting is a more recent, something that's happened more in the last century or so.
But there have been opportunities to cast a ballot outside of Election Day, and that's working.
I mean, we're seeing that work really well.
If you look at the states, the 47 states where they offer early voting, you're going to get a lot of people showing up to vote.
There'll often be long lines on the first day of early voting in these early voting states.
And you'll hear some people say, oh, see, this is voter suppression.
There's long lines at the polling place.
And I'll be honest, I always think this is wonderful and inspiring.
All of these voters have showed up to stand with their community, wait in line.
They're often in a really good mood.
And the reason for that is because they could come back tomorrow.
They could go to another early voting site if they wanted to and vote there.
They've chosen to do that because they're excited about participating.
And so I don't think we need to tweak around Election Day and make it a national holiday in order to achieve the goals of making it easier for voters to participate.
We've largely already achieved that.
And, you know, for all of the talk about voter suppression, the last four federal general elections have been four of the highest turnout elections we've ever seen in American history, including the highest turnout midterm election and the highest turnout presidential election.
Head out to California.
Steve's waiting in La Miranda, California.
Good morning.
You're on with David Becker.
Good morning.
I just want to ask a question, and maybe he can elaborate on an ethics complaint on him in 2005, where the head of the Department of Justice of Civil Rights Division stated he was the most unethical thing I've ever seen.
Called David Becker, a hardcore leftist who couldn't stand conservatives.
Maybe you could elaborate on that.
And thank you very much.
David Becker, on your back.
Most certainly, thanks for googling me.
So there was a single individual who made a complaint against me.
He was a political appointee.
That complaint was dismissed almost immediately.
That individual was also sanctioned by the Office of the Inspector General of the DOJ for having engaged in partisan hiring.
So I'm completely comfortable with my record.
I've worked with Republicans and Democrats all over the country.
I've got Republicans on my board.
The major lawsuit that I brought at the United States Department of Justice was Georgia versus Ashcroft, where I was lead counsel in a case that sued the Georgia Democrats who then controlled the state in their redistricting plan.
I was given the highest honor that a career attorney could get for that by the Bush administration.
So my record is pretty strong, and I feel comfortable with that.
I'll stand on that.
To Olivia, Upper Marlboro, Maryland, good morning.
Next, hi, good morning, John.
It's always a blessing to um see you.
So, more importantly, mr Becker, I want to speak to the research component.
Um, I have a recent experience, so I received a um trial, a summons and trial.
What is this?
Uh, it's a trial jury summons.
I reported to the circuit court for Prince George's County on March 16, 2026.
That morning, over 400 people reported.
The problem is on the back of the summons is what it's called the Part B jury qualification form.
More specifically.
Olivia, does this have to do with elections or jury service?
Negative, negative.
So Mr. Becker talked about the real ID.
We have people, about 92% of that, more than 400 people that showed up that morning, okay, did not complete the Part B jury qualification form.
The reason why that's important is because when you scan the jury, the trial jury summons in, you receive an error if Part B is not completed.
Well, Olivia, let me give David Becker a chance because we're short on time.
Is there anything you can follow up there?
So I think, I'm not sure if she's getting to this point, Olivia, but there have been times in the past where individuals, jurors often have to be citizens.
And there are individuals who said, I can't serve on jury duty because I'm not a citizen.
And what some in the elections community have done who have tried to, who are looking for non-citizens on the list, have often said the people who said they're non-citizens on the jury list and that they're registered, that's election fraud.
What election officials have actually found is it's much more often juror fraud, fraud on the judicial system, that there are people who want to get out of jury duty by lying about their citizenship status.
And they actually are citizens and they can legally vote.
What I would say is if you're a citizen, you should vote.
You should also serve on a jury.
I've actually done it.
And it's a great honor to be in a country like ours where we both get to vote and serve on juries.
And just briefly, we've brought this up before, but in these surveys of people's trust in the election system, the people who often have the highest trust in the election system in this country are the people who have worked elections, who have seen it from the inside out.
Jury Duty Fraud Concerns Surface00:10:15
I'm so glad, yeah, you brought that back to that.
This is, if you have any doubts, the people, it's understandable.
I work on elections every day.
I think about it every day.
Election officials think about it every day.
But most Americans think about it right around election time.
And they don't think about everything that goes into making that election work.
And so when their candidate loses and people that they trust are telling them the candidate didn't really lose, that election was stolen from them, they have questions.
And the way to answer those questions, the best way, even better than listening to me, is to go and volunteer to be a poll worker.
Because you will see all the checks and balances and redundancies and transparencies that make our election system work, make it be confirmable and verifiable.
There's a reason that you have to go through training beforehand.
There is a reason that election officials show up, poll workers show up hours before the polls are open and stay hours after the polls close.
It's because they're checking and double checking and they're all doing it under transparent observation.
And those numbers are being checked and double checked and triple checked over and over and over and over again.
We know that our elections are secure and the best way to see that is by volunteering to be a poll worker.
And a great way to learn about our election system and the work of the Center for Election Innovation and Research is to go to electioninnovation.org.
David Becker is the founder of that group and we always appreciate your time, especially on a Saturday.
All right, thank you, John.
Coming up after the break, we are going to talk about the AP U.S. History Exam.
We're going to be joined by history educators, Matthew Ellington and Jason Stacey.
Whether you're a AP high school student or just a lover of history, a good segment for you to tune into.
But before that, it's going to be our open forum.
Any public policy, any political issue that you want to talk about, now's your time to call in.
Go ahead and start dialing in.
And as you're dialing in, I wanted to let you know about some of the many parties around Washington, D.C.
This White House Correspondents Dinner Week.
C-SPAN co-hosted one of those parties with YouTube TV and the Meridian Center for Diplomatic Engagement.
That was on Thursday night.
Want to give you a look of what one of these parties looks like and kind of an insider's view.
C-SPAN's Cape Michael took viewers around that party.
We're at Meridian International House where we are recognizing diplomacy at 250.
This is a precursor to the White House Correspondents Association Dinner Weekend, which will be full of events like this around town.
This event is in partnership with Meridian, YouTube, and C-SPAN.
Well, I think...
What is this weekend all about?
I mean, this weekend is supposed to be about the First Amendment.
And as somebody who's been a conflict journalist and lived in authoritarian places and hasn't had the right to free press, I really take that seriously.
And I think we're so blessed to have a free press.
There is a lot of excitement in Washington about this weekend.
And this is a precursor to the weekend.
But what are you most...
Kick off, really.
What are you most excited about this weekend?
I love the opportunity to celebrate the press, the freedom of the press.
It's such an important part of the United States democracy.
And having the chance to come together as a community to really lift up all our journalists and show how important we know that field is, the media.
We are here discussing diplomacy at 250.
And these events are kind of, you know, on the lighter side for White House Correspondent Association Dinner Weekend.
What does diplomacy mean to you and why do these kind of lighter events, why are they important to diplomacy?
Well, diplomacy is relating to people and a relationship between societies, between countries, and not all relationships are heavy or very serious.
There's also, you know, a lighter side to relationships.
And this is important.
And of course, it's very important.
The White House Press Corps.
I've lived in Washington on and off since I was eight years old and I always follow the press course of the White House.
So I want to congratulate all the professionals at the White House for the great job they do.
So we're here recognizing diplomacy at 250 years.
What is diplomacy to you and why does coming to an event like this matter to diplomacy?
Absolutely.
Diplomacy is super important because it connects cultures.
It promotes conversations where people can hopefully solve problems.
And attending an event like this is important to move policy forward?
Events like this create space and build relationships for diplomacy to occur.
So networking and connection, does that actually make policy happen?
Of course.
That's the fundamental, the core principle of policymaking.
And diplomacy is about networking and connection.
Are you all planning to attend the dinner this year?
Absolutely.
And what are we expecting that we might hear from the president if he attends?
Well, I'd hope there's a positive message for America's next 250 years.
Well, I think he's going to be funny and a good sense of humor.
I think it's exciting that the president's going to be there.
This is historic.
I'm sure there are going to be some lots of news being made.
This is going to be fantastic, so we'll see where it goes.
Can you give us an insider's account of what the dinner is like and why these pre-parties are important?
You know, the pre-parties are really important for me because that's where you really see people.
You can talk to them and you have a free flow where you don't have that in the dinner.
You know what I mean?
It's where you're seated, you're there.
And I think the pre-parties are wonderful for me because you get to meet people and you get to really, you know, get a sense of the style and the fashion and the people and where they're coming from.
So it's a whole different vibe.
But why are events like these important to Washington society?
I think there's a couple of reasons.
There's several reasons, actually.
I think partly is because when eyes are on Washington, there's always something maybe negative or always something, you know, stressful and things like that.
This is a chance where we can celebrate the good.
You know, we have eyes now on Washington and seeing how we can strive and do really well there.
Plus, Washington loves a good party.
What about any of the celebrities or notable names that come to Washington around this time of year?
It's interesting because for us, we think the people that cover the news are our celebrities.
The Holatons are celebrities, but we have all the other celebrities come in.
Like last night, I took a selfie with Don Lemon, so that was kind of cool.
But I think that, you know, everybody wants to see people out dressed up, and we can get what happens in Hollywood, we can get what happens in New York, and it's our chance to do it here.
Well, you're going to have a bunch of people here.
You're going to have creators, you're going to have musicians, songwriters, politicians, and people who need to come together and figure out how we all get along and move things forward and make things better.
Who would have thought that the road manager for Rundy MC and the BC Boys would be up here talking to you guys?
Anybody got a camera?
Can you take a vote?
I got to send it to my mother.
I just want to say thank you to everybody and let's have a party and have a good time.
So here's to you.
Washington Journal continues.
And if you want to watch the White House Correspondents Dinner, that decades-old tradition, it is tonight, starting at 7 p.m. here on C-SPAN, C-SPAN.org in the free C-SPAN Now video app.
Washington Journal continues with Open Forum.
Any public policy issue, any public policy issue you want to talk about, now is the time to do so.
Phone lines are for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, as usual.
We have about 20 minutes here to take your phone calls, and there are plenty on the line already.
So we'll go right to David out in San Francisco.
Democrat, David, good morning.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
Appreciate being having my call taken and listening to your last guest about elections.
I just want to comment about elections in general, give a broader perspective.
He talked about how we do it here in America.
I lived in Brazil in Bolivia and South America.
And elections, just share with the American audience that elections, they are handled a bit differently.
Basically, the electorate is required by law to vote.
And if they don't vote, there are various kinds of sanctions that are applied, like losing their job.
So, you know, when we talk about our election system, Becker didn't even mention this, but we're really suffering, I feel, from the fact that we have a low turnout.
We don't really can have, it's a sign of a poor electoral interest and poor interest in the electorate in our political system.
And we could think more broadly about how to change it to increase participation.
So that's just the thoughts I want to share this morning.
Thank you.
David, thanks for the call from California.
We'll stay in the Golden State.
This is Mike Valley Center Independence.
Go ahead.
Hey, thanks for taking my call.
Yeah, I just wanted to talk about the corruption in the Trump government and everything that Trump seemed to touch fails.
Trump Cabinet Pardons Scandal Emerges00:02:54
Their Bitcoin is the Trump Bitcoin is worth, let's see, $2.87.
At the time, at one time, it was worth $75.
The World Liberty Financial is now worth $0.08, their coin.
And Melania's coin is now worth less than $0.12.
The Trump kids are selling drones to our military.
And now they're trying to sell drones to the countries in the Middle East.
And both of the kids are on the border prediction markets.
There's no way that people are going to win in the prediction markets because the Trump kids get insider information before anybody else.
The Trump cabinet is selling pardons.
The growing rate in the last administration, in his last administration, was $3 million for a pardon.
And Trump's trying to prosecute the innocent, and he's pardoning the guilty.
That's what I got to say.
That's Mike in California.
What Donald Trump is doing in the past 24 hours is posting to his social media page, his true social page.
Here's a few of the things that have been on the president's mind about 15 hours ago.
It is several pictures of the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial, 2,500 feet, the length of the tallest building in the world, he says, starting the final phase of the renovation that was supposed to cost $301 million and take three years.
It was instead done with the help of the Secretary of the Interior and his entire department for $2 million in one week.
Some of those renovations of the pool that sits between the Lincoln Memorial and the National World War II Memorial, some of the pictures there.
President Trump also posting about Hakeem high-tax Jeffries, as he calls him, calling him a low IQ individual, not smart enough to be running the Democratic Party.
Hakeem Jeffries, if Democrats do take the House in the midterm elections, one of the most likely people to become the next Speaker of the House.
And then one more from the President, this also from about 15 hours ago, focusing on Right-wing columnist and commentator Candace Owens saying her stock, which was never very high, has fallen a long way.
Her attack on the First Lady of France is despicable.
I believe in this case, without verification, she's an extremely low IQ person.
Voting by Mail and Volunteer Roles00:14:58
And then a doctored Time magazine cover calling Candace Owen vile person of the year.
Some of President Trump's true social pages.
This is Wanda in California as well, Republican.
Good morning.
Yes, I would like to contradict David Becker when he says that people should get a job as a volunteer poll worker.
That's not a way to tell whether that's honest or not because all the poll workers do is take your name and hand you a ballot.
They don't see what goes on in the counting room.
They don't do that part.
The bureaucrats do that and they have no idea.
We have no idea who the bureaucrats are.
I guarantee you they're all Democrats.
Wanda, have you ever volunteered?
I certainly have.
I know what they do.
All they do is take your name and hand you a ballot.
They don't know a damn thing.
Why did you want to volunteer and when did you volunteer?
I just wanted the experience.
That was a long time ago for me, but they do the same thing now.
That's Wanda in California to Idaho.
This is Russell in Jerome, Idaho, Democrat.
Good morning.
Hello.
Thank you for taking my call.
I just wanted to make a question and a comment.
I was a victim of the wildfires.
This is concerning the wildfires in Florida and the people that are making an effort to help those people because I was a victim of a wildfire in San Diego in 2007.
And FEMA was a big part of my recovery.
I know it was a big government expense, and now they're cutting that back.
But also, the Red Cross and all the volunteers were so instrumental in helping me to become who I am now.
And I'm just worried that all the money that we're spending on military is going to be diverted from the people that are going to need it because it takes a lot to recover from a wildfire.
And I'm just praying and I'm sending my donations to Florida.
And I know Idaho, the state of Idaho, is sending the volunteers out there.
And I just wonder what's going to become of this military spending and take away from our people here in America that need it.
That's Russell in Idaho on the fires in northern Florida and Georgia.
Here's one of the latest headlines on it.
Wildfires destroying dozens of structures in Georgia, according to the governors.
The fires fueled by drought have burned tens of thousands of acres in southern Florida, southern Georgia, northern Florida, where officials said one blaze was blamed for the death of a volunteer firefighter.
This is Robert in Virginia, Independent.
Go ahead.
Yes, good morning.
Good morning.
Listen, I heard all the news that Donald Trump and the Justice Department are bringing back the executions, you know, in the form of firing squads and the executions like that.
And all kinds of things hanging.
Well, look, I'm not going to complain about cadets that use Donald Trump and Hedge Pass for the first customers because they've killed so many kids.
Let's just not go there.
Robert, this is Jane in Augusta, Maine.
Republican, good morning.
Hi, John.
This is Jane.
I'm a dietician.
I usually call every month.
Last month I missed last month.
Last month was National Nutrition Month.
But I just want to remind viewers: I like your resources and your coverage of Medicare, Medicaid, and programs.
There is a resource on your website looking at legislation, H.R. 6199, the Medical Nutrition Therapy Act, that looks at individual needs of individuals for nutrition care.
Like I said, I've enjoyed your coverage and focusing on issues that relate to food safety, food waste, and your upcoming issue regarding civics.
In Maine, we really need to look at more civics education so people understand government in a process.
For high school students, they have a social studies requirement for two years of social studies, but civics is not part of it.
So in Maine right now, we have a fraud issue regarding Maine Department of Human Services and Social Services Agency.
So I hope you continue the good work on all the coverage of these issues.
Thank you.
Jane, thanks for that.
We'll have our cram for the exam for the APUS government exam coming up in just a couple weeks.
Up next, actually, on the Washington Journal, we're going to be talking about the APUS History Exam, our Cram for the Exam segment.
It is the eighth year in a row that we've been doing it for the APUS history exam.
I think it's been longer for the government exam, but glad to help high school students.
And it's always a segment to learn about history and government.
That's coming up in less than 10 minutes.
So stick around for that.
This is Carol in Maryland, Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my call.
I want to talk about voting by mail and ballot.
I just moved to this state.
I lived in Pennsylvania before.
And my husband and I voted in person for years.
And then all of a sudden, we weren't really, he wasn't able to get there and stand in line.
So we started voting by ballot.
And so we, for the 24-0 election, we both signed our request to have a ballot.
And then a while later, you know, my neighbor called and she said, the ballots are in.
Go down to your mailbox and get them.
And I did.
But there was only one, and it was for me because my husband had passed away.
I think it was 10 days before.
And they knew about it.
And I thought, you see, the people who are running the who are responsible for making sure that the ballots go out to the right people or to real people are really working hard.
And I hope that it will continue.
There were people in rural areas that just didn't get to the voting place because it was so far away.
Voting by mail is good, and I hope it continues.
Thank you for listening.
Carol, thanks for the call.
Tim is in Wisconsin, Independent.
Good morning, Open Forum.
Go ahead.
Yes, sir.
I was just calling.
I just want to comment on that last caller.
Voting by mail is the biggest reason we had one of the biggest frauds in 2020.
And just on my second subject, I hope Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, people like Megan Kelly, I hope they get their proper rebuke for being as absolutely horrible people for what they've done to Erica Kirk with their smears and lies.
I think those people ought to be ashamed of themselves, but they probably won't be.
So thank you.
That's Tim in Wisconsin.
This is Paul in the land of Lincoln, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
I'd like to compliment President Trump on doing a good job of closing the borders and trying to get rid of all the people that don't belong here.
It's ridiculous.
They come here and they take half the jobs that Americans could be doing.
And also, I'm happy with him helping Israel in this war and trying to get rid of the terrorists and doing a job.
Sometimes he's a little braggadocia about what he's doing, but in the overall picture, and cutting taxes and cutting taxes on Social Security is another good thing because I'm on Social Security, and I don't know if the Medicare part is going to be tax-free too, but that's like $24,000 a year that I'm not going to have to pay taxes on.
Hopefully, if they get the Medicare, I pay $7,000 a year now in Medicare premiums, which is another ridiculous thing.
So, anyway, I want to congratulate President Trump on for what he's doing, trying to make the country better, trying to make the world better.
And I appreciate the Republicans in the House and the Senate, and I hope they can keep the majority.
And if the Democrats get in, everything is going to be destroyed again.
That's been good what's happening now.
And thank you for letting me make my comments.
That's Paul in Illinois to the Buckeye State.
Walter Cleveland, Democrat.
Go ahead.
Yes.
Hello.
Good morning, John.
Thanks for taking my call.
John, our president, Donald Trump, is drunk with power.
Have you ever seen the movie Covadus with Deborah Kerr, Robert Taylor, Peter Ustinoff as the crazy Emperor Nero?
Well, if Donald Trump doesn't remind you of Ustinoff, Nero, in that movie, then watch it again.
Just like him, and, you know, things did not come to a good end for Nero.
So it seems like, and I'm not saying that the administration hasn't done some good things.
The guy brought up closing the border just before me.
That was a good idea.
Getting Maduro was a good idea if it helps Venezuela, but it's almost like a means to an end.
And I think the end in Venezuela has to do with the oil down there, of course, as well as in the Strait of Hormuz.
So hang Wickoff and Kushner in Islamabad.
I hope something good comes out of it, but they're businessmen.
And the means to that end, again, is oil.
I don't really think it had anything to do with regime change in Iran and helping the people there.
It was the oil.
And So hopefully things will get better and they'll make some decisions in that administration.
Oh, one other thing.
I've never heard anyone bring this up before in the media or I've never read it, but I think a good name for Pete Hegset would be Pete Henchman.
If you look up the definition, you probably know what a henchman is anyway.
But anyway, that's my nickname for him.
That's Walter in Ohio.
Elida is in Virginia, Independent.
Good morning.
Elida, you with us.
Then we will go to Annie in Fairfax, California, Republican.
Annie, go ahead.
Hi, I want to say I registered Republican back when George W. Bush was president because I wanted to fly beneath the radar there after 9-11.
It sounds kind of kooky, but anyway, I wanted to bring up a really off-topic that is suicide.
And I lost a sibling to that.
And I want to say, without sounding presumptuous, that Donald had a brother who was an alcoholic.
And I just wanted to say I'm sorry for what happened there because I think, you know, when people are, quote, acting out, unquote, it has to do with pain.
And anyway, that's my comment.
And I hope you ask me a question because I like it when you ask follow-up questions.
Annie, I just want to say I'm sorry for your loss.
Thank you, sir.
Sean, California, Democrat.
Go ahead.
Good morning, John.
I just wanted to call this morning and first ask if you could put up that debt clock.
I know during the last administration, we were showing that debt quite a bit, and I would like to see it now.
What do you want to know about the debt clock?
Which aspect of it, besides that top-line number of $39,162,362,000,000 and counting in the U.S. national debt?
What else do you want to know?
There's a lot of numbers there.
I would like to see that it had rose to that high because the last time I seen it was 37,000.
I worked two jobs.
$37 trillion, I think you mean.
Yeah, $37 trillion.
It'd be a long time ago if it was $37,000.
Yeah, like way back before I was born.
Yeah, so I'm not able to get that in the morning.
I mean, I'm only able to get it in the morning when I'm speaking with you.
Also, I am a fond person of mail-in vote.
I get my vote and ballot.
My ballot is probably back two weeks, two and a half weeks prior, and I check on it.
I worked too much.
I found that I missed voting one time because I had to choose between voting and going to work.
Retired Teacher Shares Voting Struggles00:09:19
So for all of those people that sit in home, you baby boomers, stop calling in here and saying that vote and ballots messed up 2020 election because you're only basically saying that Trump didn't win.
But thank you very much, John.
And I would like to see that clock from time to time.
And it's good to talk with you again.
That's Sean in California.
Susan is in Worcester, Mass, Republican.
Go ahead.
Yes, I'd just like to say about my president.
I think he's doing a great job.
He's one of the most powerful presidents we ever had.
We had weak, corrupt like Biden, but he is calling for the 2020 election to be completely overturned because the SPLC, meaning Biden and his administration is legitimate.
And it was going back in 2016, they got all the documents about what Obama did.
You know, I want to see jail time for these people.
NAGA wants to see Obama perk like I do.
All the crummy things that they've done.
And this is the biggest story right here when Trump said the overture of the 2020 election.
And one other thing about Trump, you know, you people that call you so jealous, why don't you get off your fiennies?
Do something positive.
Go to work instead of waiting for your check from the Democrats.
That's all you do.
It's unbelievable.
And news called you dumbasses, the black people that were in the audience.
What do you think of that?
Being called dumbasses.
Well, if you who you are to call this show.
All right.
That's Susan.
This is Anthony, Memphis, Tennessee, Independent.
Go ahead.
Yes.
Hi, John.
I just wanted to say, y'all, in this, I really want to speak.
That last call almost made me change everything I wanted to say.
But in regards to the Epstein files, what I was calling about, you know, there have been a lot of complaints about the Republicans not releasing the files.
But I don't understand why no one's saying anything about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
They had the files first.
They could release them.
So that's one of my major concerns is why are the Democrats getting so much of a pass on not releasing the files when they had them first?
And my second thing is, you know, there's a lot of complaints on the Democrats, about the Republicans.
They both seem to be basically had being hypocrites.
They complain about certain things that they're the party that is.
And then when it happens on their side, then they don't have, they don't complain about it.
But what I would really like to see, I think this country would be in a much better condition, much better shape, if we got a good independent party in there.
And I would like to see an independent party led by Dick Cheney.
Pardon me, Mike Pence and Liz Cheney.
I think they would be the best representative to run this country because they are not extreme left or extreme right.
And they look for what is good for the country.
They both made sacrifices to improve the United States.
So I wish this message could get to Mike Pence and Liz Cheney and they would get together and form a strong independent party.
And that's who I would vote for.
Thank you.
That's Anthony in Tennessee.
This is Linda out of Fort Worth, Texas, as we continue with Open Forum.
Democratic Lion, go ahead, Linda.
Hi, I haven't called in ages.
I'm a retired teacher here in Texas.
I am curious about how Donald Trump manages to vote since he's a convicted felon.
He sends in his mail ballot.
Do they just set it aside in a little basket with his name on it and never count it?
Also, I always suggest to people that they go to the Secretary of State website and take the online training for being a poll worker.
You don't have to be a poll worker, but you're going to have the training.
And you're going to learn a lot of things about what happens when you move and you don't update your registration and all the problems that people come across when they show up to vote.
And they just need to be educated and informed.
I've been a precinct chair.
I've helped run many elections, done block walking and all of that.
I'm 84, so I don't do that anymore, but I do as much as I can to help Democrats get elected.
Linda, there were several stories about Donald Trump after that conviction and his voting status.
And as a Florida resident, he wouldn't be banned for voting because of the state's disenfranchisement law.
He wasn't incarcerated for after that conviction.
And therefore, he was allowed to vote.
This all was back in 2024.
This came out.
You don't remember the stories about this?
No, I don't.
And so I'm wondering if different states must have different laws about that.
There are lots of different laws in different states for convictions and rules about when somebody can and can't vote, although this now all moots since the president won the election.
I wonder, though, you mentioned you're a teacher, you were a teacher.
What topic did you teach?
I was a special ed teacher.
And how long were you a special ed teacher for?
40 years.
And when did you stop being a special ed teacher?
2010.
I retired.
What are your thoughts on special education in America today and the support for special ed programs on the state level and the federal level?
Well, I really don't know too much about what's going on currently in recent years.
When I ended my career, our elementary school, our school district, was going into inclusion so that I was in the regular classroom with my special ed students.
And the teacher and I co-taught many different kinds of lessons.
I will say that I was quite pleased in fifth grade that one of my special ed kids passed the state math test and several of the regular ed kids didn't pass it.
So we were doing something right.
Linda, thanks for the call from Fort Worth, Texas.
This is Barbara in Knoxville, Tennessee, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
How are you this morning?
Doing well.
Good.
I was calling about voting.
The last time I can remember is Gore versus Bush, and they had a big deal about that.
But Gore just said, okay, he won.
Let's go on.
We don't have a rigged election.
We don't have cheating and voting.
If there is, it's very, very minute.
And all this big deal about vote, cheating, and cheating, we don't.
I mean, there's very few people that do.
I wish people would get off that because they're trying to rig the elections to make it, well, you can cheat if you think about it.
So that's all I've got to say about that.
That's Barbara in Volunteer State to the Garden State.
This is Carrie in Morristown.
Democrat, go ahead.
Hi, good morning.
Thank you for taking my call today.
My conversation is going to be very brief.
First of all, I'm a Democrat.
Donald Trump is our president.
I didn't vote for him.
I didn't support him.
But he's our president.
When Iran comes after us, they're not coming after Republicans.
They're coming after all of us.
There comes a time when none of the vision has to be set up.
Support the president, understand what it means, and move forward.
There will come a time when Democrats will take the position of the government again once, but know clearly it's not about a tribe anymore.
It's about willing people to stick together, reach together, and make us, this country, much better.
So much division among countrymen, race, and so much prosperity.
And the news organizations need to bring us together.
Enough is enough.
And it is frightening.
It's earth-wracking.
And someone, some institution needs to bring the spirit of humanity in this country together, as George Washington has put it clearly for us to survive.
Kerry, do you think that the 250th birthday of this country is something that can bring us together?
A Democrat willing to listen to a Republican can do that, and a Republican who's willing to listen to a Democrat can do it as well.
150th anniversary is a hallmark, is a principle of defining who we are, black people.
You're not a race.
You're not a color.
You're Him and Dane.
You have more to offer this country than the first principle fighting for something of dignity of race that you achieved from the civil rights era.
We have moved on.
What more you have to offer to the country of the United States?
Because if you don't get it right, first immigrants coming on, they're taking over the opportunity Richard Nixon put in place for black people to affirm in action for equal opportunity, taking the opportunity and moving forward while you're still singing Kumbaya.
It's Kerry in New Jersey, our last caller in this open forum.
Stick around about 35 minutes left this morning.
In that time, we'll be joined by educators Jason Stacey and Matthew Ellington to preview this year's High School Advanced Placement U.S. History Exam.
If you're a high school student taking the exam or a lover of history, you won't want to miss it.
Stick around.
We'll be right back.
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Exploring the American story, watch American History TV every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history.
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
Sunday with our guest, co-anchor of CNBC morning program, Squawkbox, and the founder and editor-at-large of the online financial report Deal Book.
Andrew Ross Sorkin has authored two best-selling books, Too Big to Fail, about the 2008 bailout of the U.S. financial system, which was adapted into a movie by HBO and 1929 on the great stock market crash and named the best book of 2025 by Time, Bloomberg, and others.
He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein at the New Orleans Book Festival.
You are doing the show Squawkbox.
You're doing Deal Book, which you invented.
And you're doing a column for the New York Times.
Yep.
And you've got three teenage children.
How do you have time to write a book?
Ah, they would like the answer to that question, too.
Slowly is maybe the answer.
It took me about eight years to write this book.
But you realize the Great Depression was over in less than eight years.
This is very true.
This is very, very true.
Watch America's Book Club with Andrew Ross Sorkin.
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Washington Journal continues.
Well, across the country, it's that time of year.
The high school students are prepping for advanced placement exams on a variety of topics, and we're lending a hand this morning by taking a look at the AP U.S. History Exam.
Joining us in that effort is Jason Stacey of Southern Illinois University, an Edwardsville history professor and co-author of the book Fabric of a Nation, a history with skills and sources for the AP U.S. History Exam.
Jason Stacey, thanks for joining us.
For folks who may not be in high school and may not be taking this test on May the 8th, what is the APUS History Exam?
Why would a high school student want to take it?
Well, first of all, John, thanks for having me on and good to talk to you again today.
And hello, everybody.
And it's good to talk to you about the APUS History Exam, APUS History, the class, and U.S. history in general.
The APUS History Exam is the historian's perfect exam.
We love the APUS History Exam because it tests what historians think are some of the most important items and skills for being able to do history.
This is not your traditional exam where all you have to do is recall facts.
In fact, historians spend a lot of time interpreting documents, contextualizing documents, connecting them to periods that came before and after, and trying to come to some generalizations and big picture conclusions and write them down for other people to read.
And that's what the APUS History Exam assesses.
Students have to not only take a multiple choice section, but that multiple choice section is not just fact recall.
They have to interpret documents, they have to interpret images, they have to interpret charts and graphs, and then there's an essay portion of the exam where the students write a number of essays and they not only have to make an argument based on the past, but they have to interpret primary sources, historical documents, historical images as part of their argument.
But that's just the test.
Behind the APUS history test is a great class, APUS History, which over half a million students have taken this year in preparation for the test.
And throughout the course of this academic year, teachers across this country have been training their students not only in the facts of U.S. history, but how to interpret U.S. history for themselves and to interpret some of the great primary sources and some unknown sources in this nation's history.
And May 8th is the date of the exam this year.
And we have a special line devoted for students.
If you want to call in and ask questions about how you're studying and what to study, Jason Stacey and his co-author, Matthew Ellington, very good at providing that advice.
They've done so in their textbook for this class.
Here's how you can call in 202748-8000 for students to call in.
Teachers, it's 202-748-8001.
And then a line for all others, 202748-8002, some time devoted to American history today.
Jason Stacey, on the format of this test, you talked a little bit about it.
I want to show it to viewers some 55 multiple choice questions for the students who will be taking it, three short answer questions.
They'll also have to respond to a document-based question, and then they'll have to provide one long essay.
I want to give an example of some of the documents that students may be asked to interpret in taking this test to show viewers what it's like.
And one of those documents is the toppling of the statue of King George III in New York City, July 1776.
This might be something coming up in this semi-quincentennial year that students will be asked to interpret.
We're showing it to our viewers on screen.
What should a student taking this test take from this image?
What will the college board want them to know?
Well, this is a great document, John, and I'm glad we're showing it today because it's a very rich document for students to work with.
And you're going to notice that we're going to be doing a lot of documents today that are related to the country's 250th anniversary.
And this is at the very front end of that legacy.
So this is an image, as you read, of the tearing down of George III's statue in New York City, a famous event probably undertaken by the Sons of Liberty, and that a student could apply the historical reasoning skill that they've learned over the course of the year of contextualization.
What is the context of this primary source?
And what does it tell us about the time period and the context in which it was created?
And so this is really at the very beginning of the American Revolution.
The conflict has already started.
The Declaration of Independence has been issued.
And you can see here what looks like a spontaneous act to symbolically tear down the British monarchy in British North America.
But there are some other interesting attributes that a student might notice about this document.
You'll notice that the College Board offers what we call a source line for all of their documents.
And that source line is going to give you information about when the document was created, who created the document, and maybe a title for the document that will help you situate it within its context.
Now, this document is very interesting because it was actually created by a European.
It's an engraving that was mass produced for distribution in Europe.
It was first created by an anonymous French source, but then a German, Franz Habermann, in 1778 began to mass produce it, put his name on it, and spread it throughout Europe.
And so what's very interesting here is we have a European image of what was happening in New York during the Revolution.
And there are some clues to give this away, and students may not necessarily catch all of these.
For example, the architecture is all European.
That's not how New York looked in 1776.
Also, you'll notice that there's a mixed ethnicity of the rebels pulling down the statue.
There's African Americans and there are European Americans pulling down the statue.
And that some of the individuals pulling down this statue are strangely dressed for New York, even in July, in that they look overwhelmingly like they might be enslaved workers in the Caribbean.
And so we have a kind of European imagining of what this revolutionary act was.
They see it in very egalitarian terms.
We see a mixed ethnicity here.
They also have some of the buildings incorrect, and they're not really sure how many people were there or who was there.
And so it's an interesting document because it also tells us the context of the European interpretation of the American Revolution.
All of the students know now that the American Revolution in terms of equality and rights and liberty was not necessarily the same for everyone in 1776.
And it would be a long struggle over the course of American history to redress some of those inequalities and lack of rights for many Americans.
But we also see here in this imagination of the American Revolution on the part of the Europeans the extent to which the American Revolution is going to influence Europe itself.
And as all the students out there know, soon after the American Revolution, we will have the French Revolution, which will partially take its inspiration from the American Revolution.
And well into the 19th century, there will be revolutions in Europe that take the ideas of equality and liberty and a Republican government as their inspiration, some of which is inspired by the American Revolution in 1776.
You mentioned the students out there.
We already have some students calling in.
Hopefully there's some of those students taking this test on May the 8th.
Let's start with Sage in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
Sage, good morning.
Are you an AP U.S. student?
Yes, I am.
And I do Renaissance Academy Charter School in Phoenixville.
I was wondering if you would recommend studying specific dates or the broad timeframes and what generally occurs in them or a mix of both.
And if you recommend the specific dates, could you please list some?
Oh, sure, Sage.
Well, first of all, it's a great question.
And students often ask us, how important are dates?
The important thing to remember about the dates are the dates are important only for the things that happened.
And so you don't have to memorize all the dates.
What you have to remember are the specific events that are illustrative or examples of larger trends.
And so you're not going to ask, you're not going to be asked to recall a specific date on the AP exam.
However, you'll notice that the AP curriculum is divided into time periods.
And those time periods, there's nine of them, have a date at the beginning and a date at the end.
And so you can check out the time periods.
If you don't have them from class, you can look them up on the internet.
The time periods for the AP US history class and exam are on the College Board website.
And we can show them to viewers as well as we scroll through the nine different time periods.
Go ahead.
Good.
So take a look at those time periods on the college board website.
Thanks for putting those up there, John.
And ask yourself, what are some of the specific dates at the beginning and at the end that are of a particular significance?
And so, for example, if you look at period two, period two begins in 1607, and you should ask yourself, if you don't remember, why would they have 1607 as the beginning date?
Well, of course, that is the first permanent British settlement in North America, and that's pretty significant for U.S. history.
And so that might be a date that you want to remember.
Also, keep in mind that at the end of Period II is 1754, the beginning of the Seven Years or French and Indian War, which generally historians see as sort of the beginning of the revolutionary era.
And so there you've got some bookends for period one, or excuse me, period two.
And the dates are what established those bookends.
But most importantly, those dates are only mile markers for very important events that divide U.S. history.
So it's the significant events and the significant trends.
The dates are just a tool to help us navigate the whole of U.S. history.
I hope that helps, Sage.
Sage, before you go, do you have a favorite period of U.S. history to study as you've gone through all these different periods throughout the course of the year?
What's your favorite?
The Gilded Age.
I just think it's interesting politically, but also, you know, all the architecture that came from the era.
Yeah.
That's great.
That's great, Sage.
Lean into that interest.
Lean into that interest in that time period.
The Gilded Age is a complicated period politically, socially, economically.
And ask yourself, remind yourself the specific things you're interested in in the Gilded Age and the specific facts or evidence that supports that interest.
And then ask yourself, what are some other things that you recall that are connected to some of the architectural change?
For example, how much did changes in industry and the second industrial revolution during that time period influence architecture?
Because in history, all of these things are connected.
And that's going to help you on the DBQ.
When you come to a document and you look at that source statement, which tells you something about that document, you should begin to recall other facts and events and trends that you remember that are connected to that particular document.
And then you'll begin to see the web in the way in which documents are connected, events are connected to everything else that's going on in that time period.
Jason Stacey have got several students waiting to chat with you.
Let's keep rolling through them.
Annabeth is in Alpharetta, Georgia.
Annabeth, go ahead.
Hi.
I was just wondering if you were a student worried about the LEQ part of the exam, what period would you recommend studying the most, just as someone who has insight into what that might be on the exam?
And Annabeth, what's an LEQ for those of us who aren't taking it this year?
Oh, sorry.
That would be the long essay question.
It's the essay question that does not come with writed documents to give you context and argumentation help.
Excellent.
Stay on the line, Annabeth.
Jason Stacey, go ahead.
Annabeth, great question.
And I'm going to tell you straight out: at this point in the semester, you don't have to concentrate on any certain time period.
Now, the time periods are weighed differently.
And the majority of the exam will be on the time periods three through eight.
And so that's a lot of class, right?
That's taking you probably from October all the way till last month, March.
And so there is the very early stuff and the very late stuff, those are not heavily emphasized on the exam.
But it's not worth focusing on any specific time period at this point.
Try to give yourself a sense of the sweep of the time periods.
Think about some trends that you're seeing within the particular time periods, especially those big ones at the center of the course, and think about some connections between the time periods, some of the broader trends or themes throughout U.S. history, both the economic and the political and the social.
AP History Exam Time Period Trends00:04:08
You want to go into this exam not with any specific time period or set of facts or heaven forbid just one or two facts in mind.
You want to instead have a kind of even landscape of the whole sweep of U.S. history that you've studied over the course of the year because you've really been studying for this exam the whole school year.
And so I think you're going to be ready.
Annabeth, before you go, what's your favorite time period?
Oh, I'm a really big fan of period eight, especially when it comes to the civil rights movement and especially those like peripheral groups and how it was all just like very much at the same time.
I just really find it fascinating.
Period eight for us non-U.S. history viewers or students, I should say, period eight, 1945 to 1980.
Annabeth, thanks for the call.
Let me bring it up.
And if I could just jump in, John.
Very quickly, one last word to Annabeth.
Your interest in the civil rights movement is your way to make connections to the pursuit of civil rights in this country across the time periods.
So that you probably also recall the beginning of the women's rights movement way back in the 1830s and 40s and the beginning of the abolitionist movement in the 1830s and well through the Civil War and after.
And so take your interest in the civil rights movement in period eight and use it as a bridge to the rest of U.S. history that you've studied because that's a theme that you can thread throughout U.S. history.
Annabeth, thanks for the call.
Jonathan is a teacher out of Palm Springs, California.
Jonathan, thanks for calling in this morning.
Do you teach AP U.S. history?
Never taught AP U.S. history, but high school history, yes.
What are your thoughts on this exam?
Sure.
My question is: what is the success rate for the students who are taking the test across the country?
What are the success rates?
And if you could break that down demographically, I've seen the test.
It's been a few years since I worked as a teacher, but I know that test is difficult.
It's pretty intense.
It's a change.
We had a hard time getting our students to pass that test.
And if I recall, we've lowered the standard a few times.
So anyway, so that's my question.
What is the success rate of the students across the country?
And if you could break that down demographically.
Thank you very much.
Jonathan, thanks for the call from California.
Well, thanks, Jonathan.
We're getting just to the borderlands of my knowledge here.
And so I don't want to get beyond that.
But generally, the pass rate on the exam is around 50% or a little north of 50%, at least last time I checked.
I can't give you a breakdown because I do not know it of the demographics of it.
I'm sure that that information is out there, but I'm sorry I don't have it for you, Jonathan.
Is this a pass-fail type test?
No, it isn't.
And so it is an exam where the final score is broken down between one and five.
And the college board considers a passing score to be either three, four, or five, five being the highest.
But, you know, the goal for many students on the APUS history exam is to receive college credit.
And generally, a three, four, or five will gain a student college credit for having taken the class in the exam.
But I want to stress it is up to individual colleges and universities what scores they take.
And so your mileage may vary.
Some schools will take a three, four, or five.
Some whole states require a certain score.
Some schools require a four or five before they'll grant college credit.
And I believe that there are some colleges and universities that are happy that you took the AP test.
They're happy to look at your scores, but they do not give college credit if you receive a three, four, or five.
Reconstruction Era Unfinished Process Explored00:03:55
Jason Stacey, we showed that image example of a document-based question that a student may be asked about.
Let me give a text example that a student may be asked about on this year's AP U.S. history exam.
The source information here is the Centennial Canvas.
It's not the American Crisis.
Let me get the right one on the screen for the viewers.
The Centennial Canvas from New York Daily Herald, July 3rd of 1876.
So, we're talking 100 years past the American Revolution, and the centennial Canvas quote that was in the New York Daily Herald July 3rd, 1876, says, Whatever Northerners or Southerners may think of Lincoln or Lee, they have one opinion of Washington.
There is comfort in the idea that after all these quarrels, these wars, these heartburnings, we can gather around the Liberty Tree of 1776.
There can be no Reconstruction that will not begin with an old-fashioned 4th of July friendliness.
What should students take when they're seeing that text, that document on the test?
Well, I hope the students that are watching today took a look at that document, took a look at the source line, and once you started reading it, John, and they started reading it along with you, immediately the context began to become very clear.
This is 1876, it's 100 years after the birth of the country, and we are at the end of a time period that historians call Reconstruction.
And Reconstruction is the attempt after 1865 to reconstruct the nation in the aftermath of the Civil War.
And there is a long history, and many of your students recall that it was a very complicated process and, in fact, an unfinished process, even by 1876.
And so, what we see in this document is very interesting: an attempt by the New York Herald in 1876 on the eve of the nation's centennial birthday to use the memory of the American Revolution to make some plea for unity,
noting that there is still some divisions in the nation between, as it says, Lincoln and Lee, but they can all agree on Washington.
And then there's that mention of the Liberty Tree in 1776 itself.
And so, here's an opportunity for students to apply the reasoning process that the college board calls continuity and change over time.
And so, there is a clear continuity in this document with the legacy of the American Revolution.
And the change over time here is that there has been a very complicated history in those 100 years, in this case, leading to the greatest rupture of the United States during the Civil War,
and that long process and that unfinished process of trying to unite the nation again and seek some redress for some of the, frankly, crimes of the pre-Civil War era.
And so, there is both in this document a continuity with the memory of the Revolution and a change over time, recognizing that this is a very different context in which from the American Revolution itself, and that that change over time is recognized in this document as it remembers or tries to use some of those continuities from the Revolution.
We're talking about the AP U.S. History Exam.
It's May the 8th.
Crafting Arguments for History Documents00:09:30
We're trying to help students cram for the exam today and taking phone calls from students.
Teachers as well also have a line for all others, but we're trying to prioritize the students who call in.
And another one for you, Jason Stacey, is Margaret out of Edwardsville, Illinois.
Margaret, good morning.
Good morning.
Margaret.
Good morning, Margaret.
What's your question?
Do you happen to know Jason Stacy from the Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville?
I actually do.
He is my father.
Margaret, what's your question for your dad?
Are you taking the exam this year?
No, but I took it last year.
And do you think you're well prepared as the daughter of one of the men who wrote the book on the exam?
I hope.
Can I ask what you got on the exam, Margaret?
No, Margaret, you do not have to tell.
So Margaret, what's your question for your dad today?
I wanted to ask, what are the most important things to consider when writing a DBQ?
Fantastic question from your daughter.
Yeah, it's a hard question from my daughter.
So for everybody else who hasn't taken the exam, when you're taking the DBQ, you're going to be given some time to review the documents.
And for many students, their first inspiration is to read the prompt.
That's the question.
Panic, and then go to the documents to save them.
And my advice as a former APUS history teacher, and now I'm teaching the college class that the APUS history exam is supposed to emulate, is that read the question and sit with it a little bit.
You know more than you think you do.
And in fact, there will be answers, potential answers, that will come to mind just when you read the question.
Maybe take a couple notes after you read the question, but sit with the question for a little while and trust yourself.
Then go to the documents.
And as you're reading the documents, think about what you thought might be the answer or how you'd like to answer the question.
And you might find that the documents confirm what you thought might be a good answer.
You might find that the documents help you revise what you thought was a good answer.
Or even the documents will give you some clue to say, you know what, maybe I should take it in this direction while I read these documents.
And while you're reading those documents, think about, after you look at those source lines, think about the other information that you know that maybe the documents help you remember.
And write those down next to the documents.
You're going to have some time to do this before you begin to write.
And so don't rush into the documents.
Think about how the answer, the question might be answered first.
Then go into the documents and have a kind of conversation with them regarding what you think an answer to the question is.
And let those facts that you know that the documents help you remember, let those facts come to your mind.
You know, Jason Stacey, you mentioned that brief moment of panic.
Is that like when you realize your daughter's calling into a live television show that you're appearing on?
Yeah, it's something like that, John.
You'll notice I did take a minute to let it sink in.
Do you have a sense of what your daughter's favorite period of U.S. history is?
Oh, I'm sure that it's her father's favorite time period, which is the generation before the Civil War.
And I believe Margaret is still with us.
Margaret, is that your favorite time period in U.S. history?
It is.
And specifically the First Great Awakening.
Margaret, thanks so much for the call.
I really appreciate you calling in.
I do have a few other students and just about five minutes left.
Jason Stacey, let me get to them.
Zach in Sandy Hook, Connecticut is a student.
Zach, what is your question about the APUS history exam?
Yeah, good morning.
I was just wondering if the best way to study would be to practice the MCQ questions on some online sources and maybe Get a couple wrong and kind of write the correct answers.
Or the best way is to be confident in the content, also by finding someone like online sources and just making sure that you know all the patterns and then like going with that without really focusing that much on practicing the MCQ, which is a better kind of way to study.
Thank you.
Yeah, Zach, I'm going to split the difference.
I'm going to tell you both.
I'm sorry.
And let me explain why.
You know, you're in the period now where you're going to be sort of working the muscles you've already built up over the course of the year.
And so taking practice questions is a great opportunity for you to further familiarize yourself, raise your confidence level, keep those mental muscles strong in how to answer certain kinds of questions.
The MCQs, the short answer questions, the document-based questions, those are helping you remember how to engage those questions in terms of structure.
But also, you can begin to take a very large overview of the content as well.
Maybe use those time periods as your guide.
Maybe take some notes first from memory, then from your textbook, of some of the big events that are happening during those nine time periods that you want to keep in mind.
And those will all be pretty familiar to you.
And start thinking about how they connect, how they influence each other, how there is both continuity and change over time, some of the context for those events.
And in that regard, both of those kinds of final practicing will keep those mental muscles you've built up over the course of the year strong.
Just about three minutes left.
Let me try to get in Brian Fort Myers, Florida, on that line for teachers.
Brian, you are on with Jason Stacey.
Jason, I'm an AP grader.
I'm going to be in Kansas City this summer grading AP exams.
I've been doing it for 14 years.
Great, thanks for your work.
You're welcome, but they pay well.
ETF is generally what we're looking for, okay, when we're grading.
We only get to spend a maximum of five minutes with each exam.
Okay, so it's not on the LEQs.
What the student wants to do is come up with an argument for the question first and then weave the documents into the argument.
I would use this one as supporting my argument that says blah, blah, blah, whatever it is.
Okay.
Then and treat it almost like an LEQ where you have no information at all and you have to do it all from memory.
Okay, but the DBQ is probably the most important essay to do because you can, if you get at least 80% on the multiple choice and you get at least a five or six because it's nine points on the DBQ, if you get at least a five or six on the DBQ, you can write an average or even a below average LEQ and still pass the exam.
Brian, let me give that to Jason Stacey at last 90 seconds, Jason Stacey, on responding to that, but also on your final tips for students as they get ready.
Again, May 8th is when students across the country will be taking this AP US history exam.
Thank you, Brian.
That's all good information, and that's right.
You know, there is no one part of this exam that'll necessarily break, make or break one score.
There's a whole score that's ultimately given to the students.
And so I think it's important for students not to approach the exam too strategically where they say, I'm just going to concentrate on this and this is not as important.
I would go to give your best to all sections of the exam because you're being tested on the whole of U.S. history and each of these sections of the exam assess a student in a slightly different way.
And it's important to keep in mind that there are multiple quality control steps through the reading process where individuals who are reading the exams are also aligned with certain standards and to make sure that that almost half a million students who take those exams are given a very fair assessment in Kansas City this year.
And Jason Stacey is the author of Fabric of a Nation, a history with skills and sources for the AP U.S. History course with his co-author, Matthew Ellington.
We always appreciate you joining us for this cram for the exam segment.
Let's do it again next year.
Let's do it again.
Thanks, John.
Good luck, everybody.
And that's going to do it for us this morning on the Washington Journal.
We'll be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Eastern, 4 a.m. Pacific.
A reminder that tonight is the White House Correspondents Dinner.
C-SPAN's coverage begins at 7 p.m. Eastern.
You can join us on cspan, cspan.org, and the free C-SPANNow